Reconstructing White-Red: Lorehold Spirit Precon Upgrade Guide

Lorehold is back with a new thesis of how white-red should work in Commander.

This color combination has been scouring the less-traveled corners of the color pie in search of a way to generate card advantage and create synergy for a long time. Previous solutions include 'play equipment' and 'make token creatures.' Sometimes the solution is more specific and asks you to goad creatures and force your opponents to attack each other. Lorehold Spirit tries to rectify the follies of the past with some new retrofitting.

In this precon guide, I strip out some of the questionable, over-costed and out-of-place cards and hone in on a new mission statement; our graveyard is our second library and we will use it.

The Specter of the Past

The Lorehold Spirit precon comes with:

• 1 Ready-to-play 100-card Commander deck
• 1 Traditional foil face commander with borderless art
• 1 Traditional foil featured commander with borderless art
• 98 Non-foil cards, including 10 new-to-Magic cards
• 10 Double-sided tokens
• 1 Deck box

Playtest this list now, or test it against other players in our Play Online lobbies! Be sure to add this deck to your Favorites list first.

Our Intrepid Researcher

The face commander, Quintorius, History Chaser, is a planeswalker with that special line of text, "Quintorius, History Chaser can be your commander." For four mana, he comes into play with five loyalty counters, one static ability, and two loyalty abilities.

His static ability is how he protects himself from attackers, but it's a tricky puzzle to solve. Every time one or more cards leave your graveyard, Quintorius creates a 3/2 red and white Spirit creature token. If you ramp out Quintorius as fast as you can, he will have no defense besides his own high number of loyalty counters and any defenders you played on earlier turns.

His first loyalty ability is one of the best card advantage loyalty abilities ever printed on a planeswalker; for the cost of adding one loyalty counter, you may discard a card (and you really should). If you do, you draw two cards, then mill a card. The graveyard is your second library, after all, so this is netting you one-and-a-half cards on each activation. And even though you're discarding a card to fuel the card draw, what if we could turn that cost into an advantage? We'll explore that later.

His second and final loyalty ability is a temporary buff for your Spirits. It's not an overrun or an alpha strike kind of ability; it can be used even when you need your Spirits back on defense. It grants Spirits you control double strike and vigilance until end of turn. The cost is steep at four loyalty counters, so you won't be able to activate this ability frequently. It's important to note that this ability can be activated on the turn he comes into play, which could be vital in the late game when you re-cast him with a full board.

So, is he a Spirit kindred commander? A graveyard commander? A discard synergy commander? He's all three at once, and there's a lot of moving pieces we need to get synced up together to make this work.

Our companion for this project is this spirit-forged steed:

Excava, Risen Past does everything you want in this deck, and does it quickly. He's a 3/3 for four mana with flying and haste. He has an attack trigger that returns up to one target artifact, creature, or non-Aura enchantment with mana value 3 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield with a finality counter on it, and makes it a 1/1 Spirit creature with flying in addition to its other types.

His haste is a huge advantage, as is the fact that his reanimation effect is an attack trigger and not a combat damage trigger. He's the perfect follow-up to playing Quintorius the turn prior. One swing from Excava will bring out a flying blocker from the graveyard, and trigger Quintorius's Spirit-generating ability, giving you two blockers to keep Quintorius alive as he continues digging deeper and deeper into your library with his first loyalty ability.

Let's try to fix the cracks in this deck's architecture.

Echoes in Eternity

During initial playtesting, this precon was slow and sluggish to start, had a strong midgame plan, but nothing to push it over the top besides the singular copy of Moonshaker Cavalry. The times it had an edge over the other Secrets of Strixhaven precons was when it could consistently recur creatures with removal attached to them like Skyclave Apparition and Kami of Ancient Law, policing opponents' board states and removing their most powerful threats while my commander stayed safe behind his many defenders. We need to tighten up the cycle — we'll remove threats by using creatures that we recur from the graveyard, create Spirit tokens with Quintorius's trigger, and set up an impressive board state that can start eliminating players in the late game.

Utility Creatures

Every time one of these utility creatures is on the battlefield, you're generating some kind of value beyond just its power and toughness.

Selfless Spirit primarily serves as removal protection. A creative use for Selfless Spirit is sacrificing it before combat to give your attackers indestructible, swinging creatures without fear of losing them to blockers, then recurring it the same turn with one of this deck's many recursion mechanics and generating a 3/2 Spirit token with Quintorius in the process.

One of the best removal-on-a-stick creatures ever made, Skyclave Apparition exiles any nontoken threat with mana value 4 or less when it enters the battlefield. Recurring and flickering Skyclave Apparition is devastating to almost any opponent's board state. Sure it can't exile their biggest, most expensive threats, but it can exile card advantage engines, artifact ramp, synergy pieces, and more. If you're playing at a table of other Secrets of Strixhaven precons, it doesn't matter how huge Zimone's Hydras are, Skyclave Apparition can exile them and only hand back a 2/2 or a 3/3 blue Illusion token in return when the Apparition leaves the battlefield.

Kami of Ancient Law can threaten to destroy any enchantment at instant speed. There are similar options that can remove an artifact or enchantment like Westfold Rider, but because of its Spirit creature type, Kami has some advantages over the more generic repeatable removal. But if you go that route, take a look at Bounty Agent and Curious Farm Animals as well for your consideration.

Let's add some more impactful recursion targets:

Lieutenant Kirtar would be the perfect protection for our planeswalker commander if he had the Spirit creature type, but this is close enough. At three mana, every Sun Titan trigger can bring this back to the battlefield, and he'll trigger Tocasia's Welcome on the way in. Then you can sit back and dare your opponents to attack you with their commander or any large creature, keeping two mana open to exile an attacker.

Our resident Reclamation Sage with a doctorate in Archaeology, Loran of the Third Path destroys up to one artifact or enchantment when she enters the battlefield. Her activated ability is useful if you desperately need card draw, and its downside of letting an opponent draw a card with you can be used politically.

A Spore Frog in Spirit-form, Kami of False Hope can sacrifice itself to fog for a turn. This deck can make use of Kami of False Hope in every possible way; discard him to a Conspiracy Theorist trigger to cast from the graveyard for cheap. Sacrifice him to protect your commander from being killed with combat damage, then bring him back on your turn with a Guardian Scalelord attack trigger. Late game, with multiple Spirit kindred buffs, attack with him for a surprising amount of damage with cards like Vanguard of the Restless in play. Kami of False Hope is one of the best single upgrades to the deck you can make.

Graveyard Recursion

Lorehold Archivist's prepare trigger will be online early and often. After that, for just four mana, she can bring any creature or artifact back from the graveyard — no mana value restrictions here. The only downside is that she exiles the card that she brings back, so don't use this on creatures that you want to recur multiple times like some of the ones we just covered in the previous section.

Angel of Indemnity's enters-the-battlefield trigger returns a permanent of mana value 4 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield with no downside. The card isn't exiled, it doesn't have a finality counter, and it doesn't have to be a specific type of permanent. In the late game, if you milled her earlier or if she was removed by a sweeper, you can bring her back for her encore cost and bring three token copies of her into play, each one bringing a permanent back from your graveyard to the battlefield, and encore itself triggers your commander's Spirit-token-generating trigger.

A little more conditional, Serra Paragon is a cheaper recursion enabler. The finality counter is definitely a downside, but once we add some flicker spells to the deck — including repeatable ones — we can wash that counter right off.

Since cards leaving the graveyard is a core part of our gameplan, I added some more enablers:

Banon, the Returners' Leader's Pray ability works beautifully with our commander. When activating your commander's first loyalty ability, you can discard a creature and then cast it with Banon, making the discard cost not a downside at all. Or you might mill a creature, and Banon will make it immediately castable this turn. If you can't meet any of those requirements, or if Quintorius is keeping his ink dry in the command zone, attacking with any creature will trigger Banon's second ability where you can pay one generic mana and discard a card to draw a card, letting you cast a creature you discarded, or simply rummaging a less-useful card away for a fresh draw.

Monarchy is a thing of the past, right? Right? Since Lorehold is all about uncovering relics of bygone eras, Court of Ardenvale fits in both thematically and mechanically. Being the monarch in a deck that's not as "stompy" as your average Dinosaur deck, or as evasive as an Angels deck, may seem like a big risk, but consider that your opponents will have to choose between attacking you to get the monarch, or attacking your planeswalker commander to remove him. It's an extra layer of psychological defense. Court of Ardenvale's upkeep ability will also trigger Quintorius's Spirit-generating trigger whether you have the monarch or not, but if you do, whatever you're bringing back from your graveyard will go straight into play instead of your hand, no strings attached.

Below are some Secrets of Strixhaven additions you might find in a pack or trade for at your friendly local game store when you pick up your precon:

Ark of Hunger has an exiting-graveyard trigger exactly the same as Quintorius's, but this one drains the table for one life, giving you a little bit of incidental group slug damage and some lifegain that will add up over the course of a game. Its tap ability functionally says "draw a card," since it mills a card and allows you to play it the same turn. To my knowledge, this is the first time that exact templating has appeared on a Magic card. If you do choose to play the card you milled, you get to ping the table again, and if Quintorius is in play, create a 3/2 Spirit token, too.

Summoned Dromedary fails the vanilla creature test as a 4/3 for four mana, but I wouldn't recommend actually casting this Camel. Instead, discard it to Quintorius's loyalty ability, then activate its ability from the graveyard to bring it back to your hand and make a 3/2 with Quintorius's static ability. Two mana for a 3/2 actually does pass the vanilla creature test, and the best part is you can repeat this trick every turn when you activate Quintorius.

Flicker Effects

Flickering our creatures can serve a lot of purposes, and white has some of the best flicker cards ever printed. I picked some wallet-friendly flicker options:

Eerie Interlude serves double-duty as a board wipe insurance spell, and a generically good way to re-trigger all of our creatures' enters abilities. If you have a board worth saving, keep three mana open when this is in your hand.

White's copy of Conjurer's Closet, Teleportation Circle, is a little more versatile because it can flicker an artifact, although the deck doesn't currently have many noncreature artifacts that would benefit from a flicker. It has a cheaper mana cost than Conjurer's Closet, and as of its most recent reprinting, it's down to around $3.60, perhaps due to the new card art featuring a group of humanoid turtles wearing headbands and brandishing traditional Japanese weaponry.

Fresh off the printing press from 2026's first set Lorwyn Eclipsed, Morningtide's Light is a unique take on flicker spells. It's sorcery-speed so it can't spare your creatures from a boardwipe, but it will spare you from any damage for the next entire turn cycle. There's one other important condition missing from Morningtide's Light: it doesn't say "creatures you control." You can exile anyone's creatures and cause them to come back at the next end step tapped under their owner's control. This is great for exiling every token creature your opponents have if they're playing a go-wide strategy that's overwhelming the board.

This new uncommon card from the main set fits in with this class of cards:

Daydream is a single-target sorcery-speed creature flicker spell that brings the targeted creature back with a +1/+1 counter. The best selling point for this card in this list in particular is that it has flashback. In your constant milling and discarding, you may end up with this card incidentally in your graveyard. For three mana you can cast it from the graveyard with flashback, and flicker, let's say, Sun Titan, triggering Quintorius's token-creating ability once when Daydream leaves the graveyard. Then when Sun Titan re-enters the battlefield and brings a permanent back from the graveyard, Quintorius's token-creating ability will trigger yet again.

Threats

Before upgrades, this deck took a long time to get a board big enough to start swinging. Let's shorten that clock a little:

Another new card from the main set, Antiquities on the Loose is an above-rate token creation sorcery that makes two 2/2 Spirit tokens. It also has flashback for six mana, and when cast from the graveyard, puts a +1/+1 counter on all your Spirit tokens, including the ones you just created, and the one that Quintorius will create when he sees this card leave the graveyard.

Gau, Feral Youth is just a misunderstood kid looking for a home, and this deck may be a good home for him. Each time he attacks he gets a +1/+1 counter, and at the beginning of each end step, he deals damage to each opponent equal to his power if a card left your graveyard that turn. If everything is going according to plan, that should be at least once every turn cycle. After a few swings with Gau, slugging your opponents for five damage at each of your end steps will be a significant threat they will have to contend with.

Surly Badgersaur makes Quintorius's first loyalty ability a toolbox of effects. Depending on what you discard, you can either create a Treasure token, give Surly Badgersaur a +1/+1 counter, or have Surly Badgersaur fight a creature you don't control. He's ramp, an ever-growing threat, and board control at the same time.

Finishers

This decklist comes with one of white's best finishers, Crater — I mean Moonshaker Cavalry. Assuming you've generated lots of tokens over the course of the game and managed to keep them around, when you get eight mana around turn eight and cast Moonshaker Cavalry, you'll turn your board into gigantic, evasive attackers. Use Quintorius's second loyalty ability, granting double strike and vigilance to all of your Spirits, and you can easily deal lethal damage to one or more opponents, and if any opponents remain you don't have to worry about a crack-back swing because your vigilant attackers remain untapped.

Storm of Souls doesn't end the game the same way Moonshaker Cavalry does, but it sets up an impressive board in the late game. Every creature in your graveyard will come back as a 1/1, trigger any enters-the-battlefield effects, trigger your Quintorius to make an extra 3/2, then receive any buffs due to now being Spirits. My favorite part about this card is that the creatures don't get exiled and brought back as tokens, nor do they receive finality counters; they're just back on the battlefield in Spirit form, and when they die, they go back to the graveyard as normal. If bringing back your graveyard full of creatures can't end the game, it can at least stabilize your board state if you were falling behind.

Fossilized Remains

Here's everything we chipped away from the original decklist. Some cards seemed completely out of place and, to be honest, a little shoehorned-in. I'll list these in order from easiest cuts to hardest.

They may be Spirits, but in this decklist we have no way to force the two legendary Spirit Dragons' death triggers to go off. This isn't a sacrifice deck (if you like that archetype, consider Witherbloom Pestilence and have a look at our precon upgrade guide), and hoping your opponents destroy your Dragons at the exact time it'd be most beneficial to you isn't a good plan.

Balefire Liege is from a bygone era when people played 1v1 — what a strange and antiquated custom — and its non-buffing abilities are nearly blank text in Commander.

To be brutally honest, Remorseful Cleric and Drumbellower seem like they showed up in a Scryfall search and were included because of their Spirit creature type, and Drumbellower desperately needed a reprint. I mean, seriously, our commander can grant all Spirits vigilance until end of turn, what do we need an extra creature untap for?

Wave of Reckoning was certainly on the reprint schedule and needed any white-inclusive precon deck to go in. There, I said it, I'm sorry I said it, but also I'm not sorry.

These are over-costed or overcomplicated ways of getting card advantage in a deck whose commander wrote a doctoral thesis on card advantage. Naktamun Lorespinner in particular, although it has the Reserved List gem Wheel of Fortune as a prepared spell, isn't very useful when we're the player most likely to be ahead on cards. By casting Wheel, we'd likely be helping our opponents out more than ourselves.

Advanced Reconstruction simply costs too much mana and is more focused on flashback strategies.

Fateful Tempest is an interesting take on blending group slug with exiling cards from the top of your library to play until your next end step, but this list lacks synergies around playing cards from exile.

I can see where they were going with these, but they over-focus on payoff and not enough on enabling the core gameplay loop of our deck. Spirit of Resilience doesn't work well with cards that have a trigger on entering the battlefield, which is the source of our most powerful effects.

Staff of the Storyteller is a very slow and very conditional white Phyrexian Arena-style effect, and even Phyrexian Arena itself isn't always keeping up these days.

Lorehold Charm's modes are underwhelming: an artifact sacrifice mode, a very meager overrun mode, and a mode that brings a creature or artifact back from the graveyard if it has a mana value of 2 or less. I decided to replace it with a card that did one of those things well rather than do all three of them poorly.

These new cards had promise but didn't align enough with how our strategy works. There's little to no synergy with these cards and the deck as it's constructed.

Relic Retriever asks us to exile cards from our graveyard on other turns besides our own to get its full value, and how exactly were we supposed to do that? It's a powerful build-around synergy piece for a flashback-oriented Spellslinger deck, not our graveyard recursion deck that operates mostly on its own turn.

The third copy of Quintorius, Quintorius, Loremaster, was the weakest and slowest one of the bunch. Though the free card exile trigger on endstep is great for triggering the commander as well, he's overcosted at five mana, and waiting until end of turn for his exile trigger means he could get removed beforehand and do nothing at all. Compare that to either Sun Titan or Angel of Indemnity which, for one mana more, bring a permanent back from the graveyard upon entering the battlefield. Even instant-speed removal can't undo that two-for-one value.

Rebuilt and Restored

Try this upgraded Lorehold Spirit precon, Echoes in Eternity, right now in our full-table Playtester or in a game with others in our Play Online lobbies!

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