The Blight Curse Precon Was Nerfed! (Here's How To Un-Nerf It!)

Lorwyn Eclipsed brought us two high-powered Commander precons so it's time once again for some precon upgrades! I'm only, uhhh, 3 weeks late getting this one out, but hopefully this will still be useful to folks looking to upgrade their stock lists!

You can find my Dance of the Elements precon upgrade guide over here, but this article will be focused on Blight Curse!

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Blight Curse is a Black / Green / Red -1/-1 Counters deck, a rare archetype and the first precon of its kind. The deck is all about putting -1/-1 counters on creatures, both your opponents' creatures and your own. You're rewarded for doing this not just by murdering creatures but also through a bunch of payoff cards, creating ssssnakes with Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons, making treasures with Village Pillagers, and drawing cards with Oft-Nabbed Goat! While creatures keep shrinking and dying, we eventually win the game by either stealing our opponents' creatures with cards like The Reaper, King No More or draining the table with our commander, Auntie Ool, Cursewretch!

So if you want to play a grindy midrange/control deck with tons of ways of murdering creatures -- your opponents' and your own! -- for value, and with an archetype that is rarely seen, Blight Curse is the precon for you!

Stock List

Alright so step one, let's look at the stock list and see what we're working with:

Blight Curse is all-in on it's -1/-1 Counters theme: I count 27 reliable ways to put -1/-1 counters on creatures (a mix of putting counters on themselves or other creatures) plus a couple more situational -1/-1 counters (wither cards like Kulrath Knight where your opponents choose to block them). There's also 28 cards that reward you for putting counters on things with lots of overlap (e.g. Wickerbough Elder comes with counters but rewards you for having them).

For an archetype with such a shallow card pool to work with, the density of thematic cards in this precon is impressive. Not all the cards are bangers of course, but it will definitely feel like a -1/-1 Counters deck every time you play it.

The Good

I'm going to be a broken record here but the face commander is absurdly strong. WOTC has long figured out that slapping a busted commander to carry precons is the easiest way to guarantee the deck will end up performing well, and Auntie Ool, Cursewretch is no different. This is both the best card draw engine in the entire archetype and it doubles as a finisher too! Also a clever design choice is that Ool rewards you more for putting counters on your own creatures, which helps prevent annoying gameplay patterns of constantly murdering all your opponents' creatures -- at least until you've drawn enough cards and are ready to close out the game. Of course the secondary commander, The Reaper, King No More does encourage that annoying gameplay pattern for folks who are into that!

On that note though, one of the strongest parts of a -1/-1 Counters deck is that it rewards you for murdering your opponents' creatures. Like imagine if all removal spells drew you cards, made you treasures, and stole the creature when it died. That's busted! And that's literally what this deck does. Any strategy that puts you ahead by putting your opponents behind is an innately powerful one. That's the true power of a -1/-1 Counters deck, and honestly I would caution WOTC not to print too much support to make it too busted (I mean, it's already kinda busted now, but please don't push it further).

Something that actually surprised me though is that unlike most overpowered face commanders, this precon is not entirely reliant on the commander sticking around! Too often with modern precon design you'll see decks that feel unfair if the commander is left untouched, but then also do absolutely nothing if the table (correctly) hates out the commander -- Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls's precon is a prime example of this, where Valgavoth dominates games if left untouched, but if killed on sight then the deck does absolutely nothing, it's all feast or famine. Blight Curse is more well-rounded: Ool is the best draw engine in the deck, but the 99 still has plenty of ways to draw cards without her, and lots of them are thematic too -- Dusk Urchins, Oft-Nabbed Goat, Sinister Gnarlbark, Eventide's Shadow, and also some generic reliable options like Painful Truths and Harmonize. Are these cards necessary when Ool is doing her thing? Not really, but part of good deckbuilding is anticipating how the deck will function in an actual game against other decks, not just how well it goldfishes, and that's a trap a lot of modern precons fall into -- Dance of the Elements being another example, by the way! -- that Blight Curse avoids.

There's even an infinite combo that can easily win you the game: Blowfly Infestation + Flourishing Defenses. If you put a -1/-1 counter on any 1/1 to kill it, you'll make another 1/1 with Defenses and immediately put a -1/-1 counter with Infestation to kill it, rinse repeat for an infinite loop. Then we can draw our entire deck with our commander or drain the table for infinite with Grave Venerations. I'm a bit surprised this combo made it to print, but hopefully this helps normalize combos in casual settings!

So yeah, it's got a busted commander, the archetype strategy is innately strong, and it's actually consistent too. Very good!

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The Bad

This deck is slooooow!

The average mana value of the deck (not counting lands) is 3.67 which is a bit on the high side, and we have insane card draw in the command zone, so we'd want a lot of ramp to deploy all these cards in our hand, right? But the ramp package here is very underwhelming. Like yeah we have some good ones, things start strong with Ignoble Hierarch + Channeler Initiate + Devoted Druid, those are all bangers here, we've got corporate-mandated Sol Ring and Arcane Signet sure sure, and then ... ? Okay Wickersmith's Tools is cool and thematic but it's still slow ramp, and why the heck is there Commander's Sphere here? Where's my Rampant Growth? Farseek? Three Visits? Nothing??

Actually hold up, I just counted and there's only 9 cards you can count as ramp here, and I'm being generous and including slower ramp like Village Pillagers. That's not nothing, but it makes the deck so slow right out the gate, and some of the options are so bizarre when we're in Green! The ramp color!

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if the ramp was intentionally nerfed to be this slow, because otherwise this deck would crush way too much. There's so much good here that it's gotta have some flaws or else where the hell are you playing this precon, bracket 3+ by default? Like dang.

There's some other minor nitpicks, like bad thematic cards, Liliana, Death Wielder being the worst of these (is that a starter deck planeswalker???), and then random generic cards that aren't like bad or anything but why are they here, like Chimil, the Inner Sun or Grave Titan. These are kinda whatever though, the lack of speed is the major thing holding the precon back not these like 5 randomly bad card inclusions.

Also the lands suck in this precon deck, aka water is wet.

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Upgrade Goals

With the strengths and weaknesses analyzed, my optimized upgrade path is focused on just two things:

1. Speed up the deck by adding cheap ramp options and removing some of the weakest high-mv cards.
2. Add any remaining powerful thematic card options, juice up our wincons -- we've got a combo kill in the stock list already, we can expand on that for easier wins!

Add These

I'm going to suggest a bunch of cards that improve the deck with an explanation for each one. The prices range from under $1 to over $40, so pick and choose based on your budget and what you already have laying around. I'll post the cuts after, but since this is a buffet-style upgrade, it's up to you to make the swaps yourself. As a general rule, when you add a card, cut a card that fulfills a similar function, so cut a land for a land, a removal for a removal, etc.

First let's inject some great ramp into the deck:

1. Farseek premium 2mv ramp, gets our commander out turn 3 and starts the engine going.
2. Rampant Growth same thing.
3. Three Visits same thing.
4. Nature's Lore same thing.
5. Scuzzback Scrounger is 2mv thematic ramp, it has higher variance than the generic choices above, worst case it dies before you generate value but best case it still gets out a t3 commander and it starts drawing cards and doing synergy stuff while also ramping.
6. Kodama of the West Tree one of the best reasons to run basics. Again higher variance than a Farseek but it can easily ramp out 3+ lands in a single turn.

Now for the fun stuff: the best splashy cards!

7. Nest of Scarabs is arguably the single best upgrade in the deck. It's useful early / midgame constantly churning out 1/1's which you can chump block with or put counters on to, but it also enables infinite combos with Blowfly Infestation which is already in the stock list.
8. Obelisk Spider is a thematic drain engine, it keeps your life total up but also can easily finish off opponents, especially when you go infinite.
9. All Will Be One same thing as Spider, it costs more mana but it also doubles as removal.
10. Contagion Engine gets a ton of counters on your opponent's creatures and is one of the best proliferate engines in the game.
11. Persistent Constrictor is repeat counters on opposing creatures along with lifeloss.
12. Harbinger of Night is slow, needing to get to your next upkeep, but it's only four mana, and the payoff of getting a counter on literally every creature is so huge!
13. Yawgmoth, Thran Physician puts combos, proliferates, combos with a ham sandwich (in this case Nest of Scarabs).
14. Spitting Dilophosaurus puts counters, removes blockers, lovely!
15. Mikaeus, the Unhallowed is one of the best proactive protection for the deck, your creatures come back from death and you can easily remove the +1/+1 counters to keep doing it.
16. Dawnhand Dissident a great 1-drop! Puts counters, is efficient recursion, removes counters!
17. Warren Torchmaster efficient counter generator and gives haste.
18. Shadow Urchin turn all your dying creatures into amazing extra draw.
19. Generous Patron all your counters on opposing creatures also draw.
20. Ammit Eternal this is a very cute one, it's super efficient source of putting counters on itself.
21. The Ozolith is evil, for 1 mana you have a repeatable source of removal as whenever your creatures die with -1/-1 counters on them, you can then move it to opponents' creatures to kill them!
22. Soul Immolation thematic wipe, note you don't need to blight your biggest creature, you can put all those counters on a random 1/1.
23. Thirsting Roots adds consistency to the deck, proliferate is great later on.
24. Unnatural Restoration Regrowth with proliferate tacked on is fantastic.
25. Grim Affliction counters and proliferate is good.
26. Atomize flexible removal and proliferate is good.

Finally for land suggestions, there's nothing groundbreaking here: you run fetches like Bloodstained Mire, pair them with duals like Overgrown Tomb, you know the drill. Untapped mana-fixing is what we're aiming for. There's also plenty of utility lands you can add, like Boseiju, Who Endures and Boggart Trawler which are great with the stock list's bouncelands, and Karn's Bastion is nice thematic.

Here's all those upgrades, again pick and choose what you like, but I recommend all these:

Cut These

These are the weakest cards in the list in my opinion. Some of them are obvious, like Grave Titan, but most are decent cards that just have better options out there like Terminate. Archfiend of Ifnir is a card I want to like here, but there's so little ways to trigger it outside of discarding down to hand size, it just doesn't work consistently. Tree of Perdition is another very cute one, you put all your -1/-1 counters on it to give your opponents less life when you swap, but it takes a while to set up, your opponents see it a mile away, and honestly the difference between 13 life swap and something like 8 really isn't that much.