Silverquill Influence precon upgrade guide

Killian, Decisive Mentor draws a card when an enchanted creature attacks — and nothing in that sentence says the creature has to be yours.

I resolved the shipped Silverquill Influence list before writing a line of this, and the first thing the numbers said was that its 22 Auras are a liability. Twenty-two single-target attachments is the shape of a deck that loses two cards every time somebody points removal at its best creature.

Then you read the commander's second ability slowly. Whenever one or more creatures that are enchanted by an Aura you control attack, draw a card. An Aura you control — not a creature you control. Nineteen of those 22 Auras can legally sit on anything on the battlefield, and Killian's other ability goads a creature every time an enchantment of yours enters. The box is quietly handing you a deck where an opponent's board is part of your engine, and most of what follows is about clearing the junk away from that.

What are the best Silverquill Influence upgrades?

Ranked by how much each one changes a game:

1. Orzhov Signet, Mind Stone, Commander's Sphere and Thought Vessel. The box ships four ramp pieces — Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Fellwar Stone and Talisman of Hierarchy. Four is half what a deck this size normally wants, and it's the one number in the whole list that's genuinely out of range.
2. Hyena Umbra. One mana, and totem armor means removal eats the Aura instead of the creature. It's the only card here that answers the objection every Aura deck gets.
3. Ethereal Armor. One mana for first strike and a pump that counts every enchantment you control. The upgraded list runs 27 of them.
4. Mesa Enchantress. A card every time you cast an enchantment, in a deck where 27 cards are enchantments.
5. Danitha Capashen, Paragon. Auras cost you one less, and she's a first-strike lifelink body that wants to wear them.
6. Damn. Two black mana kills a creature; four mana later it destroys everything. The stock list has exactly one sweeper.

The full list runs to fourteen swaps in each direction. What comes out is the harder half, because the shortlist of things to cut is mostly wrong about this deck.

Killian's second ability is missing two words

Here it is in full: whenever one or more creatures that are enchanted by an Aura you control attack, draw a card.

An Aura you control. The creature doesn't have to be yours.

That matters because 19 of the deck's 22 Auras say plain “Enchant creature” — only Chains of Custody, Sheltered by Ghosts and Animate Dead restrict where they can go. Every one of the other nineteen can legally sit on a creature across the table, and when that creature swings at somebody else, you draw.

The box is explicit about wanting this. Five of the Auras hand out goad on top of their other text: Coercive Impetus, Ghoulish Impetus, Martial Impetus, Parasitic Impetus and Redemption Arc. Goad forces the creature to attack, and to attack somebody other than you. Killian's first ability — whenever an enchantment you control enters, tap up to one target creature and goad it — means every enchantment you play, Aura or not, points a creature at one of your opponents.

So the reflex an upgrade guide normally applies here, cut the single-target Auras because they're two-for-ones waiting to happen, is backwards for most of this list. All 22 Auras get shortlisted on that reasoning. I'm overruling it for sixteen of them.

The number that's actually wrong is four

Ramp. Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Fellwar Stone, Talisman of Hierarchy, and that's the lot. A hundred-card deck averaging 2.97 mana usually wants eight to twelve ways to accelerate, and this one has four.

It shows up as a specific failure rather than a vague slowness. Killian costs three. The deck's best turns start with him resolving and an enchantment following, and on four ramp pieces that sequence arrives late more often than it should. Adding four cheap rocks takes ramp to eight and pulls the average mana value down to 2.76.

Card draw needs nothing. The stock list already sits at 11 draw pieces, and after the swaps it's 13 — above the normal band, which for a deck whose commander draws off combat is where you want to be.

Seven lands enter tapped, and five of them are fine

Umbral Expanse cycles. Forum of Amity surveils. Silverquill Campus and Temple of Silence scry. Bojuka Bog exiles a graveyard on the way in, which is the only graveyard hate in the deck. Those five pay for the tempo they cost.

Path of Ancestry doesn't. Its scry only fires when the mana casts a creature sharing a type with your commander, and Killian is a Human Warlock in a deck with no typal plan at all — no creature type reaches even a third of the 26 creatures. Human and Warlock between them cover 10. So it's a tapland that scries on fewer than half the creatures it can help cast, and does nothing at all on the other 62 cards.

Sunlit Marsh has no text beyond entering tapped.

Both come out for lands that don't cost a turn: Concealed Courtyard and Tainted Field, at under a dollar each. That's 37 lands before and after, with the always-tapped count down from seven to five.

One thing I'd leave alone. Eclipsed Steppe enters untapped unless you control fewer than two basic lands, and the deck runs 16 basics. Turbulent Moor wants your opponents on eight lands. Neither is a tapland in practice, and cutting them for “speed” would make the mana worse.

White asks for two pips more often than it can pay

Eleven spells in the stock list want a second white pip by turn three — Ajani's Chosen, Archon of Sun's Grace, Winds of Rath, Angelic Destiny, Eidolon of Countless Battles, Forum Filibuster, Pearl-Ear, Imperial Advisor and Shielded by Faith among them. On 27 white sources you have both pips on time about 76% of the time, against the 36 sources that would put it at 90%.

Nine sources short isn't a gap you close in a precon upgrade without spending real money on lands, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Two extra white sources and one fewer double-pip four-drop get it to 80%. That's the honest ceiling here.

Black is short on paper too, but only two cards in the deck want double black, so the number doesn't describe a real problem.

What I'd cut

The four most expensive cards in the box

Eldrazi Conscription is the deck's only eight-drop, and it's an Aura that wants a creature already good enough to be worth killing. Promise of Loyalty asks everyone to sacrifice down to one creature, which is a bad trade when you're the player with a board. Angelic Destiny costs four and demands double white, the exact pip the mana base can't reliably produce. Songbirds' Blessing costs four to dig for a random Aura.

Three cards that pay an opponent

Keen Duelist gives a chosen opponent a free card every upkeep and hands them the life-loss dial. Secret Rendezvous draws three for you and three for someone else. Nils, Discipline Enforcer spreads a counter to every player's board each end step, in a deck with no counters theme to leverage it.

Politics cards earn their slot when the deck can convert goodwill. This one converts attacks, and it's already goading people at you.

Four that never trigger the commander

Darksteel Mutation turns the creature into a 0/1 with no abilities, which means it won't be attacking and you won't be drawing. Screams from Within shrinks a creature by a point, discouraging the attack you're trying to cause. Sentinel's Eyes is a +1/+1 and vigilance for one mana. Intermediate Chirography wants two more mana investments before it does much.

Tomik, and the two lands

Tomik, Wielder of Law has affinity for planeswalkers. The deck runs zero planeswalkers, so that line is decoration. He's a 3/2 flier with a narrow static ability, which isn't nothing, but it isn't worth a three-drop slot in a deck that wants Killian on turn three.

Path of Ancestry and Sunlit Marsh, for the reasons above.

What I'd add

Four rocks

Orzhov Signet, Mind Stone, Commander's Sphere and Thought Vessel. Nothing clever — two-mana acceleration in the deck's colours, taking ramp from four to eight and the curve's centre of gravity down with it. Thought Vessel's no-maximum-hand-size clause is live here more often than it looks, given 13 draw pieces.

The two Auras that survive removal

Hyena Umbra grants totem armor: when the enchanted creature would be destroyed, you remove all damage from it and destroy the Aura instead. That's the two-for-one turned around, for one mana. Unquestioned Authority gives protection from creatures, which makes the creature unblockable by anything with a body, and replaces itself with a card on the way in.

Two Auras that count the others

Ethereal Armor and All That Glitters both scale off your permanents rather than sitting flat, and the upgraded list gives them 27 enchantments to count. On a board with four of those out, Ethereal Armor is a one-mana +4/+4 and first strike.

Three creatures that make Auras cheaper or bring them back

Danitha Capashen, Paragon knocks one off every Aura you cast, joining Transcendent Envoy, Starfield Mystic and Pearl-Ear, Imperial Advisor in a discount pile that's already the deck's quiet strength. Mesa Enchantress draws on every enchantment cast. Monk Idealist returns one from the graveyard when it enters, which is also a fresh enchantment trigger for Killian.

A sweeper, and two untapped lands

Damn casts for two black mana as spot removal and, when the game has gone wrong, overloads for four to destroy everything. Concealed Courtyard and Tainted Field replace the two lands that came out.

All fourteen adds together cost $9.50, taking each at its cheapest paper printing — the relevant number, because none of these are cards you buy for a particular printing. Three are over a dollar — Thought Vessel at $2.33, Damn at $1.73 and Unquestioned Authority at $1.37 — and eight are under fifty cents. Mind Stone is in Secrets of Strixhaven Commander itself, just not in this deck.

The cards that look like cuts and aren't

Flickering Ward is the one I'd defend hardest. It reads as a one-mana Aura granting protection from a colour, which is fine and unexciting. The relevant line is the last one: {W}: Return this Aura to its owner's hand. Two white mana a turn buys you an enchantment entering the battlefield every single turn, and every enchantment entering taps a creature and goads it. That's a repeatable removal-and-redirect engine stapled to a common.

Gift of Immortality does a quieter version of the same thing. It returns itself at the next end step after the creature dies, so it keeps re-entering and keeps triggering Killian.

Doomwake Giant costs five and looks like exactly the top-end a curve this low should shed. But constellation shrinks every opposing creature by a point whenever any enchantment you control enters, and 27 cards in the upgraded deck do that.

Sage's Reverie costs four and draws a card for each Aura you control when it lands. Scriv, the Obligator makes an Aura token whenever it enters or attacks, which is a Killian trigger on a stick. And the four Impetus Auras are the engine described at the top of this page, not filler.

Winds of Rath deserves its own note. It destroys all creatures that aren't enchanted, and this deck has 20 Auras looking for homes. It reads as a board wipe to everyone else and something much closer to one-sided for you, and it stays in the list for exactly that reason.

Where this leaves the deck

The upgraded list runs 100 cards, 37 lands, 26 creatures and an average mana value of 2.76, on 29 white and 30 black sources. Ramp is in range at eight. Draw is above it at 13. The always-tapped land count is down to five.

It stays in Bracket 1 territory: no Game Changers, no mass land denial, no extra turns, no tutors. Nothing in these swaps changes that, and I didn't try to. The box’s singles come to $86.73, and the fourteen additions cost $9.50 on top of that — recoverable more or less exactly if you sell the Eldrazi Conscription you just cut.

The upgraded decklist

The whole list, with the fourteen swaps applied. Hover any card name to see the card and its current price.

Load into the deck builder Copy decklist

“Load into the deck builder” opens this list in your account, pinned to the printings the box shipped, ready to edit or save. “Copy decklist” gives you plain text for Moxfield, Archidekt or Arena — no account needed.

FAQ

Can you put the Auras on other players' creatures?

Yes, and the deck is built for it. Nineteen of the 22 Auras in the box say plain “Enchant creature” with no restriction, so they can target anything on the battlefield. Only Chains of Custody, Sheltered by Ghosts and Animate Dead are limited to your own side. Killian's draw trigger checks whether the attacking creature is enchanted by an Aura you control, not whether you control the creature.

Does Killian draw a card when a goaded creature attacks someone else?

Yes, as long as an Aura you control is attached to it. Goad forces that creature to attack and to attack a player other than you, so the two halves of Killian's text are designed to work together: the first ability goads, the Aura satisfies the second ability's condition, and the attack that follows is the one that draws you a card. Multiple enchanted attackers in the same combat still only draw one card — the trigger says “one or more”.

How do you stop losing two cards every time an Aura gets removed?

Hyena Umbra is the direct answer — totem armor destroys the Aura instead of the creature. Beyond that, the deck already runs Auras that replace themselves or come back: Flickering Ward returns to hand for one white mana, Gift of Immortality rebuilds itself, Raffine's Guidance can be cast from the graveyard, and Screams from Within returns when the creature dies. Monk Idealist is worth adding for the same reason.

Is Path of Ancestry a dead card in this deck?

Close to it. The scry only happens when that mana casts a creature sharing a type with Killian, who is a Human Warlock, and only 10 of the deck's 26 creatures qualify. The rest of the time it's a land that enters tapped for no benefit. This deck has no typal plan — no creature type reaches even a third of the creature count — so there's nothing to name and nothing to build toward.

Why keep Flickering Ward when it barely affects the board?

Because of its last line: one white mana returns it to your hand. Recasting it makes an enchantment enter the battlefield, and Killian taps and goads a creature every time an enchantment of yours enters. Two white mana a turn, repeatable forever, to tap down a blocker and point it at an opponent. The protection ability is almost beside the point.

Does Winds of Rath really spare your own board?

It spares whatever you've enchanted. It destroys all creatures that aren't enchanted, so an untouched creature of yours dies with everyone else's. With 20 Auras in the upgraded list you're more likely than any opponent to have coverage when you cast it, but it's a sweeper you build toward for a turn, not one you fire blind.

What does this upgrade cost on top of the box?

About $9.50 for all fourteen, taking each card at its cheapest paper printing. Thought Vessel at $2.33 is the dearest, three cards are over a dollar, and eight of the fourteen are under fifty cents. Hover any card name on this page for its current price — though a very recent reprint can show none yet, since the site quotes the default printing and a brand-new one takes a while to have a market.