Planar Portal Precon Upgrade | $20 | Prosper | Rakdos | Exile Matters | AFC

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Adventures in the Forgotten Realms preconstructed decks have been revealed and with it comes another round of my precon upgrades. We're kicking things off with the deck we had the honor of revealing to the world, Planar Portal! We're going to do a thorough analysis of the deck, highlighting its goals and how well it accomplishes them, check out its deckbuilding fundamentals, identify its strongest and weakest cards, then use all that information to create a high-impact list of upgrades for under $20.

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Planar Portal is a Rakdos precon that lets you take the role of the archenemy at the table (BBEG) utilizing the dark powers found in D&D such as Devils and Beholders to use your opponents’ own decks against them. The deck is all about exiling cards, stealing your opponents' stuff, and creating tokens (mostly treasures) to sacrifice for value. If you like controlling the table, using your opponents' own decks against them, and want a more Goodstuff style of Rakdos instead of a hyper-focused theme one, Planar Portal is the deck for you!

Our Commander

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While Karazikar, the Eye Tyrant is a sweet commander in its own right, this deck is absolutely made to showcase the power of its face commander: Prosper, Tome-Bound. Prosper is super unique as it's one of the few cards out there that reward you for playing cards from exile, creating a treasure token whenever you play a card from exile. He also serves as incremental card draw, letting you impulse draw once per end step. In a format largely defined by card draw and mana generation, a commander that provides both super efficiently is destined to be a powerhouse.

There are plenty of cards in this precon that let you play cards from exile, like Light Up the Stage, Dire Fleet Daredevil, and Hurl Through Hell, which will let you start amassing a hoard of treasure tokens with Prosper. And there's plenty of keywords that trigger Prosper's ability, such as Cascade (Wild-Magic Sorcerer), Foretell (Dream Devourer), and Suspend (Profane Tutor), giving us a ton of sweet cards to potentially add to the deck as upgrades that synergize with our commander. So while the extra card per turn is awesome, the true power of this card is the ridiculous amount of mana we can generate with it.

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The Precon List

Alright, now let's check out the decklist and see how well it accomplishes its goals:

Unlike most precons, Planar Portal isn't heavily focused on a specific theme, functioning more as a Goodstuff deck that has some powerful but minor subthemes. The strongest theme here is exiling stuff: I count 27 cards that exile cards, most of which let you play the exile card, which works very well with our commander and Wild-Magic Sorcerer but there aren't many other exile payoffs. There's 11 cards that steal your opponents' stuff, but no payoff for specifically doing so. Most bizarre is the token and sacrifice subtheme cards, of which there are 10, which is too few to consistently come together in games. Overall though, the individual power level of a lot of these cards is very high, making it a solid Goodstuff deck that has extra synergies to help elevate it to be a solid contendor at a table.

Now that we've glanced at the list as a whole, let's take a look at the deck's ratios.

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Analyzing the Precon

As I often explain in my Budget Commander articles, every time I build a rough draft of a deck, I make sure I have a certain ratio of mana, interaction, card advantage, etc. This gives me a reference point to compare to the deck and see which areas may need improvement. My general ratio is:

• 50 mana; lands and ramp, usually a 37–13 split
• 10 card draw; cards that net you 2+ cards in hand
• 8 targeted removal; split between creature / artifact / enchantment removal and countermagic
• 3 board wipes; creature-light decks might want one more, creature-heavy decks might want one less
• 2 graveyard recursion
• 2 flexible tutors; higher budgets I recommend more tutors
• 1 graveyard hate; since you need to keep Graveyard decks honest 
• 1 finisher; something that can win games the turn you cast it without too much setup

That's always my starting point, which is then tweaked to suit the individual deck's strategy and further tweaked with playtesting. I always find it immensely useful to figure out some quick ways to improve the deck in question.

Let's see what the rough ratios are for Planar Portal and how it compares. I count:

• 51 mana; 39 lands and Prosper, Tome-Bound, Ebony Fly, Grim Hireling, Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Fellwar Stone, Mind Stone, Rakdos Signet, Talisman of Indulgence, Commander's Sphere, Orazca Relic, Unstable Obelisk
• 19(!) card draw; Prosper, Tome-Bound, Karazikar, the Eye Tyrant, Share the Spoils, Fevered Suspicion, Chaos Channeler, Bag of Devouring, You Find Some Prisoners, Wild-Magic Sorcerer, Dark-Dweller Oracle, Tectonic Giant, Fiend of the Shadows, Etali, Primal Storm, Dream Pillager, Commune with Lava, Light Up the Stage, Ignite the Future, Throes of Chaos, Apex of Power, Theater of Horrors
• 12 targeted removal; Grim Hireling, Hurl Through Hell, You Find Some Prisoners, Piper of the Swarm, Chittering Witch, Rakdos Charm, Terminate, Bedevil, Chaos Warp, Consuming Vapors, Bituminous Blast, Phthisis, Danse Macabre
• 3 board wipes; Reckless Endeavor, Vandalblast, Hex
• 4 graveyard recursion; Lorcan, Warlock Collector, Dire Fleet Daredevil, Izzet Chemister, Danse Macabre
• 0 flexible tutors; 
• 2 graveyard hate; Rakdos Charm, Bojuka Bog
• 1 finisher; Marionette Master

This precon is jam-packed with mana and card draw -- perhaps even too much card draw, something I never thought could happen! Overall though, amazing ratios here, checks all my boxes. There's even two amazing graveyard hate cards here, something precons traditionally lack, which makes me happy.

Now that we have the ratios in mind, let's take a look at the individual cards, highlighting the strongest and weakest in each category.

39 Lands. While not fancy, the lands we got here are really good: we've got excellent untapped fixing with Command Tower, Tainted Peak, and Smoldering Marsh, all great options in a Rakdos deck. Since we're a 2C deck we can afford running a high number of basics like the 27 we've got here (though 27 is a bit high). We also got a Bojuka Bog reprint, yay! There's nothing aggressively bad here -- the worst is Zhalfirin Void but it's not horrible.

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12 Ramp. One highlight of the precon are the sweet top-tier ramp cards included: we've got much-needed reprints of Fellwar Stone and Talisman of Indulgence alongside staples like Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Rakdos Signet, and Mind Stone. I love seeing this much early ramp! Prosper, Tome-Bound is the most powerful of the bunch, obviously, as protecting him will allow us to generate silly amounts of mana.

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19 Card Draw. 19 card draw?! Yup, that's right! Though it's not that absurd once you look at the actual cards: nearly all of it is incremental draw like Karazikar, the Eye Tyrant and Theater of Horrors, with only a few burst draw like Commune with Lava and Dream Pillager. The card draw is all over the place, and while most of it is really good, some of them are less powerful in the deck, like Dark-Dweller Oracle in a deck with few creatures to sacrifice.

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13 Targeted Removal. We've got a synergy removal here with Grim Hireling since the deck makes a lot of treasure tokens, so that's sweet. There's also plenty of great flexible removal like You Find Some Prisoners and Bedevil which I love to see. There's some weaker stuff too though, like Bituminous Blast and Phthisis, which works with Prosper but is a bit too cute.

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3 Board Wipes. Vandalblast is an amazing staple to see here. The rest isn't the greatest, but I do want to see Reckless Endeavor in action, looks fun!

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4 Graveyard Recursion. Most of the recursion fits the theft theme like Lorcan, Warlock Collector and Dire Fleet Daredevil. Izzet Chemister is pretty meh. Not too exciting stuff here.

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0 Flexible Tutors. Tutors are super helpful for any Commander deck to help you find the right card for any situation, but I'm fine with them not showing up in precons. These are decks that are meant to pick up and play without being intimately aware of the deck's contents so tutors would only serve to confuse new pilots.

2 Graveyard Hate. The best aspect of the deck has to be its graveyard hate: not one, but TWO pieces of hate, and both are good! You love to see it!

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1 Finishers. Marionette Master is a great way to turn all your treasure tokens into a finisher for the deck. A lot of the deck is about stealing your opponents' cards, so hopefully you can steal something good enough to win as well!

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The Verdict. The lands, ramp, card draw, and targeted removal are all highlights of this deck. The graveyard recursion and board wipes are a bit weak, but overall I love what I see in this deck.

Upgrade Goals

I have some specific goals when upgrading the deck:

• Make the deck more mana-efficient
• Improve the board wipes
• Improve the the themes of exile and theft

This precon is really solid right out of the box and since it's basically a Goodstuff deck it's not missing any "key" theme cards. We're just going to do some basic tune-ups to make it even better.

$20 Upgrades

Disclaimer: Card prices are volatile and may be different at the time you read this article.

Here's how I'd swap in $20 worth of upgrades. If you want to upgrade on a smaller budget then just makes less swaps:

In	Out	Reason
Revel in Riches	Chittering Witch	Flavorful win condition.
Xorn	Piper of the Swarm	Gets crazy with Prosper.
Stolen Strategy	Dark-Dweller Oracle	Fits our theft theme, lots of card advantage.
Laelia, the Blade Reforged	Pontiff of Blight	Great beater and draw in our exile deck.
Dream Devourer	Loyal Apprentice	Huge benefit to our exile theme.
Magmatic Channeler	Izzet Chemister	Solid exile draw.
Valakut Exploration	Apex of Power	Great exile draw.
Outpost Siege	Phthisis	Great exile draw.
Volcanic Torrent	Bituminous Blast	Exile wipe.
Mana Geyser	Zhalfirin Void	Powerful ritual to get our more expensive stuff out.

Here's how the cuts look in lists.

Additions:

Cuts:

And here's the deck with the upgrades installed:

One Down, Three To Go!

I'll be back soon with another precon upgrade!