Blight Curse Upgrade Guide: 15 Easy Changes You Can Make

The Reaper, King No More | Illustration by Zack Stella

The Blight Curse precon is an awesome total package in the -1/-1 counters space. Most of the cards you’d want to include are already in the box, which isn’t always the case with precons. There’s just a few tweaks we need to make for it to pop.

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• CONTENTS—100-card Blight Curse deck with 12 new cards (including 2 foil Mythics), deck box, 10 double-sided token cards, strategy insert, reference card

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The deck looks fun, and the counters interactions are going to feel fun and unique if this isn’t the sort of deck you normally play. I’m excited to work with it and sleeve it up! Let’s give it a look!

Blight Curse Deck Overview

Black Sun's Zenith | Illustration by Daniel Ljunggren

The simple answer to what this deck does is to draw cards by putting -1/-1 counters on your creatures with your commander out. Along the way you can do the same to opposing creatures as needed to clear a path.

The more complex answer is that you’re trying to spin through your deck to find the infinite combo this deck runs, with the engine of Flourishing Defenses and Blowfly Infestation paying off with Grave Venerations or any other Blood Artist type card you might want to add to the deck.

Upgrade Plan

You have two options.

You can remove Grave Venerations and remove the infinite combo, say if you’re in that kind of play group and/or you ordered this deck before the list came out. Just be sure to tell people that you did that or you’ll be a target at certain tables.

Your second option is to lean into that and add all sorts of cards that support this with redundancy, which should allow your card draw to get you there pretty quickly. You can add tutors if you want to lean into the Commander Bracket question, and there’s also stuff like Al Bhed Salvagers and Falkenrath Noble or about 20 other similar cards, and there’s things like Goblin Sharpshooter which get there in a slightly different way.

I’m going with the first option because I think the second is an easy build. But if you want to carve out a non infinite combo deck, that’s more of a challenge, so I think some of you might be here for that.

If that’s what we’re doing, how do we win?

Well, you go fast, and your commander is the lynchpin. There are other options in the precon, like The Scorpion God, but to make this work you have to lower the curve of the deck and give more commander redundancy.

Let’s see where that gets us! Here’s what to add (and cut). I think a lot of these changes are interesting, even if you still want to lean into the infinite combo, so take a look.

Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

Suggested Cut: Grave Venerations

Yawgmoth, Thran Physician is a powerful card, especially in a sacrifice deck with some graveyard recursion abilities. The proliferate mode works better in this deck than most, which is one of the best reasons for this inclusion.

We’ve got to kill the combo here with the cut.

Generous Patron

Suggested Cut: Skinrender

I didn’t know this card existed! Generous Patron is gas in this deck because it allows you to turn the tables and draw cards for putting counters on your opponents’ creatures! All that is better than the slow but on theme Skinrender.

Maha, Its Feathers Night

Suggested Cut: Wickerbough Elder

Wickerbough Elder is too slow and sad for today’s Magic, but Maha, Its Feathers Night is only sad for your opponents because it turns all your cards into Ravenous Chupacabras, including itself if it swoops down when stuff is already a-withered!

Harbinger of Night

Suggested Cut: Commander's Sphere

Just read the card and you can see why this deck desperately wants Harbinger of Night! Gasoline on the fire when this comes down. Unlike Commander's Sphere, which is sadness with meh sauce and a side of ennui.

Hexing Squelcher

Suggested Cut: Grim Poppet

A new card that’s quick and helpful when you need to land some of your haymakers. Likely a Commander staple as well as a Standard powerhouse, so grab a Hexing Squelcher while you can and put the expensive Grim Poppet out to pasture.

Grub, Storied Monarch / Grub, Notorious Auntie

Suggested Cut: Cathartic Reunion

Easy to cast and flip, Grub, Storied Matriarch / Grub, Notorious Auntie is a utility card in this deck, grabbing your Hexing Squelcher someone killed A.S.A.P., and you can rinse and repeat. Plus, making copies of your blighted things is a lot of value. I think Cathartic Reunion is in here as a nostalgia joke as much as anything!

Grim Affliction

Suggested Cut: Hoarder's Greed

I often cut removal in precons, as those cards often feel like they just tick a box of, “Well, we need five removal spells in these colors, so what’s available?” But Grim Affliction is a nice synergy piece, while Hoarder's Greed is the worst card in the precon!

Heroic Intervention

Suggested Cut: Binding the Old Gods

And let Heroic Intervention stand in for all the green protection spells you might want in a creature-heavy deck that only work if you have your card draw creatures on the field. Hapatra's Mark is on theme if you like that sort of thing. Slow value removal isn’t what we need, so Binding the Old Gods is out.

Agent Venom

Suggested Cut: Painful Truths

You need your card draw to lean into the plan, not whatever Painful Truths is trying to do when you get color screwed. Agent Venom is a Spider-Man card, so there’s that, but it’s cheap to cast and does everything you want to accelerate the deck.

Grim Haruspex

Suggested Cut: Incremental Blight

Same idea with Grim Haruspex! Draw cards! Go fast! Nothing that Incremental Blight allowed!

High-Society Hunter

Suggested Cut: Liliana, Death Wielder

Slower than the previous options, High-Society Hunter is still worth it. And if you need to have a place you can put -1/-1 counters you can blank, this is here for you.

Liliana, Death Wielder is terrible. Expect winning the game from 7-drops please.

Skullclamp

Suggested Cut: Grave Titan

I only said I was removing the infinite combo. I never said I was playing nice! Cheap and perfect synergy with any sac deck, but especially this one, where the blighting helps you to make sure more things can be eaten by the Skullclamp than you might expect.

Grave Titan is too slow and doesn’t synergize.

Sudden Spoiling

Suggested Cut: Chimil, the Inner Sun

Sudden Spoiling is a nice piece of stoppage for a powerful card, but it also doubles as a micro Plague Wind depending the number of counters you have out there. I don’t know why Chimil is in this deck. I guess the reprint was needed?

The Ozolith

Suggested Cut: Ferrafor, Young Yew

If you haven’t played -1/-1 counters decks in Commander, The Ozolith might come as a surprise. You can use it to kill creatures, eventually. That’s a good thing in a deck like this. This plus Skullclamp together in the same deck is wicked fun.

Ferrafor, Young Yew is a fun card for your saproling deck. Get it out of this one.

Ziatora’s Proving Ground

Suggested Cut: Forest

Let Ziatora's Proving Ground also stand in for improving the typically underwhelming precon mana base!

The Final Deck and New Cards

And there we are! Above is the full upgraded deck, but you can snag just my additions by clicking on the shopping cart in the table below.

Commanding Conclusion

Maha, Its Feathers Night | Illustration by Alessandra Pisano

I like the challenge of this version of the deck. And I love being able to sit down and say I’ve removed the infinite combo but I’m still going to win.

Of course, then I have to win. And I think this deck can get there. I’m not sure it has what it takes against unfair decks or super control strategies, so try to underplay, reserve the commander for later, and just get by until someone else more aggressive nabs the control player. Because I think fast go-wide decks will underestimate this deck, which can turn the corner on them super fast.

Sounds fun to me. Let us know in the comments or on Discord how this plays for you, and whether you keep the combo.

Happy brewing!

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