Keen Engineering Precon: Decklist, Value, and Verdict
Everything in the Keen Engineering Commander deck: all 100 cards with current prices, what the deck is worth against the sealed price, the 0 new cards, and whether it is worth buying.
Sai, Master Thopterist
Whenever you cast an artifact spell, create a 1/1 colorless Thopter artifact creature token with flying. {1}{U}, Sacrifice two artifacts: Draw a card.
Is Keen Engineering worth buying?
I like this deck’s role in the line-up. All four of the other decks are advertised as creature type strategies, whereas Keen Engineering introduces players to building around card types instead. It’s a different kind of experience with a different path towards upgrades, and it has alternative synergies and play patterns than the other decks, which are largely all about just playing creatures to the board.
As such, this might be the most complex of the bunch, though not by some wide margin. It’s still fairly basic, but that’s a positive for the deck, and I could totally see a new player enjoying some of the interactions. I think it has the least appeal sitting next to a bunch of typal precons with way cooler names, and the reprint value’s nothing spectacular, but it passes the test.
How Keen Engineering plays
Keen Engineering is a mono-blue artifact deck with Sai, Master Thopterist as its chief engineer. There’s some ramp and card draw here, plus a healthy number of affinity for artifact cards and smaller artifacts to get them out cheaper. It’s also the only deck of the bunch that can’t really be called a typal deck in any capacity, with a focus on a card type instead of a creature type.
This deck looks very competent, and it has at least a touch of all the features you’d expect from any mono-blue deck, just toned down to match the price point.
Most valuable cards in Keen Engineering
Keen Engineering decklist
Commander 1
- 1Sai, Master Thopteristfoil$0.66
Creatures 29
- 1Etherium Sculptor$0.43
- 1Myr Retriever$0.71
- 1Ornithopter of Paradise$0.43
- 1Silver Myr$0.24
- 1Steel Overseer$0.27
- 1Chief of the Foundry$0.28
- 1Foundry Inspector$0.31
- 1Master of Etherium$0.28
- 1Palladium Myr$0.29
- 1Scrawling Crawler$4.49
- 1Shimmer Myr$0.30
- 1Master Transmuter$1.18
- 1Padeem, Consul of Innovation$0.52
- 1Vedalken Archmage$2.25
- 1Whirler Rogue$0.34
- 1Darksteel Juggernaut$0.28
- 1Memory Guardian$0.29
- 1Psychosis Crawler$0.77
- 1Research Thief$0.25
- 1Duplicant$0.18
- 1Kappa Cannoneer$0.27
- 1Shimmer Dragon$0.23
- 1Spire Golem$0.30
- 1Steel Hellkite$0.21
- 1Meteor Golem$0.28
- 1Myr Battlesphere$0.22
- 1Thought Monitor$0.29
- 1Graaz, Unstoppable Juggernaut$0.23
- 1Broodstar$0.23
Instants 6
- 1Counterspell$2.56
- 1Negate$0.17
- 1Pull from Tomorrow$0.11
- 1Launch Mishap$0.27
- 1Thirst for Knowledge$0.30
- 1Aetherize$0.35
Sorceries 2
- 1Thoughtcast$0.74
- 1All Is Dust$3.13
Artifacts 19
- 1Aether Spellbomb$0.20
- 1Sol Ring$1.39
- 1Soul-Guide Lantern$0.28
- 1Adaptive Omnitool$1.12
- 1Arcane Signet$0.41
- 1Ichor Wellspring$0.27
- 1Mazemind Tome$0.22
- 1Mind Stone$0.32
- 1Thought Vessel$2.38
- 1Cultivator's Caravan$0.24
- 1Misleading Signpost$3.39
- 1Nettlecyst$0.96
- 1Tamiyo's Logbook$0.26
- 1Thopter Fabricator$0.22
- 1Hedron Archive$0.24
- 1Nevinyrral's Disk$0.26
- 1Forsaken Monument$3.64
- 1Mind's Eye$0.58
- 1Skysovereign, Consul Flagship$0.32
Enchantments 3
- 1Fall from Favor$0.30
- 1Propaganda$2.22
- 1Thopter Spy Network$0.27
Lands 40
- 1Buried Ruin$0.28
- 1Darksteel Citadel$0.50
- 1Foundry of the Consuls$0.32
- 34Island$0.00
- 1Lonely Sandbar$0.25
- 1Remote Isle$0.25
- 1War Room$1.04
Upgrading Keen Engineering
What I want to commend the FDC decks on the most is their straightforward gameplans. A historical weakness of precons has been too many themes crammed into a single box, so most upgrades are about removing them and picking a lane. But these decks (and recent precons in general) have done a great job streamlining their focus, so they play better out of the box and upgrades focus on power, not theme.
Draftsim's upgrade guide makes 17 changes to this deck. The first picks (hover for the card):
More on Keen Engineering and the Foundations precons
- Official Foundations Commander decklists (Wizards of the Coast)
- New Foundations Commander Precons Are Stacked With Staples and Valuable Reprints by A.L. Walser (September 21, 2026)
- All 12 Mono-Colored Commander Precons in Magic Ranked by A.L. Walser (October 29, 2026)