Eldrazi Incursion Upgrade Guide: 15 Easy Changes You Can Make

Last updated on July 23, 2024

Ulalek, Fused Atrocity | Illustration by Alex Konstad

The Eldrazi Incursion precon is easily the most popular Modern Horizons 3 Commander precon deck. Most of the stores in my area are charging nearly two times more for this deck than they are for the other M3C decks, and it’s already sold out on Amazon. It’s easy to see why this deck is so popular: It has a lot of great reprints as well as some stellar new cards. It also looks very powerful right out of the box, which is worth paying a little extra for in my opinion.

While this EDH precon probably can stand up to other decks without an upgrade, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some easy changes that can be made to it to make it even better. Like every Commander precon, there are a few duds here, and there are some EDH staple cards that could easily take their place.

Let’s take a look at some easy changes you can make to Eldrazi Incursion to make it even more powerful. I’ll be trying to keep the budget in mind, as you’ll likely have to shell out a fair amount just to get this base deck (unless you’re lucky at your local big box retail store immediately after release like I hope to be). That said, to top the cards already in this deck, some of the additions are going to have to get a little more expensive, but I’m trying to avoid anything over $20 for this deck, with one exception.

Deck Overview

Flayer of Loyalties | Illustration by John Tedrick

Eldrazi Incursion is built around a 5-color commander, Ulalek, Fused Atrocity, in the command zone, and its ability to copy both Eldrazi spells and other abilities that are on the stack at the same time. Because of this, one big focus of this deck is Eldrazi creatures with cast triggers.

Another focus of this deck is creating Eldrazi spawn or Eldrazi scion tokens. These help you to have extra colorless mana to pay for your expensive spells and your Eldrazi commander’s ability.

In general, Eldrazi Incursion seeks to overwhelm your opponents with massive creatures while also removing their threats with things like annihilator or cards like All Is Dust.

Upgrade Plan

The first thing I looked for when upgrading this deck was cards that were too specific or situational, and I tried to replace them with something a bit more consistent. For instance, Vile Redeemer and Ulamog's Nullifier, while both potentially powerful in the right circumstances, could end up being much less effective if the right conditions aren’t met.

The next thing I did was look for cards that would work well with Ulalek, Fused Atrocity’s triggered ability and cast triggers in general. I also added a few cards that synergize well with the fact that you’ll be sacrificing Eldrazi tokens to help pay for your creatures.

Honorary Mention: Ulamog, the Defiler

Ulamog, the Defiler would be an easy addition to this deck. Although you’ll only end up with one, since it’s legendary, you’ll still get two cast triggers if you copy it with Ulalek, Fused Atrocity. That means exiling a huge number of cards, and ensuring Ulamog, the Defiler enters with a lot of +1/+1 counters.

While including this card would seem like an easy choice, it’s also currently sitting at about $80-$100. If pre-order prices go down or this price isn’t an issue for you, I’d include this card. However, I think this deck will be fine without it if you don’t want to shell out a huge amount of money for one card.

Mirror Box

Suggested Cut: Mystic Forge

Mirror Box let's you double up on those amazing legendary creatures, and while this won't happen often, it's an effect that you'll desperately want when the time comes.

Rogue’s Passage

Suggested Cut: Wastes

Rogue's Passage can be very effective when your opponent is low on life and you just need to sneak one of your big creatures past their chump blockers. It’ll still give you the colorless mana Wastes would, but it also has good utility. There are still other basic lands in this deck, in case an ability allows you to search for one, so ditching Wastes isn’t a huge loss.

Swords to Plowshares

Suggested Cut: Crib Swap

Swords to Plowshares isn’t just a cheaper way to exile one of your opponents’ creatures, it’s also less helpful to them. Unless a player is specifically building around lifegain, giving them some extra life will likely be less of a strategic advantage for them than getting a creature of any type from Crib Swap. And Swords to Plowshares is perhaps the best removal spell in all of Magic, so this is a straightforward upgrade.

Lightning Greaves

Suggested Cut: Suffer the Past

I wanted a card like Lightning Greaves or potentially Mithril Coat in this deck to help keep Ulalek, Fused Atrocity safe from removal. I opted for Lightning Greaves due to its free equip cost, so you can toss them on your commander as soon as it hits the board to give it haste and shroud.

While Lightning Greaves doesn’t have the same high-end potential as Suffer the Past, I think it’s a more consistently helpful card in this deck. Drawing Suffer the Past early or even mid-game wouldn’t be all that effective and would end up being a frustrating draw most of the time.

Zhulodok, Void Gorger

Suggested Cut: World Breaker

I tended to stay away from legendary creatures for this deck since they can’t really be copied. That said, Zhulodok, Void Gorger is such a good addition here that I made an exception. This is also the card that caused me to make an exception to my less-than-$20 rule as well.

This deck has a good number of colorless cards that will have cascade, cascade thanks to Zhulodok, Void Gorger. If you’re able to copy those spells with Ulalek, Fused Atrocity, you’ll also be copying the cascade triggers that are on the stack. This essentially turns any of the 7+ mana Eldrazi spells in this deck into an Apex Devastator.

Zhulodok, Void Gorger is actually easier to cast than World Breaker, and it’s also going to do a lot more for this deck. World Breaker isn’t necessarily bad, but it just can’t hold up to making your biggest cards even more powerful.

Abstruse Archaic

Suggested Cut: Ulamog's Nullifier

Although this was a nightmare card to write about with my dyslexia, Abstruse Archaic was too good of a card not to include for this deck. For 1 mana, you can copy one of your Eldrazi’s cast triggers, or, for 3 mana, you can copy and pay for another Ulalek, Fused Atrocity trigger, giving you yet another copy of whatever creature you’re playing and any triggers that may be on the stack.

Ulamog's Nullifier can be a good one-time counter if your opponents have enough exiled cards. For the same mana, and a less restrictive cost, Abstruse Archaic offers a repeatable effect that synergizes with this deck’s strategy.

Flayer of Loyalties

Suggested Cut: Morophon, the Boundless

Flayer of Loyalties has a very powerful cast trigger, making it a prime candidate to be copied by Ulalek, Fused Atrocity. For an extra 2 mana, you’ll get an additional 10/10 and annihilator 2 trigger for the turn. This also means taking control of a second creature that belongs to an opponent, which could significantly cut down on blockers and give you some other powerful abilities based on the creatures you’re borrowing.

To me, it seems like Morophon, the Boundless is simply in this deck to have another alternate commander, but it isn’t nearly as effective here as it is in other decks. Aside from Ulalek, Fused Atrocity, the most Morophon, the Boundless is going to discount a card in this deck is 2 mana. I’d much prefer another bomb than a mild anthem and some late-game cost reduction.

It That Betrays

Suggested Cut: Ulamog's Crusher

While It That Betrays doesn’t have a cast trigger, getting a copy of it can still be a huge benefit. This card is a lightning rod for removal, so having an additional copy gives you a better chance of it sticking around. Having two also means an additional annihilator trigger, which means more permanents for you if you’re able to attack with this creature.

Ulamog's Crusher is another big creature with annihilator 2, so it seemed the easiest trade for It That Betrays. It doesn’t have a powerful static ability, and it can’t really be a blocker for you either, making it significantly worse. That’s not really a surprise, considering it’s 4 less mana, but from playtesting this deck I didn’t have trouble getting up to 12 mana.

Darksteel Monolith

Suggested Cut: Eldrazi Conscription

Darksteel Monolith is a powerful card for any Eldrazi or colorless deck. It’s especially helpful in an Ulalek, Fused Atrocity deck because it’ll be much easier to pay for a copy of a creature when you didn’t have to pay for it in the first place.

Eldrazi Conscription was a hard cut for me – it's one of the best auras in the game, and the flavor fit is perfect here – but when it came down to it, I just couldn’t justify having it at 8 mana in this deck over Darksteel Monolith. While both can have a big impact on a game, I think I’d rather get to cast a big Eldrazi for free and copy it for only 2 mana, than paying 10 to get two good enchantments. That’s not even considering if you’re able to get off multiple free creatures with Darksteel Monolith, at which point it is easily the better option.

Kindred Dominance

Suggested Cut: Skittering Invasion

Just about every creature in this deck is an Eldrazi. That means Kindred Dominance is a one-sided black board wipe that’ll leave your creatures intact. Of course, this black sorcery could be a bit less effective if you’re going up against another Eldrazi deck, but you can always choose a creature type like atog if you just need to use this card as a general board wipe.

Skittering Invasion isn’t bad for this deck, but at the end of the day, it’s trading 7 mana for 5 temporary mana. I’m not saying there isn’t a time when this card would come in handy, but once you’re at the point when you can cast a 7-mana spell in this deck, there are much better options. To me, it made more sense to add another source of one-sided removal here instead.

Thran Dynamo

Suggested Cut: Dreamstone Hedron

Thran Dynamo is one of the additions I made for efficiency. I swapped out Dreamstone Hedron for it due to how much cheaper this card is. While you’re losing a potential card draw effect, I much prefer having a mana rock that hits the battlefield earlier and offsets more of its own cost.

Strionic Resonator

Suggested Cut: Wastescape Battlemage

Strionic Resonator gives you another way to copy Eldrazi cast triggers or any other triggered ability in this deck. This can give you a way to get a similar effect to your commander’s if it isn’t on the battlefield. Like Abstruse Archaic, this card can also be used to copy Ulalek’s trigger. While this is expensive, if you have the mana to do it, it’s also worth it. This can also help low mana creatures drawn later in the game be more impactful since you can sink a lot of mana into making several copies of them.

I chose to swap Wastescape Battlemage out here since these cards have the same base mana value, with Strionic Resonator technically being a bit easier to cast, thanks to being generic mana. This creature isn’t bad when kicked, but it’s pretty useless at its 2 mana base cost.

Catacomb Sifter

Suggested Cut: Temple of Silence

Catacomb Sifter synergizes really well with your use of Eldrazi token creatures in this deck. Since many of them will be sacrificed to help pay for other spells, you’ll get plenty of scry triggers off this creature.

As for why this card replaces Temple of Silence, there’s a few reasons. First, this is a repeatable scry trigger, instead of a one-time thing. This deck has a lot of ways to generate mana besides its land base, so I think cutting a single land is acceptable here. I cut Temple of Silence over Temple of Malady because there are a lot more creatures with green pips in this deck than white.

Sowing Mycospawn

Suggested Cut: Vile Redeemer

Sowing Mycospawn’s cast trigger is already good for mana fixing in a 5-color deck. Add to that the ability to copy it with your commander, and this card is even better in this deck. If you’re able to kick this spell, you can also exile one of your opponents’ lands, giving you an even bigger advantage in terms of mana over that player.

While Vile Redeemer could create a lot of temporary mana in the right circumstances, that wasn’t a guarantee. I’d prefer to have a card like Sowing Mycospawn that I know will reliably get me some ramp and mana fixing, and that’s flexible enough to let me choose any land I need at that time.

Idol of False Gods

Suggested Cut: Inversion Behemoth

Idol of False Gods gives you a repeatable method of creating Eldrazi Spawn tokens, which is a good mana sink for any turn when you don’t end up using all your available mana. This card will also be easier to turn into a creature in a deck that is sacrificing Eldrazi somewhat regularly. As a kindred artifact, Idol of False Gods can potentially be copied by Ulalek, Fused Atrocity, meaning you could end up with multiple mana sinks and two massive creatures later in the game.

By the time I got done making changes to the creatures in this deck, I realized Inversion Behemoth wasn’t going to be super effective for that many of them. That made it an easy cut. I chose to replace it with Idol of False Gods since it was a cheaper spell and would help offset some of the higher mana value spells I slotted in here like It That Betrays.

The Final Deck and New Cards

Eldrazi Displacer | Illustration by Daarken

And that’s the completed decklist! You can click the shopping cart icon in the table below to buy all the new cards for this deck from TCGPlayer. I’ve left Ulamog off this list, since I know not everyone will want to slot in an additional $100 card on top of their likely over-priced precon.

Commanding Conclusion

Kindred Dominance | Illustration by Bram Sels

When making these changes, I really wanted to make the Eldrazi Incursion precon more efficient by cutting potentially dead draws. I also wanted to bolster the basic strategy of the deck by including cards that work well in this specific deck over cards that might be generally good. Overall, I think this new version has a bit more synergy and some exciting cards that improve on the already strong base that this EDH precon had.

While this is how I chose to upgrade this deck, that doesn’t mean it’s the only way. For example, you could potentially lean further into token creation and death triggers, since sacrificing Eldrazi tokens is a big part of this deck. If you wanted to go that route, you may also consider using this deck’s alternate Eldrazi commander and fellow Modern Horizons 3 standout, Azlask, the Swelling Scourge, which is built to work well with that type of strategy and may end up being the best annihilator card overall.

If you want to take a crack at upgrading this deck on your own, head on over to our general guide for upgrading preconstructed decks. I plan on picking up this precon if I can, so I’d also love to hear any ideas you have for this deck down in the comments or on Draftsim’s Twitter.

Thank you for reading and see you next time!