Hail, Caesar Upgrade Guide: 24 Easy Changes You Can Make

Last updated on March 13, 2024

Caesar, Legion's Emperor | Illustration by Alexander Gering

Caesar, head of Caesar’s Legion in Fallout: New Vegas, believes that “an individual has no value beyond his utility to the state, whether as an instrument of war, or production.” Hence, his attack-focused deck is about sacrificing creatures for value. In that spirit, let’s carve away some of the chaff from this Commander precon to increase its effectiveness.

Hail, Caesar, indeed!

Deck Overview

Hail, Caesar is a go-wide deck that wants to make a lot of creatures and turn them sideways. Turning things sideways causes various triggers, including buffs, card draw, etc. Along the way there are various ways to make tokens, including via Caesar, Legion's Emperor themself on attack. There are also quite a few cards with the squad ability, which allows you to make token copies by paying a kind of kicker cost when cast.

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Strengths and Weaknesses

There is a powerful synergy in combining a deck that wants to attack with a deck that benefits from creatures dying, and the one tends to follow from the other. Our upgrades plan to make that work a little more seamlessly than it does out of the box.

The deck is weak to things like sweepers, the way a lot of aggro and go-wide decks are, so we’ll shore that up just a bit.

Our real work is to maximize the third triggered ability on Caesar, Legion's Emperor to potentially end someone’s game on the declare attackers phase. There really aren’t many comparable effects in Magic, so we’ll want to lean into that a bit more fully, especially because the other two cards that do this are in Orzhov and Rakdos , and thus Caesar, in Mardu , lets us play both.

It’s a simple concept for a deck with a ton of creatures. We’ll make some revisions to make it a bit more consistent.

Transmogrant’s Crown

Suggested Cut: Stolen Strategy

The “fixed” Skullclamp does just what you want in a deck like this that’ll get the equipped creature dead quickly enough, and Transorgrant's Crown is a more relevant source of card advantage than the boggling inclusion of Stolen Strategy, a great card for a slower deck.

Impact Tremors

Suggested Cut: Wild Wasteland

Another weird card advantage enchantment, Wild Wasteland, gets the axe in favor of a card that’ll help drain the table as we make those tokens, Impact Tremors.

Warleader's Call

Suggested Cut: Luck Bobblehead

Warleader's Call is even better than Impact Tremors, and having two of such a rare effect is key. I’m suspicious of the Bobbleheads in this deck, and running only two seems a mistake anyway.

Isshin, Two Heavens as One

Suggested Cut: Charisma Bobblehead

Isshin, Two Heavens as One doubles Caesar’s triggers, which is absolutely huge. And the deck is full of a lot more attack triggers, both from precon cards and cards we’re adding.

Commissar Severina Raine

Suggested Cut: Intangible Virtue

We don’t really need the vigilance granted by Intangible Virtue given how much sacrificing we’re doing and considering that the tokens made by Caesar and others enter the battlefield tapped and attacking. But Commissar Severina Raine offers a kind of duplicate of Caesar’s third trigger, but in some ways better because it applies to more than tokens. I think the two characters would also get along pretty well, for a bit at least, when one of them would likely kill the other. But enough fanfic….

Mishra, Claimed by Gix

Suggested Cut: Survivor's Med Kit

Mishra, Claimed by Gix is our third card with that trigger, and works on any creature like Severina. Just to keep score now, if I attack with Caesar, Severina, Mishra, and say, just three lowly soldier tokens, the triggered abilities of those three deals 14 damage/life loss for one opponent and 11 to the others. Add Isshin to the mix and we double that. Six more tokens is lethal for one opponent. Seven more kills the table. I can’t imagine they’ll ever let you have all three, but you can see the power there.

Survivor's Med Kit is fun, but not in this deck.

Phyrexian Dragon Engine

Suggested Cut: Deadly Dispute

Why not run the full meld pair if you’re already playing Mishra? It’s a reasonable card that can be recurred when you just need a few cards, too. Phyrexian Dragon Engine is a magnet for removal, and that can be kind of useful for you. Deadly Dispute is just too low impact.

Brutal Hordechief

Suggested Cut: Impassioned Orator

Like Caesar, this only hits one player, but you can spread the love around creature by creature for Brutal Hordechief. Add this to our above thought experiment and you get 16 damage to one player, 13 to the others, and 6 more damage to be distributed based on attack direction.

Mirkwood Bats

Suggested Cut: Entrapment Maneuver

Entrapment Maneuver is so tempting, but there are whole games where it’ll just rot in your hand, and we don’t have time for that! For the same cost Mirkwood Bats can ping them for token-making and for sacrificing them.

Myrel, Shield of Argive

Suggested Cut: Anguished Unmaking

We don’t have so many soldiers in this deck that Myrel, Shield of Argive is going to really pop off, but we have a few, including our commander, and Myrel can start to generate an army in a can if left alone. The ability to thwart opponents’ spells on your turn is super annoying for them, so this is another removal magnet, if nothing else, and it’s more impactful than a single Anguished Unmaking if not removed.

Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation / Temple of Civilization

Suggested Cut: Wear // Tear

Yo, Taq, I heard you like tokens….

We need to make a lot more tokens than this deck does out of the box, and Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation triples them. That’s attractive for a lot of decks, but especially given our attack triggers in this one. Temple of Civilization is a nice consolation prize if Ojer Taq dies.

Mondrak, Glory Dominus

Suggested Cut: Heroic Reinforcements

…so I put some tokens in your tokens….

Mondrak, Glory Dominus is the most expensive cards from Phyrexia: All Will Be One because it does that quite effectively! It’s certainly a better thing to be doing than ticky tack permanent removal in Wear // Tear, at least in a deck like this. Mondrak also works on other tokens, and although we have only a few Treasure makers in this deck, we can make a bit of Junk.

Heroic Reinforcements is almost hilariously bad on rate for this deck.

Anointed Procession

Suggested Cut: Boomer Scrapper

I’d rather have a creature that does this, and have the previous two, but this effect is so good and we don’t have access to green, so Anointed Procession it is! Here we have a sequence of dropping the flavor win creatures in the deck for synergistic cards and better creatures. I somehow don’t feel as bad about that as I did removing Doctor's Companions from my Doctor Who decks, maybe because there are so many interesting characters across the multi-game Fallout universe that there are too many missing favorites for me to worry too much about these.

Thalisse, Reverent Medium

Suggested Cut: Butch DeLoria, Tunnel Snake

We're replacing a totally meh creature with one that’s going to drop a lot of tokens on end step for us. That’s less good than tapped and attacking and makes us even more susceptible to board wipes, but Thalisse, Reverent Medium is still really good.

There are lots of other ways to make a bunch of tokens, from the big X spell territory like Song of Totentanz and Call the Coppercoats, to slower builds like Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin and Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon.

Adeline, Resplendent Cathar

Suggested Cut: Craig Boone, Novac Guard

If you’ve played Standard in the last few years you know how good Adeline, Resplendent Cathar is. In Commander, Adeline makes three tokens on attack until you start eliminating opponents. That’s perfect for us! Note that Adeline doesn’t have to swing to get the trigger if you want to keep a big blocker back.

Hero of Bladehold

Suggested Cut: Kellogg, Dangerous Mind

As you start eliminating opponents, the solidity of always making two tokens gets better and better. Hero of Bladehold also has battle cry, which can be bonkers in a tokens deck. It makes soldiers, which have some synergies in this deck, as well.

Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon

Suggested Cut: Mr. House, President and CEO

The improved Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin! Not by much, for our purposes, but just like Adeline is better than Bladehold because you get the trigger even if you keep them back, Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon can just sit back and send gnomes to their doom.

Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin

Suggested Cut: Keeper of the Accord

Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin is still really good for us, though!

Hanweir Garrison

Suggested Cut: Legate Lanius, Caesar's Ace

The least reliable of our token makers because it’s so small, Hanweir Garrison still does the job, and the chance to meld it with Hanweir Battlements into Hanweir, the Writhing Township is just too tempting! Thus….

Hanweir Battlements

Suggested Cut: A basic land or one of the Temples

Aside from the melding, tapping to give haste is kinda great in this deck, given how many creatures make things on attack.

Duke Ulder Ravengard

Suggested Cut: Sierra, Nuka's Biggest Fan

Duke Ulder Ravengard is a bit of a reach, but it’s a good introduction to our use of myriad in our upgrade. The Duke gives myriad to another creature, which will make a lot of tokens in this deck! A creature with myriad makes a temporary token copy of itself for each opponent you’re not attacking with it, which means early in the game this will be two tokens.

Caesar can immediately sacrifice them if you like, and there are plenty of other synergies. Isshin is quite fun with myriad creatures, as well. At 6 mana this is a bit of a reach, but when it hits it hits hard.

Wyrm’s Crossing Patrol

Suggested Cut: White Glove Gourmand

The cheapest myriad creature, on the other hand, is Wyrm's Crossing Patrol. This is a decent way to get the ball rolling. Note, by the way, that myriad tokens exile themselves at the end of turn, which is part of why we haven’t leaned into Blood Artist effects in this deck, even though the rest of the deck works with them.

The other reason is that once you drop a card like Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim and start churning out tokens, you’re gonna get targeted by the table. That’s just too scary. But your deck can drain the table without that, so I find it helps to slow-playing your goofy precon for a bit.

Genasi Enforcers

Suggested Cut: Captain of the Watch

Genasi Enforcers is another cheap myriad creature. There are a few other highest impact myriad creatures to consider if you feel like you can raise your curve, in which case ditch the Patrol and Enforcers for an upgrade with Hammers of Moradin for the tapping, Elturel Survivors to really go after green decks, and even Battle Angels of Tyr.

Legion Loyalty

Suggested Cut: Yes Man, Personal Securitron

This is an aspirational goal, for sure. It may be a bridge too far to shoehorn and 8-drop into this deck, but if you have the right creatures out and drop Legion Loyalty, it wins on the spot. You can always toss in another creature instead if you’d prefer.

Commanding Conclusion

Duke Ulder Ravengard | Illustration by Eric Deschamps

There are other ways to do this, of course. You can carve away some of the token makers for a Blood Artist and friends package to supplement the Bastion of Remembrance. You could replace some of them with more mass token makers to supplement Secure the Wastes, Call the Coppercoats and Song of Totentanz. If you feel like the mana’s in your favor, there are other cards with squad from the Warhammer 40,000 precons that would supplement cards like Gary Clone.

A few other things on the menu are, of course, improving the mana base with better multicolor options than Evolving Wilds. And you might want to find room for Teferi's Protection, Unbreakable Formation and other anti board wipes.

But I think these changes will work to make the deck more competitive in the short term, and it’ll give you a good foundation for figuring out exactly how good Caesar, Legion's Emperor actually is. And, while you’re at it, a lot of the creatures I pulled from the precon are legendary and worth exploring in their own right or adding to other decks, especially decks that care about Treasure and/or Food tokens, so it’s kind of a win/win.

Are you looking forward to this deck? And are you okay with all the legends I culled from the team to increase Caesar's Legion’s effectiveness? I think Caesar would be just fine with it, but how about you New Vegas fans out there? Let us know in the comments or on Discord, and be safe out on those wastes!

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