Welcome back to part 2 of the fallout precon upgrades. We will be moving over to the Mojave desert to find Caesar, Legions Emperor in charge of the Hail, Caesar commander deck.
In case you missed the introduction in part 1, I will be going through 10 upgrades for the deck and what I am taking out for them. To avoid making you lose all your caps it's going to be 10 cards for £10. I will also include other suggestions at the end for some non budget future upgrades.
The Hail, Caesar deck is all about assembling an army to bring back the might of the Roman empire all in the name of Caesar. It appears that this version of Caesar has conscripted various different characters from the Fallout universe to join his army from the Gary clones of Vault 108, to a member of the White Glove Society from the New Vegas Strip. I have added a few more from across the multiverse to aid Caesar in his conquest of commander tables.
Table of Contents
Budget Upgrades
Upgrade 1
The first new conscript is Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon hailing from Ixlan. Anim will allow you to generate free tokens which can then be sacrificed to Caesar if you stack the triggers correctly. Time for another bit of technical Magic. If you are the controller of two triggers that happen at the same time, you will get to choose the order in which they get put on the stack. But remember, the stack resolves backwards, as the last trigger to be added is the first trigger to resolve. In this case, you are going to want to put Caesar's trigger on first and then Anim's. This will allow you to make the gnome tokens first and then sacrifice one of them to Caesar to get one of the effects. Butch DeLoria, Tunnel Snake is being released to make room. This is because Butch cares about rouges and snakes while he can make your creature into rouges. I feel he's a better fit for a more dedicated deck and Hail, Caesar is more on the lines of humans or soldier typal.
Upgrade 2
Keeper of the Accord is the next card to go. If the game plan is going reasonably well then you should have the most creatures on the board, making the first ability redundant. The main reason to keep this card in would be the second ability as this deck isn't a green based one, so you are likely to be out ramped by green opponents. Although the deck has a reasonably low average converted mana cost (CMC), topping out at 7 CMC, hopefully you won't feel the lack of ramp so much. Coming all the way from the Warhammer 40K universe to make up for this is Commissar Severina Raine. With built-in card advantage at the cost of (hopefully) a token, you also gain 2 life as little bonus. Although, the main reason to play the Commissar is the first triggered ability. Leading from the front is an effect that is reminiscent of Hellrider, which happens to be an honourable mention for this deck.
Commissar Severina Raine has the same effect, but is objectively better, as it triggers for each opponent, not just the ones the creature is attacking. All things considered, it just pushes it over Hellrider for the deck.
Upgrade 3
Next, Impassioned Orator is getting swapped for Elas Il-kor, Sadistic Pilgrim has an upgraded effect with only the minor downside of costing 1 black to also cast. There are a number of other cards that have similar effects, such as Blood Artist, Cruel Celebrant, Corpse Knight or the other half of the lifegain spectrum like Soul’s Attendant and Soul Warden. But, Elas il-kor edges out over all of these by being both in one, allowing for life gain whenever a creature enters and life loss when a creature dies. The card I want to give the honourable mention to is Corpse Knight, as it has a more unique effect of draining when the creatures enter instead.
Although, this gets eclipsed by my next card to add…
Although, this gets eclipsed by my next card to add…
Upgrade 4
Mirkwood Bats. This does double duty by triggering on creation and sacrifice of tokens making it a powerful addition, just off Caesar's trigger alone if you're sacrificing a token and choosing to make more you are getting a free 3 life drain. Add in cards like Secure the Wastes for instant speed tokens and you have one hell of a card. I would suggest swapping it out with Ruthless Radrat. While the squad ability for it is nice, it has a high cost of needing 4 extra cards to exile for each copy. That, and the body isn't great to copy as a 2/2 with menace.
Upgrade 5
Another awkward cost squad ability is Thrill-Kill Disciple. Not only do you have to pay (1) but you also have to discard a card. You do kind of get this card card in the form of Junk Tokens so it could be seen as a sort of rummage ability (i.e. discarding cards to draw cards), it still seems too expensive for the effect. But do you know what the opposite of overcosted is? You might say undercosted, but I like to go with free, and that is exactly what Isshin, Two Heavens as One is. Letting you double up on attack triggers. Just plain vanilla value.
Upgrade 6
You know what pairs well with Isshin for maximum overkill? My next card: Shared Animosity. It lets all your little tokens get a huge spike in power, even without Isshin doubling the effect. If you have five 1/1 tokens sharing a creature type, it makes them all into 5/1s, which is a serious upgrade. Now imagine if you had 10 tokens that share a creature type, or even 20. This will end games for you. Do note though, that if creatures share multiple types (commonly you will have human soldiers) it will only count for 1 of the types shared. For example you only have Gary Clone and have used the squad ability to have a token copy, those both have the creature types of human citizen. These will only give +1/+0 from Shared Animosity, as it won't get to trigger off both creature types. It doesn't matter how many types it shares as long as it is one. This is to stop two changings from just being enormous. Swapping out for Shared Animosity is Wild Wasteland. I’ve never been a big fan of cards that have the downside of slipping your draw step, Necropotence aside. While this does let you “draw” two, it limits your options to playing them on that turn or being lost.
Upgrade 7
For true card draw I have added Plumb the Forbidden. Being able to turn all the extra tokens into card draw at instant speed. This will also give you some wrath protection by being able to sacrifice your board and turning it to cards to play on your next turn. It does come at the downside of 1 life per draw, but I like to remind players that your life is a resource. At the end of the game it doesn't matter if you have 1 life or 40 life left, there is no bonus for the extra. I'm taking out Deadly Dispute. While having the treasure is nice, I think that the option of drawing more cards is worth the trade off.
Upgrade 8
Another trade off I have done is Heraldic Banner for the Luck Bobblehead. The Bobbleheads suffer from needing a critical mass of them to make the ability worth it. As they stand, if you only have 1 or 2, they are pretty overcosted, barring a few such as the agility one. If you can get 4 to 5 out then they turn into relatively strong abilities, the only problem with this is you are going to need all of them in the deck to be able to reasonably get that many out without using tutors. With only two in this precon, I have cut this one as the only other payoff for it is Mr House (spoiler alert: he’s also getting cut). Luck Bobblehead is even worse by itself, as it's 50/50 if you get your mana back in the form of a treasure. This is offset by being a mana rock, but Heraldic Banner being an anthem as well as a mana rock just seems a better fit for Hail, Caesar.
Upgrade 9
As I stated earlier, I am cutting Mr House, President and CEO. This one feels shoehorned into the deck. There is only one other card (Luck Bobblehead) that supports the rolling theme. I do like Mr House as a card and I am personally going to make Mr House into his own commander deck as you can stack the odds with rolling d20s instead. Horn of Gondor seems like a better fit. Not only is it a scaling token generator, it fits quite well in this deck, as a lot of the creatures are also humans.
Upgrade 10
The last card that I am adding is Warleader's Call, a nasty little enchantment that will allow you to get chip damage for all your creatures entering the battlefield including the tokens generated. This leads me to the last honourable mention for this deck Impact Tremors.
The little brother to Warleader's Call, having the same effect but without the built in anthem effect. Coming out is The Nipton Lottery. While I do love this card, and it is such a flavourful win with the lore of Fallout, I don’t think that this deck needs a 4th board wipe. I will advocate for most EDH decks to pack at least 1 in the 99 as an answer to out-of-control board states. This deck has 3 other ones which I feel are stronger and more favourable for the deck strategy.
That wraps it up for the changes I would make for Hail, Caesar commander deck. Again, this is only my thoughts and suggestions, while trying to also be budget minded. Here are some other cards to keep an eye out for that will let you power the deck up further and potentially dominate the battlefield.
Non-budget Upgrades
That brings us to the end of part 2. Hopefully this has given you some ideas in powering up your precon. Stay tuned for parts 3 & 4, where we will be going over the remaining 2 decks, Mutant Menace and Science. In case you missed part 1 where we covered Scrappy Survivors you can find it here. If you're wanting even more Fallout products check out the Collector Boosters and the other decks available. And as always, good luck and have fun.
*The prices for all these cards were correct at time of writing.
