Devour for Power Commander Precon Remastered - The Mimeoplasm

The Mimeoplasm | Art by Svetlin Velinov

Welcome to the beginning of a new series, Precon Remastered! Here, we take precons and "remaster" them so they better fit in today's world.

Frequent readers of EDHREC will recall Andy Zupke's Precon Redux articles (Here's one of them, for example), but he remade those precons. Here, we're doing things a little differently.

Without further ado, allow me to set the rules, laying the groundwork for future articles in this series (And yes, I'll re-post these each time, so new viewers won't get lost).

Laying the Foundations for Precon Remastered

I'll retain a good portion of the rules laid out in Andy's articles, but I'll bring a few tweaks of my own. The groundwork is as follows:

1. The value of the deck cannot exceed $120. This will apply to the reprints only, which gets to my first personal quirk.

2. Every card unique to the precon stays in the deck. All those new cards that get released with precons remain in the list.

3. The land package should closely reflect what we get in precons these days (and, in my humble opinion, they're actually pretty good).

4. For at least until 2020, we're not tied to a particular set, so we're free to choose whatever we want. You can be assured I have ideas for 2020 and beyond, though.

5. Universes Beyond cards are not added. No exceptions, unless they have a in-universe variant.

With the rules established, we can at last dive into the meat of today's article.

Devour for Power

The Devour for Power precon has a game plan: Dump big creatures in the yard, then reanimate them or take advantage of them being there. Where on earth have I heard this strategy before? It's probably nothing.

In that regard, it's The Mimeoplasm that best fits the precon, so we'll upgrade the deck with that in mind. Both Damia, Sage of Stone and Vorosh, the Hunter will remain in the 99.

Devour for Power Original Precon Deck List

Initial Digging

Outside of the mana base, it's easy to see that the list needs some good reworking.

Firstly, there are cards here that won't hold a candle to today's power-crept world. Paying six mana to eliminate a specific kind of creature with Dark Hatchling is not going to fly, for instance. In addition, while we do have some big creatures here, we could do with more of them. Remember that the Mimeoplasm becomes a clone of a creature we exile, so we need to improve the creature quality as well.

The instants and sorceries are not bad, but we can do better than a lot of these. Unfortunately, as most of the cards in the category are new, there isn't much we can do about the enchantments. Also, we're in green, so some of the artifact ramp may need to be ditched for some land ramp.

Further, while Mimeoplasm exiles the cards, we could add a few more reanimation spells to ensure that none of the creatures in the bin are simply waiting to be exiled.

Churning Over Dirt

Fixes for the nonland cards in this deck come in two categories: To bring the price down to our target of $120 (It was nearly $180 at time of writing), and to improve the card quality.

Unfortunately, Grave Pact fell into the former category, carrying quite a price tag. That said, it really didn't do a heck of a lot in the deck. Even so, it'd be downright oppressive in the Ghave, Guru of Spores precon (Spoilers? Maybe?).

The latter category is easy to find. Time was not kind to the older precons, and this one's no different. Be aware that this is one dead horse I'll be beating for a while in this series. Like I said above, cards like Slipstream Eel and Triskelavus are not the best options for copying, let alone boost the creature we clone with Mimeoplasm.

If you ask me, the cuts are relatively straight forward. The mana base is even easier. Older precons didn't come with many good lands, if at all. In a way, that makes us very spoiled when it comes to choices.

Devour for Power Remastered Deck List

A Fresh Graveyard

With this newer take, it takes the feeling of the old precon, and gives it a more modern feel. Our big reprint is no longer Grave Pact, but Colossal Grave-Reaver, which is sure to give your opponents headaches.

Speaking of cards that reanimate, I didn't add as many reanimation cards as I thought I would, but the quality is much better. Unfortunately, Reanimate almost made it in, but it was more expensive than I realized.

The deck does skimp on ramp and draw a bit, but I did what I could to ensure that there's enough options in there. The latter isn't as bad, since we're trying to get stuff into our graveyard.

Speaking of graveyards, we get much better Mimeoplasm targets, like Lord of Extinction, which combos with another card in the deck, Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord.

That said, a card that really shines in this deck is Singularity Rupture. It's a wipe, and cuts everyone's library in half. That means lots of targets for Mimeoplasm to go around.

A Second Shot at Life

What are your thoughts on the remastered list? The rules I established? The card choices I made? I aim to keep this within Bracket 2, but there's always a chance I can overshoot and make a given list more powerful than it should be.

I'll tackle another of the original precons soon, but do come back next week as we take a gander at another of the Top 200 commanders.