Keen Engineering deck is perhaps the most fun deck among the five Foundations Commander precons. It’s a great starting point for beginners, or even for more experienced players who want to add a fun mono blue deck their arsenal.
Join us as we explore everything we know about this fascinating deck so far.
Tons of Artifacts, Tons of Thopters
The main theme are artifacts. (If you’re new to MTG, these cards represent a wide variety of objects, such as weapons, constructs, vehicles, tools, and so on.) That’s a common occurrence for blue decks, as there’s a lot of variety to it.
For instance, this deck combines it with a secondary theme — Thopter tokens. These are small 1/1 flying artifact creatures. You can use them in a bunch of different ways — as reduntant blockers, sneaky attackers, sacrifice fodder or as artifact synergy support.
As you can see this deck gives you lots of options, so you’re decisions really matter. If you prefer to play games with multiple paths to victory, you’re going to enjoy Keen Engineering.
Both of these themes are represented perfectly on the deck’s commander.
Main Commander: Sai, Master Thopterist
A three mana for a 1/4 is fine, but Commander players are more interested in the text box anyway.
So, each of your artifact spells also gives you a 1/1 flying Thopter token. That’s pretty neat, as there are plenty of uses for them.
Even Sai gives you an additional way to use them by allowing you to cash-in a couple of mana, a couple of artifacts in order to draw two cards. That’s not terribly efficient, but it still comes in handy. Particularly so, if you pair it with cards such as Myr Retriever or Junk Diver.
That’s probably not news for more experienced players. After all, this card first appeared in Core Set 2019, eight years ago. So, why is a reprint being used and not a brand-new design? Because Foundations precons aren’t just like every other Commander precon.
What’s the Deal With Foundations Precons?
The main goal of these decks is to be a beginner-friendly Commander product. Usually, precons can be expensive and fairly complex. That’s not the case here, though.
Foundations precons are cheaper and less complex. That’s achieved by only including reprints and no new cards. However, this doesn’t mean that this decks are bad. As we’ve seen from the first iteration of Starter Commander decks, you’ll notice that pricey cards missing, but the inclusions are playable to strong.
Thus, you can expect quite a few cheap blue artifact Commander staples to appear in the deck. (For example Thought Monitor, Etherium Sculptor and generic good interaction like Counterspell.)
Consequently, even enfranchised players are also interested in these. After all, it’s pretty easy to turn Keen Engineering precon into a powerful deck with a few upgrades.
Some players decide to purchase all five of them, in order to end up with a self-contained board game. When you organize a game night, you simply pull the five of them out and you’re ready to go. (No wasting time on discussing brackets!)
Keen Engineering Decklist
Sadly, we’ll still need to wait a little longer for the full decklist. Based on previous sets, you should mark you calendars for September 15th as the most likely reveal date. But even without the full list, we’ve got a few early upgrade ideas ready.
| Commander (1) 1 Sai, Master Thopterist Artifacts (2) 1 Sol Ring 1 Arcane Signet |
Keen Engineering Upgrade Ideas
While we don’t know which cards will be included, we can be pretty sure which ones will be missing. Some of the more pricier cards, or some from the latest sets.
With that in mind, here are three cards that play well with Sai, Master Thopterist, but are pretty unlikely to see a reprint here. If you find them cool and useful, now might be a good time to pick them up, before other players start to upgrade their decks and potentially drive up the prices.
Stridehangar Automaton
This is an essential piece for any deck that cares about Thopters. Not only does Automaton buff all of them, making it easier to close out games, but it also provides more Thopters, whenever you create artifact tokens.
So, this kinda doubles your Sai triggers, but if there are any other token makers in this precon (which is extremely likely), it works with those too.
The card’s price is in a weird spot. It’s not so expensive that it’s certainly avoiding a reprint here. However, it’s also not bulk, which would almost guarantee it’s inclusion. Now if it’s not included, this will be the first card players pick up to add to their decks.
Mystic Forge
If you didn’t play with this card before, it’s an absolute unit for artifact decks. You can easily “draw” a bunch of cards with it, and the exiling the top card helps with that.
Plus, the card is simply fun to play. There’s just something about looking at the top of your deck, playing cards from it and hoping there’s another artifact on top.
Next up, another neat card advntage card.
Fateful Discovery
The Hobbit, a set just before Reality Fracture, brought us this powerful enchantment, which just might be a new staple for blue artifact decks.
It should be pretty easy to draw a ton of cards with it. After all, it doesn’t just count artifact spells, but any artifact entering under your control. That includes Sai’s Thopter tokens too!
You’ll be drawing so many cards with it, that you might even risk decking. But more likely than not, you’ll win before that.
How Many Thopters Will You Create?
That’s it for the Keen Engineering deck so far. If we missed a good not-so-cheap card to pair with Sai, let us know in the comments below. Perhaps some of our readers take your suggestion to heart and add the card to their decks.
Oh, one more thing we forgot to mention earlier — Sai, Master Thopterist will feature new artwork, the one you see on the packaging below.
Do you already know you’re getting this deck no matter what? In that case, it might be smart to preorder the deck, and lock-in that preorder price. (These are releasing on October 2nd, 2026.)
Until next time, enjoy playing Magic, and may your opponents fail to successfully deal with your Thopters!