Abzan Armor Precon: Decklist & Spoilers

With the return to Tarkir, we’re getting five Commander decks, and perhaps the toughest among them is Abzan Armor Precon. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s hard to play, but just that your creatures will excel with a really high toughness.

In this article, we’ll discuss more about its strategy, and examine the full decklist and spoilers. Let’s jump right in.

Attacking Defenders

The Abzan Armor deck will feature a lot of defenders. (For beginners: a creature with defender can’t attack. They typically have high toughness, but low power. Example: Consulate Skygate)

Attacking with defenders seems like a bit of a paradox, but there are ways to do so. Arcades, the Strategist and Assault Formation are two iconic ones. Your commander will work in a similar way, allowing you to turn your defenders sideways and attack for a bunch of damage.

So, if you enjoy playing with unorthodox strategies, and if you think Doran, the Siege Tower is the coolest card ever designed, this is a perfect deck for you.

Even if you aren’t over the moon about the whole defenders shtick, you might still enjoy the precon. It does have a strong secondary commander, as you’ll discover in a moment.

Abzan Armor Decklist

Just one quick note about the new cards. If you can’t see their hover images, it’s because their weren’t added to the database yet. You can find them in the next section, though.

Abzan Armor Spoilers

First up, here’s the main commander of this deck.

Four mana for a 0/5 is a weird stat line, but the first line of text essentially makes it a 5/5, which is a real deal. As you can see, Felothar allows your defenders to attack, and each of your creatures deals damage with its toughness.

Most modern-era precon commanders also provide you with some sort of card advantage. Typically, they give you 1-2 cards per turn cycle. Felothar can provide significantly more cards, but you’ll need to do some work.

You need to pay 3 mana and sacrifice a creature. Then you draw cards equal to that creature’s toughness and discard cards equal to its power. The ideal scenario is that you sacrifice a creature with high toughness and zero power, so you can just draw a ton of cards. A couple of good targets would be Tree of Perdition or anything enchanted with Stoneskin.

It’s not that hard to imagine a scenario where you draw 7+ cards with a single activation, and that’s an insanely powerful effect. Will the other commander also be on par, as far as the power level goes? Let’s take a look.

Sometimes secondary commander feels like a different take on the main one. That’s not the case here, as Betor goes into a completely different direction. It cares both about life gain, life loss and graveyard. That’s an unusual combination, but a perfect fit for the Abzan colors.

Its ability triggers at your end step and does two things. First, you put +1/+1 counters on another creature. How many will depend on amount you’ve gained this turn. Betor can help with that, as it is a 3/5 flier with lifelink. However, you probably want additional ways to gain life, so you can already place a bunch of counters on the turn you play the dragon.

The second part cares about how much life you’ve lost during your turn. More life lost equals more expensive creature coming back from your graveyard.

In order to maximize Betor’s potential, you’ll likely need to build around a whole deck around it. This will be a proper treat for avid deckbuilders, as you’ll need to pay attention to multiple things. Gaining and losing life during your turn, filling up your graveyard and having good targets for +1/+1 counters.

All things considered both commanders seem really strong and fun to play with.

Conclusion

That’s all about Abzan Armor precon. For more information about the other four decks, check out the article about Tarkir Dragonstorm Commander Precons.

Until next time, have fun, and enjoy attacking with your defenders.