Blight Curse Upgrade Guide: 10 Fun and Spicy Additions

So, you got the new Jund precon and you want to improve it. You’ve come to the right place, as this Blight Curse Upgrade Guide can help you make your deck more fun and consistent.

Below you’ll find ten card swaps that will work towards that goal. All recommendations work well with the deck’s theme. (They aren’t just generic staples, such as Rampant Growth.)

At the end you’ll also find some additional suggestions, as well as ideas on how to improve the mana base. But before we get to all that, let’s quickly check what the deck is all about.

Curse Your Opponents With -1/-1 Counters

The Blight Curse precon is all about –1/-1 counters, as you can already see from the main and secondary commanders.

One neat thing about these two is that you can swap them without needing to completely change the deck. One major difference is that Auntie rewards you for putting counters on your creatures, whereas The Reaper doesn’t.

The recommendations below assume you’re using Auntie Ool as your main commander, although most will work with The Reaper too.

Blight Curse Decklist

Here’s the original decklist of Blight Curse. The deck is solid, with a lot of key -1/-1 counters cards already included. For each card in the deck, an argument could be made why it deserves an inclusion. However, in order to make improve the deck, some cuts will need to be made.

If the new card images aren’t showing yet, you can find all Blight Curse spoilers here.

With that said, let’s take a look at suggested card swaps.

#1 Nest of Scarabs

There’s already one similar card in the deck, Flourishing Defenses. However, the effect is extremely powerful in this deck, so you’ll want multiple copies of it. Being two mana cheaper is also a big deal.

This can provide multiple creatures, which means more targets for -1/-1 counters, which smooths out your synergies.

Replaces: Wickersmith’s Tools

This artifact seems good at first read. It ramps you and it’s a payoff for -1/-1 counters. However, it doesn’t do anything particularly well.

If you want to ramp, you’d prefer a two mana card, such as Rampant Growth or Farseek. While getting a bunch of creatures can be useful, it takes a lot of time and mana to get there.

Still, the card can be useful in specific scenarios, so if you want to keep it, feel free to cut something else.

#2 Ammit Eternal

Ammit is a pretty solid card, when you can turn its downside into a massive upside. While, it works with many cards in your deck, it’s at its best when you control your commander, Auntie Ool, Cursewretch.

Then Ammit Eternal becomes a better Rhystic Study and you probably know how powerful that card can be.

Replaces: Grave Titan

Grave Titan was a power house back in the day. Nowadays, with so many powerful cards being released, it’s not as exciting as it used to be. It also doesn’t enable particular strategies with the deck, so it has to go.

#3 Dawnhand Dissident

This card comes from the main Lorwyn Eclipsed set, and it does a lot of work for a single mana.

The first two abilities both use the new blight mechanic. (To blight X, you put X -1-/1 counters on one of your creatures.) You can actually turn this cost into an upside with various synergies within the deck.

You’ll get to set up your draw steps, and cast creatures from your graveyard. The latter actually allows you to remove -1/-1 counters, which is also really strong.

Replaces: Cathartic Reunion

This is a perfectly playable card, but doesn’t do anything synergistic for our deck. Dissident cheaper, plays well with the deck, while also providing card advantage and filtering.

#4 Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

Yawgmoth is a powerful card on its own, but also works well in this particular shell by both distributing negative counters and proliferating.

If you put it in your deck, you’ll soon find out it enables a bunch of mini combos with cards like aforementioned Nest of Scarabs and many others.

Replaces: Painful Truths

Pure card advantage spells aren’t what they used to be. (That’s why many similar spells are among suggested cuts.) You want these slots to be taken by cards that also do something else besides draw you cards — just like Yawgmoth does.

#5 Generous Patron

Here’s another card that can provide card advantage, while doing something extra. It works kinda similar to Auntie, but Patron triggers whenever you put -1/-1 counters on opponents’ creatures.

The support effect can allow you to get a card immediately, or simply grow your creatures. (Particularly useful with persist creatures, as +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters cancel each other out. If a creature has one of each, they both get removed.)

Such flexibility is really useful.

Replaces: Harmonize

Harmonize is an okay card, but exchanging four mana for three cards has gotten worse in recent years. Generous Patron is a mana cheaper, works with the theme, and often draws you more than three cards over the course of the game.

#6 Maha, Its Feathers Night

Maha is a very popular commander on its own, but it also slots well here. (Even though it doesn’t specifically mention counters).

When Maha enters, all creatures with -1/-1 counters on them will die. Plus, all of your effects that give -1/-1 counters are now turned into actual kill spells. Thus, you’ll really want to add this Bird to your Blight Curse precon.

Replaces: Cathartic Pyre

An okay card, but not crucial in any way. If you’d rather cut a more expensive cards you can remove Binding the Old Gods or Eventide’s Shadow instead.

#7 All Will Be One

Now this is a really fun and potent enchantment, thanks to all the counters you’ll be putting around. It allows you to control the board, or simply take out your opponents when you distribute a lot of counters in a single turn.

Replaces: Archfiend of Ifnir

Archfiend is a powerful card, but it requires a lot of support. This deck isn’t really about cycling and discarding, and jamming cards into the deck only to enable one of the 99 cards in the deck, won’t be an efficient strategy.

#8 Obelisk Spider

This Spider can double up your commander’s drain ability. It also doesn’t care on whose creature you put the negative counters on. In the right scenario, this effect can be devastating.

Replaces: Commander’s Sphere

Some players still like this iconic artifact, but 3-cost mana rocks feel worse and worse with every year. As mentioned, if you want ramp, just go with Farseek or even Rampant Growth instead.

#9 Atomize

Commander decks often suffer from lack of interaction, so it’s useful to add removal spells that actually work with the deck’s theme. If there are already some -1/-1 counters out there, Atomize will fit into that role perfectly.

Replaces: Liliana, Death Wielder

This planeswalker is pretty cool, but does too little for the hefty cost of seven mana. Atomize is obviously a different card, but significantly more efficient way to deal with a problematic permanent and put add more -1/-1 counters around.

On the other hand, if your play group is more casual, and doesn’t play very efficient decks, you could keep Liliana and perhaps even pair it with Liliana’s Influence for some additional value.

#10 Harbinger of Night

The tenth and final card is perhaps more of a personal favorite, then an incredibly strong card on its own. However, there’s something fun about playing a Reserved List card that not many players know about. (Thankfully, it isn’t as expensive as many other cards on the List.)

If you can keep it around for a full cycle, you’ll get to put -1/-1 counter on every creature. If you also have your commander in play, you are getting a ton of beneficial triggers too.

Replaces: Hoarder’s Greed

This is a slow and clunky draw spell, especially if you lose the clash. As one of the weakest cards in the precon, this one is an easy cut.

Blight Curse Upgrade Recap

And that makes ten card swaps. To quickly recap, here are the suggestions:

Of course, you don’t need to strictly follow these. Remove the cards that aren’t fun for you, cut the ones that seem bad to you. Really make the deck your own.

Finally, one last section that we didn’t really discuss are the lands, so let’s get to them.

Mana Base

Once upon a time, the mana bases of Commander precons were quite bad. That’s not the case anymore, as most of them are now perfectly fine. Still, you should get rid of a few tap lands, if possible, or at least include the ones that make all three colors of mana.

With this deck there aren’t that many utility lands that you’d absolutely need, most of them are already included. Some players like Karn’s Bastion, which can be useful if you can get away with playing a colorless land. Another great option, although nor particularly synergistic would be Shifting Woodland.

Now for the mana fixing — you can find all Jund lands here. Pick the ones that can give you multiple colors of mana and enter untapped most of the time. Suggested cuts are lands that always enter tapped. This will allow you to play spells on curve more consistently.

Bonus Recommendations

Of course, there are many cards that could potentially work well in this deck, depending on your budget, play group, and preferred strategy. Perhaps some of the following will suit you well.

Were There Some Misses?

With that, this Blight Curse Upgrade Guide comes to the end. But of course, with over 30,000 MTG cards in existence, it’s easy to miss some great additions. So, if there’s a great card that you know about, let us and our readers know in the comments.

Are you interested in the other deck from Lorwyn Eclipsed? You can find more about it in our Dance of the Elements Upgrade Guide.

Until next time, enjoy Magic and may you win lots of games with your upgraded Blight Curse precon.