Divine Convocation Upgrade Guide

Do you want to make your new convoke Commander precon better? If so, you’ve found the perfect article for you, as this Divine Convocation Upgrade Guide will help you with that. You’ll find some great suggestions of which cards to add to your deck in order to make it not only stronger, but also more fun.

Before We Start

This time around, tried something new. I wanted to get these guides out as quickly as possible, so the article was posted with just the Top 3 cards section. However, now the article is fully updated.

This means that you’ll be able to find not only the three best cards for the deck, but also the budget upgrade, and the full upgrade. At the end of the article I’ll talk about which cards you should remove from your deck, and I’ll also provide a sample upgraded decklist.

Since most players probably won’t play with Planechase variation, I won’t focus too much on that part of the deck. You can still play with the upgraded deck and Planechase cards, if you want, though. The upgrades won’t make it unplayable in that mode. It just won’t be the focus of this article.

Divine Convocation Decklist

Get the Deck

One quick reminder before we get to the upgrades: If you don’t already own the Divine Convocation precon, you can get it on Amazon.

How to Upgrade Divine Convocation Precon?

Whenever you’re in doubt on how to start upgrading a Commander precon, you should take a look at the face commander, and try to maximize its synergies.

Kasla is pretty straightforward. It has convoke itself, and it rewards you for casting spells with convoke.

So, there are three main things that you’ll want when you’ll start upgrading the deck:

• More cards that can generate multiple tokens, so you can convoke efficiently.
• More strong convoke cards, to further support the theme.
• Cards that can untap your creatures, so you can really go off.

Finally, you’ll potentially want to add some staples, but you don’t want to go overboard with them, as you might dilute your main theme.

Top 3 Cards for Divine Convocation Upgrade

It can be hard to upgrade a whole 100-card deck all at once, especially if you’re a newer player. That’s why I like to highlight just three cards, that will improve the deck by a lot. In this section, I don’t focus much on price – I only tried to omit some of the most expensive cards. The focus here is on on-theme cards, as opposed to general staples. With that said, let’s get right to it!

Jeskai Ascendancy

If you were to add only a single card to your Divine Convocation then, then I’d recommend getting Jeskai Ascendancy.

The idea with it is that you tap your creatures for convoke spells, and then untap them by casting noncreature spells. If your convoke spell is a noncreature spell, you’ll get to untap your creatures immediately. The second ability, which lets you loot, will make sure that you won’t run out of gas too quickly. If you have Kasla in play during this process, you’ll also get to draw a ton of cards along the way.

Oh, and while you’re doing this, your creatures are constantly getting buffed. This means that when you cast your last noncreature spell in your hand, you can swing with an army of very large creatures.

As you can see, this enchantment is one of those rare cares that are both enablers and victory conditions for your deck’s theme. On top of that, even though the card is good, you can still get it for quite cheap, which is always nice.

The noncreature subtheme will also play nicely with some of the token generators, but more about that later.

Bennie Bracks, Zoologist

The deck already has some good convoke cards, but you can’t have too many of the amazing ones. Bennie Bracks, Zoologist is certainly one of them. It costs just four mana, so combined with convoke, you’ll typically have a way to cast it for real cheap.

Convoke decks obviously want a lot of creatures in play. The easiest way to do that is with token creatures. So, Bennie’s ability rewards you for something that your deck wants to be doing anyway. If you have a way to get tokens during opponents’ turns as well, you’ll be able to draw cards on their turns as well. However, even if you only get a card during your own turn, this is still a very useful card for your deck.

Halo Fountain

We already talked about how cards with multiple uses are good. Halo Fountain certainly belongs into that group.

Its first ability allows you to untap a creature to get another token. You had to pay a mana to do that, but since you now have two untapped creatures, it’s like you netted an additional mana for your convoke spell.

The second option draws you a card. If you have a convoke spell to cast with the two creatures you just untapped, this practically cost you zero mana.

The last ability is pretty hard to activate. You need to have five white mana, which can be somewhat hard in a three color deck, plus fifteen tapped creatures. However, it shouldn’t be easy, as you simply win the game, if you manage to pull it off.

This card is certainly good in this deck, plus it does some pretty unique and fun stuff. That’s why I think you’ll be happy with it if you do decide to put it into your deck.

Budget Divine Convocation Upgrade

First up, here’s the budget upgrade. Even thought these cards are on the cheaper side, it doesn’t mean that they’re bad. Some of these can be insanely powerful and will significantly improve your Divine Convocation precon.

Tokens

As we’ve said before, you want more tokens, so you’ll be able to use your convoke spells more efficiently. Cards that can make tokens multiple times (so-called token generators) will typically be better than one-time effects.

Here are some token generators that work similarly: Young Pyromancer, Third Path Iconoclast, and Saheeli, Sublime Artificer. There’s also Monastery Mentor, which just a few weeks ago wouldn’t belong into the budget part of the article, but due to its reprint in March of the Machine, its price is relatively low.

Ovika, Enigma Goliath is also an interesting option. It does cost a lot of mana, but the payoff is definitely there, as you can get a ton of tokens from a single noncreature spell. With this deck, it might be quite easy to cast an expensive noncreature spell, thanks to the convoke theme.

If y lot of your noncreature spells are instants and/or sorceries, you can also play Talrand, Sky Summoner and Murmuring Mystic. However, these aren’t cards that will fit into just any shell.

There are plenty of other token makers. White particularly has a bunch of them that can give you a bunch of tokens with one card. Some examples are:

• Call the Coppercoats
• Finale of Glory
• Horn of Valhalla
• Increasing Devotion
• Martial Coup
• White Sun’s Twilight
• White Sun’s Zenith

Of course, you shouldn’t play all of them, so pick the ones that look the most exciting to you.

Synergies

Cyclonic Rift is a blue Commander staple since forever, it’s also quite expensive as a redult. However, there is a cheaper variant in Perplexing Test. Of course, it’s certainly a different card, but it can do a lot of work, and you get to keep your tokens, so it might be an even better fit for your deck.

Rootborn Defenses is practically worthless common, money-wise, but can be a very relevant game piece. It protects your creatures and gives you another token.

Convoke

As far as low price convoke spells go, you can find City on Fire in the regular March of the Machine set. Even though it’s a mythic, it’s currently not that pricey. In this deck, it’ll allow you to immensely power up all of your threats.

Another card from the same set is Transcendent Message. If you manage to have a bunch of creatures out, you’ll get to draw a ton of cards with it, and bury your opponents in card advantage.

Untap

We talked about how untapping your creatures is good with convoke. So, what are the budget effects that will allow you to do so?

Besides a couple of effects, which are already included in the deck, there really aren’t that many. You can use Dramatic Reversal, which is at its best paired with Isochron Scepter. If you include one, you likely have to include both.

Random fun fact – I thought I found a hidden gem in Dream Tides, and was very ecited about it. However, I quickly realized that you have to pay 2 mana for each creature and not all of them, at which point my dreams have quickly been drowned.

So, if you want to really lean into the untap synergies, you’ll have to play some expensive cards. Thankfully, at least Jeskai Ascendancy is cheap.

One Drops

Creatures that cost a single mana can work really nicely in this deck, provided they do something relevant on their own. You can play them early, so you’ll be able to cast your convoke spells earlier. In the latter turns they can cast essentially zero mana, as you can play them, then immediately use their mana for a convoke spell.

Some interesting options are:

• Dragonmaster Outcast
• Giver of Runes
• Mother of Runes
• Skrelv, Defector Mite

Mana Base

Mana bases in Commander precons are typically passable, but there’s always room for improvement. I’m a big advocate for playing lots of lands in Commander decks. You always have so much to do with your mana, so you really should miss your early land drops. For this deck, I’d recommend playing 41–42 lands.

This means that you can cut three worst nonland cards in the deck, and replace them with basic lands. This upgrade is essentially, and you’ve already improved your deck.

Utility Lands

If you’re afraid that you’ll draw too many lands, you can include more utility lands. These are lands that have spell-like effects. Some of the cheaper ones that you might want to include are:

• Castle Ardenvale
• Castle Embereth
• Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance

Two of these can help you make creatures, and one can pump your whole team. In some scenarios, this can be very useful. If you’re facing a lot of graveyard synergies, you might want to also include Scavenger Grounds.

Mana Fixing

You want to also include lands that can produce at least two colors among white, blue, and red. You already have some of these in your deck, but most of them enter the battlefield tapped. Such lands aren’t that great, so you don’t want to play too many of them. The only exceptions are the ones that can provide all three colors of mana.

The best mana fixing lands can be quite expensive, but there are still some budget friendly options. Here are some suggestions:

• Pain lands: Adarkar Wastes, Battlefield Forge, Shivan Reef
• Bounce lands: Azorius Chancery, Boros Garrison, Izzet Boilerworks
• Check lands: Glacial Fortress, Clifftop Retreat, Sulfur Falls
• Fabled Passage

Mana Rocks

Since I tend to play more lands, I play less mana rocks. The idea is that often mana rocks are replacing lands, but then one unfortunate scenario is likely to occur. You play your mana rock, and then a turn or two later you miss a land drop. Thus, if your mana rock would just be a land, you would still have the same amount of mana, and you didn’t need to spend two mana earlier to deploy the mana rock.

In this deck, your creatures are essentially mana rocks, as you’re playing so many convoke spells. However, if you still want to include some mana rocks – and you likely should play a small amount of them – you should go with the Talismans:

• Talisman of Progress
• Talisman of Conviction
• Talisman of Creativity

These will also work well with the noncreature subtheme.

Full Divine Convocation Upgrade

In this section you’ll find the more expensive cards, these are typically quite strong, and therefore popular in Commander, hence the high price. While you can still do a very serviceable upgrade without these cards, these cards will add the final touch to the deck, and bring it to the next level.

Tokens

Grand Crescendo does two things – it can give you a ton of tokens, and it protects your creatures. But options are useful in this deck.

The front face of Invasion of Segovia gets you two tokens for three mana, which is not optimal, but you can work with it. Particularly since the backside is so good in this deck. It gives all of your noncreature spells convoke, and it lets you untap up to four creatures in your end step. In a multiplayer game, it shouldn’t be too hard to flip it, as you often have one opponent who isn’t ready to defend it yet.

Synergies

Anointed Procession is a staple in white token decks, and for a good reason. If you double all of your tokens, you can quickly get ahead in a game. Mondrak, Glory Dominus can serve as a second copy of it.

If you want to increase your tokens not by quantity, but by quality, you can add a copy of Divine Visitation to your deck and turn your measly 1/1s into relevant threats. However, with such cards (that neither make tokens nor are convoke spells themselves) you might dilute your convoke synergies, so make sure that you aren’t adding too many of them.

Purphoros, God of the Forge can be your win condition, if you’re making a ton of tokens.

If you’ll regularly deal damage with your creature tokens, then Curiosity Crafter can provide you with a steady stream of cards.

Convoke

Every Commander deck that can put out a ton of creatures, wants to have ways to protect them. If that cards work well with the theme, that’s particularly useful. Not every deck has access to such cards, but Divine Convocation does. I’m speaking of Clever Concealment, which can actually protect not only creatures, but all types of permanents, and it has convoke on top of that. It’s a really amazing card and a perfect fit for this deck.

Untap

Drumbellower lets you untap your creatures during your opponent’s untap steps. So, you can use them for convoking instants on your opponent’s turns. If you really want to go deep into the synergies, add Leyline of Anticipation to the mix.

Intruder Alarm works a bit differently, but can be even more powerful in certain scenarios. If you add just one other card to the mix, you also get an infinite combo.

Infinite Combo

If you’re a fan of infinite combos, you should definitely add Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker to the deck. Even thought, it’s not among the cheapest cards, it’s also not that expensive, thanks to its many reprints. As I said, it’ll combo with Intruder Alarm, and with Village Bell-Ringer too. That one is already included in the precon. Another, a bit slower option is Fable of the Mirror-Breaker.

You can make the combo even more consistent with the addition of Imperial Recruiter. However, keep in mind, that some play groups don’t like playing against such combos. So, if your playgroup is more casually orientated, you might want to leave these cards outside your deck.

Good Stuff

Zero mana protection spells are always useful. Both Fierce Guardianship and Flawless Maneuver can work great in this shell. They are expensive, but you’ll be able to play them in basically any deck that runs these colors.

Yes, Rhystic Study is expensive and annoying, but it’s one of the best card draw engines. If you want to win, you should probably include it in your deck, even though it doesn’t have particular synergies with the rest of your deck. Similar things are true for Smothering TIthe.

Esper Sentinel and Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer are great one drops. They have a lot of value for a single mana, and one drops work well with your convoke spells, as we mentioned earlier.

Mana Base

As far as the utility lands go, the only one worth mentioning here is probably Field of the Dead. When you fully upgrade your mana base, you’ll end up with plenty of different lands, so you’ll be be able to trigger it without much work. It’s essentially a free token maker, with the only cost being that the land enters the battlefield tapped.

As far as the mana fixing goes, you have a lot of options. Here are just some of the great lands that you can play:

• Shock lands: Hallowed Fountain, Sacred Foundry, Steam Vents
• Fetch lands: Flooded Strand, Arid Mesa, Scalding Tarn
• The original duals: Tundra, Plateau, Volcanic Island
• Raugrin Triome

Cards to Remove

Deciding which cards to remove can be very hard, especially for new players. There are just so many exciting cards that you want to play. However, Commander decks need to have exactly 99 cards + 1 commander. So, for the every card you add to your deck, one has to go.

So, how to decide which cards to remove? First, you should start with cards that don’t work well within your theme, or a just too weak. For example, you could get rid of Angel of Finality. It doesn’t do anything for your theme, and it isn’t even that strong on its own.

Some other cards that you should probably get rid of include:

• Goblin Medics – way too weak of a payoff
• Duergar Hedge-Mage – too weak, especially once start upgrading the mana base, and have fewer lands with basic land types
• Ichor Elixir – unless you’re playing Planechase, you’re overpaying for the effect
• Flight of Equenauts – one of the weakest convoke cards
• Wrenn’s Resolve – there are better ways of getting card advantage

As far as the other cards go, it can be a bit tricky. One thing you can do is to try to find which cards fill similar roles. Let’s say you’re adding Young Pyromancer. It’s a cheap card that can make tokens, in that case you might want to remove Goblin Instigator.

Divine Convocation Upgraded Decklist

Here’s an example of an upgraded Divine Convocation decklist. Of course, feel free to build the deck in any way you want, and use whichever cards seem most fun to you. The following is by no means the most optimized decklist out there, but is a fine blueprint of how a better version of the deck could look like.

Conclusion

That’s the end of our Divine Convocation Upgrade Guide, If you feel that I missed a certain card, let me know in the comments below.

If you want to see the upgrades for the other four March of the Machine Commander decks, you can check them by following these links:

• Call for Backup Upgrade Guide
• Cavalry Charge Upgrade Guide
• Growing Threat Upgrade Guide
• Tinker Time Upgrade Guide (coming soon)

Until next time, have tons of fun and get many wins with your upgraded Divine Convocation deck.