Legends' Legacy Upgrade Guide

They say that heroes get remembered, but legends never die. This is especially true in today’s Legend’s Legacy Upgrade Guide. We are going to be talking about the new pre-constructed commander deck: Legends’ Legacy. This is going to be five unique ways to specialize the precon to be something both personal and powerful.

Table of Contents

A Brief Note on Budget

As always, this article isn’t like a lot of other upgrade articles. I’m not giving you upgrades for $30, $50, $100 or whatever limit you often see on upgrade guides. I don’t want to tell you exactly what you should play in your deck. Rather, I want you to find a few interesting ideas that can inspire you to build a deck that is uniquely yours. As a result, I’m going to be recommending any a and all cards that come to mind in each individual strategy.

Sometimes this means that I’ll recommend cards that are too expensive for some players. I find this truly regrettable. Whenever possible, I will recommend budget alternatives for expensive cards. However, if a card is one of a kind and outside your budget, consider asking your playgroup if they would be alright with using proxies.

The other thing that I want to say in this section is that I found five interesting deck strategies for upgrading this pre-constructed deck. It’s possible, though, that these are not the only available options. If you come up with something that I didn’t, please let me know in the comments below.

If you don’t own the Legends’ Legacy precon already, you can get it on Amazon.

Legends' Legacy Dominaria United Commander Decks Decklists

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Legends’ Legacy Decklist

*These are brand-new cards that come in the Painbow deck. If their display images aren’t working, that means that they haven’t been added to the database that we use. You can find the cards in our Dominaria United Commander article.

Legends’ Legacy – General Upgrades

Dihada, Binder of Wills Dominaria United Commander Decks

This deck is another example of Wizards of the Coast’s new designs for Commander decks. More specifically, these decks are much more focused on their theme than decks of the past. You’ll find a lot of legendary cards in it. Personally, I feel that if you commit more to your deck’s shtick, you’ll have both a better experience piloting it and ultimately have a more powerful deck.

I say this with the caveat that your deck’s theme should not neglect the important pillars of a good deck. When I say ‘the pillars of a good deck’ I’m referring to card draw, ramp, and removal. As long as a deck has an appropriate amount of each of these things, it will likely perform well.

Additionally, if these utility elements also happen to contribute the rest of the deck’s focus, you’re killing two birds with one stone. You won’t have to sacrifice synergy to include these vital pillars. Thereby, your deck

The Mana Base

This precon comes with thirty-nine lands. Everyone has a different amount of lands that they recommend, but I feel like thirty-seven is a pretty safe number. It’s what I always try to aim for when building a new deck. This means that you can probably afford to cut a couple of cards from the mana base of this deck. Basics are obviously the easiest option.

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In addition to pulling back a little on how many lands you have, you can also improve the quality of your mana base by running more lands that tap for more colors and more lands that enter the battlefield untapped. The deck comes with a handful of such lands, but any of the following that you can make room for will probably make your games play much smoother overall.

These lands aren’t the only options for upgrading your deck, but they are among the best. I know, though, that the price of these being so good is that they also tend to be kind of expensive. Most of the less expensive options already come in the precon, but you could also try running:

Hopefully, between these options and the decent lands that already come in the deck, you should be able to put together a workable mana base regardless of your budge.

What to Take Out

All the creatures in this deck are legendary. A lot of the artifacts and enchantments are also legendary. This means that making cuts might be more difficult than some other precons they have released. A lot of the cards that you end up cutting will probably just be less focused on the upgrade path’s theme than other legendary cards.

I will go into more detail in each individual section on which specific cards I think are playable or not, but for now the only card I’m going to explicitly recommend cutting is Sword of the Chosen. I get that the card is cute, but it’s simply not strong enough in this deck to be worth a whole card slot. Feel free to cut it to make room for something more synergistic and impactful.

5 Ways to Upgrade

Based on the commanders’ abilities, I thought of five unique directions you could take this deck:

Legends Matter
Superfriends
Treasures
Tribal
Threaten Effects

Power Level

At the beginning of each of the next sections, I included a range of numbers. That range is what I expect this deck to be able to perform at on a 1-10 power scale (Based on the power scale established by the Command Zone Podcast). For more information on the Commander power scale, you can take a look at the table below.

Power Level	Name	Description
1-2	Jank	Very little synergy among cards. No Commander staples. Under powered on purpose.
3-4	Casual	Some synergies, but lacking the strong ones. The deck still lacks focus. Mana curves mostly neglected. A deck that a new player would build.
4-6	Focused	Synergy exists, the deck has a focused gameplan, although it doesn't always win in the exact same way, usually after turn 13. Includes staples and a small amount of tutors. On the same power level as most Commander precons.
7-8	Optimized	Powerful and varied synergies between the cards. A decent number of good tutors. Good mana curve. Has an efficient and consistent way to win on turns 10-12 (level 7) or 7-9 (level 8). Some social rules — like no mass land destruction, no consistent combo wins — still exist.
9-10	Competitive	The most powerful decks, on competitive EDH level. Quick and explosive, can win on turns 4-6 (level 9) or 1-3 (level 10). No social rules, no jank cards. Only the most powerful commanders and strategies can reach this level.

Actual power levels may vary, but let those numbers be a guide when considering upgrading this deck in those ways.

1. Legends Matter (5-7)

Recommended Commander: Dihada, Binder of Wills or Shanid, Sleeper’s Scourge

Avacyn's Memorial Legends' Legacy Upgrade Guide

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In the last several years, Wizards has printed dramatically more legendary creatures than they had for the first couple decades of the game’s existence. Because of that fact, a small handful of commanders have started to pop up to take advantage. Previously, we had

If any of those seem more interesting than the commanders in this deck, feel free to build them. This deck could potentially serve as a decent starting point for some of those commanders. However, in this article we are not going to dive deep into those. Rather, here are some great cards that contribute to your legendary theme:

Value From Your Mana Base

There are also plenty of legendary lands in Magic. These are easy ways to increase the number of synergy slots in your deck without having to justify another legend that may or may not be good enough for your legendary deck.

Honestly, you could probably fill your entire mana base with nothing but legendary lands. That probably won’t be as good as playing untapped lands that tap for two or more colors of mana, but here is an exhaustive list of your options. Once you are confident your mana base will be consistent, feel free to add as many of these as. will fit:

Backgrounds

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In the recent Commander Legends set, Wizards introduced a new mechanic called Background. Each color has a handful of Background cards, each of which is a legendary enchantment. As such, these work perfectly with what your deck is trying to do. Feel free to choose any or all of these cards:

On an unrelated aside, I love the flavor that each of these Backgrounds add to your commander. They each add a unique twist both to the gameplay and to the imaginary backstory you give your cards.

Dialing In Your Focus

Unfortunately, the fact that there are so many legendary cards in the game nowadays means that, other than being legends, these cards don’t inherently have synergistic through lines. You will probably find that you should choose a handful of legendary cards that work together, then find more legendary cards that do similar things.

Otherwise, you might find your deck filled with random things like Zetalpa, Primal Dawn, Traxos, Scourge of Kroog, Kari Zev, Skyship Raider, and so on. Consider trying to focus in on legendary enchantments, legendary aristocrats, or legendary reanimator to get a more powerful deck.

New Cards From Dominaria United

Dominaria United, like many recent sets before it, is crawling with legendary cards. Again, exactly which ones you decide to use will ultimately depend on what flavor of legends matter you choose, but here are some of the more interesting ones that I wanted to point out:

What to Take Out

As I said previously, legends are probably not specific enough of a tribe to make a good deck. Once you hone in on the flavor of legendary cards, then you can decide what cards to cut. I did mention a small list of legendary creatures that earned a slot in this deck exclusively because they are a legend. Those can come out of the deck, as well as:

2. Superfriends (5-8)

Recommended Commander: Dihada, Binder of Wills or Shanid, Sleeper’s Scourge

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One permanent type I intentionally omitted from the previous section is planeswalkers. All planeswalkers are legendary, and therefore they would all be able to work reasonably well with this deck’s theme.

I have found that there are not many planeswalkers that are staples to this archetype. There are so many that you could reasonably run your favorite 25-35 and have a fun deck that feels like it has a planeswalker theme. I’ll let you choose whichever planeswalkers you like, but here is a list of cool planeswalker support cards you could include:

The Combo

One of my favorite interactions of all time is how Planebound Accomplice works with Crucible of Worlds. If you have these two cards, as well as a planeswalker that can make two or more mana, you can get into a loop where you activate a planeswalker infinite times. Allow me to explain further:

Planebound Accomplice Legends' Legacy Upgrade Guide

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Let’s say you already have a Planebound Accomplice and a Cloudstone Curio on the battlefield with one red open and two planeswalkers in your hand. You use that red to put Koth of the Hammer into play with Planebound Accomplice‘s ability. You activate Koth’s -2 ability, which adds red mana to your pool equal to the number of Mountains you have.

Let’s assume you have at least two. With one of your two floating red mana, you activate Planebound Accomplice another time, putting a second planeswalker from your hand into play. When it enters, you get to bounce Koth back to your hand with Cloudstone Curio‘s ability. Then, you can activate whichever ability you want to/can on the new planeswalker.

After that, you use the remaining floating red mana to activate Planebound Accomplice yet another time, returning Koth of the Hammer to the battlefield. Triggers Cloudstone Curio again, and you bounce the non-Koth planeswalker to your hand. Now you have a loop where you activate Koth, activate the Accomplice, return Koth to hand, activate the Accomplice again, return the other planeswalker to your hand again, and repeat.

Combo Piece Replacements

Chandra Torch of Defiance Legends' Legacy Precon Upgrade Guide

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You could replace Koth in this look with Chandra, Torch of Defiance, Chandra, Bold Pyromancer, or Chandra, Novice Pyromancer. This is an interesting combo that doesn’t see enough play. Plus, the opportunity cost to play it is relatively low, especially in a deck that already wants to play a bunch of planeswalkers. If your playgroup doesn’t like infinite combos, you probably shouldn’t play this one, but if they are okay with them this one is a lot of fun.

New Cards From Dominaria United

There are two planeswalkers from Dominaria United that could go in this deck, as well as a pretty powerful synergy card that I want to mention here. Jaya, Fiery Negotiator and Liliana of the Veil are the two planeswalkers, both of which could make fantastic additions to this deck. The last card is Urza Assembles the Titans. If you pull one of these from a DMU pack, it seems like it would be incredibly powerful in this deck.

What to Take Out

The easiest recommendation for this version of the deck is to just trade the vast number of legendary creatures out for planeswalkers. You lose a bit of utility in the creatures, but most planeswalkers have what you need for removal, card advantage, etc.

3. Treasure (6-8)

Recommended Commander: Dihada, Binder of Wills

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One strategy that has been pretty controversial in the community lately has been the overabundance of efficient Treasure cards. I don’t think it’s a secret that the token has started to feel more and more overpowered for the last few years. Whether it is good for the game is not what I’m here to discuss, though.

Rather, I want to point out that Dihada, Binder of Wills‘s minus ability will probably be able to make you four Treasures per activation. That is a decent rate, and might just fit in pretty well with a full deck that’s trying to do this kind of thing. Such a deck might include:

This list contains six legendary creatures. This is probably not enough to get full value out of Dihada’s +2 ability. However, that likely won’t be a problem, since you mainly care about her ability to generate Treasures.

New Cards From Dominaria United

Surprisingly, there are not any cards in the new set that make Treasures. Honestly, it feels like a breath of fresh air. However, it is slightly inconvenient for purposes of upgrading this deck. Just know that if this is the upgrade path you choose, and you want to crack packs to find some juicy upgrade options, Dominaria United probably will not have what you need.

What to Take Out

This version of the deck is the first one to really abandon the legendary theme altogether and focus on a completely different aspect of Dihada’s abilities. As a result, the many cards that come in the precon that are on theme are unnecessary in this version of the deck. Feel free to cut anything that has synergy with legendary cards.

4. Tribal

I know, I know. This deck is not designed to be a tribal deck. But one of my favorite things to do when I write these articles is evaluating how good the face commander and secondary commander are within the context of their tribes.

In Dihada’s case, the section about Superfriends was sort of like a tribal section for her. Shanid, on the other hand, is a Human Knight. Let look at those two tribes, specifically the legendary cards that could add both tribal and mechanical synergy to a Shanid deck.

Humans (4-7)

Recommended Commander: Shanid, Sleeper’s Scourge

Jirina Kudro How to Upgrade Legends' Legacy Commander Deck

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Unfortunately for Shanid, Wizards printed a Mardu Tribal Humans precon a few years ago. The deck was mostly an Aristocrats deck with some White Weenies thrown in. This version of the deck is probably very similar to that one. The one thing that I would say is different is that Shanid cares specifically about Legends. Here are a bunch of Human legends you could consider for the deck:

There’s not a lot to be said about this deck. It’s probably worse than a Humans deck built around Humans in general, but the legends theme gives it an interesting twist. I’m sure it would be a fun deck.

Knights (4-6)

Recommended Commander: Shanid, Sleeper’s Scourge

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Similarly, Knights are mostly a Mardu tribe. They tend to be more aggressive than Humans, but a lot of their gameplay will be similar. They can be decent at Aristocrats, but they also want to use Equipment to bump up their power level. You could run plenty of legendary Equipment cards, as well as cards like Nim Deathmantle to also play into the Aristocrats theme.

Here are some of the powerful legendary Knights in Mardu colors:

New Cards From Dominaria United

There are lots of Humans in Dominaria United. There are also a handful of Knights. Not all of them are worth putting in this deck, but here are a few of the ones that I would consider:

Hero’s Heirloom could potentially be good in the Knights version of the deck as well.

What to Take Out

A good handful of the legendary creatures in the precon are already either Humans, Knights, or both. This is pretty handy, since you might not have to make too many cuts. However, if you end up needing more slots for cards, you can cut any or all of the non-Humans/-Knights.

5. Threaten Effects (4-6)

Recommended Commander: Dihada, Binder of Wills

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Last but not least, we have a strategy built around Dihada’s ultimate ability. Usually I would recommend against such a plan, especially when Dihada enters at five loyalty, ultimates at eleven and only has a plus two. It wouldn’t be impossible to get to that ability, but you probably can’t count on it every game.

However, if we build a deck around “Threaten” effects, we can try to plan on stealing our opponents’ commanders. This glues together the primary theme, as well as gives us a way to use Dihada’s plus two ability as we slowly work our way to the ultimate.

Here is a list of all of the Threaten variants in Mardu colors. I wouldn’t recommend running all of them, but you definitely need a critical mass:

Stealing your opponents’ creatures also works well with the Aristocrats theme we’ve talked about in some other sections of this article. Once you steal an opponents’ thing, sacrifice it for value. That also counts as removal, which covers one of your pillars of a great deck.

New Cards From Dominaria United

Just like most good sets, Dominaria United has a new take on a Threaten variant. The card is In Thrall to the Pit. It likely works just as well as the other cards in this section, so I would recommend running it if you pull one and need an additional version of this card.

What to Take Out

This is another version of the deck that likely doesn’t want to keep hardly any of the cards that come in the precon. One exception would be Etali, Primal Storm, because that could potentially lead to you stealing things from your opponents. I do want to point out, though, that this deck isn’t just about stealing your opponents’ things. It is specifically a Threaten.dek, so you can steal your opponents’ commanders and benefit from Dihada.

Conclusion

And that’s a wrap on another upgrade article. I hope you found some inspiration on building your next Commander deck, or upgrading your Legends’ Legacy deck. Let me know if you have any feedback or insights on these upgrade recommendations or anything else. You can leave me a comment down below, or find me on Instagram or Twitter.

If you enjoyed the new cards from Dominaria United, and you’d like to try your luck and open some of them in packs, you can get a Dominaria United Set booster box on Amazon.