Necron Dynasties precon upgrade guide

Six cards in this box print the word Necron, and every one of them is describing a token it creates. The type on the package is flavour; the deck underneath it is an artifact deck.

What are the best Necron Dynasties upgrades?

Free fix first, then roughly by how much each one changes a game:

1. Trimming the top of the curve — free, and it does more than anything on this list. Eighteen of the sixty-two spells in the box cost five or more. Seven of those leave, and average mana value falls from 3.79 to 3.35.
2. Infernal Grasp ($0.35), Feed the Swarm ($0.19) and Bone Shards ($0.24) — three answers for well under a dollar, against a box that shipped three pieces of spot removal in total.
3. Buried Alive ($2.06) — a tutor that puts three creatures where eight of this deck’s creatures already want to be.
4. Lightning Greaves ($4.71) — Szarekh's ability is attack-triggered, and the box contains no way to attack the turn he lands.
5. Snuff Out ($12.55) — free removal, and its condition is “you control a Swamp”. There are thirty.
6. Ashnod's Altar ($15.67) — the second sacrifice outlet, which is what turns a graveyard full of unearth into a machine rather than a pile.
7. Victimize ($1.45) and Phyrexian Reclamation ($3.02) — reanimation at three mana and at one, replacing reanimation at five.
8. Steel Overseer ($0.42), Nettlecyst ($3.86) and Solemn Simulacrum ($0.32) — three cards that scale off a number this deck is already enormous in.
9. Cabal Stronghold ($12.64) and Black Sun's Zenith ($0.34) — a mana sink for those thirty Swamps, and a sweeper you get to size.

Fourteen cards come out to make room; the full list is below.

Every lord in this box reads “artifact creature”

Six cards in the ninety-nine print the word Necron: Imotekh the Stormlord, Biotransference, Royal Warden, Their Number Is Legion, Necron Monolith and Night Scythe. Every one of those six is describing a token it creates. Nothing in the deck asks you to choose a creature type, and nothing pays you for the twenty-three Necrons you drew.

What the deck keys on instead is the artifact type line, and it does it everywhere. Skorpekh Lord gives other artifact creatures +1/+0 and menace. Cryptothrall gives them hexproof. Imotekh the Stormlord pumps one of them each combat. Cryptek picks one and promises to bring it back when it dies. Technomancer reanimates artifact creature cards worth six mana in total. Canoptek Spyder draws a card whenever a nontoken artifact creature or Vehicle enters. Their Name Is Death destroys all nonartifact creatures. Ghost Ark hands unearth to artifact creature cards in your graveyard. Szarekh, the Silent King mills three on attack and takes an artifact creature or Vehicle card out of it.

Forty-nine of the ninety-nine cards are artifacts. Twenty-seven of the twenty-nine creatures are artifact creatures, and three more permanents are Vehicles. That is the deck.

Reading it that way settles an argument before it starts. Canoptek Wraith is a Wraith, Cryptothrall is a Construct, Canoptek Spyder is a Spider, Canoptek Tomb Sentinel is an Insect: four creatures that look like intruders in a Necron deck and are nothing of the sort. Cryptothrall is one of the best cards in the box, because hexproof for every other artifact creature you control is protection for twenty-five of them. Solemn Simulacrum, on the add list, is a Golem for exactly the same reason.

It is also why Herald's Horn and Vanquisher's Banner aren’t on the add list. Both reward twenty-three Necrons, which sounds like plenty until you notice the deck has forty-nine artifacts and not one card that cares about the tribe. Steel Overseer and Nettlecyst pay off the larger number: the Overseer puts a +1/+1 counter on every artifact creature you control for one activation, and Nettlecyst arrives with a body whose size is your artifact count.

One number worth having before you sleeve this up. Thirty of the ninety-nine cards behind Szarekh are artifact creatures or Vehicles, so milling three finds him something 66.6% of the time. Two attacks in three refill your hand. The third one only fills your graveyard, which this deck is also happy about.

Two of these creatures aren’t artifacts, and everything else assumes they are

Shard of the Nightbringer and Shard of the Void Dragon are the only creatures in the deck without the word Artifact on the type line. Look at what that costs them. Skorpekh Lord doesn’t pump them. Cryptothrall doesn’t protect them. Cryptek can’t promise to bring them back, Technomancer can’t reanimate them, and Szarekh can’t pull them out of a mill. Then Their Name Is Death, your own board wipe, destroys all nonartifact creatures, which by that point means the two most expensive cards you drew.

Biotransference patches it by making everything you own an artifact, and Biotransference is one card in a hundred. Eight mana and seven mana are steep prices for creatures that need a specific enchantment before they belong in the deck.

That is two of the fourteen. The rest:

• Caged Sun (6) — six mana before it does anything, in a deck already carrying eighteen spells at five or more.
• Tomb Blade (6) — a flier whose damage trigger asks an opponent to sacrifice a creature they were probably happy to lose.
• Triarch Stalker (5) — five mana to grant menace to your attackers, when Skorpekh Lord already grants it to every artifact creature for three.
• Royal Warden (5) — two 2/2 tokens arriving tapped is a turn-two effect at five mana.
• Gilded Lotus (5) and Unstable Obelisk (3) — ten pieces of ramp and forty-one black sources is comfortable, so the expensive rock and the rock that charges seven mana to destroy something are the two the deck can spare.
• Beacon of Unrest (5) — reanimation is the one thing this deck is not short of. Dread Return, Living Death, Technomancer, The War in Heaven and Tomb Fortress are all already here, and the adds bring back two more for four mana between them.
• Canoptek Scarab Swarm (4) — graveyard hate that pays you in Insect tokens for artifacts and lands, in a deck where the graveyard you least want emptied is your own.
• Mask of Memory (2) and Resurrection Orb (2) — the box already draws ten cards’ worth, and a four-mana equip cost is a turn you don’t have.
• Darkness (1) — a fog is a fine card in a deck that wins by not dying. This one wins by attacking with fliers.
• Desert of the Glorified — see the mana section.

None of this touches the bracket. There are no Game Changers in the box and none on the add list, so nothing here lifts the deck above the floor it already sits on. What changes is how often it gets to do the thing it was built to do.

The box shipped three removal spells and one of them costs seven mana to fire

Go for the Throat, Canoptek Scarab Swarm and Unstable Obelisk. That is the interaction. The Obelisk wants seven mana, a tap and a sacrifice; the Scarab Swarm eats a graveyard. Go for the Throat is the real one, and it destroys target nonartifact creature, which in a Warhammer 40,000 pod is a coin flip on whether it can point at anything.

So five of the fourteen adds are answers. Infernal Grasp kills anything for two mana and two life. Feed the Swarm is the only way mono-black gets to destroy an enchantment. Bone Shards costs one and asks you to discard a card, which with eight unearth creatures in the deck is closer to a bonus than a cost. Snuff Out is the pick I like most here: {3}{B}, or four life if you control a Swamp, and this deck controls thirty of them. Free instant-speed removal that never asks you to hold mana open.

Deadly Rollick does the same job unconditionally while Szarekh is on the battlefield, and I left it off anyway. At $27.67 it costs more than every other card on this list except two combined, and Snuff Out is also free. If a Rollick is already in your binder, run both and drop Go for the Throat.

The sweepers are stranger and better than they look. Their Name Is Death destroys all nonartifact creatures, which spares twenty-eight of your thirty out of the box and all twenty-six of them after these swaps. Mutilate gives everything −1/−1 for each Swamp you control, so with seven or eight out it is a board wipe that hits you as hard as anyone. Black Sun's Zenith joins them as the one you get to size, and its −1/−1 counters answer indestructible and regenerating creatures that the other two leave standing. Spot removal goes from three to five, which is finally inside the range a hundred-card deck wants.

Eight creatures climb out of the graveyard without help

Chronomancer, Lokhust Heavy Destroyer, Royal Warden, Skorpekh Lord, Tomb Blade, Canoptek Tomb Sentinel, Hexmark Destroyer and Triarch Praetorian all have unearth. Ghost Ark hands unearth {3} to every artifact creature card in the yard whenever it’s crewed, and Convergence of Dominion knocks {2} off activated abilities of cards in your graveyard while you control your commander. Then Imotekh the Stormlord makes two 2/2s every time artifact cards leave that graveyard, so each unearth activation is also a pair of bodies.

Filling the yard is the other half. Szarekh mills three on every attack. Flayed One, Necron Deathmark, The War in Heaven, Necron Monolith, Convergence of Dominion and Tomb Fortress all mill. Out of the Tombs mills two, then four, then six, escalating every upkeep until you are drawing off an empty library.

Three adds make that half deliberate instead of accidental. Buried Alive costs three and puts any three creatures into the graveyard, which in this deck is a tutor for whichever unearth creatures the board calls for. Victimize turns one token into two creatures off the top of the pile. Phyrexian Reclamation costs a single black mana and buys a creature back every turn for the rest of the game.

Ashnod's Altar is the piece that makes them connect. Illuminor Szeras is the only sacrifice outlet in the box and it has to tap, so it does one thing per turn. The Altar does it for free and as often as you like, which is what puts Cryptek’s promise, Psychomancer’s drain and a handful of unearth costs into the same turn.

Szarekh has to attack, and the box has no way to let him

My Will Be Done triggers on the attack. Not on cast, not on damage: on the declaration. A four-mana commander with flying who has to survive a full rotation before he does anything is a commander who gets killed in response to nothing at all.

Lightning Greaves is $4.71 and fixes both halves of that. Haste means he attacks the turn he lands, and shroud means the removal spell being held for him has nowhere to go. Swiftfoot Boots is the same card with a slower equip and worth running if you own one; I’d rather have the zero-cost equip in a deck that wants its mana for unearth.

Which is also why the equipment cuts above aren’t hypocrisy. Cranial Plating stays: +1/+0 for each artifact you control is a different card in a deck with forty-nine of them, and {B}{B} moves it at instant speed onto whichever flier got through. Mask of Memory and Resurrection Orb ask you to spend mana making one creature slightly better. The Greaves ask you to spend two mana making your commander work at all.

Thirty basic Swamps is a constraint, not filler

Most precons run a pile of basics because nonbasics cost money. Here, five cards read the word Swamp and get worse the moment you swap those basics out. Mutilate and Defile both scale off Swamp count. Endless Atlas and Sceptre of Eternal Glory each need three or more lands sharing a name before they switch on, which thirty copies of one card guarantees. Plasmancer tutors a basic Swamp on arrival.

The mana upgrade for this deck is therefore not a cycle of duals. It is Cabal Stronghold, which taps for colourless normally and then converts three mana into one black per basic Swamp. There is no shortage of places to spend that: Necron Overlord drains for X, Tomb Fortress reanimates for five, and every unearth cost in the deck is a mana sink with a body attached.

Desert of the Glorified comes out for it, and that one is a least-bad call rather than a cut. All five of the box’s tapped lands are doing something. Barren Moor cycles for a single black. Tomb Fortress is a reanimation spell stapled to a land. Myriad Landscape fetches two basics, and this deck has thirty. That leaves two cycling lands charging two mana apiece, Polluted Mire for {2} and the Desert for {1}{B}, and the coloured pip decides it. Always-tapped lands drop from five to four.

There is a cost here, and it is worth stating plainly. Losing that land and Gilded Lotus takes black sources from forty-one to thirty-nine, and Black Sun's Zenith at {X}{B}{B} means the deck now wants double black on turn three rather than turn four. Thirty-nine sources clears that at 93.4% on the play, down from 96.9%. In a mono-coloured deck with thirty-seven lands, I’ll take that trade.

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is the land I’d add next and didn’t. It turns every land in play into a Swamp, which makes Mutilate and Defile enormous, and it is $56.44 by itself: roughly what every card on this list costs combined. Cabal Coffers ($33.35) is the one after that. Both improve a mana base that already works, which is why they sit behind fourteen cards that fix things that don’t.

The upgraded decklist

The hundred cards after all fourteen swaps. Hover any name to see the card, its mana value and what it costs today.

Load into the deck builder Copy decklist

“Load into the deck builder” opens this list in your account, pinned to the printings the box shipped, ready to edit or save. “Copy decklist” gives you plain text for Moxfield, Archidekt or Arena — no account needed.

FAQ

What can Szarekh’s attack trigger actually put in my hand?

Artifact creature cards and Vehicle cards, and only from the three cards that particular attack milled. Out of the box thirty of the ninety-nine cards behind him qualify, so he finds something 66.6% of the time; after these swaps it is twenty-eight of ninety-nine and 63.6%. The two cards he could never find were Shard of the Nightbringer and Shard of the Void Dragon, and both are on the cut list. Tokens can’t be milled, so the 2/2 Necron Warriors never turn up there either.

Will Their Name Is Death wipe my own board too?

Barely, and after these swaps not at all. It destroys all nonartifact creatures, and twenty-eight of your thirty creatures out of the box are artifact creatures. The two exceptions are the C'tan Shards. Cut those and every creature in the deck, commander included, survives your own sweeper. Biotransference gets you there from the other direction by making everything you control an artifact, which is worth remembering on the turns you have both.

What do these fourteen upgrades cost?

$57.82 in total at market prices for the default printings, checked on 6 September 2026. Three cards are two-thirds of that: Ashnod's Altar at $15.67, Cabal Stronghold at $12.64 and Snuff Out at $12.55. The other eleven come to $16.96 between them, so the removal package and the graveyard package are close to free. The cards I priced and skipped are Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth ($56.44), Cabal Coffers ($33.35) and Deadly Rollick ($27.67).

Is Out of the Tombs going to deck me?

It mills two on its first upkeep, four on the next and six on the one after, so it has taken thirty cards off your library by its fifth trigger. That is the point rather than the risk: when your library is empty and you would draw, it returns a creature from your graveyard to the battlefield instead, and you only lose if there is nothing there to return. In a deck with eight unearth creatures and five other ways to reanimate, the empty library is where the deck wants to end up. Just don’t cast it on turn three with a fresh hand and no board.

Should I add Herald's Horn or another Necron payoff?

Twenty-three of the thirty creatures are Necrons, so the count is real, but no card in the box asks about it. Every lord effect, every reanimation spell and the commander himself are written against “artifact creature”, and forty-nine of the ninety-nine cards carry that type. A tribal lord pays off the smaller number. Steel Overseer and Nettlecyst pay off the bigger one for less money.

Is Necron Dynasties worth playing straight out of the box?

It is more coherent than most. Thirty-seven lands, ten pieces of ramp and ten ways to draw are all inside the ranges a hundred-card deck wants, and the artifact-creature theme is carried by nearly every card rather than by six of them. Two things hold it back: eighteen of its sixty-two spells cost five or more, and it shipped three pieces of spot removal, one of which needs seven mana. Those are also the two cheapest things to fix.

Why keep four lands that always enter tapped?

Because each of the four buys something a Swamp doesn’t. Barren Moor cycles for one black mana when you are flooded. Polluted Mire does the same for two generic. Myriad Landscape trades itself for two basics, which matters when five cards in the deck count Swamps. Tomb Fortress exiles itself to mill four and reanimate a creature. Thirty-three of the thirty-seven lands still enter untapped, and this deck has no turn-one play worth protecting.