Eternal Bargain precon upgrade guide

Oloro draws once per life-gain event, however much life it is, and no card in this box gains life each time you cast a spell or another creature enters.

Oloro, Ageless Ascetic gains you 2 life at every upkeep, from the command zone or the battlefield. On the battlefield, each time you gain life you may pay {1} to draw a card and make each opponent lose 1. The ruling that decides this deck is that the trigger happens once per life-gain event, whatever the amount. Azorius Herald's 4 life and one tap of Pristine Talisman are the same trigger. Two creatures with lifelink dealing damage together are two events, and one lifelinker hitting three blockers is one.

So the number to count is events, and the box counts badly. Eight of its cards gain life in a single lump: Azorius Herald (4), Filigree Angel (3 for each artifact), Razor Hippogriff (the mana value of the artifact it returns), Stormscape Battlemage (3, if kicked with {W}), Death Grasp (X), Dromar's Charm (5, if you pick that mode), Spinal Embrace (the toughness of the creature it steals) and Survival Cache (2, then 2 more when it rebounds). The rest of the supply is a trickle: Wall of Reverence at your end step, Pristine Talisman, Sun Droplet, and some paid sacrifice and lifelink effects. None of the 58 nonland cards gains life each time you cast a spell or another creature enters.

The payoffs are already in the box, and most of them reward size over count. Sanguine Bond drains for the amount gained, Cradle of Vitality adds that many counters, Well of Lost Dreams draws up to that many cards and Vizkopa Guildmage drains that much for the turn. Ajani's Pridemate is the one that counts events. The box can use a big gain well and has no way to make small ones often. Four of the adds fill that gap, and two more are payoffs that make every event worth more.

The second finding is the mana. The box runs 41 lands, 24 of them basic and 11 entering tapped. Blue is short at 20 sources against 23 black and 22 white (the count includes mana rocks and any-colour lands), and five cards cost seven or eight to go with a six-mana commander. Average mana value is 3.81.

What are the best Eternal Bargain upgrades?

Ranked by what each does for Oloro. Each price below is the cheapest released printing as of October 2026.

1. Soul Warden ($3.02). It gains you 1 life whenever another creature enters, yours, an opponent's or a token. Thopter Foundry, Sharding Sphinx, Myr Battlesphere and Curse of Shallow Graves all make tokens, and Myr Battlesphere is five creatures entering for seven mana.
2. Tithe Drinker ($0.27) and Syndic of Tithes ($0.13). Both have extort: when you cast a spell you may pay {W/B}, and each opponent loses 1 life while you gain that much. Each payment is an event, so two extort creatures turn one spell into two. Tithe Drinker also has lifelink.
3. Righteous Valkyrie ($1.85). Whenever another Angel or Cleric you control enters you gain life equal to its toughness. After the swaps six others qualify: Disciple of Griselbrand, Filigree Angel, Syndic of Tithes, Soul Warden, Vito and Archangel of Thune. At 47 life she also gives your creatures +2/+2.
4. Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose ($8.98). It's Sanguine Bond's text for three mana instead of five. With both out, every event drains twice, because the two triggers resolve separately. Vito is a Cleric as well.
5. Archangel of Thune ($18.02). Flying and lifelink, and each time you gain life every creature you control grows by a counter. The price is a masterpiece-series printing, and the other printings run $44 to $51. It's the part of the list to buy last.
6. Swords to Plowshares ($0.98) and Vindicate ($0.29). Exile a creature for {W}, and destroy any permanent for three. Without Vindicate the box's answers to an artifact or enchantment are Act of Authority, which leaves in this list, and Nevinyrral's Disk, which destroys your own artifacts, creatures and enchantments too.
7. Three rocks and three lands, argued in the mana section: Arcane Signet ($0.40), Azorius Signet ($0.18), Dimir Signet ($0.27), Glacial Fortress ($0.21), Drowned Catacomb ($0.50) and Isolated Chapel ($0.21), $1.77 together.

The Curses reward attacking, which is why two of them stay

Curse of the Forsaken says that whenever a creature attacks the enchanted player, its controller gains 1 life. It enchants a player rather than a creature, so the objection that it's a single-creature attachment misses. The trigger is per attacking creature, so put it on an opponent and attack with six creatures and you've gained life six times. That's six Oloro triggers from one combat, and it's the closest the box comes to a stream. It cuts both ways, since other players attacking that opponent gain life too, and it does nothing when the attack goes at a planeswalker.

Curse of Shallow Graves lets a player who attacks the enchanted player create a tapped 2/2 Zombie, once per attack. That's a creature entering, which Soul Warden turns into a life point. Both are three-mana enchantments that need you to attack a particular opponent, and I'd rather have the two of them than the Curse of Inertia, which lets the attacker tap or untap one permanent and feeds nothing.

Three more cards stay against the objection a deckbuilder would raise. Sanguine Bond is five mana, and Vito does the same thing for three, but two drainers on the same event drain twice. Cradle of Vitality puts counters on one creature, and it's the card that turns Azorius Herald's 4 life into four counters for {1}{W}. Vizkopa Guildmage looks like a lifelink grant, and its second ability is the part to use: activate it first and every gain for the rest of the turn drains for the same amount.

Nine spells leave, and Swiftfoot Boots is the close call

Spinal Embrace costs {3}{U}{U}{B}, works only during combat, and ends as one life-gain event worth the stolen creature's toughness. Tidal Force is {5}{U}{U}{U}, eight mana with three blue pips, in a deck where blue is the short colour. Famine deals 3 damage to each creature and each player, and 14 of the box's other 27 creatures have toughness 3 or less. Toxic Deluge is the better sweeper because you set X, so Famine goes and Deluge and Nevinyrral's Disk stay.

Diviner Spirit draws you and the player it hit the same number of cards, so each connection gives an opponent as many cards as it gives you. Hooded Horror is a 4/4 for five that can't be blocked only while the defending player controls the most creatures or is tied, so the evasion switches off whenever another player at the table has more creatures than the defender. Order of Succession has each player take a creature from the next player, so the neighbour on one side picks a creature from your board while you pick from the other neighbour's, and Oloro's engine is made of small creatures you want to keep.

Act of Authority exiles an artifact or enchantment when it enters, and on later upkeeps may exile another and hand itself to that permanent's controller. It's {1}{W}{W} for a narrow target, and Vindicate answers that and everything else. Swiftfoot Boots are the call I'm least sure of. They give one creature hexproof and haste for {1} to equip, and Oloro is the card the whole plan hangs on. But he returns to the command zone for {2} more and keeps gaining you 2 life at every upkeep from there. What the Boots protect is the draw and the drain, and I'd understand keeping them.

Five lands leave and three come in

Azorius Guildgate, Dimir Guildgate and Orzhov Guildgate always enter tapped for two colours, and they become Glacial Fortress, Drowned Catacomb and Isolated Chapel. Each of those enters untapped if you control a land with one of its two types, and 24 of the deck's lands are basics. Lonely Sandbar and Barren Moor also enter tapped, make a single colour, and cycle for {U} or {B}. With three lands coming in, the land count falls by two, and Arcane Signet, Azorius Signet and Dimir Signet take colour-making slots as rocks.

That moves the count of lands that always enter tapped from 11 to 6, with three more entering conditionally. Black goes from 23 sources to 24, blue from 20 to 22 and white from 22 to 24, and that count includes the Signets. Blue is the colour that moved most. The odds of one blue source by turn two go from 84.8% to 87.7%, black from 89% to 90.1% and white from 87.7% to 90.1%.

It doesn't fix double pips and I'd be overselling it to say so. Two white pips by turn three go from 63.9% to 69.4% and two black from 66.7% to 69.4%, and a 90% target on the play takes about 24 sources for one pip and 36 for two. Reaching 36 sources in a three-colour deck isn't realistic. The deck ends at 39 lands, still above the typical 35 to 38. That's a judgement and not a measurement, and it's there because Oloro costs six and every event wants a spare {1}.

Jwar Isle Refuge stays and is the one tapped land that gains life on entering, which is an Oloro trigger. Scoured Barrens ($0.13), Tranquil Cove ($0.07) and Dismal Backwater ($0.13) do the same, and I left them out because the deck still has six tapped lands. If you'd trade the tempo for a card each, they're the swap.

Two cards I priced and left out

Exquisite Blood ($39.31) gains you life whenever an opponent loses it, and Sanguine Bond already in the box makes an opponent lose life whenever you gain it. That's an infinite loop between two cards, which the Commander Brackets don't intend in Brackets 1 and 2, so price is the smaller reason. Aetherflux Reservoir ($19.85) gains you 1 life for each spell you've cast this turn. Two spells in a turn make two events and 3 life, which is real, but it's four mana and $19.85 for a trickle, while the two extort creatures make an event for every spell.

Where the numbers land after fourteen swaps

Average mana value goes from 3.81 to 3.43, and the cards costing seven or more go from five to four. Lands go from 41 to 39, creatures from 28 to 31 with Oloro, and mana rocks from three to six. Cards that gain you life each time you cast a spell or another creature enters go from none to four (Righteous Valkyrie's trigger covers Angels and Clerics only): Soul Warden, Tithe Drinker, Syndic of Tithes and Righteous Valkyrie. Bracket floor is 1 before and after, and no add is a Game Changer.

The upgraded decklist

Oloro and the 99 with all fourteen swaps made, grouped by type, with a card preview on hover.

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FAQ

How many cards can Oloro draw in one turn?

As many as you have life-gain events and spare {1}. Say you control Oloro, Soul Warden, Tithe Drinker and Syndic of Tithes and cast a creature spell. Your upkeep gain was one event, each extort payment is another (two), and the creature entering is a fourth. That's four draws, and it costs {1} for each Oloro trigger plus {W/B} for each extort payment, six mana on top of the creature spell.

Does Filigree Angel's life gain draw a card for each artifact?

No. It gains 3 life for each artifact you control as one gain, so Oloro triggers once whether you control two artifacts or twelve. The size of the gain matters to Sanguine Bond and Vito, which drain for the full amount, and to Cradle of Vitality, which adds that many counters. The Angel is a better fit for those than for Oloro.

Who should wear Curse of the Forsaken?

The opponent you expect to attack most, because the curse triggers for each creature that attacks the enchanted player and pays that creature's controller 1 life. Six of your creatures attacking them is six separate gains, so six Oloro triggers. Other players attacking the same opponent gain life as well, and attacks aimed at that player's planeswalkers don't trigger it.

What does upgrading Eternal Bargain cost?

Fourteen adds come to $35.31, pricing each at its cheapest released printing in October 2026. Archangel of Thune is $18.02 of it, and that is a Marvel masterpiece-series printing, since the other printings run $44 to $51. The other thirteen cards add up to $17.29, and the three new lands and three mana rocks are $1.77 of that.

Why isn't Exquisite Blood in the upgrade?

It gains you life whenever an opponent loses life, and Sanguine Bond (already in the box) and Vito make an opponent lose life whenever you gain it. Together that's a loop that ends the game or, per Sanguine Bond's rulings, a draw if nobody breaks it. The Commander Brackets don't intend two-card infinite combos in Brackets 1 and 2, and its bracket floor is 1 today. It's also $39.31.

Do Divinity of Pride and Sphinx of the Steel Wind each trigger Oloro?

Yes. Each creature with lifelink that deals combat damage causes its own life-gain event. Sphinx of the Steel Wind has first strike, so its damage lands a step earlier than Divinity of Pride's and the two are separate events anyway. A single lifelinker that splits its damage between several blockers is only one event.