Power Hungry precon upgrade guide

Prossh turns every mana he cost into a 0/1 Kobold, and this box already owns thirteen ways to sacrifice one. What it lacks is anything that turns them into cards, or the mana to cast him on time.

Count the cards in Power Hungry that sacrifice a creature as a cost and you get thirteen, not counting Prossh himself: Viscera Seer, Carnage Altar, Goblin Bombardment, Shattergang Brothers, Blood Rites and eight more. Nobody has to buy outlets for this deck.

Prossh is the supply. He's a 5/5 flier for {3}{B}{R}{G}, and the moment you cast him he creates a 0/1 Kobold for every mana you spent on him. Commander tax counts, so the first cast makes six, the second eight and the third ten. Each Kobold is a sacrifice for his own ability, which gives him +1/+0 with no cap on how many you feed it.

That leaves three things the box gets wrong, and they're all around the Kobolds rather than in them. Almost nothing converts a sacrifice into cards. The mana base enters eleven lands tapped. And three colours run on 19 black, 22 green and 20 red sources, which is thinner than a commander who needs all three on the same turn can afford.

What are the best Power Hungry upgrades?

The order I'd buy them in, cheapest argument first:

1. Skullclamp ($5 at its cheapest printing). Put it on a 0/1 Kobold and the token becomes a 1/0 and dies, so every Kobold you made turns into two cards for {1}.
2. Mayhem Devil, Zulaport Cutthroat and Pitiless Plunderer ($4.77 together). The three cards that make each of the box's thirteen outlets cost the table something: damage, a drain and a Treasure for every Kobold you sacrifice.
3. Blood Crypt, Overgrown Tomb and Stomping Ground ($24.32 together). Each replaces the tapped dual that covers the same two colours, and together they're the biggest line in the bill.
4. Arcane Signet, Kodama's Reach and Ashnod's Altar ($15.93). Ramp for a six-mana commander, with the Altar turning spare Kobolds into mana.
5. Harmonize, Night's Whisper, Putrefy and Mogg War Marshal ($0.82). Two draw spells that don't need a death first, the removal the box was short of, and two bodies for {1}{R}.

Fourteen cards come out to make room, and the list starts with the ones that help your opponents.

Every draw effect here waits for a death, and most of them are expensive

Read the box for ways to draw and you find Carnage Altar (sacrifice a creature and pay {3}), Grim Backwoods (sacrifice a creature, pay {2}{B}{G} and tap it), Foster (pay {1} when a creature of yours dies, but only to fetch a creature), Jar of Eyeballs and Fecundity. All five need something to die first. The two draw effects that don't are the cycling on Dirge of Dread and Curse of Chaos, and both are on the cut list.

A deck that can sacrifice thirteen ways and pays three or five mana to draw once is spending its best resource at the worst rate. Fecundity is worse than slow, since it lets whoever controls a dying creature draw, and your opponents' creatures die too.

Skullclamp fixes the rate. It gives +1/-1, equipping costs {1}, and a Kobold is a 0/1. So the first cast's six Kobolds are twelve cards for six mana, plus one to cast the Clamp. Nothing else in the hundred draws more than one card per death. Harmonize (three cards) and Night's Whisper (two cards and two life) cover the turns when the board is empty.

The damage and drain half is cheaper still. With Mayhem Devil, Zulaport Cutthroat and Pitiless Plunderer on the table, one Kobold sacrificed to Viscera Seer is a Treasure, one life lost by each opponent and one damage to any target. Six Kobolds is six Treasure, six life from each opponent and six damage to whoever you point it at. Mayhem Devil sees every sacrifice, Prossh's own ability included, and the other two see every death on your side.

I looked at Blood Artist ($2.77) for the drain slot and went with Zulaport Cutthroat ($1.27). The Artist triggers on every creature at the table and targets one player. Zulaport Cutthroat only counts your creatures, but it hits each opponent, so at a three-opponent table each Kobold costs the table three life for one of yours. Neither is a Game Changer.

Mogg War Marshal is the cheap body. It makes a Goblin when it enters and another when it dies, so declining the echo payment still leaves you two creatures to sacrifice from a two-mana card.

Eleven lands enter tapped under a commander who costs six

The box has 39 lands, 20 of them basic. Eleven always enter tapped: Akoum Refuge, Golgari Guildgate, Golgari Rot Farm, Gruul Guildgate, Kazandu Refuge, Khalni Garden, Llanowar Reborn, Rakdos Guildgate, Rupture Spire, Savage Lands and Vivid Grove.

The curve makes that worse. There are 21 three-drops, more than the four- and five-drops put together (14), so the deck's first real turn is turn three, and a tapped land on turn two or three takes a chunk of it.

What the swaps do about colour is less than you'd hope:

• Black goes from 19 sources to 20. A single black pip by turn two lands 83.1% of the time in the box and 84.8% after.
• Green stays at 22 and red goes from 20 to 21.
• Lands that always enter tapped fall from eleven to seven.

Each shockland replaces a tapped dual of the same two colours: Blood Crypt for Akoum Refuge, Overgrown Tomb for Golgari Guildgate, Stomping Ground for Gruul Guildgate. So the colour count doesn't move, only the speed does, and the net gain of one source in black and red is Arcane Signet, which makes any of the three. Entering untapped costs 2 life each time.

Llanowar Reborn is the fourth land out. It enters tapped, makes only green and grafts a counter, and green was already the colour with the most sources. Khalni Garden looks like the same card and isn't, because its Plant is a 0/1 body for Prossh to eat. I stopped at three shocklands, so Rakdos Guildgate stays, and a black and red dual is the next land I'd buy.

That brings the count to 38. The ramp coming in is Arcane Signet, Kodama's Reach and Ashnod's Altar, on top of the box's Sol Ring, Obelisk of Jund, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Armillary Sphere and Spoils of Victory. Eight ramp cards is enough that a 39th land is the card to give up.

What leaves, starting with what helps the table

Hunted Troll hands a target opponent four 1/1 fliers when it enters. They attack the whole table, you included, and what you get back is a four-mana 8/4 with regeneration.

Curse of Chaos, Curse of Predation and Curse of Shallow Graves each reward whoever attacks the cursed player: a loot, a +1/+1 counter on every attacker, a tapped 2/2 Zombie. You're one attacker at a table of several and the curse pays all of them equally.

Widespread Panic makes a player put a card from hand on top whenever a spell or ability shuffles their library. The box has six other cards that shuffle (Sakura-Tribe Elder, Spoils of Victory, Armillary Sphere, Evolving Wilds, Jund Panorama and Terramorphic Expanse), so it taxes you for playing your own mana base, and Kodama's Reach would have been a seventh.

Then the top of the curve, which loses two of its four seven-drops:

• Stalking Vengeance deals damage equal to a dying creature's power to a player. A Kobold's power is zero, so the deck's main source of fodder delivers nothing through it.
• Spine of Ish Sah costs seven colourless to destroy one permanent. Putrefy destroys a creature or an artifact for three at instant speed.
• Deepfire Elemental wants {X}{X}{1} to destroy something with mana value X, on top of its six-mana price.

And two cheap ones that sit idle. Night Soil needs two creature cards in one graveyard for each 1/1 it makes, which is a slow way to make what Prossh hands you for free. Dirge of Dread gives every creature fear for a turn, which helps whoever attacks next at a table where Prossh already flies.

The priciest card in the box stays, and three clunky ones

Goblin Sharpshooter is $23.47 on Scryfall today, the dearest card in the deck. It doesn't untap on its own, but it untaps whenever any creature dies, and it taps for 1 damage to any target. Every sacrificed Kobold is another ping.

Primal Vigor ($14.32) is a five-mana enchantment that doubles tokens, and Prossh's trigger makes tokens. With it already out, the first cast makes twelve Kobolds instead of six, and every Ophiomancer Snake and Jade Mage Saproling is doubled too. It doubles everyone's tokens, so it's a worse card at a table full of token decks.

Capricious Efreet looks like a six-drop with a coin flip attached. Each upkeep it destroys one of up to three targets at random, and you choose one of them. Pick a Kobold as the one you control and two of the other targets as opposing permanents, and the worst outcome is losing a token that was going to be sacrificed anyway.

Mass Mutiny steals one creature per opponent until end of turn, untaps it and gives it haste. Steal it, sacrifice it to any outlet, and the opponent's creature is gone and Prossh is a point bigger. At three opponents that's three creatures for five mana.

What the fourteen swaps leave behind

The upgraded list has 32 creatures, 38 lands and an average mana value of 3.39, down from 3.65. Seven lands enter tapped for certain, against eleven. Two seven-drops are gone. It still contains no Game Changers, so the bracket floor stays at Bracket 1, and none of the fourteen adds is one.

The fourteen adds come to $50.84 on 10 October 2026, each at the cheapest paper printing, which is often a promo or a reprint from a Commander product and not the card the box would ship. The three shocklands get new printings next month, which could push their $24.32 down, and Ashnod's Altar has a Secret Lair printing dated 12 October.

The upgraded decklist

The full hundred after the fourteen swaps. Hover any name to see the card.

Load into the deck builder Copy decklist Playtest the upgraded deck

“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, with no account needed.

FAQ

What happens to the Kobolds if Prossh gets countered?

They stay. The trigger fires when you cast him, not when he enters, so it resolves before Prossh does and the tokens are already on the battlefield by the time anyone responds. A counterspell still costs you the 5/5 flier and sends him back to the command zone, but the Kobolds are yours to keep.

How many Kobolds does each recast from the command zone make?

The trigger counts the mana you actually spent, and the rules say that includes commander tax. The first cast costs six and makes six Kobolds. The second costs eight and makes eight, the third costs ten and makes ten. Every trip through the command zone pays you back in Kobolds.

Can Prossh kill a player by himself?

Not in one swing off the first cast. He is a 5/5, and six Kobolds fed to his own ability make him 11/5, so a connect is 11 commander damage. Two of them are lethal, but the second needs six more bodies to sacrifice. Reaching 21 in a single combat takes sixteen sacrifices. What the deck does instead is turn each death into damage elsewhere, which is what the added payoffs are for.

What do the fourteen swaps cost?

About $50.84 on 10 October 2026, counting every add at the cheapest paper printing it has. Three shocklands ($24.32 together) and Ashnod’s Altar ($13.98) are $38.30 of that. The other ten cards come to $12.54, and Skullclamp is $5 of it.

Should I buy the shocklands now or wait for Star Trek?

Star Trek is due on 13 November 2026 and Scryfall lists Blood Crypt, Overgrown Tomb and Stomping Ground among its printings. A reprint usually pulls a price down, so waiting a month is the cheaper play if you can. The lands are the only cards on this list with a mainstream reprint announced (Ashnod’s Altar has a Secret Lair printing dated 12 October), which makes them the part to hold off on if you are not in a hurry.

Why does black stay the short colour after the swaps?

Because three shocklands replace three duals one for one, so they add speed and not sources. Black goes from 19 sources to 20, and the extra one is Arcane Signet. A single black pip on turn two lands 84.8% of the time. The lands that always enter tapped fall from eleven to seven. Green stays at 22 and red is at 21.

Does this deck need a board wipe?

The box already has Rough // Tumble, Jund Charm and Plague Boiler, and the one I left out is Blasphemous Act. It deals 13 damage to each creature, which kills every Kobold you own and Prossh with them, and it is not a Game Changer, so nothing stopped it but the fit.