Call the Spirits precon upgrade guide

Twenty-eight of this box’s sixty nonland cards are enchantments, and apart from Daxos only three cards in it pay off when you cast one. Thirteen swaps add the payoffs, fix the white mana and remove the cards that work against the deck.

Daxos the Returned does two things. Cast an enchantment spell and you get an experience counter. Pay three and you get a Spirit enchantment creature token, with power and toughness equal to your experience counters. The box takes the first half seriously. Twenty-eight of its sixty nonland cards are enchantments, seven of them creatures, and eighteen of the twenty-eight cost three or less. Counters are cheap to come by.

What the box doesn’t do is pay you for the cast. Mesa Enchantress draws a card, Celestial Ancient grows your whole board by a counter apiece and Sigil of the Empty Throne makes a 4/4 flying Angel. Those are the only three, and two of them cost five. The second problem is colour: fifteen cards want white twice and the basics run thirteen Swamps against eleven Plains.

The thirteen adds cost $24.23 together, using the lowest-priced released printing of every card, and for two of the lands that printing is a promo.

What are the best Call the Spirits upgrades?

Buy and play them in this order:

1. Hallowed Haunting: a Spirit Cleric token every time you cast an enchantment spell, each one as big as the number of Spirits you control. Daxos’s tokens are Spirits, so the two engines feed each other.
2. Archon of Sun’s Grace and Starfield Mystic: a lifelinking flier that makes a 2/2 flying Pegasus whenever an enchantment enters, and a two-drop that takes one generic mana off each enchantment spell that has any.
3. Authority of the Consuls, Journey to Nowhere and Dawn of Hope: three cheap enchantments, which means three cheap experience counters, each doing a job on top.
4. Arcane Signet and Talisman of Hierarchy: two rocks that make both colours, and between them they replace Thought Vessel, which makes only colourless mana.
5. Isolated Chapel, Shattered Sanctum and Godless Shrine: three duals that usually enter untapped, $10.28 of the $24.23.
6. Mentor of the Meek and Eidolon of Countless Battles: a draw engine for the 2/2 tokens this deck makes, and a Spirit that grows with every creature and Aura you control.

Thirteen cards leave. The list is below.

Daxos counts casts, and five other cards count enters

Casting a spell and having a permanent enter are different events, and this deck lives on the difference. Daxos only counts casts. Five cards in the box count enters instead: Underworld Coinsmith gains you a life, Ajani’s Chosen makes a 2/2 Cat, Doomwake Giant gives your opponents’ creatures -1/-1 until end of turn, Dreadbringer Lampads gives one creature intimidate until end of turn, and Daxos’s Torment becomes a 5/5 flying Demon with haste until end of turn.

An enchantment that comes back from the graveyard onto the battlefield sets off all five and gives Daxos nothing, because nothing was cast. Silent Sentinel’s attack trigger does exactly that. The same goes for Daxos’s own tokens: the rulings say putting one onto the battlefield doesn’t trigger his first ability, but because the tokens are enchantment creatures, constellation abilities do trigger.

So the box has plenty of enter payoffs and very few cast payoffs, and the swaps move toward the cast side. Hallowed Haunting is a fourth card that rewards the cast. Starfield Mystic doesn’t reward it but makes most of them cheaper. Archon of Sun’s Grace is a sixth enter trigger, and its Pegasus tokens have lifelink, which matters for Karlov of the Ghost Council: Karlov puts two +1/+1 counters on himself every time you gain life, and removing six lets him exile a creature.

Hallowed Haunting needs a number to work with. The box has three Spirit creature cards: Karlov of the Ghost Council, Ghostblade Eidolon and Banshee of the Dread Choir. Eidolon of Countless Battles is a fourth. Add Daxos’s tokens and the Haunting’s own tokens, which count themselves, and a pile of Spirit Clerics gets large fast. At seven enchantments on the battlefield it also gives your creatures flying and vigilance.

A Spirit made with no counters is a 0/0

Daxos’s token has no power or toughness of its own. An ability sets both to your experience counters, so with none it enters as a 0/0 and dies on the spot. The constellation triggers still happen, but you’ve paid three mana for them. The order of a turn matters: an enchantment first, then the activation.

That’s why the cheapest enchantments get priority in the adds. Daxos on turn three, then Authority of the Consuls and a 1/1 Spirit on turn four, uses exactly four mana. The box has Phyrexian Reclamation at one mana for the same job, and Journey to Nowhere does it at two mana while exiling a creature. Every counter after the first adds a point to every token you have, so the tokens are a late plan, and the cast payoffs are what carry the middle of the game.

The Auras that come back

Two Auras that sit badly in a go-wide deck are cheap experience-counter engines in this one. Cage of Hands costs three, and for two more it returns to your hand. Cast it again and that’s another counter. Five mana per counter, or four with Starfield Mystic out, and each recast also sets off every enter trigger in the deck. Fallen Ideal returns itself to your hand when it goes to the graveyard, so a dead host means another cast.

The same logic keeps the graveyard cards. Monk Idealist returns one enchantment, Dawn to Dusk returns one and can destroy an enchantment, and Crystal Chimes returns all of them once it’s out, for three more mana. Every enchantment recast is a counter, and the Seals that sacrifice themselves are the natural targets.

Three five-drops stay on purpose despite the price. Doomwake Giant triggers on its own entry and on every other enchantment after it, Daxos’s tokens included, and only your opponents’ creatures shrink. Black Market adds one black mana each turn for every creature that has died since it arrived, and Deadly Tempest feeds it. Dictate of Heliod has flash, which makes it a way to win a combat in a deck that makes small creatures.

What leaves, and the objection to each

Thirteen cards go: Open the Vaults, Treasury Thrull, Thief of Blood, Kor Sanctifiers, Vow of Duty, Vow of Malice, Grave Peril, Thought Vessel, Lightning Greaves, Orzhov Guildgate, Ghost Quarter and two Swamps.

The top end. Open the Vaults costs six and returns every artifact and enchantment card from every graveyard, which hands your opponents their own back. It’s also a sorcery, so Daxos gives you nothing for it. Treasury Thrull costs six, and its recursion happens only when it attacks. Thief of Blood is the stranger case: it removes all counters from all permanents as it enters, which strips Karlov of the Ghost Council, the charge counters on Black Market and the two on each Vivid land. Experience counters sit on players, so Daxos is safe, but the rest of the deck isn’t. Cards at mana value five or more go from 18 to 15.

The Vows and Grave Peril. Vow of Duty and Vow of Malice give one creature +2/+2 and stop it attacking you. They are enchantment spells, so the counters survive: three enchantments leave and five come in, and the total rises from 28 to 30. Grave Peril is the one I’d warn people about. Its trigger is not optional, it fires when any nonblack creature enters, and 14 of the 25 creature cards in the ninety-nine aren’t black. Cast your own Mesa Enchantress with it out and it destroys her.

Kor Sanctifiers. A three-mana body whose only effect is to destroy an artifact or enchantment, and only if you pay an extra white. Seal of Cleansing, Aura of Silence, Banishing Light and Grasp of Fate all stay to answer an artifact.

Lightning Greaves and Thought Vessel. Thought Vessel taps only for colourless mana, which the mana section below deals with. Lightning Greaves is the close call. It gives shroud to one creature, and Daxos is the creature this deck leans on most, but Daxos costs three to recast and the plan is spreading across a board.

Left out. Smothering Tithe is a white enchantment for four mana and the kind of card this deck would like. It’s on the Game Changers list, which moves the bracket floor from 1 to 3, and its cheapest printing is $56.09. I’d take either reason on its own as enough.

Fifteen cards ask for white twice, and the box runs more Swamps

Fifteen cards in the stock list carry two white pips and eight carry two black. The basics are thirteen Swamps and eleven Plains. Counting the rocks and the basic-land fetchers as sources, white has 24 and black 26, which gives a 69.4% chance of two white sources by turn three on the play against 74.2% for black. White is the colour with more to cast and fewer places to cast it from.

Three things change that. Thought Vessel, which taps only for colourless, goes. Arcane Signet and Talisman of Hierarchy come in, and both make white and black. Orzhov Guildgate and two Swamps give way to Isolated Chapel, Shattered Sanctum and Godless Shrine, which brings the basics to eleven of each. That count then reads 28 sources of each colour, and two of the same colour by turn three reaches 78.5% for both. Because it includes the rocks and fetchers, it’s a ceiling on what the lands alone provide.

White still asks more than it did. Seventeen cards want white twice after the swaps, because Archon of Sun’s Grace, Hallowed Haunting and Eidolon of Countless Battles all want it twice and only Open the Vaults leaves. Seven want black twice. The percentage rising from 69.4 to 78.5 while the demand rises is the better number to trust than the source count.

Isolated Chapel arrives untapped once a Plains or a Swamp is out, which with 22 basics in the deck is nearly always. Shattered Sanctum enters untapped once you control two other lands. Godless Shrine costs two life to enter untapped, and it’s the add to wait on: it’s $8.49 now and the Star Trek set brings it back on 13 November 2026. Always-tapped lands go from eight to seven.

Ghost Quarter also leaves. Three lands in the box make only colourless mana (Ghost Quarter, Rogue’s Passage and Temple of the False God), and in a deck short of coloured sources that’s one too many. At 39 lands the box is one over the usual 35 to 38, and this brings it to 38.

The upgraded decklist

Hover or tap any card name for the card. The list below is the full 100 after the thirteen swaps.

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

Does making a Spirit token give Daxos an experience counter?

No. Daxos only counts enchantment spells you cast, and a token is put onto the battlefield without being cast. The rulings add that constellation abilities do trigger, because the tokens are enchantment creatures, so Underworld Coinsmith, Ajani's Chosen, Doomwake Giant, Dreadbringer Lampads, Daxos's Torment and Archon of Sun's Grace all fire when one enters.

Is Grave Peril worth keeping in Call the Spirits?

I cut it. Its trigger is not optional and it fires on any nonblack creature, including yours. Fourteen of the 25 creature cards in the ninety-nine aren't black, so casting Mesa Enchantress or Celestial Ancient with it out destroys your own card. Journey to Nowhere does the removal job at two mana and is an enchantment spell, so it still gives Daxos a counter.

What is the quickest way to get Daxos's first experience counter?

A one-mana enchantment. Authority of the Consuls costs one white and Phyrexian Reclamation costs one black. With Daxos out on turn three, Authority of the Consuls plus a Spirit token uses exactly four mana on turn four, and the token is a 1/1 because you have one counter. Making a token with no counters gives a 0/0 that dies at once.

Which creatures count as Spirits for Hallowed Haunting?

Karlov of the Ghost Council, Ghostblade Eidolon, Banshee of the Dread Choir and the added Eidolon of Countless Battles are Spirit creature cards. Daxos's tokens are Spirits too, and so are the Spirit Cleric tokens Hallowed Haunting makes, which count themselves. Each Haunting token's power and toughness equal the number of Spirits you control.

Should I add Smothering Tithe to this deck?

I left it out. It is a white enchantment that fits the plan, but it is on the Game Changers list, which moves the bracket floor from 1 to 3, and its cheapest printing is $56.09. If your table plays at Bracket 3, it is the first card I would look at.

Can Cage of Hands make an experience counter every turn?

Yes, at a price. Cage of Hands costs three to cast and two to return to your hand, so each extra counter costs five mana, or four with Starfield Mystic out. Every recast also puts an enchantment onto the battlefield, which sets off the constellation cards.

How much do the thirteen upgrades cost?

$24.23 on 10 October 2026, using the lowest-priced released printing of every card. Godless Shrine ($8.49), Hallowed Haunting ($7.76) and Authority of the Consuls ($3.77) are $20.02 of it. Godless Shrine comes back in the Star Trek set on 13 November 2026, so it is the one to wait on.