Arcane Wizardry precon upgrade guide

Twenty of the box's thirty Wizards cost four mana or more, and Inalla's drain needs five of them untapped. Eleven swaps for $58.18, and seven of the eleven adds are mana.

Inalla, Archmage Ritualist does two things. Eminence: whenever another nontoken Wizard enters, you may pay {1} for a hasty token copy of it, which is exiled at the next end step, and it works from the command zone. And the drain: tap five untapped Wizards you control and target player loses 7 life. The box has 31 Wizards counting Inalla, so it can fill either job. What it can't do quickly is pay for them.

Seven life a time is slower than it sounds. One opponent on 40 needs six activations, which is thirty Wizard taps, so the drain finishes players that other cards have already worn down. The taps themselves are free. The rules let you tap Wizards that arrived this turn, eminence tokens included, and Inalla can tap too. The expense is reaching five Wizards in play at all. The box's other Wizards cost two (four cards), three (six), four (seven), five (seven), six (five) and seven (one), a median of four, and five median Wizards is twenty mana of creatures before a single {1} is paid for a copy.

What are the best Arcane Wizardry upgrades?

Ranked by what each does for this list, not by price. Prices are the cheapest released paper printing on Scryfall, as of October 2026. The cards they replace are argued in the cut list.

1. Arcane Signet ($0.38). Taps for any colour in Inalla's identity, so one two-mana rock fixes blue, black and red at once. The box's six rocks include a Fellwar Stone that depends on what your opponents' lands make.
2. Glen Elendra Archmage ($9.64). A flying Wizard that can sacrifice itself for {U} to counter a noncreature spell, then persists back once. The return is a new nontoken Wizard entering, so eminence triggers a second time, and the counter answers a wrath aimed at your board.
3. Nekusar, the Mindrazer ($3.28). Every player draws an extra card in their draw step, and each opponent takes 1 damage per card they draw. That is 2 a turn to each opponent from a normal draw step with no Wizards tapped. It also feeds Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind, who pings whenever you draw.
4. Snapcaster Mage ($13.45). Flash, and the target instant or sorcery in your graveyard gains flashback. A paid eminence copy gives a second flashback target the same turn. Fourteen instants and sorceries survive the swaps.
5. Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia ($1.55). Two mana is the cheapest a Wizard costs in the box, and the box has four. At the start of your end step, if you control no decayed creature, Jadar makes a 2/2 Zombie with decayed. The Zombie isn't a Wizard, so it adds nothing to the five.
6. Blood Crypt ($8.55). The one land here that changes a colour count: it adds a red source and replaces a blue-black tapland, and red is the colour with the least.
7. Steam Vents ($10.05) and Watery Grave ($9.85). Same colours as the tapped lands they replace, so these are tempo and nothing else.

Talisman of Dominance ($0.45), Talisman of Indulgence ($0.51) and Talisman of Creativity ($0.47) are the last three. All three are mana.

Four more rocks and three fewer taplands

Eleven of the box's 38 lands always enter tapped: Path of Ancestry, Crumbling Necropolis, Dimir Aqueduct, Dismal Backwater, Izzet Boilerworks, Jwar Isle Refuge, Rakdos Carnarium, Swiftwater Cliffs and the three Vivid lands. Ramp is six cards (Sol Ring, Commander's Sphere, Darksteel Ingot, Fellwar Stone, Unstable Obelisk and Worn Powerstone) against the eight to twelve a Commander deck usually runs. A deck whose commander wants five Wizards on the table is thin on both counts.

The three cut lands are the gain-lands: Dismal Backwater, Jwar Isle Refuge and Swiftwater Cliffs, which tap for two colours and give 1 life for the privilege of arriving a turn late. The three bouncelands stay. Each enters tapped and bounces a land, but it taps for two mana, so it pays the tempo back. The Vivids stay as well: each taps for its own colour, or spends one of its two counters for any colour, which is fixing this mana base lacks. The three shocklands that replace the gain-lands come in untapped for 2 life, or tapped for nothing, so each can still arrive tapped like the gain-land it replaced, just without the 1 life. After the swaps 27 lands enter untapped, 3 more enter untapped only if you pay 2 life, and 8 always enter tapped.

The colour numbers move mostly because of the rocks, and that needs saying plainly. Black goes from 23 sources to 26, red from 20 to 24 and blue from 28 to 30, but the lands alone only shift red up by one and blue down by one, because Blood Crypt replaces Jwar Isle Refuge. Arcane Signet and the Talismans do the rest, and a rock isn't a land. It arrives a turn after you cast it. The mana audit counts rocks as sources, so these figures flatter the rocks by about one turn.

What they buy is real anyway. Five cards want BB by turn four (Decree of Pain, Kindred Dominance, Memory Plunder, Necromantic Selection and Puppeteer Clique), and the odds of having it go from 72.8% to 79.8%. Two cards want RR, Comet Storm and Niv-Mizzet, and the audit's turn-three check on them goes from 58% to 69.4%. Both are late cards in practice, since Comet Storm scales with X and Niv-Mizzet costs six, so that's the least urgent of the three colours. A single black source by turn two moves from 89% to 92.1% and a single red one from 84.8% to 90.1%. Blue is already the deepest colour and still gains: twelve cards want UU in the box and ten after the swaps, and 78.5% becomes 82.2%. I stopped there on red. Two spells asking for RR don't justify more red lands at $8 to $10 each. Three of the new cards cost 2 life when they enter untapped and the Talismans cost 1 each time they tap for a colour, so this list takes more damage from its own mana than the box does.

Eight spells that reward the wrong player or cost too much

Three Curses go first: Curse of Verbosity, Curse of Disturbance and Curse of Opulence. Each enchants a player and pays when that player is attacked, with a card, a 2/2 Zombie or a Gold token, and every other opponent attacking that player gets the same. A deck that wins by tapping Wizards and not by attacking collects only when somebody attacks the cursed player, and every opponent who does collects with it. The Zombies from Disturbance aren't Wizards either, so they never count toward the five.

Nevinyrral's Disk is the cut I expect the most argument about. For {1} and a tap it destroys every artifact, creature and enchantment. This list runs 36 creatures and ten mana rocks, so the Disk is a wipe aimed mostly at the player holding it. The box already has Decree of Pain, Necromantic Selection and Kindred Dominance if the table needs a reset, and the third of those is one-sided (see below).

Cauldron Dance costs six, can only be cast during combat, and both halves end at the end step: the creature from your graveyard goes back to your hand and the one from your hand is sacrificed. Clone Legion costs nine, the only card in the box above eight. Spelltwine is six mana that needs an instant or sorcery in your graveyard and another in an opponent's, and then exiles itself. Opportunity is four cards at instant speed for six, and this deck already draws through Azami, Mercurial Chemister and Merchant of Secrets, plus Arcanis the Omnipotent, which draws three for a tap every turn it survives.

The swaps take the average mana value of the nonland cards from 3.95 to 3.67, the six-drops from eight cards to five, and the nine-drop out altogether.

Shifting Shadow, Body Double and the Wizards that tap

Shifting Shadow is a single-creature Aura in a deck with 36 creatures, and it stays. Put it on one of your own Wizards and at the start of your upkeep that Wizard is destroyed, then you reveal cards until a creature card appears and put it onto the battlefield with the Aura attached. Every creature card left in the library is a Wizard except Body Double, so each upkeep is a free Wizard entering, and a free eminence trigger to pay {1} on. It costs three, and the price of being wrong is a random Wizard in place of the one you chose.

Body Double is a Shapeshifter in a deck of Wizards, and it still counts. It enters as a copy of a creature card in a graveyard, and a copy of a Wizard is a Wizard as it enters, which is the moment eminence looks. Galecaster Colossus costs seven, and its ability taps an untapped Wizard to return an opponent's nonland permanent to hand. That is the same resource as the drain. Azami, Lady of Scrolls taps a Wizard to draw a card. Three cards draw on one pool of untapped Wizards, which is the cost to watch rather than a reason to cut any of them.

Which Wizards deserve the extra mana

Eminence asks for {1} each time, and not every Wizard is worth it. Eleven of the 34 Wizards in the 99 are legendary after the swaps. A token copy of a legendary creature triggers the legend rule at once, so you keep one and the other goes to the graveyard. The extra {1} buys you nothing there except a second enters-the-battlefield trigger, and only Mairsil, the Pretender has one. Decline it on the rest.

The ones to pay for are the non-legendary Wizards with something to do on entering. Archaeomancer and Izzet Chronarch each return an instant or sorcery, Merchant of Secrets draws a card and Sea Gate Oracle digs two deep, Harbinger of the Tides bounces a tapped creature, and Puppeteer Clique takes a creature from an opponent's graveyard. Snapcaster Mage is the eighth. Bloodline Necromancer is the best of them: its copy returns a Wizard card from your graveyard, and that Wizard entering triggers eminence again.

Kindred Dominance is a one-sided wrath if you name Wizard

Kindred Dominance destroys every creature that isn't of the type you choose. Name Wizard and the only creatures of yours that can die are a Body Double that copied something other than a Wizard and a Zombie token from Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia. After the swaps 35 of the deck's 36 creatures are Wizards, 31 of 32 in the box. Name Human instead and you keep 20 creatures and lose 15 of your own Wizards. The same choice comes up on Mirror of the Forebears, and Wizard is the right name there too. It becomes a copy of a Wizard you control for {1}, an artifact creature that counts as another Wizard to tap. Pick a nonlegendary target, because a copy of a legendary Wizard you control sends one of them to the graveyard.

The two I left out

Spellseeker ($17.36) is a three-mana Wizard that searches for an instant or sorcery with mana value two or less, and the deck has six: Comet Storm, Into the Roil, Reality Shift, Go for the Throat, Rakdos Charm and Terminate. It would be a good card, and it costs more than anything else I weighed. If you do buy it, Portal Mage is what it replaces, since that entering ability only does anything in the declare attackers step. It sits last in the buying order.

Dark Confidant ($3.59) is the cheap one I skipped on purpose. The 99 cards total 224 mana value, so he costs about 2.3 life a turn on average, with the 8-drop and the 7s sitting in the library. This list already pays up to 6 life for shocklands and 1 per Talisman tap. Neither card is a Game Changer, and none of the 11 adds is either, so nothing here raises the bracket floor (how that's worked out).

The upgraded decklist

Ninety-nine cards and Inalla, with all 11 swaps applied. Hover any card name to see the card.

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

Can Inalla win with the five-Wizard drain alone?

Not quickly. Each activation is 7 life, so one opponent on 40 needs six, which is thirty Wizards tapped, and Wizards untap once a turn. It works as a finisher: Nekusar's damage, Niv-Mizzet's pings and the 5 life from Vindictive Lich when it dies all shrink the number of activations you need.

Does eminence still make copies if Inalla never leaves the command zone?

Yes. The trigger checks that Inalla is in the command zone or on the battlefield both when a nontoken Wizard enters and when the ability resolves, so you can play the whole game without casting the commander. You pay {1} once per trigger, and the token is exiled at the next end step, so it can be tapped for the drain that turn but won't stay.

Is Snapcaster Mage worth $13.45 in this deck?

Only because of what surrounds it. The deck runs 14 instants and sorceries after the swaps, and Kess, Dissident Mage already recasts one from the graveyard each turn, so a second flashback is a luxury. Paid for with eminence, a Snapcaster copy gives a second target in the same turn. Archaeomancer and Izzet Chronarch already return a spell to hand from the box, so the flashback is the second source of that effect, not the first.

Which creature type should Kindred Dominance and Mirror of the Forebears name?

Wizard. After the swaps 35 of the 36 creatures are Wizards, so naming it makes Kindred Dominance a wrath that spares your own board. Human would keep 20 creatures and destroy 15 of your Wizards. The one Wizard-less creature is Body Double, which counts as a Wizard whenever it enters as a copy of one.

Are the shocklands and Talismans worth the life they cost?

The shocklands are optional: each enters tapped for free or untapped for 2 life, so the worst case is a gain-land that doesn't gain life. The Talismans deal 1 damage to you each time you tap them for a colour, though they tap for {C} at no cost. Across three shocklands and three Talismans the exposure is 6 life plus 1 per coloured tap, which is why I didn't add Dark Confidant on top.

What does the whole Arcane Wizardry upgrade cost?

All 11 adds come to $58.18 at the cheapest released printing, priced in October 2026. The three shocklands are $28.45 of that, the four rocks $1.81 and the four Wizards $27.92. The cheapest useful slice is $6.64: the four rocks, Jadar and Nekusar. All three shocklands are reprinted in Star Trek on 13 November 2026, so those prices may fall and I'd check them before buying.