Faceless Menace precon upgrade guide

Twenty cards in this box can be cast face down and Kadena makes the first one each turn free, but 12 of its 40 lands enter tapped and black has only 18 sources.

Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer says the first face-down creature spell you cast each turn costs {3} less, and a face-down spell costs {3}, so that first one is free. She also draws you a card whenever a face-down creature enters under your control. The box has 20 cards that can be cast face down (19 creatures and the Aura Gift of Doom) and three more that put creatures face down for you: Thieving Amalgam, Ghastly Conscription and Scroll of Fate. Two enchantments pay out on the flips. Secret Plans draws a card whenever a permanent you control is turned face up, and Trail of Mystery gives a creature +2/+2 until end of turn when it does.

The mana underneath that plan is the weak part. Forty lands is above the usual 35 to 38, and 12 of them always enter tapped. Black has 18 sources, so the odds of one black source by turn two are 81.2% and of two by turn four 57.8%. Ramp cards number 7. At the top of the curve Apex Altisaur costs nine, the only card above seven, and Hex can't be cast unless six creatures are there to target. One card sets the bracket: Seedborn Muse is a Game Changer, so the box is Bracket 3 at the least, and the swaps below keep it there.

What are the best Faceless Menace upgrades?

Prices are October 2026 market prices at the cheapest released printing, which can be a promo, and the 13 swaps together come to $5.34. The order is by what each card changes in this deck. The cuts come right after, under what leaves.

1. Whisperwood Elemental ($0.27). At the beginning of your end step it manifests the top card of your library, and that face-down 2/2 entering is a card from Kadena. It's a five-mana 4/4, so with Kadena out it draws on each of your end steps.
2. Panoptic Projektor ($0.32). Tap it after your first morph and the next face-down creature spell you cast this turn costs {3} less, which makes the second one free as well. Its other line makes a trigger that fires when a permanent turns face up fire an extra time, which is one more card from Secret Plans on every flip.
3. Hauntwoods Shrieker ($0.80). Whenever it attacks it manifests dread, and for {1}{G} it reveals a face-down permanent and turns it face up if it's a creature card, without the morph cost.
4. Zimone, Mystery Unraveler ($0.52). Your first land each turn manifests dread, and a second land the same turn turns a permanent of yours face up for nothing.
5. Threats Around Every Corner ($0.28). It manifests dread when it enters, and every face-down permanent that enters afterwards fetches a basic land onto the battlefield tapped.
6. Ruthless Ripper ($0.10). A one-mana deathtouch creature that turns face up by revealing a black card, and makes a player lose 2 life when it does.
7. Printlifter Ooze ($0.37), Etrata, Deadly Fugitive ($0.32) and Aveline de Grandpré ($0.48). Three deathtouch creatures that earn their place in a face-down deck, argued below.
8. Underground River ($0.58), Drowned Catacomb ($0.46), Woodland Cemetery ($0.61) and Hinterland Harbor ($0.23). Four dual lands that are untapped most of the time, for six lands that don't help, in the mana section.

Seven spells out, and what each was doing

Apex Altisaur is a nine-mana 10/10 that fights up to one creature you don't control when it enters and again whenever it's dealt damage. Nine mana is two more than anything else in the deck, and Kadena only discounts face-down spells, so it can't be cast cheaply. Hex destroys six target creatures, and the ruling says you can't cast it unless you can choose six different ones. You need six creatures across the whole table, and unless the opponents have them your own face-down 2/2s fill the list, which are the creatures that draw you cards.

Great Oak Guardian is a six-mana 4/5 with flash and reach whose enter trigger gives the creatures a target player controls +2/+2 until end of turn and untaps them. It's a combat trick attached to a body, and Whisperwood Elemental is a 4/4 for five that draws a card each turn with Kadena out. Gift of Doom is the weakest of the 20 face-down cards. To turn it over you have to sacrifice another creature, and as an Aura it's not a creature card, so Hauntwoods Shrieker can't flip it. A free 2/2 that draws a card is the same thing any of the 19 creatures offer, and those turn over for value. Pendant of Prosperity enters under an opponent's control, so the draw-and-land ability is theirs to use. You draw only when they spend {2} and tap it. Scaretiller is a 1/4 for four that does something only when it taps, and the one thing in the deck that taps it is attacking with a 1/4. Thought Sponge enters with a counter for each card the most-drawing opponent has drawn this turn, so after a normal draw step it's a 2/2 for four with flash, and on your own turn it's a 1/1.

Six lands leave too, and they get their own section further down.

Kadena pays for one spell a turn, and the box keeps casting more

Twenty cards can be cast face down, and only the first each turn is free. Cast a second and it costs {3}, which is the price of a three-drop for a 2/2 that hasn't done anything yet. Panoptic Projektor is the answer in the list, and the order matters: cast the first morph, then tap it for the second, because its discount goes to the next spell. It does a second job too. The ruling on it says the extra trigger covers a permanent's own turned-face-up ability as well as other permanents' triggers, and that each copy of the trigger makes its own choices. So Silumgar Assassin's destroy trigger can take two creatures, Ruthless Ripper takes 4 life instead of 2, and Secret Plans draws two cards. Replacement effects don't double, so Hooded Hydra still gets its five counters once.

Three of the adds are cards that can be cast face down, and they go in for three reasons. Ruthless Ripper has the cheapest flip in the deck on paper, but it needs a black card in your hand, and only 14 other cards are black, so I treat the free flip as a bonus. Its deathtouch is the part you can count on. Printlifter Ooze has disguise {3}{G} and a trigger on every flip: a 0/0 Ooze with trample that enters with a +1/+1 counter for each other creature you control. With five other creatures that's a 5/5 from a flip you were making anyway. Aveline de Grandpré has disguise {B}{G}, so she turns over for two mana, and she puts counters on any deathtouch creature that connects. Besides her, the list has four: Deathmist Raptor, Printlifter Ooze, Ruthless Ripper and Etrata.

Etrata, Deadly Fugitive gives every face-down creature you control a way to turn itself up for {2}{U}{B}. That is cheaper than Thousand Winds' {5}{U}{U} and Hooded Hydra's {3}{G}{G}, and it works on a manifested card that has no morph cost at all. The odd part is the second sentence of that ability: if the creature can't be turned over, because it's a manifested instant or sorcery, Etrata exiles it and lets you cast it for free. That turns the worst result of a manifest into a free spell. Her third line cloaks the top card of an opponent's library whenever one of the deck's four Assassins hits them, and a cloaked creature entering is another card from Kadena.

Four ways to put the creature there without casting it

Everything that enters face down draws a card, whether it was cast or not. The box has three sources of those: Thieving Amalgam manifests the top card of each opponent's library at their upkeep, Ghastly Conscription manifests every creature card in a graveyard, and Scroll of Fate manifests from your hand. The swaps add five more, and four of them are cheap enough to play before the seven-drops.

Whisperwood Elemental is the steadiest, one manifest per turn at your end step, and its sacrifice ability makes your face-up nontoken creatures manifest the top card of your library when they die for the rest of the turn. Hauntwoods Shrieker only manifests when it attacks, so it asks for a window, but its {1}{G} ability is the part I'd pay for. It turns a face-down creature card face up without the morph cost, so Thousand Winds comes over for two mana instead of seven, and Hooded Hydra gets its five counters for two instead of {3}{G}{G}. The catch is the words "creature card": Gift of Doom is an Aura and wouldn't qualify, and a megamorph turned over this way doesn't get its +1/+1 counter. Zimone does the same job on a land drop. The first land each turn manifests dread, and any later land turns a permanent face up, which in this list means Cultivate, Farseek, Tempt with Discovery, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse are each a free flip as well as ramp whenever they aren't the turn's first land, and Explore buys the second land drop that triggers it. Threats Around Every Corner puts a land behind all of it: every face-down permanent that enters fetches a basic onto the battlefield tapped, and the manifest it makes on arrival fetches the first.

Put together, a turn with Kadena, Whisperwood and Zimone out can draw a card for the free morph, another for Zimone's manifest and a third at the end step for Whisperwood's, and every one of those bodies is another land if Threats is there.

Six lands out, four in, and a land count in range

The box's 40 lands drop to 38, which is the top of the 35 to 38 range, and always-tapped lands fall from 12 to 9. Bojuka Bog enters tapped, taps only for {B} and exiles a graveyard on the way in. This deck wants graveyards: Ghastly Conscription manifests the creature cards in one, Deathmist Raptor returns from yours and Den Protector returns a card from it. Foul Orchard and Woodland Stream are tapped two-colour lands with no other text. Woodland Cemetery stands in for the first, untapped whenever you control a Swamp or a Forest, and 11 lands here carry one of those types. Hinterland Harbor replaces the second under a Forest or an Island, which 13 of them carry. Underground River is always untapped and costs 1 life when it makes colored mana, and Drowned Catacomb is untapped under an Island or a Swamp, which 9 lands carry.

The other three are colorless lands. Reliquary Tower removes your maximum hand size and nothing else. Shrine of the Forsaken Gods makes {C}{C} for colorless spells only, and only with seven lands out. The colorless spells here are a handful of artifacts and the face-down creature spells, and Kadena already pays for the first of those each turn. Thespian's Stage copies a land for {2}. Cutting three leaves three lands that tap only for colorless (Temple of the False God, Ash Barrens and Myriad Landscape), where there were six, in a deck that is short of black and blue.

Black goes from 18 sources to 19, and the odds of one black source by turn two go from 81.2% to 83.1%. Two black by turn four go from 57.8% to 61.1%, and the three cards that ask for it are in the next section. Blue goes from 20 sources to 22, with its odds of one source by turn two rising from 84.8% to 87.7% and of two by turn three from 58% to 63.9%. Green stays at 24 sources and 90.1% for one by turn two, but ten cards now ask for {G}{G}, up from eight (Biomass Mutation counts because its hybrid pips can be paid with green), so the 69.4% for two by turn three is a real limit. The source counts include Darkwater Catacombs, which needs {1} to filter, and the fetch lands, which count for each color of basic they can find.

The seven-drops and the Game Changer that stay

The cheap-flip cards are the engine, but several heavy cards earn their slots. Thieving Amalgam costs seven, and what it does is manifest the top card of each opponent's library on their upkeep, so a four-player pod gives Kadena three triggers a round. Its other line gains you 2 life and costs its owner 2 whenever a creature you control but don't own dies, which fits because the manifested cards are theirs. Ghastly Conscription is also seven and turns every creature card in one graveyard into a face-down 2/2, one draw each. Bane of the Living, Ghastly Conscription and the Amalgam are the three cards that print {B}{B}, which is why black is the mana section's problem.

Seedborn Muse is the Game Changer and the single reason for Bracket 3. It untaps all your permanents in each other player's untap step, so in a four-player pod your mana is back three times a round, and turning a card face up is a special action you can take any time you have priority. That makes every flip an instant-speed play on someone else's turn. It's a legitimate cut for a table that wants a lower bracket: without it the checker finds no Game Changer in either list, and the flips still work.

Ixidron deserves a warning more than a defense. It turns every other nontoken creature face down as it enters, which strips the abilities of every creature that has no way back and sets Ixidron's size at the number of face-down creatures, but Kadena is a nontoken creature too. She has no morph or disguise, so her own text can't turn her back over. Three cards in the list can: Etrata, Hauntwoods Shrieker and Zimone. They're nontoken creatures as well, so they only help if they're cast after Ixidron resolves. Otherwise cast Ixidron before Kadena lands, or when the table's board is worth more than yours. Vraska the Unseen stays as the deck's cleanest answer, since her -3 destroys any nonland permanent, and Volrath, the Shapestealer puts a -1/-1 counter on a creature at the start of each of your combats and can become a 7/5 copy of whatever has one.

The shock lands I priced and left out

Watery Grave ($9.97) and Overgrown Tomb ($8.22) are the dual lands a three-color deck wants, and I tested them in the list in place of Underground River and Woodland Cemetery. The black, green and blue source counts and odds came out identical, so the extra $17 buys lands that cost 2 life once, in place of 1 life per tap on Underground River and an untapped condition on Woodland Cemetery. Both carry the Swamp type, so Farseek can fetch either, but that is a small reason. Both are being reprinted in Star Trek on 13 November 2026, so wait before paying today's price. After the nine spells, they're what I'd buy next for the mana.

The numbers after 13 swaps

Average mana value falls from 3.59 to 3.36, and the box's 16 cards that cost five or more become 13. Creature cards go from 32 to 35 with Kadena counted, and the cards that can be cast face down from 20 to 22. Cards that put a creature face down without casting it go from three to eight. The deck drops from 40 lands to 38, always-tapped lands from 12 to 9, black rises from 18 sources to 19 and blue from 20 to 22, and the bracket floor stays at 3 on Seedborn Muse alone.

The upgraded decklist

Kadena and the 99 with all 13 swaps made, sorted by card type. Hovering any name shows the card.

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“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

How does Kadena's discount work when I want to cast two morphs in one turn?

Only the first face-down creature spell you cast each turn costs {3} less, and a face-down spell costs {3} to cast, so that one is free. The second costs the full {3}. Panoptic Projektor is the fix in the swap list: tap it and the next face-down creature spell that turn costs {3} less too, so two morphs can come down for nothing. Face-down creatures that enter without being cast, like manifests, don't use up the discount.

Does a manifested card draw a card off Kadena?

Yes. Kadena triggers whenever a face-down creature enters under your control, and manifest, manifest dread and cloak all put the card onto the battlefield face down as a 2/2 creature. Whisperwood Elemental at your end step, Hauntwoods Shrieker when it attacks, Zimone on your first land each turn and Thieving Amalgam on each opponent's upkeep each draw you a card that way. In a four-player pod the Amalgam alone manifests three cards a round.

What Commander bracket is the Faceless Menace precon?

Bracket 3 at the least, and the reason is one card: Seedborn Muse is a Game Changer. Take it out and the checker finds no Game Changer in either list. The 13 swaps add none, so the guide's list stays where the box is.

Is it safe to cast Ixidron with Kadena on the battlefield?

Not if you want to keep her. Ixidron turns all other nontoken creatures face down as it enters, Kadena included, and she has no morph ability, so her own text can't turn her back over. Etrata, Hauntwoods Shrieker and Zimone can, but only if they are cast after Ixidron resolves, because it turns them face down too. Cast Ixidron before Kadena, or when the opposing board is worth losing yours for.

How often can Ruthless Ripper be turned face up for free?

Only while you have a black card in hand. Its morph cost is revealing one, and the deck has 14 other black cards among its 99. That makes it an unreliable free flip rather than a free one, and a good reason to hold a Putrefy or a Mire in Misery. When it does turn over it has deathtouch and makes a player of your choice lose 2 life.

Are the shock lands worth buying for this deck?

I tested it and no. Swapping Watery Grave ($9.97) and Overgrown Tomb ($8.22) in for Underground River and Woodland Cemetery leaves the black, green and blue source counts exactly where they were, so the extra $17 buys lands that cost 2 life once, in place of 1 life per tap on Underground River and an untapped condition on Woodland Cemetery. Both are being reprinted in Star Trek on 13 November 2026, so the price may fall.

How much does upgrading Faceless Menace cost?

The 13 cards come to $5.34 at their cheapest released printings. Nine are spells and four are lands, and the most expensive single card is Hauntwoods Shrieker at $0.80, which is cheapest in a promo printing. Prices are October 2026 market prices.