Exit from Exile precon upgrade guide

Eleven cards in this box show you the top of your library and give you until end of turn to use it. Eight of them cost seven mana or more. That is the whole problem, and it costs about thirty dollars to fix.

Faldorn is a good commander built on a real idea. She makes a 2/2 Wolf every time you cast a spell from exile, and she comes with her own way of getting cards there: one mana, tap, discard a card, exile the top of your library and play it this turn. Every impulse effect in the deck is a Wolf attached to a card.

Baldur’s Gate then filled the rest of the box with seven- and eight-drops.

What are the best Exit from Exile upgrades?

In the order I’d buy them:

1. Cutting the top of the curve — free, and it is most of the fix. Five cards costing seven or eight leave, and the average mana value drops from 4.18 to 3.54.
2. Fires of Yavimaya ($0.31) — haste, which is the cheapest way to make a creature you flipped this turn actually do something before the window shuts.
3. Guardian Project ($12.97) and Beast Whisperer ($7.51) — the two real draw engines. Twenty-eight creatures in, twenty-eight cards out.
4. Valakut Exploration ($3.51) — it impulses for you every upkeep and, crucially, burns an opponent for whatever you couldn’t cast. The first card in this deck where the window closing is somebody else’s problem.
5. Elemental Bond ($3.04), Colossal Majesty ($1.30) and Garruk's Uprising ($0.45) — three more ways for a board of large creatures to keep your hand full.
6. Abrade ($0.18), Chaos Warp ($0.32), Vandalblast ($1.32) — cheap interaction, which matters more once you are not spending turn seven casting one spell.
7. Farseek ($0.49), Skyshroud Claim ($0.97), Springbloom Druid ($0.13) — more lands, sooner, so the cards you flip are castable.

Fifteen cards come out; the list is below.

Eleven cards start a clock the deck can’t beat

Count the impulse effects in the stock ninety-nine and you get eleven: Light Up the Stage, Jeska's Will, Ignite the Future, Escape to the Wilds, Outpost Siege, Stolen Strategy, Journey to the Lost City, Xenagos, the Reveler, Laelia, the Blade Reforged, Tectonic Giant and Etali, Primal Storm. Faldorn adds a twelfth from the command zone.

Every one of them works the same way. It exiles from the top of your library and gives you permission to play the card, usually this turn only. If you can’t pay, the card is gone — not shuffled back, not put in your hand. Gone.

Now look at what it might find. The box runs four cards costing seven, three costing eight, and one at ten. Its average mana value is 4.18. Flip End-Raze Forerunners off Light Up the Stage on turn four and you have not drawn a card; you have removed one from your deck and paid two mana for the privilege.

That is why almost every cut on this page is at the top of the curve, and why the cheapest card on the add list is one of the best. Fires of Yavimaya costs thirty-one cents and gives everything haste, which turns a creature flipped on your turn into a creature that attacks on your turn.

Two cards in this hundred draw you a card

Sarevok's Tome and Return of the Wildspeaker. That’s the list.

A Commander deck normally wants eight to twelve ways to refill, and this one has the lowest count of any precon on this site. It survives because the impulse effects are doing the job in disguise — but only when the curve lets them, which is the same problem again from the other side.

So four of the adds are plain, boring card draw off creatures: Guardian Project and Beast Whisperer draw when one enters or is cast, Elemental Bond draws on anything with power three or greater, and Colossal Majesty draws each upkeep as long as something with power four is around. Twenty-eight creatures makes all four of them live.

Three of the biggest mana values in this deck are lies

Any list sorted by mana value puts these three at the top, and all three are cheaper than they look:

• Greater Gargadon reads ten. You cast it for {R} with suspend 10 and take counters off by sacrificing things. It is a 9/7 you paid one red mana for, on a delay you control.
• Beanstalk Giant reads seven. Its adventure, Fertile Footsteps, is a {2}{G} ramp spell that puts the Giant in exile — where casting it later triggers Faldorn.
• Tlincalli Hunter reads seven. Retrieve Prey costs {1}{G} and does the same thing.

The two adventures are the neat part. An adventure card sits in exile after the small half resolves, so the creature half is a spell you will cast from exile later — which is a Wolf, without spending a card on getting there. They’re the two seven-drops that stay.

Five seven-drops, and what follows them out

Five cards at seven or eight mana, none of which has an adventure to hide behind:

• End-Raze Forerunners and Ezuri's Predation — eight mana each, both triple green against twenty-three green sources.
• Sandwurm Convergence — eight mana for an enchantment that starts working next turn.
• Hornet Queen — seven mana, triple green, and the single worst card to flip off an impulse effect.
• Dream Pillager — seven mana for a 4/4 that has to connect before it gives you anything.

Then four at six that the deck doesn’t miss:

• Aurora Phoenix, Sweet-Gum Recluse — big bodies, no impact on the turn they arrive.
• Warstorm Surge and Primeval Bounty — six-mana enchantments that pay off only if the game goes long, in a deck now built to stop doing that.

Three more that were never pulling their weight: Chaos Wand (three mana and an activation to maybe find a spell), Izzet Chemister (slow, and it wants the instant-heavy deck this isn’t) and Natural Reclamation (five mana to destroy an artifact, where Abrade does it for two).

And three lands. Myriad Landscape, Highland Forest and Gruul Turf all enter tapped; the deck goes from thirty-nine lands to thirty-eight, and the ones entering tapped from seven to four.

Thirty-three dollars, and two cards are twenty of it

Guardian Project ($12.97) and Beast Whisperer ($7.51) are $20.48 of the $33.18. They’re here on merit — twenty-eight creatures is exactly the deck that wants them — but if the budget matters, skip both. The remaining thirteen cards cost $12.70 together and fix the curve, which was always the bigger problem.

The two I’d least want to lose are the two cheapest. Fires of Yavimaya at $0.31 solves the impulse window directly. Springbloom Druid at $0.13 is a body that fetches two lands, in a deck where casting what you flip is the entire brief.

Valakut Exploration ($3.51) deserves its own line. It exiles the top card each upkeep, lets you play it that turn, and at end of turn deals damage equal to the number of cards you didn’t cast. Every other impulse effect in the deck punishes you for a low land count; this one charges the table instead.

Skipped on price, and worth naming: Toski, Bearer of Secrets and Rhythm of the Wild both belong in a version of this deck with a bigger budget, and Ancient Copper Dragon at over a hundred dollars is the card everyone will tell you to add. It is a fine card and it is not proportionate to a deck whose singles are worth about $158.

Where the curve ends up

The curve is the point. Average mana value falls from 4.18 to 3.54; the cards costing seven or more go from eight to three, and two of those three are the adventures that cost three. Six-drops drop from six to two.

Card draw goes from two to seven, which is still one short of the normal band and deliberately so — the impulse package is the rest of it, and it works now that the curve does.

Lands go from thirty-nine to thirty-eight, and from seven entering tapped to four. That trade costs a little: green sources slip from 23 to 22 and a single green pip by turn two from 89% to 87.7%. Red is untouched at 24 sources and 90.1%. I’ll take about a point of green consistency for six mana values off the top.

Bracket floor is 3 before and after, set by Jeska's Will, which is also the most valuable card in the box. Nothing on the add list changes that in either direction.

The upgraded decklist

All hundred cards after the swaps. Hover a 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

What happens to a card I exile and then can’t cast?

It stays exiled and you never see it again. That’s the whole difference between impulse effects and card draw, and it’s the thing this deck keeps losing to: eleven cards in the box exile from the top of your library with permission to play it this turn only. Exile Hornet Queen off Light Up the Stage on turn four and you haven’t drawn a card, you’ve deleted one.

Does Faldorn trigger when I cast a card I exiled myself?

Yes. Her wording is “whenever you cast a spell from exile”, and it doesn’t care who exiled it or how. Your own impulse effects trigger her, her own discard ability triggers her, Stolen Strategy casting a card off an opponent’s library triggers her, and so does casting an adventure creature out of exile after its adventure half has resolved. Each one makes a 2/2 Wolf.

Is Greater Gargadon really a ten-mana creature?

No, and it’s worth knowing before you cut it as the biggest card in the deck. You cast it for {R} with suspend 10, then remove time counters by sacrificing artifacts, creatures or lands. Its mana value is genuinely ten — which is why it sits at the top of any curve chart, including the one on this page — but you never pay it. Beanstalk Giant and Tlincalli Hunter are the same trick with adventures: both read seven, both get cast for three or less most games.

Can Durnan and Passionate Archaeologist be the commanders instead?

They can, and both are already in the ninety-nine. Durnan of the Yawning Portal reads “choose a Background” and Passionate Archaeologist is a Background, so that pair is a legal command zone straight out of the box. It’s a different deck rather than a better one: the Archaeologist turns every spell cast from exile into damage equal to its mana value, which is a faster clock, and you give up Faldorn’s Wolves and the free discard outlet that fuels them.

Should I cut Jeska's Will to reach Bracket 2?

That’s the trade, and it’s a real one. Jeska's Will is the only Game Changer in the box, so it alone is why the deck floors at Bracket 3 before and after these swaps. It’s also, at around $41.69, comfortably the most valuable card in it — about a quarter of what the sealed deck’s singles are worth. Cut it if your table plays Bracket 2; keep it if that isn’t the conversation you’re having.

What do the fifteen adds cost?

About $33.18 quoted from the cheapest paper printing of each card on 6 September 2026, and two cards are $20.48 of it: Guardian Project at $12.97 and Beast Whisperer at $7.51. The other thirteen come to $12.70 between them, and eight are under a dollar. Skip the two expensive ones and you still get most of this guide for about thirteen dollars.

Why is card draw still short after the upgrade?

Because five real draw spells is what fits without gutting the theme. The stock deck has two, the upgraded list has seven, and the normal range for a Commander deck is eight to twelve. The honest read is that the eleven impulse effects do most of the work of card advantage as long as the curve is low enough to cast what they find — which is exactly what the cuts are for. If you want the number itself higher, Guardian Project’s neighbours on the shelf are Toski, Bearer of Secrets and Rishkar’s Expertise.