Growing Threat precon upgrade guide

Every one of the other 32 creature cards in this box triggers Brimaz, and twelve of them aren’t Phyrexians by type line. What the box doesn’t have is a card that doubles what the trigger makes.

Brimaz, Blight of Oreskos makes an Incubator with X +1/+1 counters whenever you cast a Phyrexian creature spell or an artifact creature spell, X being that spell’s mana value. Pay {2} and the Incubator flips into a Phyrexian artifact creature that keeps the counters. At the beginning of each end step he also proliferates if a Phyrexian died under your control that turn. Counting type lines, 20 of the other 32 creatures are Phyrexians and 15 are artifact creatures, four of them both. Graveshifter is the last one in, as a changeling. Nothing in the 32 misses.

The curve suits the trigger. Eighteen of those creatures cost five or more and thirteen cost six or more, so a six- or seven-drop pays out a six- or seven-counter Incubator on top of itself. Four things hold it back. Nothing in the box doubles what the trigger creates. Its one mass-sacrifice creature costs you the board Brimaz has been building. A removal spell hands the victim an Incubator. And five of the 38 lands always enter tapped. Eleven swaps fix those, for $80.04 at the cheapest released printing of each card as of October 2026 (it can be a promo), and $43.91 of that is one card.

What are the best Growing Threat upgrades?

Ordered by what each one changes about the turn, not by price. The doubler and the enters-trigger engine are $66.45 of the $80.04, and the other nine cards are $13.59.

1. Mondrak, Glory Dominus ($43.91): doubles every token you create. Every Brimaz trigger after it makes two Incubators, each carrying the full X counters, and the Splicers’ Golems and the Horror from Phyrexian Rebirth double as well. It is a Phyrexian creature spell, so casting it pays Brimaz too.
2. Elesh Norn ($22.54): every enters trigger on your side happens twice. Eighteen creature cards in the list have one.
3. Metastatic Evangel ($0.30) and Surge Conductor ($0.30): proliferate when a nontoken creature, or a nontoken artifact, enters under your control. An artifact creature trips both. Each proliferate can put another counter on every Incubator you have.
4. Wurmcoil Engine ($9.62): a Phyrexian artifact creature at six mana, so a six-counter Incubator, and when it dies you get two 3/3 Phyrexian Wurm tokens and Brimaz proliferates.
5. Anguished Unmaking ($1.53): replaces Excise the Imperfect, which hands the permanent’s controller an Incubator.
6. Isolated Chapel ($0.27) and Caves of Koilos ($0.28): the two tapped lands that go, replaced by lands that mostly come in untapped.
7. Solemn Simulacrum ($0.28), Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim ($0.66) and Contagion Clasp ($0.35): a four-mana artifact creature that fetches a basic, a two-mana deathtouch Phyrexian that drains for each creature of yours that dies, and a proliferate source.

Eleven cards come out, and they are further down.

Eleven creatures that Brimaz pays for without being Phyrexians

Read the type lines and the box looks like a Phyrexian deck with some colourless filler. Eleven of its creature cards are artifact creatures with no Phyrexian type: Noxious Gearhulk, Duplicant, Meteor Golem, Myr Battlesphere, Angel of the Ruins, Ancient Stone Idol, Scrap Trawler, Bloodline Pretender, Burnished Hart, Shimmer Myr and Cataclysmic Gearhulk. They set off Brimaz’s trigger exactly as a Phyrexian does. A Battlesphere or a Meteor Golem is a seven-counter Incubator, and Ancient Stone Idol is a ten-counter one even when attackers have cut its cost to almost nothing, since its mana value stays 10.

Being off-type is no reason to cut any of them. The one I do cut is Cataclysmic Gearhulk, for what it does when it enters.

The cheap end is where the trigger is thin. Ten of the 32 creatures cost three, which is a three-counter Incubator and {2} more to flip, so five mana in all for the three-drop and a 3/3. Blade Splicer is the best of them because it brings a Golem of its own. It is why the two-drop I add is Elas il-Kor for the drain and not for the counters.

Doubling the trigger, then growing it

Mondrak is the engine. His text is a replacement effect: if one or more tokens would be created under your control, twice that many are created. The ruling on him is that the extra tokens get whatever the original effect gave them, counters included. So a Brimaz trigger from a six-mana creature is two Incubators with six counters each, twelve counters for the price of six, and Phyrexian Rebirth makes two X/X Horrors where it made one. His own casting makes one Incubator, because the trigger resolves before he is on the battlefield.

Elesh Norn does a different job and I want to be exact about it. She doesn’t double Brimaz, because that trigger is on casting. She doubles every trigger caused by a permanent entering. Eighteen creature cards here have an enters trigger of their own: the three Splicers, Massacre Wurm, Noxious Gearhulk, Meteor Golem, Duplicant, Myr Battlesphere, Angel of the Ruins, Phyrexian Delver, Phyrexian Rager, both Gargantuas, Graveshifter, Bone Shredder, Blight Titan, Filigree Vector and Solemn Simulacrum. Massacre Wurm then gives opposing creatures -4/-4 instead of -2/-2, and Phyrexian Gargantua draws four cards instead of two. Metastatic Evangel and Surge Conductor proliferate twice for each nontoken creature, or nontoken artifact, that arrives, and Shattered Angel can gain 3 life twice whenever an opponent plays a land. She also stops opposing permanents entering from setting off their controllers’ triggers, which switches off the enters triggers in the rest of the pod.

Put both out and Darksteel Splicer is the extreme case. It makes a 3/3 Golem for each opponent, so three in a four-player game, the trigger happens twice, and Mondrak doubles each batch: twelve Golems, all of them indestructible while it lives. That is a seven-mana creature plus two cards you had to find first, so I wouldn’t plan a game around it.

The proliferate cards are what turn the Incubators into the real threat. Metastatic Evangel proliferates when a nontoken creature enters and Surge Conductor when a nontoken artifact does, and every artifact creature trips both. Every proliferate adds one counter to each Incubator you choose, and a counter on an unflipped Incubator is a counter on the creature it becomes. The box ran three ways to proliferate: Brimaz, Karn's Bastion for {4} and a tap, and Filigree Vector by sacrificing an artifact. After the swaps it runs six, with Contagion Clasp the sixth. The Clasp’s enters trigger puts a -1/-1 counter on a creature, and you can’t decline it. If you are the only player with a creature it has to be one of yours, so don’t cast it onto an empty table.

Cataclysmic Gearhulk sacrifices your board too, and ten other cuts

When Cataclysmic Gearhulk enters, each player chooses an artifact, a creature, an enchantment and a planeswalker among their nonland permanents and sacrifices the rest. Every Incubator is an artifact. Every Golem is an artifact creature. A board Brimaz has spent five turns assembling is reduced to the single artifact and single creature you choose, which can be the same permanent, exactly as it is for the table. The deck wants the widest board in the pod, not an equal one.

Excise the Imperfect exiles a nonland permanent, and then its controller incubates for that permanent’s mana value. Anguished Unmaking does the same exiling and costs you 3 life, which beats giving somebody a free body. The swap also moves your first double-white card from three mana to four, and the odds of having {W}{W} when it is due go from 74.2% to 79.8%.

Coveted Jewel draws three when it enters and taps for three mana of one colour. It also changes hands: whenever an opponent’s creature attacks you and goes unblocked, that player draws three cards and takes the Jewel. A six-mana rock that can take cards to somebody else’s hand, in a game with three attackers, is a bet that you can block everything. Fractured Powerstone and Ichor Elixir are the other two artifacts that go. The Powerstone’s planar die does nothing outside Planechase (its own ruling says so), and the Elixir’s text only changes planar dice, which leaves {C}{C} for four mana. Eight mana rocks stay, from Sol Ring to Hedron Archive, and so does Wayfarer's Bauble.

Path of the Schemer puts a creature from any graveyard onto the battlefield for five mana. Nothing is cast, so Brimaz doesn’t trigger, and Phyrexian Delver, Victimize and Yawgmoth's Vile Offering already do the same job. Sculpting Steel is cast as a noncreature artifact, so entering as a copy of Myr Battlesphere gives you the enters ability and still no Incubator. Scytheclaw and Bitterthorn each arrive with a 1/1 Germ and need {3} to move to a better body. Their case is that a Germ is a Phyrexian token, so unequipping one kills it and starts Brimaz’s proliferate. That is an expensive way to do something Phyrexian Ghoul does for free. The Ghoul stays.

Nettlecyst stays, and it is the same kind of card. It is a living weapon too, but it gets +1/+1 for each artifact or enchantment you control, and every Incubator and Golem you make is an artifact. With one Incubator out its Germ is a 2/2, and it grows with every rock and Golem after that.

Two tapped lands out, and what the Isolated Chapel needs

Bojuka Bog enters tapped and exiles one player’s graveyard, which is a plan against a deck you haven’t met. Silverquill Campus enters tapped and spends {4} and a tap to scry 1. They go for Isolated Chapel and Caves of Koilos. The Chapel enters untapped if you control a Plains or a Swamp, and the deck has 23 basics, so by turn three on the play (nine cards seen) you have drawn at least one 91.8% of the time. The Caves are always untapped and cost 1 life whenever you tap them for a colour. Lands that always enter tapped go from five to three: Temple of Silence, Goldmire Bridge and Path of Ancestry.

Those three stay with reasons. Goldmire Bridge is indestructible and an artifact, which means Surge Conductor and Nettlecyst count it. Path of Ancestry scries when its mana pays for a creature spell that shares a type with Brimaz, and after the swaps the deck has 26 Phyrexian creature cards by type line, Brimaz included, with Graveshifter on top as a changeling. The Temple scries on entering.

The colour counts barely move, and I wouldn’t read much into them. Black goes from 32 sources to 31 because Coveted Jewel was being counted as a source of any colour, and white stays at 28. Those totals also count Fetid Heath, which needs coloured mana before it filters any. Double black by turn four is the weaker of the two black tests at 88.3%, with seven black cards asking for it, Massacre Wurm among them.

The one I priced out

Sheoldred, the Apocalypse is $81.53. She is a Phyrexian at four mana, so she pays Brimaz, and the deck draws plenty (Night's Whisper, Ambition's Cost, both Gargantuas, Phyrexian Rager) to make her punish the table for every card it draws and reward you for yours. She isn't a Game Changer. I left her out on price, and because Stardates, out 13 November 2026, reprints her. If the reprint moves her price a long way down she is the next card I would buy. Anointed Procession ($62.95) is the other token doubler, and Mondrak is cheaper and counts as a creature spell for Brimaz, which is why he got the slot.

What the eleven swaps moved

Creature cards go from 33 to 39, since seven come in and Cataclysmic Gearhulk is the only one to leave. The Phyrexian share goes from 64% to 67%. Average mana value falls from 4.1 to 4.02. No Game Changer goes in, so the bracket floor stays at 1.

The upgraded decklist

The list below is the box with all eleven swaps made. Hover a card name to see it.

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

Does Brimaz trigger when I cast a creature that isn't a Phyrexian?

Yes, if it is an artifact creature, and eleven creature cards in this box are artifact creatures without being Phyrexians, among them Noxious Gearhulk, Duplicant, Meteor Golem and Myr Battlesphere. Graveshifter is a changeling, which makes it every creature type including Phyrexian, so it counts too. A creature that enters without being cast does not. Phyrexian Delver bringing a creature back, a token from a Blade Splicer and an Incubator you flip for {2} all skip the trigger.

Which creature type should Bloodline Pretender name?

Phyrexian. It grows whenever another creature of the chosen type enters under your control, and after the swaps 25 creature cards besides Brimaz, Blight of Oreskos are Phyrexians by type line, with Graveshifter on top as a changeling. The Golem tokens from the three Splicers, the Wurm tokens from Wurmcoil Engine and the Horror from Phyrexian Rebirth are Phyrexians as well. Naming Golem catches only those tokens and four Golem cards.

Does Elesh Norn double what Brimaz makes?

No. Brimaz triggers when you cast a spell, and Elesh Norn only doubles triggers caused by a permanent entering. What she does double is the box’s other creatures: eighteen creature cards here have an enters trigger of their own. With Mondrak, Glory Dominus also out, Darksteel Splicer makes six Golems for itself in a four-player game, then doubles them to twelve.

How much do the eleven Growing Threat swaps cost, and what do I buy first?

$80.04 at the cheapest released printing of each card, as of October 2026, and that can be a promo. Mondrak, Glory Dominus is $43.91 and Elesh Norn is $22.54. The other nine cost $13.59 together, so start there if the total is too much. Metastatic Evangel and Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines both have a printing in The List dated 9 November 2026, which may move their prices.

What actually kills a Phyrexian for Brimaz’s end-step proliferate?

Anything that destroys or sacrifices one of yours. Phyrexian Ghoul sacrifices a creature for free, Compleated Huntmaster sacrifices a creature or artifact for {1} and a tap, and chapter II of Phyrexian Scriptures destroys every nonartifact creature. Wurmcoil Engine dying counts, and so does a Golem token trading in combat. The trigger checks as the end step begins, and it checks every end step, including your opponents’.

Doesn’t Excise the Imperfect exile anything? Why cut it?

It does, and its controller then incubates for the exiled permanent’s mana value. Exile a six-drop and its owner gets an Incubator with six counters, which is a 6/6 for {2}. Anguished Unmaking exiles the same permanents, costs you 3 life, and gives the victim nothing back.