Wakanda Forever precon upgrade guide

T'Challa builds you a mana rock every time he attacks, and that mana can't cast T'Challa.

A Vibranium token reads “this mana can't be spent to cast a nonartifact spell,” so every scrap of acceleration this commander generates points at one slice of the deck. The box builds toward that slice honestly — twenty-three of its artifacts cost four or more, and three separate cards pay you for casting them. What it never does is pay for anything else. Fourteen cards in here want two green or two white pips by turn three, and the deck's own ramp can't produce a single coloured mana toward them.

What are the best Wakanda Forever upgrades?

Six cards, in the order I'd buy them. Each is argued further down.

1. Wooded Bastion — pay one green or white, get {G}{G}, {G}{W} or {W}{W}. Fourteen cards in this deck want a double pip by turn three, and nothing else in the colour pair answers that directly.
2. Foundry Inspector — every artifact costs a mana less, which turns the wall of four-drops into three-drops. Cost reduction doesn't touch mana value, so T'Challa, Zuri and W'Kabi keep triggering off them.
3. Ghostly Prison — ten cards in this box hand you the crown and exactly one defends it. Two mana per attacker is how you keep the extra card.
4. Skysovereign, Consul Flagship — three damage when it lands and three more every time it attacks, on a mana-value-five artifact your commander is already paying you to cast.
5. Temple Garden and Brushland — untapped duals for a little life. With the two taplands leaving, they take this deck's always-tapped land count to zero.
6. Wurmcoil Engine — a 6/6 deathtouch lifelink blocker that leaves two bodies behind, which is crown defence that happens to be a mana-value-six artifact spell.

The rest, and what comes out for them, is further down the page. None of it is on the Game Changers list, so the deck keeps its Bracket 1 floor.

The box is built at mana value four, and it means it

Three cards in here read some version of “artifact spell with mana value 4 or greater.” T'Challa puts two +1/+1 counters on himself when you cast one. Zuri, Warrior of Wakanda puts a counter on every creature you control off the same trigger. W'Kabi, Shield of the Nation makes a 4/4 trampling Rhino whenever your commander attacks, as long as one of those artifacts is already on the battlefield.

So the box ships twenty-three artifacts at mana value four or higher. Nineteen cards cost exactly four — more than any other slot on the curve, and close to a third of the deck's nonland cards. The average settles at 3.84, the heaviest of the four Marvel decks: Avengers Assemble sits at 3.36, Doom Prevails at 3.65, The Fantastic Four at 3.69.

That's a design, and I don't want to flatten it. The four-drops are the fuel. I just want them arriving on turn four instead of turn six.

One distinction is worth holding on to. W'Kabi checks the battlefield; the other two check the cast. A single mana-value-four artifact sitting in play keeps W'Kabi switched on for the rest of the game, while T'Challa and Zuri need you to keep casting them.

Vibranium is mana value zero

The tokens are artifacts, and a token with no mana cost has mana value zero. They never trigger T'Challa's counters, never trigger Zuri, and never satisfy W'Kabi's battlefield check — the commander's signature ability does nothing for the commander's other ability.

What they do count for is everything that asks how many artifacts you control rather than how big. Shuri draws you a card at three artifacts and pumps the team at six. Dispatch turns from a tap effect into an exile effect at three. Panther Robot gets a mana cheaper for each one.

Metalwork Colossus is the card that reads like it should and doesn't. Its cost drops by the total mana value of your noncreature artifacts, and a Vibranium token contributes zero to that sum. Panther Robot's affinity counts artifacts instead, so the same board that does nothing for the Colossus takes four mana off the Robot. One word of templating separates them, and it's why only one of the two is in my cut list.

The rule runs in your favour on the other side. Foundry Inspector makes a four-mana artifact cost three and its mana value stays four, so every trigger still fires.

Ten cards hand you the crown. One card defends it.

The monarch is this deck's card draw, and it's the part of the box that gets counted least. Eleven cards grant the crown or care about it. Queen Mother Ramonda, Okoye, Palace Jailer and The Spear of Bashenga hand it to you as they enter. Nakia does it whenever your commander enters. King Solomon's Frogs, T'Chaka, Heart-Shaped Herb and Throne of the High City buy it with an activated ability. Fight for the Throne gives it to you when the creature you fought dies.

M'Baku goes the other way on purpose. At your end step, if nobody is the monarch, he hands the crown to an opponent — because M'Baku, Okoye and The Spear of Bashenga all pay off for attacking the monarch. This deck wants a crown on the table and doesn't much mind whose head it starts on.

What the box never ships is a way to keep it. Queen Mother Ramonda stops attackers with power two or less. That is the entire defensive package, in a deck that spends the whole game painting a target on itself.

Both colours are ten sources short where it counts

Thirty-eight lands, twenty-four of them basic, which is a fine land count and I wouldn't change it. Green and white each have twenty-five sources. For the first pip that's enough: at 90% on the play you want twenty-four sources to have one green by turn two, and twenty-five gets there 91.2% of the time.

The second pip is where it comes apart. Six cards want {G}{G} by turn three — Conduit of Worlds, Greater Good, Harmonize, M'Baku, Overwhelming Stampede and Wakanda Forever! — and eight want {W}{W}, among them Divine Visitation, Martial Coup, Palace Jailer, Queen Mother Ramonda and Vanquish the Horde. Twenty-five sources gets you there 71.8% of the time.

The honest reading of “you want thirty-six sources” is that no two-colour deck reaches it — thirty-six of thirty-eight lands would have to make green. What's available is a source or two in each colour, a land that converts one pip into two, and the removal of the two lands that cost you the turn outright.

There's a second problem the land count hides. Sol Ring, Thran Dynamo and every Vibranium token make colourless mana, and the Vibranium is restricted on top of that. Ramping in this deck mostly gets you to a bigger artifact, not to Overwhelming Stampede.

And two lands enter tapped no matter what you do: Scattered Groves and Path of Ancestry. In a deck whose double-pip spells all want to land on turn three, those are the two that push it to turn four.

What I'd cut

Thirteen cards. The lands first, because they're the cheapest fix on this page.

Two lands that always enter tapped, and one that makes no mana on its own

Scattered Groves and Path of Ancestry enter tapped every single time. Path of Ancestry's scry is real — T'Challa is a Human Noble Hero and fifteen other Humans ride along — but a tapland is how you miss a turn-three double pip, and this deck has fourteen of those to miss.

Sungrass Prairie is the strange one. It has no ability that makes mana by itself; you spend {1} to get {G}{W} back, so on the turns when a spare mana is the thing you don't have, it produces nothing at all.

Four Equipment, in a deck with one Equipment payoff

Eight pieces of Equipment ship in this box. Only Hammer of Nazahn does anything about the equip costs; the other seven each ask you to pay twice, once to cast and once to attach, to improve a single creature. They're here because they're artifacts at mana value four, which is the most expensive way this deck could have hit that number.

Helm of the Host is the clearest cut: four to cast, five to equip, and nothing happens until the combat step after that. Panther Habit spends four mana preventing damage on one creature. Midnight Angel Armor brings its own 1/1, which is genuinely something, but it costs five with two white pips in a deck already short on {W}{W}.

Whispersilk Cloak actively fights the deck. Shroud shuts off Nakia's counters, Okoye's counter, Fight for the Throne, and every other Equipment you were about to attach.

The eleven-drop, and the ten-drop that stays

Metalwork Colossus wants roughly eleven mana value of noncreature artifacts on the battlefield before it's realistically castable, and the artifact this deck produces most often contributes zero toward that. Meteor Golem is seven mana for a 3/3 and one Beast Within — and the deck already runs Beast Within, plus Generous Gift, Dispatch, Valorous Stance and a Hatut Zeraze Strike Force that shoots an artifact or enchantment on the way in.

Panther Robot stays, for the affinity reason above.

Three artifacts that ask for more than they return

Coveted Jewel is the one I feel strongest about. It draws three and taps for three, and it walks over to whoever attacks you and isn't blocked — in a deck that spends the game wearing a crown and inviting precisely that attack.

Mind's Eye costs five and then {1} per card. The monarch already draws you a card every turn for nothing.

Heart-Shaped Herb prevents one damage. Its real mode costs {2}, the tap, the Herb itself and a creature, and hands back a reanimation and the crown — a lot of moving parts for a card that does nothing on the turn it arrives.

A wipe that kills your own commander

Three board wipes in a deck with twenty-four creatures is one too many, and Scourglass is the one to lose. It costs five, it only fires during your upkeep so it telegraphs a full turn in advance, and then it destroys T'Challa along with everything else. Martial Coup and Vanquish the Horde both scale, and Martial Coup leaves you the board.

What I'd add

Three lands and a sorcery aimed at the double pips

Wooded Bastion fixes the actual problem. Pay one green or white mana and it gives you {G}{G}, {G}{W} or {W}{W} — every one of the fourteen double-pip cards is a target. It's also the priciest card on this list, and if you buy one thing off this page, buy that one.

Temple Garden and Brushland come in untapped for a little life. Between the two of them arriving and the two taplands leaving, the number of lands in this deck that always enter tapped goes from two to zero.

Three Visits puts a Forest card onto the battlefield untapped, and after these swaps that means Temple Garden or Canopy Vista about as often as it means a basic.

Two accelerants that make coloured mana

Faeburrow Elder taps for one mana of each colour among your permanents, which here is {G}{W} off a three-drop with vigilance that grows as the board fills.

Selesnya Signet is a fifty-cent card that turns one mana into {G}{W}. Unglamorous, and it's the cheapest double-pip fix in the format.

Three artifacts that do something the turn they land

Foundry Inspector is the single best rate change available to this deck: sixteen artifacts get a mana cheaper and not one of them loses a trigger.

Skysovereign, Consul Flagship deals three damage as it enters and three more on every attack, and crew 3 is trivial once T'Challa has been making tokens. Meteor Golem's job, on a card that keeps doing it.

Wurmcoil Engine is six mana for a 6/6 with deathtouch and lifelink that dies into two more bodies. In a deck that keeps making itself the monarch, a blocker nobody wants to attack into is worth more than another Equipment.

Four cheap cards, and what they're protecting

Ghostly Prison taxes every attacker two mana. Against a table that can see you're the monarch, that's usually the difference between keeping the crown and handing it back on the turn after you take it.

Unbreakable Formation is three mana for indestructible, and cast in your main phase it also puts a +1/+1 counter on each of your creatures and gives them vigilance — which is the deck's own counters theme, at instant speed, on the turn somebody wipes. Heroic Intervention is the stronger card if you want to spend ten times as much.

Loran of the Third Path kills an artifact or enchantment on arrival, taps to draw, and is a Human, so it lands in the deck's largest creature type on the way past.

Swords to Plowshares is one white mana for the cleanest answer in the game, and this box shipped without it.

The cards that look like cuts and aren't

Sixteen cards look cuttable on the numbers and I'm keeping all of them. Four are the Equipment that survive: Hammer of Nazahn attaches the others for free, Sword of the Animist ramps every attack, Vibranium Strike Gauntlets flash in and draw cards, and The Spear of Bashenga blows up a tapped permanent whenever its wearer swings at the monarch. Equipment that only buffs a creature is a bad deal; Equipment that draws, ramps or removes is a fine one.

Five look wrong because they aren't Humans — Storm, Bast, Loyal Guardian, Fleecemane Lion and Solemn Simulacrum. Human is 63% of the creatures here, but no card in this box makes you name a creature type, so nothing is lost by playing off-type. That is a real difference from its shelfmates: Avengers Assemble and Doom Prevails both hand you cards that name a type, and this one hands you none.

Four are monarch cards that read as overpriced in isolation. Queen Mother Ramonda is five mana for a 3/5, and she's the only card in the box that protects the crown. Okoye, Nakia and Fight for the Throne all target a single creature, which is exactly what you want when the plan is to send one big attacker at whoever's wearing the crown.

Panther Robot and Gilded Lotus round it out. The Robot is discussed above. Gilded Lotus is five mana for a rock, but it's the only card in the deck that makes three of one colour, and this deck's problem is three of one colour.

Birds of Paradise is on the list too, and I'd sooner add more of it.

What this list gives up

Artifacts at mana value four or greater go from twenty-three to sixteen. That's the real cost of cutting four Equipment and two of the big robots, and I think sixteen is still comfortably enough to keep T'Challa growing — but it's the number to watch if you want to trim this list differently.

Card draw drops from nine sources to eight and board wipes from three to two, both still inside the range I'd want. In exchange the curve comes down from 3.84 to 3.46, the four-drop pile thins from nineteen to sixteen, always-tapped lands go from two to zero, and both colours pick up a source: the turn-three double pip moves from 71.8% to 74.2%.

The box prices at $67.85 and the upgraded list at $107.29, so this is about forty dollars of cards, most of it in the mana. The bracket floor doesn't move — no Game Changers go in, and none were there to start.

The upgraded decklist

All 100 cards, with the thirteen swaps applied. Hover any 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

Is the Wakanda Forever precon worth upgrading?

Yes, and it's one of the cheaper ones to fix, because most of what's wrong is mana rather than card quality. The box already has a coherent plan — cast artifacts at mana value four, grow T'Challa, attack the monarch — and thirteen swaps costing about forty dollars get the curve down from 3.84 to 3.46 and take the always-tapped land count to zero.

What can Vibranium mana actually pay for?

Artifact spells, and nothing else. A Vibranium token taps for {C} that “can't be spent to cast a nonartifact spell,” so it will happily pay for Kimoyo Beads or Wurmcoil Engine and will not pay for a land-fetch sorcery, a board wipe, or T'Challa himself. It can pay for artifact creatures, since those are artifact spells.

Does Divine Visitation turn Vibranium tokens into 4/4 Angels?

No. Divine Visitation replaces creature tokens, and Vibranium tokens are artifacts without a creature type. It does upgrade the Soldiers from Martial Coup, Royal Talon Fighter Jet and Kimoyo Beads, the Rhino from W'Kabi and the Goat from Trading Post, which is still five enablers — just not the one on your commander.

Why cut Metalwork Colossus but keep Panther Robot?

Because of one word. The Colossus costs less by the total mana value of your noncreature artifacts, and a Vibranium token's mana value is zero. Panther Robot has affinity for artifacts, which counts them, so each token really does shave a mana off it. Same board state, two completely different discounts.

How do you hold on to the monarch in this deck?

Out of the box you mostly don't — Queen Mother Ramonda stopping power-two attackers is the only defence the box ships, against eleven cards that hand the crown around. Ghostly Prison is the cheap fix, and Wurmcoil Engine is the one that blocks. Deathtouch on a lifelinking 6/6 makes attacking you for the crown a bad trade.

What's the cheapest way to fix this deck's mana?

Cut Scattered Groves, Path of Ancestry and Sungrass Prairie. Two of those enter tapped every game and the third makes no mana unless you feed it one. Selesnya Signet at under a dollar and Three Visits are the cheap adds; Wooded Bastion is the expensive one and also the only card that turns a single pip into a double.

Does the upgraded list still cast enough big artifacts for T'Challa?

Sixteen artifacts at mana value four or greater survive the swaps, down from twenty-three. Three cards care about that count, and only two of them — T'Challa and Zuri — need a fresh cast; W'Kabi just needs one sitting on the battlefield. Foundry Inspector makes all sixteen a mana cheaper without lowering any of their mana values.

Do you name a creature type with this deck?

There's nothing to name. Sixty-three per cent of the creatures are Human, but no card in the box asks you to choose a creature type, so the typal split here is flavour rather than a mechanic. That frees you to add the best card rather than the best Human — which is why Wurmcoil Engine and Faeburrow Elder are on my list.