Grand Larceny precon upgrade guide

Twenty-one cards in this box let you cast something you don't own. Twelve of them hand it over free, which is the one case where the commander's discount does nothing at all.

Gonti, Canny Acquisitor has two abilities and Grand Larceny is built almost entirely around the second one. The first says spells you cast but don't own cost {1} less. The second turns any creature of yours connecting in combat into a card off the top of that player's library, exiled face down, yours to play with mana of any type.

Four more cards in the 99 exist to make stolen spells cheaper. That's five discounts in one deck. The trouble is what they're pointed at: most of the theft in this box is free theft, and a discount on a free spell is worth nothing. Twelve swaps below, $63.63 at market, and most of the work is aiming the deck at the half of itself that pays off.

What are the best Grand Larceny upgrades?

In buying order. The first four are the ones that change how the deck plays, and they come to $22.26 between them.

1. Changeling Outcast ($2.30). A one-mana creature that can't be blocked, ever, by anything. With the commander on the battlefield it lifts a card off somebody's library on every combat you take, indefinitely, and it is the only black creature of its kind the deck can play.
2. Reconnaissance Mission ($0.29). This deck connects constantly and draws almost nothing for it. Cycling {2} means it isn't a dead card in an opening hand.
3. Mnemonic Betrayal ($8.39). Every opponent's graveyard at once, cast with mana of any type. It's the single biggest turn the commander's discount can pay for.
4. Thada Adel, Acquisitor ($11.28). Islandwalk against a table with Islands in it, and the artifact she finds is one you pay for, so the discount applies.
5. Toski, Bearer of Secrets ($8.08). A second copy of the draw trigger that can't be countered and can't be destroyed.
6. Mystic Remora ($12.77). Draw that doesn't need a combat step, for the turns you don't get one.
7. Faerie Mastermind ($11.40). A two-mana flier that connects, and a Rogue.
8. Xanathar, Guild Kingpin ($2.41). The top of an opponent's library every turn, and you pay for what you take.
9. Blooming Marsh ($3.06), Botanical Sanctum ($1.76), Waterlogged Grove ($1.53) and Rogue's Passage ($0.36). Four lands for $6.71 that replace four costing you a turn each.

The twelve add up to $63.63 at market for default printings, against a box whose own singles come to at least $164.57. Everything leaving is listed under what goes out.

The commander's first line is off for most of this box

Twenty-one cards in the 99 let you cast or play a card an opponent owns. I went through all of them, and they split cleanly in two.

Eleven say without paying its mana cost: Stolen Goods, Dazzling Sphinx, Arcane Heist, Smirking Spelljacker, Mind's Dilation, Diluvian Primordial, Silent-Blade Oni, Fallen Shinobi, Extract Brain, Villainous Wealth and Chaos Wand. Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion makes it twelve by a different route, charging life instead of mana. A discount is meaningless on all twelve.

That leaves nine that actually make you pay, and they're the only cards in the deck the commander's first ability ever touches: Gonti, Lord of Luxury, Predators' Hour, Cunning Rhetoric, Brainstealer Dragon, Heartless Conscription, Hostage Taker, Siphon Insight, Thief of Sanity and Dream-Thief's Bandana. Add the commander's own trigger and it's ten.

Now count the discounts aimed at those ten. Sage of the Beyond takes {2} off. Savvy Trader takes {1} off. Doc Aurlock, Grizzled Genius takes {2} off. Thieving Varmint taps for two mana that can only be spent on spells you don't own. With the commander that's five separate cost reducers built for ten targets, three of which are seven-drops you'll rarely reach.

One honest caveat, because three of those reducers are worded more broadly than the commander's. Sage of the Beyond, Savvy Trader and Doc Aurlock read "from anywhere other than your hand" or "from your graveyard or exile", so they also cover your own cards cast from outside your hand. In this box that's exactly two cards: Sage of the Beyond's own foretell and Siphon Insight's flashback.

So the fix isn't more discounts. It's more spells you pay for. Mnemonic Betrayal, Thada Adel, Acquisitor and Xanathar, Guild Kingpin all hand you a card with mana of any type rather than for free, and all three come in. Dream-Thief's Bandana leaves for reasons below, which takes the count from nine paid targets to eleven, plus the commander's trigger.

Fourteen combat triggers, and the card that doubles them

Felix Five-Boots is the best card in this box and it isn't the commander. It reads: if a creature you control dealing combat damage to a player causes a triggered ability of a permanent you control to trigger, that ability triggers an additional time.

Fourteen permanents in the 99 carry a combat-damage trigger. Dazzling Sphinx, Thief of Sanity, Cold-Eyed Selkie, Shadowmage Infiltrator, Ohran Frostfang, Edric, Spymaster of Trest, Cazur, Ruthless Stalker, Bladegriff Prototype, Trygon Predator, Orochi Soul-Reaver, Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion, Silent-Blade Oni, Fallen Shinobi and Dream-Thief's Bandana. The commander makes fifteen. Felix doubles all of them at once, and doubles the granted trigger from Predators' Hour and a ciphered Arcane Heist on top.

All of which is worth nothing if you can't get through. Of the 36 creatures in the box, ten fly, eight can't be blocked or effectively can't, and four have ninjutsu, which arrives already unblocked. Twelve have no way through at all.

The two best cards in the deck for this commander are its cheapest. Slither Blade and Triton Shorestalker are one-mana 1/1s that can't be blocked, and with the commander out, each one is a card off an opponent's library every single turn. They're the whole engine, and the box runs exactly two of them.

Changeling Outcast is the third, it's black rather than blue, and it can't block either, which costs this deck nothing because a 1/1 was never blocking anyway. Rogue's Passage pushes something bigger through for {4}. Thada Adel, Acquisitor brings islandwalk, which in a three-opponent pod is usually live against at least one of them.

Five draw spells in a deck that has to hit first

Five cards in the box draw you anything: Ghostly Pilferer, Baleful Strix, Shadowmage Infiltrator, Ohran Frostfang and Edric, Spymaster of Trest. Eight to twelve is the normal range for a hundred-card deck, so this is a real gap, and the box's answer to it is theft.

That answer only works when you connect, and it fails in exactly the spots you need it most. A board stall, an opponent with a wall of blockers, a turn where your evasive creature ate a removal spell. Those are the turns you'd like to draw a card, and they're the turns theft gives you nothing.

Two of the five already convert combat damage into cards, so the cheapest fix is more of that. Reconnaissance Mission is 29 cents and does what Edric does without giving your opponents the option. Toski, Bearer of Secrets does it again and is close to unkillable, though it attacks each combat whether you want it to or not, which is worth knowing before you cast it into four open mana.

Mystic Remora and Faerie Mastermind cover the other half, drawing off what opponents do rather than what you manage to push through. Waterlogged Grove is a land that turns into a card once you've stopped needing lands. That takes the deck from five draw effects to nine.

Eight spells leave, and the eighth ramp source goes with them

Three of these are seven-drops in a deck whose plan starts on turn one.

• Mind's Dilation ({5}{U}{U}). A seven-mana enchantment that does nothing the turn it lands, and what it eventually gives you is free, so every discount in the deck sits idle.
• Thieving Amalgam ({5}{B}{B}). Seven mana, no evasion, and it manifests rather than casts, so nothing it takes can be discounted either.
• Sage of the Beyond ({5}{U}{U}). Seven mana for a {2} discount in a deck that already has four. Doc Aurlock, Grizzled Genius does more of the same job for two mana and is already in the box.
• Oblivion Sower ({6}). Six mana, no evasion, and what it takes is lands.
• The Mimeoplasm ({2}{B}{G}{U}). A graveyard deck's card in a deck that doesn't fill graveyards, and it doesn't connect.
• Chaos Wand ({3}). Three to cast and four to activate, for one free spell. Seven mana a turn is the price of two of the cards I'm cutting for being seven-drops.
• Void Attendant ({2}{G}). Its Eldrazi Scions only appear when you put a card an opponent owns from exile into their graveyard, and that card is the one you spent a combat step stealing. It's a mana engine that eats the deck's payoff.
• Dream-Thief's Bandana ({2}). The commander gives this trigger to every creature you control, from the command zone, for no mana and no equip cost. The Bandana is a worse copy of a thing you already have.

Void Attendant is worth flagging as a genuine cost. It was the deck's eighth ramp source, and cutting it puts the upgraded list on seven, one below the range I'd normally want. I took it anyway because the curve fell further than the ramp did. Average mana value goes from 3.57 to 3.31, the six-plus drops from nine to six, and the one-drops from three to five. Seven ramp sources behind that curve is a better deal than eight behind the old one.

Three scry lands and a bounce land cost a turn each

Six lands in this box enter tapped no matter what. Four of them go.

Temple of Deceit, Temple of Malady and Temple of Mystery each buy one scry for a whole turn of tempo, in a deck that wants to attack with a one-drop on turn two and start stealing. Dimir Aqueduct is worse again, entering tapped and taking a land back to your hand on the way in.

Blooming Marsh and Botanical Sanctum are untapped for your first three land drops and tapped afterwards. This deck spends its entire plan inside those three turns, so the drawback arrives in the half of the game it cares least about. Waterlogged Grove is untapped from the first turn to the last and cashes itself in for a card once you're done making land drops. Rogue's Passage is the fourth, and it's there for the turn a Brainstealer Dragon needs to get through.

The two that stay have a reason. Fetid Pools cycles for {2} on a turn you don't need a land, which the scry lands can't do. Opulent Palace is the only land in the deck that produces all three colours. That takes lands entering tapped unconditionally from six down to two.

Two things get slightly worse and I'd rather say so than not. Black sources drop from 29 to 27, and the fastlands are conditional after turn three rather than before it. Neither moves the single-pip numbers below the 90% line, and the deck's double-black cards were already seven sources short in the box.

The printed cost on three of these is fiction

Fifteen cards in this box are the obvious cuts on paper: expensive, or slow, or off-plan. Nine of them are in the list above. Here's why the other six stay.

Silent-Blade Oni, Fallen Shinobi and Orochi Soul-Reaver read as a seven-drop, a five-drop and a six-drop. You will never pay any of those numbers. All three have ninjutsu, so their real costs are {4}{U}{B}, {2}{U}{B} and {3}{B}, paid by returning an unblocked attacker to your hand. A deck with eighteen creatures that fly or can't be blocked is precisely the deck that has an unblocked attacker every turn, and Fallen Shinobi in particular takes two cards for four mana.

Trygon Predator costs three, flies, and is the only repeatable answer to an artifact or an enchantment anywhere in the 99. Calling it conditional removal is fair on the card and wrong about this deck, which has no other way to handle a Smothering Tithe it can't outrace.

Fetid Pools and Opulent Palace are the two taplands argued for above.

What the twelve swaps moved

Every number here is the upgraded deck, not the box.

• Lands entering tapped unconditionally: 6 down to 2. Untapped lands 27 up to 29.
• Card draw: 5 up to 9, from below the normal range to inside it.
• Average mana value: 3.57 down to 3.31. One-drops 3 up to 5, cards costing six or more 9 down to 6.
• Cards the commander's discount applies to: 9 up to 11, plus its own trigger.
• Rogues: 13 of 37 creatures up to 15 of 37.
• Ramp: 8 down to 7, discussed above.
• Bracket floor: Bracket 1 either way. Nothing in the box and nothing I am adding is a Game Changer, so neither list pushes it higher.

That last one deserves a sentence the number doesn't give it. A Bracket 1 floor is what the card pool says, and this deck will still be the one at the table playing other people's cards, taking their turns apart with Xanathar, Guild Kingpin and emptying three graveyards with Mnemonic Betrayal. Grand Larceny plays hotter than its floor. Say what it does before the game rather than after.

The upgraded decklist

What you own once the twelve swaps are made. Hover a name for the card and its price.

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 Gonti's discount work on the cards Gonti steals?

Yes, and it's the interaction the rest of the box keeps failing to use. The trigger exiles the top card of a player's library face down and lets you play it with mana of any type. You don't own that card, so the commander's other ability takes {1} off it. The eleven cards in the box that say "without paying its mana cost" get no such benefit, because there is no cost left to reduce.

What bracket is Grand Larceny in after these upgrades?

Bracket 1 either way, because nothing in the box and nothing on my list is a Game Changer, so neither version pushes the floor higher. That number understates it socially. A deck that casts your cards, searches your library and empties your graveyard draws attention whatever the bracket table says, so tell the pod what it does before the first turn rather than after.

How much do the twelve upgrades cost?

$63.63 at market for default printings, against a box whose singles come to at least $164.57. The first four picks are $22.26 of that. Rhystic Study is the obvious card I left out: at $69.90 it costs more on its own than all twelve swaps together, and Mystic Remora at $12.77 covers a real share of the same job for a fifth of the money. If you already own a Rhystic Study, it goes in over Faerie Mastermind.

Should I play Grand Larceny unmodified, or swap first?

Play it as it comes for a few games, because resolving the theft cards is the fun part and you want to feel what the deck is trying to do. Then swap. Where it lets itself down is its own plan: five draw effects, six lands entering tapped and nine cards costing six or more mana, all in a deck that wants a one-drop attacking on turn two. The cheapest $3 on the list repairs more of that than the following $60.

Do I need Felix Five-Boots on the battlefield for the deck to work?

No, but it's the largest single swing the box contains. Fourteen permanents in the 99 carry a combat-damage trigger and the commander makes fifteen, and Felix doubles every one of them at once. Without it the deck still steals a card for each creature that connects, which is the baseline everything here is built on.

Can I play a stolen card on a later turn, or only the turn I take it?

It depends which card took it, and the box is inconsistent about this. The commander, Gonti, Lord of Luxury, Predators' Hour, Cunning Rhetoric, Brainstealer Dragon, Heartless Conscription, Thief of Sanity and Siphon Insight all say "for as long as it remains exiled", so those cards wait for you indefinitely. Stolen Goods, Fallen Shinobi and Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion are until end of turn. Hostage Taker holds its card only while Hostage Taker is still on the battlefield. Check the wording before you tap out.