Quick Draw precon upgrade guide

Stella Lee's copy ability taps her, and nothing in the other ninety-nine gives her haste or untaps her.

Stella Lee, Wild Card costs {1}{U}{R} and does two unrelated things. Her first line triggers on the second spell you cast each turn and hands you the top card of your library to play, and the box builds for that properly: 29 of the 61 nonland cards cost two mana or less. Her second line is the one that sells the deck. Tap her, copy an instant or sorcery you control, choose new targets if you want, but only once you've already cast three spells that turn.

That ability has two gates on it, not one. You need the third spell, and you need Stella untapped and past summoning sickness. The box spends all ninety-nine cards on the first gate.

What are the best Quick Draw upgrades?

In buying order. Thirteen cards, $75.72 at market for default printings, against a box whose own singles come to at least $127.11.

1. Thousand-Year Elixir ($14.80). It answers both halves of the problem in one card. Creatures you control can use their abilities as though they had haste, so Stella copies a spell the turn she lands, and {1}, {T} untaps a creature, so she copies a second one every turn after that.
2. Blasphemous Act ($0.93). The box has no sweeper of any kind. This one is printed at {8}{R} and costs {1} less for each creature on the battlefield, so at a four-player table with eight creatures out it's a one-mana reset.
3. Lightning Greaves ($4.71). Equip {0}, haste, and the cheap half of what the Elixir does. Note that the shroud stops the Elixir untapping her while she's wearing them, so move the Greaves onto something else once the Elixir is down.
4. Birgi, God of Storytelling ($29.81). Every spell you cast adds {R} that survives to the end of the turn, which is spell one paying for part of spell two. It's the most expensive card on this list and the only one aimed squarely at the third-spell requirement.
5. Baral, Chief of Compliance ($3.95). A fourth effect that takes {1} off every instant and sorcery, and a ninth Wizard for Kaza, Roil Chaser to count.
6. Harmonic Prodigy ($3.49). Six of the creatures in the upgraded list have a Wizard or Shaman trigger worth having twice, and this doubles every one of them.
7. Lightning Bolt ($0.65), Abrade ($0.29) and An Offer You Can't Refuse ($2.98). Three answers that cost one or two mana, so each of them is also spell number two.
8. Spirebluff Canal ($4.57), Stormcarved Coast ($2.54) and Riverglide Pathway ($5.57). Three lands that never cost you a turn, in place of two that always enter tapped and one that makes no coloured mana at all.
9. Talisman of Creativity ($1.43). A two-mana rock in both colours.

Cyclonic Rift and Rhystic Study are the two cards a stronger Izzet deck reaches for next, and neither is here. They cost $39.54 and $70.17, which is more than this whole list, and both are Game Changers, which moves the deck's bracket floor from 1 to 3. Everything leaving is listed under what goes out.

The commander has two gates and the box only builds one

Stella lands on turn three if the mana cooperates. She's summoning sick, so the earliest her copy ability can fire is turn four, and only on a turn you also cast three spells. After that she gives you exactly one copy per turn, because copying costs her tap.

Nothing in the box moves either of those numbers. No card in the ninety-nine grants haste to another creature. Three cards have haste of their own and none of them share it: Bloodthirsty Adversary, Kaza, Roil Chaser, and whatever Cursed Mirror copies. Nothing untaps a creature either. The closest the box comes is Leyline Dowser, and it runs the wrong way, because untapping it asks you to tap an untapped legendary creature as a cost. The legendary creature you most want untapped is Stella.

Thousand-Year Elixir fixes both gates in one card and it's the single best purchase on the page. Lightning Greaves fixes the first one for a quarter of the price.

Winged Boots stays, even though a lone equipment in a deck with 21 creatures looks like a card that wandered in from a different box. Ward {4} on a three-mana commander who has to survive a full turn cycle before she does anything is worth a slot here in a way it wouldn't be almost anywhere else.

Three answers to a creature, and no sweeper at all

The box can deal with a creature three times: Pongify, Chaos Warp and Curse of the Swine. There is no board wipe. For a deck that plans to sit behind Propaganda and cast cantrips until turn eight, that's the hole that loses games.

It's also the easiest hole to fill here, because in Izzet the fix and the game plan are the same card. Every piece of removal you add is an instant or a sorcery, which means it's also spell number two for Stella's first trigger and a spell toward the three she needs for the second. Lightning Bolt, Abrade and An Offer You Can't Refuse cost one or two mana each, and none of them competes with what the deck was already doing.

Blasphemous Act is the sweeper, with the caveat that this deck makes tokens. Talrand, Sky Summoner, Murmuring Mystic, Young Pyromancer and Third Path Iconoclast all leave bodies behind, and they all die too. It's a card for the games where you're behind, not one you cast on curve.

Volcanic Torrent stays, and its printed cost is misleading. Five mana for a sorcery reads badly next to four other five-drops that are leaving. What it actually does is deal X damage to every creature and planeswalker your opponents control, where X is the number of spells you've cast this turn, and it has cascade. Cast it as your third spell of the turn and the cascade makes a fourth, so it resolves for four to their board and nothing to yours. That's a one-sided sweeper whose size is set by the exact thing the deck was already trying to do.

Sixteen cards read your graveyard and one card shuffles it away

Count them in the box: Eris, Roar of the Storm, Haughty Djinn, Dig Through Time, Octavia, Living Thesis, Mizzix's Mastery, Smoldering Stagecoach, Bloodthirsty Adversary, Finale of Promise, Arcane Bombardment, Galvanic Iteration, Treasure Cruise, Deep Analysis, Radical Idea, Think Twice, Pteramander and Faithless Looting. Delve, flashback, jump-start, cost reductions and power that scales. Sixteen of ninety-nine.

Midnight Clock picks up an hour counter on every one of your upkeeps and, on the twelfth, shuffles your hand and your graveyard into your library. The draw seven is real. The cost is that it switches off a sixth of the deck at a moment you don't choose, in a box that already has 17 sources of card draw, which is the high end of normal. Tezzeret's Gambit goes with it, for a related reason. Proliferate only ever works on permanents and players, and this box has exactly one permanent that reliably carries counters: Midnight Clock, whose hour counters you would be speeding up. The other two candidates are a Pteramander you have paid to adapt and a Bloodthirsty Adversary you have paid to enlarge. Take the rider away and what's left is a four-mana draw two, in a box that already has 17 ways to draw cards.

The two cards that look worst on a curve are the two the graveyard pays for. Dig Through Time is printed at {6}{U}{U} and Treasure Cruise at {7}{U}, and delve means six exiled cards makes the first one {U}{U} and seven makes the second one {U}. Turn eight is not when you cast these. Turn five is.

Octavia, Living Thesis is the ten-drop that leaves and Eris, Roar of the Storm is the ten-drop that stays, for the same reason. Eris takes {2} off for each different mana value among instant and sorcery cards in your graveyard, and the upgraded list runs instants and sorceries at eight different mana values, so five different values in the bin drop her to {U}{R}. Octavia needs eight instant or sorcery cards there for a flat {8} discount, all or nothing, and the deck's own delve spells eat the pile she's counting. When she does land, her payoff is making a creature 8/8.

A land that cannot help cast the commander

The land base is close to fine. Thirty-eight lands, 14 Islands and 13 Mountains, and only two of them enter tapped unconditionally. The problem is narrower than "the mana is bad", and it's worth naming precisely.

Temple of the False God makes {C}{C}, and only once you control five lands. Stella costs {1}{U}{R}. That land cannot contribute to casting your commander on turn three, turn four or turn five, and when it finally does something it produces no coloured mana in a deck that wants two specific colours. Temple of Epiphany and Izzet Boilerworks each cost you a turn, and the Boilerworks charges a land on top of it.

Spirebluff Canal, Stormcarved Coast and Riverglide Pathway replace all three. The Canal is untapped for the first three turns and the Coast is untapped from the third onward, so between them they cover the whole game. After the swaps the deck has no unconditional taplands at all, red sources go from 28 to 31 and blue from 29 to 30.

What that doesn't fix is the double-pip maths, and it's honest to say why. Both colours still fall short of the count you would want for two pips by turn three. Niv-Mizzet, Parun is the reason, and no two-colour base built on 27 basics gets a {U}{U}{U}{R}{R}{R} card to a comfortable number. You aren't casting a six-drop on turn three regardless. The cards that genuinely want double red early are Arcane Bombardment, Elemental Eruption, Finale of Promise and Niv-Mizzet, and only Finale of Promise is a turn-three play.

Ramp goes down and the deck gets faster

Here's a number that looks like a mistake. The box has seven ramp sources, already below the 8 to 12 a deck at this curve usually wants, and after these swaps it has six.

That's because this deck doesn't ramp. It discounts. Four cards take {1} off every instant and sorcery you cast: Goblin Electromancer, Thunderclap Drake, Haughty Djinn and the newly added Baral, Chief of Compliance. Kaza, Roil Chaser taps to take {X} off the next one, where X is your Wizard count, and the upgraded list runs nine Wizards. With two of those effects on the battlefield the deck's 24 two-drops cost one mana each, and casting three spells in a turn stops being a five-land fantasy.

Birgi, God of Storytelling is the other half of it. Every spell you cast adds {R} that doesn't drain at the end of a step, so a turn that starts with two lands untapped can finish three spells deep. Storm-Kiln Artist is already doing a slower version of the same job with Treasures, and it triggers on copies as well as casts, which means Stella's ability pays for part of itself.

Harmonic Prodigy is the payoff the box is missing. It doubles the triggered abilities of your Wizards and Shamans, and six of them in the upgraded list have a trigger worth having twice: Archmage Emeritus, Talrand, Sky Summoner, Murmuring Mystic, Storm-Kiln Artist, Young Pyromancer and Guttersnipe. Each of those triggers twice while the Prodigy is out.

The swaps take the average mana value from 3.28 to 2.97, move the count of cards costing two or less from 29 to 35, and cut the five-drop slot from five cards to one. The bracket floor doesn't move. It was Bracket 1 out of the box and it still is, because nothing on either list is a Game Changer.

Four of the five five-drops leave, and the one that stays is the sweeper

Thirteen cards out. The five-mana slot is where most of them live, and after the swaps it holds exactly one card.

• Baral's Expertise. Five mana to bounce three permanents and cast a free four-drop. Bouncing three things at a four-player table buys a turn and gives the cards back.
• Crackling Spellslinger. Five mana for a 3/3 whose storm rider only pays off on a turn you were winning anyway.
• Pyretic Charge. The box runs Reliquary Tower so you can hold a big hand, then plays a five-mana sorcery that throws it away.
• Rousing Refrain. A ritual whose size is decided by an opponent's hand, on a card that wanted to be suspended three turns earlier.
• Octavia, Living Thesis. Ten mana, a discount that competes with delve, and an 8/8 at the end of it.
• Midnight Clock and Tezzeret's Gambit. Both argued above.
• Smoldering Stagecoach. Crew 2 taps creatures, and the box also runs Propaganda to stop combat happening. It wants an attack step this deck is built to avoid, and it charges you tapped creatures to get one.
• Forger's Foundry. Three mana for a rock that makes {U}, with the actual payoff costing {3}{U}{U} and a tap at sorcery speed.
• Leyline Dowser. One mana per card, filtered, in a deck whose whole problem is finding mana for the third spell.
• Temple of Epiphany, Izzet Boilerworks and Temple of the False God. All three argued above.

The upgraded decklist

Hover any card name on this page to see the card and what it currently costs.

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

How do you actually cast three spells in one turn?

By making the spells cost less rather than by making more mana. Four cards in the upgraded list take {1} off every instant and sorcery, and Kaza, Roil Chaser takes off {X} where X is your Wizard count. With two of those out, 24 of the deck's cards cost one mana. Birgi, God of Storytelling adds {R} on each cast and Storm-Kiln Artist makes a Treasure on each cast or copy, so a six-land turn is comfortably three spells deep.

Do these upgrades change Quick Draw's bracket?

No. The box has no Game Changers and neither does the upgraded list, so the floor stays at Bracket 1 and the deck is still a fair Bracket 2 game. That's deliberate. The two cards an Izzet deck normally reaches for next, Cyclonic Rift and Rhystic Study, are both on the Game Changer list and would push the floor to 3.

Is Quick Draw any good straight out of the box?

Out of the box it does exactly one thing, and it does that well. It has 17 sources of card draw, which is the high end of normal for a Commander deck, and three ways to answer a creature, which is the low end, with no board wipe at all. You will draw a great many cards and lose to the first big threat you cannot handle.

If I only buy two cards, which two?

Thousand-Year Elixir at $14.80 and Blasphemous Act at $0.93. The first turns the commander's copy ability on a turn earlier and lets you use it twice a turn, and the second is the sweeper the box does not contain. Take out Smoldering Stagecoach and Baral's Expertise for them.

Can you reliably cast Niv-Mizzet, Parun in this deck?

Not on curve, and the upgrades do not change that. Six coloured pips, three of each colour, in a deck with 27 basic lands. After the land swaps the deck has 31 red sources and 30 blue, which is short of what you would want for double pips by turn three, let alone triple. Treat it as a turn eight or nine card that ends the game when it lands, not as a six-drop.

What do all thirteen upgrades cost?

$75.72 at market for default printings. Birgi, God of Storytelling is $29.81 of that on its own. The remaining twelve come to $45.91, and the three cheapest of them, Abrade, Lightning Bolt and Blasphemous Act, cost $1.87 between them and fix the deck's worst structural problem.