Spirit Squadron precon upgrade guide

Five Spirits on the battlefield make Millicent cost two mana, and her token trigger still ignores every Spirit that is itself a token.

Millicent, Restless Revenant is a seven-mana flier with affinity for Spirits, so the tokens this deck makes by the handful are what cast her. Her other ability is stricter. It fires when she or another nontoken Spirit you control dies or deals combat damage to a player, which means a token can make her cheaper and can never pay her a token back.

The box understands the first half and mostly ignores the second. It has 24 Spirit cards besides her to do the paying. It also spends four slots on cards that work against the table you are building, one of which bounces your own tokens out of existence, and it asks for two coloured pips in each colour from 27 sources.

Ten swaps fix that for $7.40, and none of the ten is a Game Changer, which leaves the floor at Bracket 1.

What are the best Spirit Squadron upgrades?

Every price here is the lowest one for a released printing, so a promo can set it. Dated October 2026.

1. Spectral Procession ($0.16). Three 1/1 flying Spirits for {W}{W}{W}. That is three of the five Spirits it takes to make Millicent cost {W}{U}.
2. Selfless Spirit ($0.52). A two-mana flying Spirit that is a card, not a token, and sacrifices itself to make your whole team indestructible.
3. Sublime Archangel ($2.25). Every creature you control gains exalted, so Millicent attacking alone grows by one for each creature you have.
4. Council's Judgment ($0.40). Removes whichever nonland permanent the table votes for, and ties exile every tied permanent.
5. Path to Exile ($0.81). One mana, exile a creature. Its controller may fetch a basic land, tapped.
6. Counterspell ($2.21). A two-mana counter that replaces one that lets the caster draw two cards.
7. Intangible Virtue ($0.16). Spirit tokens become 2/2 fliers with vigilance.
8. Glacial Fortress ($0.20), Seachrome Coast ($0.36) and Adarkar Wastes ($0.33). Three untapped-most-of-the-time dual lands in place of two colourless ones.

Which ten cards leave to make room is argued in the cuts section, and the full list is at the bottom.

Tokens cheapen Millicent, and cards pay her

Affinity for Spirits takes {1} off the generic part of {5}{W}{U} for each Spirit you control. It does not care what kind of Spirit, so tokens count in full, and a fifth Spirit leaves her at {W}{U}. A sixth takes nothing more off.

The trigger is the narrow half. Hanged Executioner makes a token when it enters, and that token dying will not pay you anything. Hanged Executioner himself dying will. The same goes for every Spirit that is a card. The box has 24 besides her and the upgraded list still has 24, counting Mirror Entity, which is a changeling and therefore a Spirit too. Seven of them cost two mana or less in the upgraded list: Remorseful Cleric, Ghostly Pilferer, Rattlechains, Shacklegeist, Supreme Phantom, Spectral Sailor and Selfless Spirit.

So the plan has two jobs. Tokens get her onto the battlefield early, and nontoken Spirits do the paying once she is there. Angel of Flight Alabaster joins the two. At your upkeep it returns a Spirit card from your graveyard to your hand, and after a sweeper that card can be Millicent herself.

Spectral Procession is the best fit for the first job. Its mana value is 6 on paper, because each hybrid symbol counts as two, so it sits at the top of every curve even though three white mana casts it. That also makes it a target for Spectral Arcanist, which recasts an instant or sorcery from your graveyard for free if its mana value is no more than your Spirit count. With six Spirits out, a second Procession costs nothing.

Selfless Spirit makes the sweepers one-sided

Kirtar's Wrath and Fell the Mighty are the box's two destroy sweepers, and both normally kill your own board. Cast either one, then sacrifice Selfless Spirit with the spell on the stack. The ability resolves first, so by the time the sweeper does, your creatures are indestructible for the turn and everyone else's are not.

It also pays for itself. Selfless Spirit is a nontoken Spirit, so if Millicent is on the battlefield its sacrifice makes you a token. Kirtar's Wrath with seven or more cards in your graveyard destroys everything and then gives you two more 1/1 fliers. Fell the Mighty never destroys its own target, so pointing it at a token is the usual play, and Millicent's 4 power is more than a 1/1's. Without the Spirit she dies to it, and with the Spirit she doesn't.

One attacker, and what it adds up to

Sublime Archangel is the card in the list that argues with the rest of it. A go-wide deck normally attacks with everything, and exalted only works when one creature attacks alone. Millicent is the creature to send. With eight creatures on your side, her and the Archangel included, she attacks as a 12/12 flier, which is lethal commander damage in two hits rather than the six it takes at 4 power. She also makes a token for each of those hits.

Intangible Virtue goes with it. Tokens become 2/2, which matters most with Supreme Phantom and Drogskol Captain on the table, since a token then reads 3/3 or 4/4. A 2/2 token still has power 2 or less, so Mentor of the Meek keeps drawing you a card for {1} each time one arrives.

The four cards that pay the table, and six that just aren't doing the job

Kami of the Crescent Moon makes every player draw an extra card at the start of their draw step. In a four-player game that is three opponents drawing an extra card every turn, and it is also the dearest single card in the box, at $7.74. Arcane Denial counters a spell and lets its controller draw up to two cards for it, in exchange for one card for you. Benevolent Offering gives you three 1/1 fliers and the opponent you choose three more, then gains an opponent 2 life for each creature they control. Flood of Tears returns every nonland permanent to its owner's hand, and a token that reaches a hand stops existing, so it erases every Spirit token you control along with whatever it sends back for the other players.

Council's Judgment is the best of the new cards for a table game. Each player votes for a permanent you don't control, and every tied permanent is exiled, so a four-player vote can take several.

Boreas Charger only fetches lands when it leaves the battlefield and an opponent controls more of them than you, which is a lot to ask of a three-mana Pegasus. Custodi Soulbinders asks {2}{W} for each Spirit after you pay four to cast it, and only as many times as it has counters. That is the price of Spectral Procession for a third of the result. Sudden Salvation needs a permanent to have gone to a graveyard that turn, and anything of an opponent's that it returns goes back under their control. Commander's Sphere is the eighth mana rock in a deck that already has seven others, and the new lands replace it, so the deck keeps 43 mana sources overall.

The non-Spirits and the two Auras that look like cuts

Nine of the box's creatures are not Spirits, and most of them look like cuts. Four are worth defending by name.

Mentor of the Meek draws a card for {1} when another creature you control with power 2 or less enters, which covers nearly every Spirit token you will make, since only Oyobi's are bigger. Hallowed Spiritkeeper is an Avatar that makes a Spirit for each creature card in your graveyard when it dies. Priest of the Blessed Graf makes a Spirit at your end step for each opponent who controls more lands than you, so it is strongest early and quiet once you have caught up. Donal copies the first nonlegendary flying creature spell you cast each turn as a 1/1 Spirit token, and the upgraded list has 19 of them.

Imprisoned in the Moon and Darksteel Mutation look like clumsy removal for a go-wide deck. They are two of only six ways in the list to deal with a single creature, and Darksteel Mutation leaves an indestructible 0/1, which a destroy-based sweeper will not clear.

Mana: three lands in, two out, and still short on pips

The box has 27 sources of each colour. Spells asking for two white pips want 36 sources to have a 90% chance of casting them on turn three, and the same is true of blue. At 27 each the odds are 76.4%. Temple of the False God and Myriad Landscape cannot help, because one makes colourless mana only once you control five lands, and the other enters tapped and makes colourless mana as well.

Glacial Fortress enters untapped when you control a Plains or an Island, and the box has 23 basics plus Prairie Stream, which is both types. Seachrome Coast is untapped for your first three lands. Adarkar Wastes is always untapped and costs 1 life when you ask it for a colour. Together they cost $0.89, and they raise each colour to 28 sources and the two-pip odds to 78.5%. That is better, not fixed. Council's Judgment and Sublime Archangel add white double pips and Spectral Procession wants {W}{W}{W} at its cheapest, so I would not pretend the swap makes the deck's mana smooth.

Lands that always enter tapped go from four to three. Hallowed Fountain ($7.41) is the cleanest dual of this kind and costs eight times as much as the three combined, so it did not make the list.

Name Spirit twice

Two cards make you choose a creature type: Distant Melody and Unclaimed Territory. Name Spirit on both. Spirits are 25 of the upgraded deck's 33 creatures, Millicent among them, and the next largest type, Cleric, covers seven. Unclaimed Territory then taps for any colour, but only to cast creature spells of that type, so it pays for Millicent in either of her colours and for every Spirit in the deck. Distant Melody counts every permanent you control of the chosen type, tokens included.

What changed, and what stayed out

Average mana value goes from 3.27 to 3.19, and that figure counts Spectral Procession at 6. Lands rise from 35 to 36 and creature answers from four to six. The bracket floor does not move: Spirit Squadron is Bracket 1 in the box and Bracket 1 after ten swaps.

Three skipped cards deserve a word. Rhystic Study ($65.68) and Smothering Tithe ($56.23) are both Game Changers, and either one would lift this deck out of Bracket 1 on its own. Anointed Procession ($55.87) would double every token Millicent makes, but it costs more than seven times what the ten swaps do. Geist-Honored Monk ($0.28) makes two Spirits and is as large as your board, and it would be the first card I added if you want an eleventh swap.

The ten adds come to $7.40. Kami of the Crescent Moon ($7.74) and Arcane Denial ($2.48) are two of the box's three most valuable cards, so at market price they more than cover the adds. All prices are from October 2026, and every other number on this page comes from resolving the shipped decklist for this deck.

The upgraded decklist

The full 100 is below with the ten swaps applied, grouped the way the deck builder groups it. Hover any name to see the card, its price and where to buy it.

Load into the deck builder Copy decklist Playtest the upgraded deck

“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, with no account needed.

FAQ

Do Spirit tokens trigger Millicent?

No. She triggers when she or another nontoken Spirit you control dies or deals combat damage to a player, so a token dying or connecting does nothing. Tokens still count for her affinity, which is why the deck wants plenty of them early and wants its 24 Spirit cards on the battlefield when she arrives.

How cheap can Millicent get?

Two mana. Affinity for Spirits takes {1} off the generic part of her {5}{W}{U} for each Spirit you control, tokens included, so five Spirits leave only {W}{U}. Seven Spirits in the upgraded deck cost two mana or less, and Spectral Procession puts three on the table for {W}{W}{W}.

Does Kirtar's Wrath still belong in a token deck?

Yes, because Selfless Spirit turns it into a one-sided sweeper. Cast Kirtar's Wrath, sacrifice Selfless Spirit in response, and your creatures are indestructible when it resolves while everyone else's are not. With seven or more cards in your graveyard it also leaves you two 1/1 fliers.

Why isn't Rhystic Study or Smothering Tithe in the swaps?

Both are on the Game Changer list, and the deck has none today, so either one lifts the bracket floor by itself. They also cost $65.68 and $56.23 at their cheapest printings, against $7.40 for all ten swaps here. If you already own them, play them and recheck the bracket.

Is Spirit Squadron worth buying for its cards alone?

The hundred cards come to about $59 at TCGplayer market prices, and the two dearest are Kami of the Crescent Moon at $7.74 and Ghostly Prison at $6.42. Kami is one of the cuts here, and with Arcane Denial at $2.48 it sells for more than the ten adds cost together, which is $7.40. Prices are from October 2026 and move.

Which creature type should Distant Melody and Unclaimed Territory name?

Spirit for both. Twenty-five of the upgraded deck's 33 creatures are Spirits, and Millicent is one of them. The next largest type, Cleric, covers seven creatures. Distant Melody also counts Spirit tokens, so it draws more the more of them you have.