Bracketology: Tweaking Your Decks for the Upgraded Bracket (3)

Jeff Girten • March 3, 2025

Deckbuilding
Akiri, Line-Slinger
 by David Gaillet

Welcome to Bracketology, a miniseries where I take existing Commander decks and see how they can fit into the newly announced Commander Brackets. This week, I'll be looking at two of my personal decklists and proposing some tweaks and substitutions to get them to match the game experience of the Upgraded bracket as described by Wizards.

For those of you who missed the announcement, the Commander Format Panel announced a beta trial of a new system to "create a common language to help people find well-paired games" consisting of five brackets:

The list of different bracket restrictions within the Commander bracket system's beta iteration. Image credit: Rachel Weeks
The list of different bracket restrictions within the Commander bracket system's beta iteration. Image credit: Rachel Weeks

Personally, I've had far too many "my deck is a seven" or "it's a lightly upgraded precon" Rule Zero conversations at my local game store, so these Commander Brackets offer a breath of fresh air. While I don't think they're perfect by any means (I think it's really hard to quantify the power level of highly synergistic decks), it's good to see that the Commander Format Panel is giving us a new tool to aid in pregame conversations.

The Upgraded Bracket (3)

I decided to start this series with the Upgraded Bracket (3) because it's where I imagine a good number of casual Commander players will end up. This bracket seems tailor-made for both homemade decks and upgraded versions of preconstructed decks.

The announcement article describes Upgraded decks as "souped up and ready to play beyond the strength of an average preconstructed deck" and notes that games "tend to be a little faster as well, ending a turn or two sooner than your Core (Bracket 2) decks. This also is where players can begin playing up to three cards from the Game Changers list, amping up the decks further."

The Game Changes list definitely complicates things further; it's a list of 40 (currently, anyways) cards that "dramatically warp Commander games, allowing players to run away with resources, shift games in ways that many players dislike, block people from play, efficiently search for their strongest cards, or have commanders that tend to take away from more casual games." Here's the list as shared in the announcement article:

It'll definitely be interesting to see how the Game Changers list evolves over time. There are some cards, like Necropotence

, Food Chain
, and Mox Opal
, that I feel are on-par with many cards on this list, but I also think the best way to pressure test the Game Changers is by experimenting with them and seeing how they play in reality.

The Game Changers definitely make building a deck with the new brackets more complicated, because they're an additional 40 cards to keep in mind in addition to the Commander Banned List, but they do help us begin to navigate the muddy waters between a game of all preconstructed decks and a cEDH pod. Let's dive into this week's decklists:

Deck #1: Akiri, Line-Slinger / Keskit, the Flesh Sculptor Artifact Tokens

For our first decklist this week, we're looking at my personal Akiri/Keskit Artifact Tokens list. The deck itself cares about getting a lot of artifacts, be they tokens or real cards, with cards like Academy Manufactor

and Thousand Moons Smithy
, and then trying to close out the game with haymakers, like Arcbound Ravager
 and Fathom Fleet Swordjack
.

It's always been a deck that I've struggled to categorize in terms of power level because it can get out to explosive starts with cards like Urza's Saga

, Akiri, Line-Slinger
, and Cranial Plating
, but it also loses HORRIBLY to Vandalblast
 and Farewell
.

I was also running two Game Changer cards in it when the brackets were announced: Bolas's Citadel

and Jeska's Will
.

Because it's running two Game Changers, this deck falls into the Upgraded Bracket (3) naturally without any changes. Removing Bolas's Citadel

and Jeska's Will
 could drop this deck down to the Core Bracket (2), but given that it's running so many cards that care about artifacts and that have synergies with them, it feels significantly more potent and explosive than the average preconstructed decklist.

Instead, I'm going to lean into the deck's aggressive playstyle a little more. The first thing I did was add a third Game Changer to the list. I ultimately settled on adding Trouble in Pairs

since the deck tends to run out of gas rather easily and I wanted to cut Trouble in Pairs
 from another deck to power it down.

Smothering Tithe

was another strong consideration for the third Game Changer since it generates so many Treasure tokens, but I opted for extra cards over mana for now. This is something I'll actively consider as I play more games with the deck over the coming months.

I could have opted to play my existing decklist as-is, but I'm trying to better distinguish my decks into brackets for now, so I opted to power the deck up and see if it can hang with other decks that fall into the Upgraded Bracket (3).

The next thing I did to help power this deck up just a bit was tweak the lands. By replacing lands that enter tapped, like Canyon Slough

, Temple of Malice
, and Nomad Outpost
, with ones that enter untapped, like Blood Crypt
 and Vault of Champions
, the deck is able to more reliably produce colored mana on curve. 

I did opt to add both Mox Opal

and Mox Amber
 into the deck as well. While neither of them are currently a Game Changer, I wouldn't be shocked to see if they eventually get added to the list since they can provide early, fast mana acceleration. Both also happen to work well in this particular deck since it's full of artifacts and both of its commanders are relatively cheap to cast.

Finally, I opted to add in Aetherflux Reservoir

as another win condition. The deck was already running Bolas's Citadel
 and Sensei's Divining Top
, so this allows the deck to have a reliable three-card combo to close out games on occasion. I don't run a lot of tutors, so this deck isn't going to be able to consistently assemble this combo, but it's good to have a powerful way to end the game in the list.

Overall, I think the revised decklist will be able to operate slightly more consistently and quickly and has an additional compact win condition compared to my original list. By changing about ten cards, I think this list now falls clearly into the Upgraded Bracket (3), but I'd be curious to hear your thoughts and other tweaks I should make in the comments below.

Deck #2: Chatterfang, Squirrel General Token Aristocrats

For our second decklist this week, we're going to look at my Chatterfang, Squirrel General token aristocrats decklist. This is a deck that loves to make a ton of tokens using Scute Swarm

, Tireless Tracker
, and similar cards that work well with Chatterfang, Squirrel General
. Then it closes out the game with cards like Mirkwood Bats
 and Nadier's Nightblade
 to drain our opponents' life totals.

My original list doesn't run any Game Changers, but it does have multiple dedicated tutors and has always been able to hang with decks that at least appear more powerful in the abstract. It runs a handful of three card combos, many of which use Chatterfang, and I've always found that it played too powerfully for casual pods, so I'm going to make a few small tweaks to make sure it falls solidly in the Upgraded Bracket (3).

There are three Game Changers I'm looking at potentially adding: Ad Nauseam

, Glacial Chasm
, and The One Ring
. I'm not sure that this deck really needs three Game Changers to fall into the Upgraded Bracket (3), but it does tend to run out of cards sometimes, so I'm adding Ad Nauseam
 and The One Ring
 to help shore up that weakness.

The deck was designed to have a lands sub-theme, so adding Glacial Chasm

in (which I want to cut from the Kirri, Talented Sprout
 decklist I featured on Plot Twist #21) adds another tool to the deck's toolbox. Glacial Chasm
 tends to slow the game down, but it does allow a deck like this one to stay alive and keep its aristocrats and token engines running.

Similarly, I also tweaked the deck's land base to be more streamlined and efficient. I added in eight fetch lands, like Prismatic Vista

and Verdant Catacombs
, to both help the deck reliably hit colored mana and add extra Landfall triggers for Scute Swarm
 and Titania, Protector of Argoth
.

Here's the revised decklist if you want to take a look. Compared to my original list, it seems like it'll still be very grindy, token-centric, and win with aristocrats-style cards, but it'll be a touch faster thanks to the upgraded manabase and have some powerful card draw to help close out the game. Part of me thinks this deck might be closer to an Optimized decklist, but only time and testing will tell.

How to Apply this to Your Own Decks

In going through this exercise, there were a handful of takeaways I came across that I'd recommend when optimizing your deck for the Upgraded Bracket (3):

Choose your Game Changers - I don't think every Upgraded deck must run three Game Changers, but I think it's a resource available to us in this bracket and will clearly define a deck's power level.

Review your win conditions - In this bracket, games can end "out of nowhere" after around turn six and can include infinite combos, so you'll want to make sure your deck has the ability to quickly and/or reliably end the game some amount of the time with something like Aetherflux Reservoir

or Craterhoof Behemoth
.

Pivot off of mass land denial - If you love Blood Moon

or Winter Orb
, the Upgraded Bracket (3) might not be right for your brews. Consider pivoting instead to effects like Citadel of Pain
 or Yurlok of Scorch Thrash
 that damage opponents who ramp quickly without explicitly denying mana or destroying lands.

Limit the extra turns - It seems clear that the Commander Format Panel wants to ensure every player gets a chance to play the game at the Upgraded Bracket (3), so if you're running extra turn spells, consider switching to cards like Alrund's Epiphany

or Karn's Temporal Sundering
 that exile themselves when cast as a start.

Look at optimizing your manabase - Being able to reliably hit your colored mana sources is one of the best ways to upgrade a preconstructed deck, so it's definitely on the table for Upgraded decks.

Till Next Time

For the next article in this series, I'm looking to adapt decklists for the Core Bracket (2). I have a couple of my own lists that I think fall into that bracket or can be tweaked to fit, but I'd love to hear from you about the changes you're making to your own personal lists that you're looking to adapt for the Core Bracket (2).

Here's a quick recap of what decks in the Core Bracket (2) look like: "The power level of the average modern-day preconstructed deck sits here. No Game Changers, two-card combos, or mass land denial. You shouldn't expect to be chaining extra turns together. Tutors should be sparse."

I hope you found this experiment in tweaking my decklists to fit the new Brackets system helpful! I believe it's really important to think through the choices we make in our decklists to help them fall into a particular bracket or power level, and that doing so can help us better describe what our decks due to enable better Rule Zero conversations.

Let me know in the comments below what tweaks you're making to either power up or power down your decks to fit them into the Upgraded Bracket (3). I'm also curious to hear what other changes you'd make to the two decks I featured this week to help it fit into the new bracket system.