Living Energy Precon Transformation | EDH to Canadian Highlander

Saheeli, Radiant Creator

| Illustrated by Ernanda Souza

Hey, nerds! My playgroup has recently gotten into Canadian Highlander. It scratches that competitive itch while still having a Commander-esque feel. Oh, and it costs $0 to get into!

If you haven't heard of the format before, it's 100-card singleton with no ban list, but instead a points system. Certain cards have a point value, and you can have a total of ten points in your deck. So cards like the original Mox are three points each, Ancestral Recall

The best part? Since it's a community format, proxies are 100% allowed! No need to drop hundreds of dollars on expensive staples to enjoy a competitive format. 

Okay, now that I've sold you on the format, how do you start playing? Picking a deck or trying to brew for a new format can be hard, especially with as deep of a card pool. Then you have to figure out which pointed cards you want to play also known as a point spread. And what theme do you want? But don't worry, that's where I come in.

I'm going to take this off-the-shelf Commander precon and turn it into a CanLander-ready deck for you and your friends to jam with. All we need to do is take 15 cards out and put 15 new cards in. 

The idea isn't to turn this deck into a competitive powerhouse. You need to make a lot more swaps than 15 to do that. This is just a starting point for you to explore the format and play causally with buds. But if you want to jump into the deep end, you can check out the Canadian Highlander website. 

Before we get into the swaps, there are some rules I'm following when making my swaps.

1. Price isn't a factor. As I've said, it's a proxy-friendly format, so just take a sharpie to a basic land. 
2. I'm not going to mention upgrading the mana base. Swapping out whatever bad duals are in the deck with OG duals, fetches, shocks, and surveil lands should be fine. 
3. I'm not going to change the color identity of the deck. While CanLander doesn't have a color identity rule like a commander. I want to keep with the idea that you just slide some paper in front of 15 cards and go, and adding another color means tweaking the mana base. Hybrid cards, like Deathrite Shaman
   , are the exception since you don't need to change the mana base to make them work. 

Okay, with all of the explanation out of the way, let's get into it! 

The Precon

Living Energy is a Temur midrange deck that uses energy cards to gain value from cards like Saheeli, Radiant Creator

The Point Spread

Let's start with the most exciting part, the point spread. The point spread is just the pointed cards in the deck. In this case, our points are Mox Sapphire

Urza's Saga became pointed about a month ago at the time of recording and is currently worth 1 point. The Constructs it makes can easily end the game on their own, especially when you tutor up Shadowspear, which I also added to the deck since we are running Sagas. Speaking of tutors, the next card I added is Tezzeret the Seeker.

This bad boy lets us tutor Aetherworks Marvel directly into play or can find us an artifact land or Mox for zero. Broadside Bombardiers is another powerhouse of the format that can turn our cheap artifacts into damage late game, or, if we are really lucky, we can dome someone for 13 by sacrificing Portal to Phyrexia.

Need More Energy!

To round out our energy package, I included Galvanic Discharge and Aether Spike as interaction. They're cheap and incredibly efficient in energy decks. Tune the Narrative is a cantrip which gives us more energy. Assaultron Dominator and Amped Raptor are early-game threats that can still impact the board late-game by giving our big creatures trample or giving us a free spell.

Blaster Hulk can hit someone for eight, or remove all of their blockers for a lethal attack. Finally, Aether Revolt is both burn and removal as we generate energy. If we gain four energy, we can ping something for four. If we have Revolt triggered, our noncombat damage is increased by two. 

Another One (Upgrade Option #2)

Before we get into the cuts, I wanted to share another 15 cards you might want to add instead. I won't always have two options, but I wanted to also build around Aetherworks Marvel. The point spread here is Tinker, Intuition, Mana Crypt, and Urza's Saga. I also kept Portal to Phyrexia, Galvanic Discharge, Tune the Narrative, and Tezzeret the Seeker.

Because I wanted to build around Aetherwork Marvel, I added Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and Blightsteel Colossus to cheat into play with Aetherworks Marvel and Nissa, Worldsoul Speaker. You can use Intuition to find Aetherwork Marvel, Trash for Treasure, and Daretti, Rocketeer Engineer to cheat Aetherwork Marvel into play.

The new Transit Mage can find us Marvel, too. Finally, Worldly Tutor can put Emrakul, Blightsteel, or whatever creature you want on top to cheat into play with Marvel. 

The Cut

We know what to add, but what about cuts? Let's start with the easy ones: anything that mentions a commander, so Command Tower, Path of Ancestry, Commander's Sphere, Arcane Signet, and Loyal Apprentice. Next, we can cut down on some of the ramp. Sol Ring needs to go because we don't have enough points for it.

Explosive Vegetation, Chromatic Lantern, Aetheric Amplifier, and Solar Transformer can all go, too. We can easily cut some of the more commander-focused interaction with Arcane Denial, Chaos Warp, and Reality Shift. Finally, I cut some of the big creatures: Aethertide Whale and Aetherwind Basker.

And there you have it! I would love to hear your thoughts on this series and if it helped convince you to try CanLander. If you already play CanLander, I'd love to hear how you think I could improve this deck and/or series. Alrighty, nerds, I'll see you in the next one!