Mishra was the brother of Urza and the face commander of the Mishra's Burnished Banner precon. Let's take a look at this deck and make some upgrades while sticking with the retro theme that these decks helped to make possible.
Just like the Urza's Iron Alliance precon, the Mishra precon is very strong and was printed with all cards in retro frames. I purchased this deck and immediately scrapped it for parts, and I regret that. I remember I was at the first annual MTG Summit in Salt Lake City playing the week these decks came out. I was extremely impressed with this deck when others were piloting it. I did use the back up commander, Ashnod, as my first ever built from scratch retro commander deck.
Here is a link to the decklists from both Brothers War precons from the WOTC website.
10 Reprints That Should Stay In Your Deck
Outside of this quick list of 10 cards that will become staples, there were also several more mana rocks and lands that were printed in retro frames for the first time.
10 Cards To Cut
If you look through most of these cuts, you'll notice they're all about lowering our curve. If you played this precon, you'll know it takes a while to get rolling. The best thing we can do in this situation is speed it up. In addition to this group of cards having a pretty high mana value, several of them lack synergy with our strategy. The artifact creatures can't get copied by Mishra, Oblivion Stone will destroy our artifacts that we've worked so hard to build up, and Geth relies on our opponents having worthwhile artifacts in their deck. Muzzio would be okay if I didnt' just cut a majority of our higher mana value artifacts but I don't want to spend the mana to get something that I would maybe not play at that time. The effect is not cheap and is kind of slow. It pains me to cut Brudiclad & Ashnod because they are really cool cards but I had to make some cuts.
Upgrades
As far as what to put into the deck, opted to add efficient card draw, ramp, and protection. Mishra will paint a target on his back because he will provide so much late game value for you. For this reason, an auto-include should be a pair of magic shoes in Swiftfoot Boots. Since we will need to sacrifice our tokens at the end of turn, I figure Skullclamp will draw us 2 cards per turn if in play. In almost any deck where Skullclamp is included in it, it's the best card in the deck. I think that is the case in this deck as well. If you have ever played with the medallion cycle, you will know how much mana they can save you, our version of a medallion in this deck is Cloud Key. This can save us so much mana per turn. Mishra's Bauble is a flavor win while also providing us with synergy, a low curve and great card draw if we copy it. Ragavan is a card that I am adding to every deck I build now that includes red. I historically have forgotten that you can Dash him out, but that is what I'm going to start doing more. The problem I've run into is as soon as the table gets blockers, Ragavan is useless. With Dash you can keep him in your hand until you have a safe attack, Dash him out and return him back safely to your hand for the next opportunity. You can even copy the treasure he makes with Mishra if you don't have other targets around. Dack Fayden and hellkite Tyrant can steal your opponents artifacts and Hellkite Tyrant can provide an alternate wincon. BE CAREFUL with hellkite Tyrant on the battlefield though, it's probably one of the best targets in the game to steal or copy for an opponent because odds are, if you're playing it, you have artifact synergies. If it gets stolen it's gg. For that reason, I will only play it if I have a sacrifice outlet available. Goblin Welder is an old card that I adore, the art is great and the flavor text is even better. You can use it to sacrifice the tokens you create to get back key pieces in your graveyard. Or, you can mess with your opponents board state by causing them to sacrifice a strong artifact for scrap in their graveyard. I know that Cyclonic Rift is an obvious choice and I'm not proud of myself that I put it in a "10 cards to add" upgrade section because there is nothing clever about it. But, by putting it here, I hope to remind people that it is now available in retro frames and it has more synergy than Oblivion Stone because it leaves our board in tact. The other cool thing about Cyclonic Rift that most people don't know is that you can actually play it for just the 2 mana and bounce one permanent. Who am I kidding, it always costs 7.
Budget Upgrades
Typically, if you see Liquimetal Torque in a deck, you know there exists potential for shenanigans. I don't think there is a ton that we can do with it thats too crazy, but what we can do is use it to help out with our cards that have Affinity for artifacts. This card alone can reduce the mana cost of those cards by 2 if we have multiple to play. If we only have one, you might as well just tap it for 1 colorless. Imskir Iron-Eater, Thought Monitor, & Baleful Strix provide us with an aerial assault while drawing us cards when they enter the battlefield. Baleful Strix serves as a rattlesnake effect by making us a poor choice to attack, this will allow us to get into the later game where we can begin to accrue insane value from Mishra. It's strange seeing Toxic Deluge in a budget upgrade section, but here we are! Wizards has printed this card into the ground and the value has plummeted from what was once a $20 card. Take full advantage of this price when it's low. I really like Manifold Key in this deck as it can help us get in for lethal damage if need be, but it will also let us untap one of our artifact tokens from Mishra that we created and attacked with so we can still get value from it by using it's tap ability (Hedron Archive, Mind Stone, & Dreamstone hedron). Goblin Engineer does the best impression of Goblin Welder while saving you some money. That effect is just too good to not include in this deck.
This is a really fun deck to play, but out of the two precons from The Brothers War, I prefer the Urza deck. I actually found myself significantly more excited about Ashnod and will eventually do a deck tech on her. In this upgrade, we trimmed some of the fat and adding more ramp and card draw to help get us to a point in the game where we can become the threat. This deck did come with a lot of great cards, and a lot of legendary creatures so I do recommend picking it up and giving it a shot.
This is the Mishra decklist that I play.
With any upgrade, I recommend upgrading your mana base as the top priority and seeing how the deck plays from there. Here are a few other posts I've written that can help to steer you in the right direction with that.
If you are playing in a little bit more of a cutthroat meta, You can add in these three cards to lock your opponents out of the game. Either Vandalblast + Mycosynth Lattice or Karn + Mycosynth Lattice will win you the game but can lose you friends. Use with caution.
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