Daily Deck Tech Vow: Upgrading Strefan's Preconstructed Deck

Here's our vow: Every workday ahead of the set's release, Insight is taking a quick look at another deck featuring the new cards from Innistrad: Crimson Vow. The Commander deck built around Strefan looks quite promising, but it could be considerably better—even on a budget!

strefan


is an interesting commander but not one that carries a game on its own. The card has just 2 toughness and an ability that requires it to attack before triggering. The passive ability is rather strong but not to the point where it makes Strefan a good commander by itself. One needs to combine both of Strefan's abilities with the right support to make the strategy pop. Fortunately, that's not very hard to do, even if the preconstructed deck comes up a bit short.

I can't help but feel that this deck has bad cards in literally every regard. Weak creatures, bad spells, unreliable mana rocks, you name it. It also attempts to do way too many things for a preconstructed deck. These are supposed to be cheap, which is why I would mostly rely on only a few of a commander's specialties. The following is my attempt of focusing on Blood tokens with a goal of reanimation, but not utilizing madness on top of that.


strefan strefan

Starting with the creatures, way too many of them are underwhelming. They either don't work with any of the deck's themes that well, or they just aren't powerful enough. Surprisingly, many great Vampires that aren't already in the deck come from the main Crimson Vow set. If nothing else, that makes upgrading the deck a no-brainer for the most part.

Some cards in the instant and sorcery department are also just painfully weak. Unfortunately, that especially goes for the reanimation options. and are cheap, yet absent.


Edgar's Awakening pyre of heroes

Even could prove a strong addition, provided she doesn't stay this expensive. You just never know with brand-new cards, especially unreleased ones. But there are many more unexpectedly cheap powerups that look great. and serve as great examples.

Finally, some lands and mana rocks like are just disappointing. Also, I'm sure everybody will take out and first. This is still a tribal deck, so I feel like is a must. If you have a slightly bigger budget, don't forget .

To make a long story short, here's what I would take away and add at a first glance. You should be able to get all the cards for under 100 euros. Should you have more breathing room, there are always things like and to consider, of course …


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Strefan's Rising Vampire Army, Upgraded
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Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily Cardmarket.