Last week I took on the challenge of building around Creatures called Archaics, which aren't brand new, but Secrets of Strixhaven (SOS) gave us enough to make for an interesting deck theme. This week I decided I would again take on the challenge of building not around an SOS legend, but around something else found in that set. This time I'm going to build around the Preparation mechanic.

Preparation is a new way Wizards of the Coast is giving Creatures additional abilities. In this case Creatures with a Preparation ability generally enter Prepared, and have a spell they can use as long as they are on the field and they are Prepared. The spell listed on their card is exiled as a copy and you can cast it from exile. Once the spell is cast, the Creature is no longer Prepared and cannot cast that spell until it once again becomes Prepared.

My first thought when picking a Commander was that I wanted to get value out of casting from exile. There aren't a lot of options, but in my search I came back with two. One of them was Prosper, Tome Bound, but my buddy Mike pointed out that Prosper cares about cards cast from exile and Preparation isn't exiling cards. That ability exiles a copy of the spell, not a card. That meant that I was going with the other pretty decent option for a deck built around Preparation spells.

Faldorn, Dread Wolf Herald is a three-mana 3/3 Human Druid in Gruul () colors with exactly the kind of party trick I'm looking for. Whenever I cast a spell from exile or a Land enters the battlefield under my control from exile, I'll create a 2/2 Green Wolf Creature token. I like Wolves, and I've always wanted to build Faldorn. He has one extra ability. For one mana I can tap him and discard a card to exile the top card of my library. I may play it that turn.

In a lot of my lower powered decks I build around themes and gameplans that are suboptimal. I don't yet know if building around Preparation in Red and Green is going to bring me all that much value, or all that many Wolf tokens. Even if it brings me a little extra value that's better than none and having modest aspirations is sometimes what lets a deck fit in at Bracket 2 tables. I'm not trying to break this mechanic wide open, I'm trying to find a fun way to get a little extra value out of it.

Being Prepared

"Be prepared to hold your liquor pretty well. Don't write naughty words on walls if you can't spell."

Be Prepared is a song off of the aptly named 1953 album Songs of Tom Lehrer. If you're not familiar with Tom Lehrer, you probably have no idea who Doctor Demento is, but if you like piano, along with dated yet still very funny lyrics, definitely look up Tom Lehrer on Youtube.

Today we're less interested in the comedy stylings of 1950's mathematics teachers and more interested in Magic: the Gathering. Be Prepared might be the Boy Scouts' solemn creed, but being Prepared is also a keyword that appears on dozens of Secrets of Strixhaven cards across all five colors. There's an argument that I should have just gone all in, run nearly four dozen cards with Preparation spells on them, and put Kenrith, the Returned King in the Command Zone.

The biggest benefit of playing around Kenrith would be that he has recursion, so I'd be able to bring a Creature with a Preparation ability back from the graveyard. I could probably run sacrifice outlets and infinite mana combos, and find a way to just outright win the game by looping the right Creatures with these additional spells tacked onto them.

Even if I didn't want to combo, which I don't, I could make sure I was in Blue so I can run Displacer Kitten. Every time I cast a noncreature spell, I'd exile a Creature with Preparation and return it to the battlefield. Many Creatures with Preparation abilities enter the battlefield Prepared, so Kitten is a fantastic support card for decks playing with this new mechanic. Displacer Kitten has even seen a recent spike in price, and I'm guessing that might have something to do with Secrets of Strixhaven.

If I were building in Blue or White I'd have lots of ways to blink my Creatures, but in Gruul I'm mostly looking at Artifacts for support. Conjurer's Closet is in the list and lets me blink a Creature on my end step. Sword of Hearth and Home is even better, giving equipped Creature +2/+2, and Protection from Green and White, and on combat damage I can exile a Creature I own, tutor up a basic Land, and then return both to the battlefield.

I'm also running Temur Sabertooth, a 4/3 Cat that can return a Creature to my hand for . If I do that, Sabertooth becomes indestructible until end of turn. I'll get to re-cast the Creature I bounced, which if it has an enter-the-battlefield Preparation ability means I'll get to cast that Creature's Preparation spell from exile again. Temur Sabertooth is a notable combo piece if you have Haste and a mana dork that can produce tons of mana, but in this deck it's playing a much slower, much fairer role.

I've got a half dozen Creatures in Red that have Preparation spells including Lightning Bolt (on Emeritus of Conflict) and Wheel of Fortune (on Naktamun Lorespinner) but four of them bring entirely new spells to the game. Of those new spells, Pigment Wrangler's Sorcery, Striking Palette, might be one of the best. For one Red mana I can copy the next Instant or Sorcery spell I cast.

If I use that on Maelstrom Artisan's Sorcery, Rocket Volley, I'll get to destroy two target nonbasic Lands. Strife Scholar's Sorcery, Awaken the Ages, creates two 2/2 Red and White Spirit Creature tokens, but I'll get four if I copy it.

Not all of these Preparation spells are worth getting excited about. Goblin Glasswright's Sorcery, Craft With Pride, costs one Red mana and just creates a Treasure token, so I don't expect I'll be copying that one anytime soon.

Moving into Green, things get a bit spicier. We've got staples such as Rampant Growth, tacked onto Studious First-Year, a 1/1 Bear Wizard. Infirmary Healer has an old X-costed lifegain spell from Beta, Stream of Life, as its Preparation spell. The most exciting new Preparation spell might be Bind to Life, a five mana Instant tacked onto Vastlands Scavenger. This spell will have me mill seven cards and then put a Creature card from among them onto the battlefield. I'm running over 30 Creatures so my chances are very good I'll hit something when casting Bind to Life.

The most exciting old spell in SOS might be Ancestral Recall, a one-mana Blue instant tacked onto Emeritus of Ideation. In Faldrorn's colors we've got to be talking about Yavimaya Bloomsage. This 2/2 Dryad Druid lets me cast a copy of Channel, a two-mana Green Sorcery that allows me to pay 1 life and add a colorless mana to my mana pool. Instead of entering play Prepared, I've got to jump through a few hoops to use this powerful spell. At the beginning of my end step I'll put a +1/+1 counter on target Creature I control, and if that Creature has seven power or greater, only then does Yavimaya Bloomsage becomes Prepared. That gives my tablemates a little time to deal with this before I can cast Channel and make a boatload of mana.

I've got a few tricks up my sleeve to try to get around the restrictions on some of the Creatures with more powerful Preparation abilities. Biblioplex Tomekeeper is a four-mana Construct that when it enters play can make Target Creature become Prepared or unprepared. I'm also running the Land Skycoach Waypoint, which has a three-mana tap ability that can make target Creature become prepared. These tricks might not amount to much, but with the right Creature in play it could make a huge difference.

A lower-powered build like I'm sharing today might not be able to win the game when it resolves Channel, but I would definitely be wary of anyone playing Yavimaya Bloomsage. Many higher-powered decks will just be able to attempt a win on the turn they resolve that spell.

Faldorn Support

Even with a focus on Preparation spells, I still want to load this deck up with some amount of spells and permanents that will support what I'm trying to do with him. For once I'm not running Possibility Storm, but I am running a healthy number of cards that either care about casting spells from exile, or that actually have a way to be cast from exile.

For four mana, Advanced Reconstruction might seem underwhelming. This Enchantment will have me mill a card and then exile a random card from my graveyard and I can play the exiled card that turn. If I pay to level it up, at Level 2 whenever one or more cards leave my graveyard it will deal 2 damage to each opponent. For another two mana I'll get to Level 3, where Spells cast from anywhere other than my hand will cost less to cast. That's great for casting Prepared spells, though it might not be worth paying a total of eight mana.

At six mana, Nalfeshnee is a 4/6 Flying Beast Demon with a great party trick. Whenever I cast a spell from exile I'll copy it. I may choose new targets for the copy, and if it's a permanent spell the copy gains Haste and gets sacrificed on the end step. I'm playing Nalfeshnee to get additional copies of my Preparation spells, but it will work for a few other things in today's list as well.

One of my best support cards is likely to be Passionate Archaeologist, a Background Enchantment that will give my Commander a sweet new ability. When it's in play Commander Creatures I own have "Whenever you cast a spell from exile, this Creature deals damage equal to that spell's mana value to target opponent."

I'm running a few spells with Cascade, including Bloodbraid Elf, Call Forth the Tempest, and Natural Reclamation, along with Wild-Magic Sorcerer, which will give the first spell I cast from exile each turn Cascade. I've also got Beanstalk Giant, Tlincalli Hunter, Two-Handed Axe, and Virtue of Strength, all of which have an Adventure mode and can then be cast from exile as a permanent.

The most exciting way to cast a spell from exile might be the new spells with Paradigm. These spells get exiled when they resolve, and at the beginning of each of my first main phases going forward I'll have the chance to cast a copy of it from exile without paying its mana cost.

These Paradigm spells are nothing to sneeze at. The five-mana Germination Practicum will have me put two +1/+1 counters on each Creature I control. The seven-mana Improvisation Capstone will have me exile cards from the top of my library until I exile cards with total mana value of four or greater, and then I'll be able to cast any number of those spells without paying their mana costs.

What does all that casting from exile mean?

Wolves, Wolves, Everywhere

Faldorn may like all of these cards with the Preparation mechanic, but he loves wolves. I've got a few ways to turn a few wolves into a big pack, starting with Hollowhenge Overlord, a 4/4 Wolf that will have me make a 2/2 Green Wolf Creature token for each Creature I control that's a Wolf or Werewolf. It triggers on my upkeep, and I'm also playing Second Harvest, a four-mana Instant that can double my tokens.

I decided to leave token doublers like Parallel Lives and Doubling Season out so that I could lean even harder on my cast-from-exile theme, but a more traditional Faldorn deck could probably run all of those staples along with Wolf anthems. I considered leaning even more into Cascade as a theme, but chose to cut Apex Devastator and not run Apex Altisaur and a few other cards with that powerful keyword. My ultimate goal was to build a deck that could play with this new Preparation mechanic and be able to hang at Bracket 2 tables.

Faldorn, Dread Wolf Herald | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Faldorn, Dread Wolf Herald

• Creatures (30)
• 1 Beanstalk Giant
• 1 Biblioplex Tomekeeper
• 1 Blazing Firesinger
• 1 Bloodbraid Elf
• 1 Bonehoard Dracosaur
• 1 Champion of Lambholt
• 1 Craterhoof Behemoth
• 1 Emeritus of Abundance
• 1 Emeritus of Conflict
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Goblin Anarchomancer
• 1 Goblin Glasswright
• 1 Hollowhenge Overlord
• 1 Infirmary Healer
• 1 Maelstrom Artisan
• 1 Naktamun Lorespinner
• 1 Nalfeshnee
• 1 Pigment Wrangler
• 1 Plargg and Nassari
• 1 Regal Force
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Springbloom Druid
• 1 Strife Scholar
• 1 Studious First-Year
• 1 Temur Sabertooth
• 1 Tlincalli Hunter
• 1 Vastlands Scavenger
• 1 Wild-Magic Sorcerer
• 1 Wood Elves
• 1 Yavimaya Bloomsage

• Instants (7)
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Chaos Warp
• 1 Collective Resistance
• 1 Heroic Intervention
• 1 Natural Reclamation
• 1 Return of the Wildspeaker
• 1 Second Harvest

• Sorceries (14)
• 1 Bala Ged Recovery
• 1 Blasphemous Act
• 1 Call Forth the Tempest
• 1 Escape to the Wilds
• 1 Ezuri's Predation
• 1 Germination Practicum
• 1 Hull Breach
• 1 Improvisation Capstone
• 1 Nature's Lore
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Rishkar's Expertise
• 1 Shamanic Revelation
• 1 Shared Roots
• 1 Three Visits

• Enchantments (5)
• 1 Advanced Reconstruction
• 1 Beastmaster Ascension
• 1 Growing Rites of Itlimoc
• 1 Passionate Archaeologist
• 1 Virtue of Strength

• Artifact (5)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Blackblade Reforged
• 1 Conjurer's Closet
• 1 Sword of Hearth and Home
• 1 Two-Handed Axe

• Planeswalker (1)
• 1 Garruk, Primal Hunter

• Lands (37)
• 13 Forest
• 13 Mountain
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Hidden Nursery
• 1 Hidden Volcano
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Rockfall Vale
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Skycoach Waypoint
• 1 Spire Garden
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 1 Wooded Foothills

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If you wanted to power this list down, I think you'd be looking at dropping out some of the better finishers, like Beastmaster Ascension and Craterhoof Behemoth, and leaning into the cast-from-exile theme even more. You might also drop out cards like Call Forth the Tempest and Sword of Hearth and Home. You could load in a more budget friendly mana base but this is already a fairly low powered, low budget brew.

To push this list up in power I'd be more discriminating about which Adventure and Preparation spells I was running. I think the best build for a Faldorn Preparation EDH deck would look to make infinite mana, use Temur Sabertooth as a combo piece with a Haste enabler and a big mana dork, and then use a Preparation Creature to make infinite Wolf Creature tokens. Since you've already got a Haste enabler for the combo you don't need to worry about using a card like Impact Tremors. You can just swing for the win once your huge Wolf army is in place.

Early Results

I was able to get this list into a low powered game in my Thursday night Tabletop Simulator group and was impressed with the results. I was up against a Bracket 2 Dina, Soul Steeper deck, a Captain Rex Nebula Vehicles deck and a Morophon, the Boundless deck themed around Scientists.

I was able to play Rampant Growth on turn two, Faldorn, Dread Wolf Herald on turn three, and Germination Practicum on turn four. The game ended up revolving around Germination Practicum, as it synergized beautifully with Faldorn. I'd get a 2/2 Wolf token when casting it from exile at the start of my first main phase, and when it resolved each of my Creatures would get two +1/+1 counters.

My opponents were doing stuff, but the scariest board other than my own was the Morophon player's because they had so many low-cost changelings and Scientists in play. They were also playing cards that had references that sounded like they would belong in a Scientist themed deck, but other than a lot of blockers they weren't a serious threat.

I drew into and played Hollowhenge Overlord, which for a brief moment looked like it was going to let me truly spiral out of control, but the Dina player smartly nipped that in the bud, using Snuff Out to send it to the graveyard before I could get more than one upkeep's worth of additional tokens.

The Morophon scientists deck played out Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student and flipped her into Tamiyo, Seasoned Scholar. The prospect of my buddy who loves drawing cards getting to draw half of his library inspired me to send nearly all of my Wolf army at him, figuring he'd have to block and would lose a lot of his board. I was correct, though Tamiyo never got that close to that -7 final ability. He had been down near 20 life because he kept paying life into Black Market Connections modes, and my attack send him down near 10.

I ended up playing Garruk, Primal Hunter and just using it to draw nine cards instead of upticking it to make a Beast token. That draw didn't include any Lands, but set me up nicely for the end of the game. The Dina player had some lifegain / life drain cards in play but their deck wasn't packing any Dina combo pieces as it was meant for Bracket 2 play. I ended up as the clear threat, but before anyone could do all that much I was able to play Second Harvest to make nine additional Wolf tokens, dinging everyone for nine, killing the Morophon player, and sending the Dina player's life total up over 50.

WIth just two players left, but a massive board of relatively big Wolf tokens, I was able to win with an alpha strike powered by Return of the Wildspeaker. My already big Wolf tokens each got +3/+3 and that was it. Dina had two blockers and I sent something like eleven 7/7 Wolf tokens and three 11/11 Wolf tokens at him, along with sending Faldorn at the Captain Nebula player with enough Commander damage to finish him off.

The deck might have been the strongest at the table, but I didn't expect that to be the case going into the game. I think it can probably play at Bracket 3 tables, though a single game isn't a good sample size. It might just as easily have games where not that much goes right and you make a few tokens but fail to keep up with the other players in the pod.

Final Thoughts

Just because I'm not playing as much combo these days doesn't mean I don't think it's a lot of fun. The process of assembling a combo and the tension in the turn before you "go off" can be exhilarating, and it's a fine way to win games in higher bracket play. If you're looking at enough pieces and it isn't too early, it's fine in Bracket 3 as well. I've just seen enough games end by combo and by combat to know that I'd usually prefer the latter if I have a choice.

Preparation as a mechanic really does seem to be begging to be used as a combo piece for winning when you've made infinite mana and have a way to blink or bounce Creatures as much as you want. I'm sure it will play well at all power levels, but my inner Spike always finds me looking for ways to break new cards and keywords.

My sample game saw nearly everything go well, though I did lose my Hollowhenge Overlord before it really put in much work. As it turned out, I didn't need it. It felt good to get the win, but less good to feel like I might have been playing the strongest deck at the table. Bracket 2 and 3 pods can easily have games like that, as variance tends to go up as power levels go down. Consistency is one of the things that makes good decks great, so when you're aiming a little lower it's much easier to see a bigger swing in how well or how badly your deck plays.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!