Upgrading the Quandrix Unlimited Commander Precon

Posted on May 28, 2026

Math is a notoriously difficult subject for a lot of kids growing up. Thankfully, Magic: the Gathering's school of math, the Green-Blue College of Quandrix on Strixhaven, is quite a bit easier to wrap your head around.

Quandrix is all about finding new ways to engage in the complexities of math, and physically manifesting those ideas. This leads to the geometric appearance of the Fractals - the fragmented mascots of Quandrix who take on a wide array of forms, depending on their size.

Only a few Quandrix cards make use of more complex mathematical concepts, much to my relief. Chief among these is Mathemagics and Zimone, All-Questioning. Instead, most of Quandrix's focus is on casting big spells and using them to make large Fractals or set off big effects. With huge threats like this, the math truly is for blockers.

Quandrix Unlimited

This leads me to talk about one of the latest batch of Commander precon decks from Secrets of Strixhaven, Quandrix Unlimited.

This deck sees fan-favorite character Zimone return once more with new card, Zimone, Infinite Analyst. This card, and the deck as a whole, embraces a rather unique concept that feels wholly Quandrix: caring about spells with in their mana costs.

As a result, this is a very different kind of precon than you might normally expect to see. There's a lot of ways to explore that focus in both gameplay and in deck-building, making for a very fun and interesting deck to upgrade.

Let's check out the list and then break down exactly why that is.

Quandrix Unlimited | Commander | Wizards of the Coast

Commander (1)
1 Zimone, Infinite Analyst

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Examining the Decklist

When I say this deck's theme is incredibly unique, I mean it. No Commander precon has ever been built with this concept in mind. Only Zaxara, the Exemplary, and maybe Magus Lucea Kane, even care about the theme directly.

When I think of cost-matters themes, my mind jumps to Rosheen Meanderer. However, in practice, her and her later incarnation Rosheen, Roaring Prophet basically just make more mana to feed into your cost spells. This is also kind of true for Troyan, Gutsy Explorer and Helga, Skittish Seer.

Naturally, this means there is a ton of space to explore with the concept. Several new Commander cards care about the theme. Not only is Zimone herself all about casting cost spells, but so are cards like Owlin Spiralmancer, Lattice Library, and Brass Infiniscope. Even one of the original Commander 2021 characters returns to help this theme in the form of Nev, the Practical Dean.

Much of other cards in the deck are cards that boast casting costs, ensuring you have plenty of ways to take full advantage of Zimone. In fact, by my count there are 31 of these spells throughout the deck, including the Adventure side of Elusive Otter and the Prepared spell on Striding Shotcaller.

If you were worried about whether or not you'll have enough cost spells to make the deck work, don't worry. You'll be just fine.

Since many cost spells care about +1/+1 counters, there's also a sub-theme of caring about more counters on your Creatures. This leads to the inclusion of cards like Hardened Scales and Ozolith, the Shattered Spire into the deck. These two cards also make something like Forgotten Ancient that much more fun as you can move counters around while also increasing their numbers along the way.

As you can probably imagine, this makes for a pretty fun deck right out of the box. If you're a new player, it's not difficult to pick up on the way your spells can scale based on how many resources you've accumulated. If you're a veteran player, it gives you the means to discover silly things to do throughout your games and has some great upgrading options as well.

Upgrading the Deck

That makes for a great segue into the crux of this article: upgrading the deck.

What makes this deck so much fun to upgrade is how challenging it is to do so. Some elements are much easier to build around than others, but there is one key aspect that makes it surprisingly tricky to upgrade. The cost-matters angle is a tough nut to crack.

The X Matters Problem

When talking about the cost-matters Legendary Creatures, I laid out about six cards. Additionally, when you consider this deck's new cards boasting this theme, that adds another five cards in total.

If you take a look at cards using this theme on Scryfall, what you'll find is that there are only twenty of them. That means, in the cards I've already covered for this article, I've talked about more than half of your options that directly deal with this theme. In addition to these cards, both Unbound Flourishing and Elementalist's Palette were reprinted into this deck.

All of this is to say that if you're trying to find cards that specifically care about costs, you're going to have a bad time. Only four other cards in this deck's colors seem to exist as of now.

Nexos is the most unique of the bunch. This card supercharges your Basic Lands and makes them all cast your cost spells for gigantic amounts of mana. The reason it wasn't included here is simple: it's from Warhammer 40,000, a Universes Beyond property that's difficult to reprint from. If you can get your hands on a copy, though, it's perfect for the deck's core strategy.

The other three cards are all from Secrets of Strixhaven and are conveniently left out to give players the opportunity to upgrade the deck on their own. Paradox Surveyor and Matterbending Mage should both be easy to acquire, as they're draft-fodder Uncommons that just so happen to care about this deck's theme.

The other is the Rare card Geometer's Arthropod, which lets you sift through your deck for more sweet cards as you cast more and more cost spells. Best of all, even though it's a Rare, it's also very cheap. Your local shop probably has a spare copy and even if they don't, you can buy a copy right here on CoolStuffInc for $0.49 (at time of writing).

More X Spells

While the deck lacks synergies for casting spells with costs, there certainly are a solid number of cost spells options to include. As of the time of writing, I've found roughly 225 cards with an cost that play well in the Quandrix color identity. Taking out the 31 spells in this list, that leaves you with around 194 options to choose from.

The most obvious effect this deck is lacking is tutors. Cards like Chord of Calling, Nature's Rhythm, Green Sun's Zenith, and Invasion of Ikoria are all great for this strategy. Precons are usually built with minimal tutoring effects to help newer players experience the deck better, but they're easy inclusions when upgrading.

Big draw effects are also great to have. The deck already contains copies of Hydroid Krasis, The Goose Mother, and Stroke of Genius, so you already have solid options. Why not add some more?

The flavorful Mathemagics will draw you absurd amounts of cards while Blue Sun's Zenith will give you a Stroke of Genius you can potentially cast multiple times a game. There's also the mighty Wan Shi Tong, Librarian if you're willing to get a little spendy.

Cards like Awaken the Woods and Pest Infestation give you really strong token generating options for a decent value. The latter is especially potent as it lets you blow up lots of Artifacts and Enchantments your opponents may have access to that you want to get rid of.

I also can't recommend the mighty Doppelgang highly enough. Why get simple 1/1 tokens when you can get exponentially greater amounts of any kind of permanent on the battlefield instead? This card was clearly left out of the deck for complexity issues, but it's a very strong and extremely flashy card that's well worth checking out.

Do More With Counters

One thing to note about cost spells is just how many of them care about +1/+1 counters in some way. The Fractals your deck makes will mostly come into play with a number of these counters on them. The various Hydras in the deck also use +1/+1 counters as a means to scale in terms of their power.

That being the case, you'll want to ways to make those counters go a lot further. Doubling counters, or at least handing out extra ones, is the obvious way to go. While cards like Hardened Scales and Ozolith, the Shattered Spire are already in the deck, there are still plenty of options for you to pull from.

Obviously, it goes without saying that Doubling Season is an easy include here, but there're plenty of less expensive options. For example, copies of Branching Evolution, Loading Zone, and Fangs of Kalonia are fairly easy to acquire.

You can also use cards like Vorel of the Hull Clade, Sazh Katzroy, and Ferrafor, Young Yew to double up counters on a single target. If you have money to burn, you can go pretty deep with the likes of Innkeeper's Talent, Scythecat Cub, and Bristly Bill, Spine Sower.

Proliferate also makes for a great way to add lots of counters. You won't double your counters every time you Proliferate, but you can increment your counters up on anything you want with each passing turn if you have a repeatable source of it. Speaking of which, there're a number of great options on that front.

Many Commander player probably knows about cards like Contagion Clasp, Contagion Engine, and Karn's Bastion. Each is basically a freeroll since they're all colorless. You can also make serious use out of Evolution Sage and Flux Channeler, especially since you can use them multiple times per turn if you build around them. Best of all, cards like Merfolk Skydiver allow you to activate a Proliferate effect whenever you want.

I'd also recommend trying some cards that grant keywords to your creatures with +1/+1 counters on them. Cards like Skatewing Spy and Tuskguard Captain are grant Flying and Trample. You can also use Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter to turn your Creatures with +1/+1 counters into mana dorks, or Zegana, Utopian Speaker to draw lots of cards. There are certainly some good rewards for leaning into this strategy a little more.

Ramp It Up

There is one other small element I wanted to mention briefly, though it probably seems obvious. The core deck is somewhat lacking in ramp options.

You have Sol Ring and Arcane Signet as mana rocks, in addition to your Commander. You even have nice reprints of Three Visits and Nature's Lore to help generate some extra mana.

Most of your other options, though, are somewhat pricey spells like Astral Cornucopia, Elementalist's Palette, Kami of Whispered Hopes, and Animist's Awakening. Several of those get better in the late game, but they don't help as much while you're setting up.

Simple ramp spells like Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, or Rampant Growth would be fantastic to give you a little more juice in the early game. Heck, even one or two one-mana Creatures like Llanowar Elves, Joraga Treespeaker, or Birds of Paradise would go a long way.

These are foundational to building a Commander deck, so there's not reason to go much deeper on ramp. However, if a key goal of the deck is to cast big spells as soon as possible, you should definitely throw in some strong low-cost ramp to help bridge the gap to your late game spells.

Is Quandrix, the Proof Worth Adding?

With the other Secrets of Strixhaven Commander upgrade articles, I've taken a look at the Colleges' namesake cards to see if they're worth adding to the deck. Prismari, the Inspiration was a slam dunk for Prismari Artistry while Silverquill, the Disputant couldn't cut it in Silverquill Influence.

So, where does Quandrix, the Proof land for this deck?

Honestly, Quandrix's is a bit more of a gray area compared to the others. Her Cascade ability will always trigger and is meant to benefit you more as you cast bigger spells. This would be a perfect match for a typical Green-Blue deck with only a handful of spells with costs. Those X-cost spells could land you some big hits and scale well into the late game.

In Quandrix Unlimited, however, this couldn't be farther from the truth. You see, if you Cascade into a spell with in its cost, if you choose to cast that spell then X will equal zero. Noiw, remember that the base deck has something like 30 cost spells in it. If you put Quandrix, the Proof into that pool of cards, you'll often just Cascade into another cost spell which would be worthless.

If, however, you choose to swap out some of these spells for other, non- cost spells, then her usefulness increases. It's a tough balancing act, but I'd say the more of the spells you cut, the more powerful she'll be.

Use your own discretion and see if she's worth playing. If nothing else, the card is fairly inexpensive, so it's an easy matter to try her for yourself.

Conclusion

Quandrix Unlimited does something different and wholly unique. That makes it both fun to play with but also a little tricky to build around. After all, there aren't many cost-matters cards for you to work with, so what can you do?

I think that's part of the appeal for Quandrix Unlimited. Try finding angles that will give you a fun experience without the strategy-specific payoffs. You might even find that Wizards will print more cards for you to upgrade your version of the deck further. Secrets of Strixhaven alone brought with it roughly eight new cards that care about cost spells, so it's only a matter of time before we see more.

Quandrix Unlimited is a great deck for players of all skill levels to pick up and play with. So, grab a copy and find cool ways to upgrade it that appeal to you!

Paige Smith

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