12, Nov, 21

Best Upgrades for MTG’s Spirit Squadron Commander Deck

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Do you consider yourself an aficionado of specters, geists, and everything supernatural? Well, there’s a new MTG Commander deck themed around exactly that: spirits.

Spirit Squadron is one of two new preconstructed Commander decks to be released alongside Innistrad: Crimson Vow. With Millicent, Restless Revenant leading the charge, this deck aims to make massive armies of flying spirits to overwhelm your opponents. While the deck is playable out of the box, there are always ways to upgrade these preconstructed decks.

In this article, we will look at both budgetary and non-budgetary cards you can buy to spruce up your Spirit Squadron Commander deck. The best part about this spirits deck is that many of its upgrades are reasonably priced. This makes Spirit Squadron a great deck for any player on a budget.

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Budget Upgrades (under $5.00)

Guardian of Faith

Millicent, Restless Revenant is really good at developing wide board states with tons of spirit creatures. While our commander does provide some bounceback against opposing mass-removal spells, giving us 1/1 Spirit tokens for each of our nontoken spirits that die, all of our best creatures will still die in the face of a board wipe.

Guardian of Faith helps out with that. You can flash it into play in response to an opponent casting Wrath of God and save our entire battlefield of creatures. Yes, Guardian of Faith will die, but that’s a small price to pay to phase out all of our creatures (including Millicent’s tokens) until our next turn.

Read More: Modern Spirits Get SPOOKY Good Upgrade From MTG Crimson Vow

Court of Grace

The monarch mechanic is one of my favorite in all of Magic: the Gathering, instantly creating a sub-game of King of the Hill where players compete for a singular “card-drawing crown”.

But it always feels bad when the crown gets taken from you. Well, in a deck where all of our creatures fly, we can easily take back the crown.

Court of Grace not only begins the monarch cycle with you, but it fits with the spirit theme of our deck, making a 1/1 Spirit token with flying every upkeep. If we’re the monarch, Court of Grace gets even better; although it stops making 1/1 spirits that work with Millicent, I’d much rather get a massive 4/4 angel every turn.

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Celestial Kirin

Wizards of the Coast

Celestial Kirin gives our deck access to a unique, repeatable board wipe effect. Every spirit we cast destroys all permanents on the battlefield equal to our spirit’s mana value. It is worth noting that this effect happens before our spirit resolves. For example, if we cast a Bygone Bishop, we will first destroy all permanents with a mana value of 3, then our Bygone Bishop will enter play.

If you want to be really mean with Celestial Kirin, you can cast Ugin’s Conjurant for X=0 and destroy everybody’s lands. While you may make a lot of enemies in doing this, if you already have an army of spirits on the battlefield, it could also lead to a win.

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Spirit of the Labyrinth

Wizards of the Coast

Commander can be an extremely fast format. It’s not uncommon for players to ramp to extraordinary amounts of mana and scrap a win together via a snowball of several spells in one turn.

But not if we can help it! Spirit of the Labyrinth provides us a “Rule of Law” effect on a spirit body, preventing players from getting too crazy. This is a great way to slow down the game and build up a spirit army with Millicent.

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Sephara, Sky’s Blade

Wizards of the Coast

At first glance, Sephara, Sky’s Blade may look like a difficult-to-cast, seven-mana angel. But in a dedicated flyer’s deck like Millicent, Restless Revenant, Sephara gets much better.

If we have four spirits lying around, a requirement is easily met by our Commander’s ability, Sephara can be cast for just one white mana. Tapping just four spirits, even if they’re tokens, is a great deal for the six mana discount we get on Sephara.

Once Sephara hits on the battlefield, she makes a good impression of Avacyn, Angel of Hope, giving all of our other flyers indestructible. This is a critical effect for our go-wide creature strategy and serves as a good way of protecting our Commander.

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Non-Budget Upgrades (over $5.00)

Selfless Spirit

Wizards of the Coast

Selfless Spirit is yet another way to protect our spirit army. Being able to give our entire field of creatures indestructible at instant speed is extremely important in a format like Commander filled with board wipe effects.

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Skullclamp

With all the 1/1 spirit tokens that our commander makes, Skullclamp becomes an INSANE source of card draw. Sure, equipping Skullclamp to our tokens will kill the creatures in the process, but that’s the point! This is one mana to draw two cards. And the effect is repeatable!

Skullclamp is a top priority upgrade for the Spirit Squadron Commander deck. Let me further illustrate this: Imagine attacking with Millicent and two other nontoken spirits. Millicent will create three 1/1 tokens. In our second main phase, we can attach Skullclamp to each of the tokens and draw a total of six cards. That is some of the most efficient card-draw you can ask for in Magic: the Gathering.

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Kira, Great Glass-Spinner

Wizards of the Coast

We’ve already included a few upgrade suggestions that can protect our creatures with indestructible. But indestructible doesn’t stop everything. Our opponents can still use popular removal spells like Swords to Plowshares to get around indestructibility.

That’s where Kira, Great Glass-Spinner comes in. It is the missing piece to our fortress of resilience, as it automatically counters the first spell or ability to target our creatures each turn. This is a great way to protect our important threats, such as Millicent, Sephara, and Spirit of the Labyrinth.

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Skyclave Apparition

Skyclave Apparition is a busted Magic card. Throughout Magic’s history white has had various Fairgrounds Warden type effects that can remove permanents from the battlefield, but only for as long as Fairgrounds Warden remains in play.

But this is where Skyclave Apparition differs. The permanent Apparition removes never comes back. Sure, your opponent gets an Illusion token as consolation, but who cares when Apparition removes any nonland nontoken permanent with four mana value or less from the game forever.

Apparition is so good, it sees consistent play in older constructed formats like Modern. But it is great in Commander too because of its ability to deal with a diverse range of threats like pesky Stax enchantments, artifacts, and Planeswalkers like Narset, Parter of Veils.

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Kindred Discovery

Wizards of the Coast

Want to draw an absurd amount of cards? Who doesn’t? Well, being that we are a deck focused on a specific creature type, Kindred Discovery is the perfect card for our deck because it will draw us a card for every spirit that enters the battlefield or attacks.

Kindred Discovery’s effect even works with tokens. With Millicent on the battlefield, this will get out of hand. Let’s say we attack with four spirits: we draw four cards, and for every spirit that dealt combat damage, Millicent will make a 1/1 token, triggering Kindred Discovery and drawing us an additional card for each token made.

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