Upgrading Commander Precon: Mardu Surge (Zurgo Stormrender)

Tarkir: Dragonstorm took us back to one of the most beloved and nostalgic planes in Magic: The Gathering. It also brought us five thematic decks, one for each clan in this plane.

In this article, we'll show you how to upgrade the Mardu precon, as well as an alternative list that interacts with spells cast from the exile.

Before we see our lists, let's go through this deck's original commander.

Zurgo is one of the most famous Mardu characters. Only one other character has more decks registered in EDHRec than him: Alesha, Who Smiles at Death.

This new version is a good commander for token decks. With his Mobilize, he creates a 1/1 Warrior when he attacks. You'll have to sacrifice the tokens he creates with this ability at your next end step, though.

His static effect states that, when a token creature leaves your board (so, when it dies or is exiled/sacrificed), you'll draw a card if it was also attacking an enemy. If not, each opponent loses 1 life.

This deck's secondary commander is the current Mardu Dragon, Neriv. When he enters, he creates two 1/1 Goblins, and, when he attacks, you'll exile cards from the top of your deck equal to how many tokens with different names you control. During any turn, if you've attacked a commander, you can play these cards.

Now that we know our commanders, let's see the original list.

Let's see what we can remove and add to upgrade it. Starting with…

Burn

Mardu decks can use great cards to interact with tokens. For instance, we can make each new token that enters our board deal damage to our opponents.

In token-focused decks, as this precon, cards that deal that type of burn damage to opponents speed up the match quite a bit.

The original list includes:

Cards We Added

Out of these, Impact Tremors is probably the most famous. Warleader's Call has the same effect as Tremors and also buffs your creatures (in token decks, global buffs are very valuable).

Let's go ahead and comment on Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim and Mirkwood Bats. These two creatures both make your opponents lose life, but slightly differently.

Mirkwood Bats works with any token, even Treasure or Food, and its ability happens whenever you create or sacrifice a token. As for Elas, it only works with creatures and gives you life when they enter the board - it only makes your opponents lose life when creatures die.

Cards We Removed

As this list didn't include many cards with this mechanic, we removed some weaker cards to open some space.

Draw and Ramp

This precon includes a good amount of card draw, but, like every Mardu list, it struggles with ramp because of its colors.

The original list includes:

Let's see a few cards that interact really well with the other mechanics in this list.

Tocasia's Welcome, Idol of Oblivion, and Skullclamp all draw cards and take advantage of the tokens that enter your board. Mindblade Render's ability triggers when the commander, Zurgo Stormrender, and other Warriors deal combat damage.

Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor is one of the strongest cards in the original list, even though it also draws cards for your opponents. The idea behind this creature is to encourage our opponents to attack each other to draw more cards.

In the last-case scenario, you can activate its effect to exile and cast spells from the top of an opponent's deck for free.

We replaced many lands in the mana base with Reliquary Tower and Savai Triome, two useful lands that don't get in our way when we need to create mana.

Cards We Added

That's a decent amount of card draw, but we can add even more ramp. So, we suggest:

With Smothering Tithe in play, you'll create Treasures passively and also remove resources from your opponents, considering they need to pay two mana to prevent you from creating a Treasure.

This is an aggressive deck, so cards that interact with dealing damage, like Professional Face-Breaker, are welcome. Besides creating Treasures, this card lets you sacrifice them to exile cards from the top of your deck and play them that same turn.

Cards We Removed

Protection

The biggest problem for this type of deck tends to be boardwipes. The original list includes these protections against them:

Grand Crescendo stands out among these, as it both protects your board and also creates more creature tokens at instant speed.

Cards We Added

If you want more protection, or suggestion is this incredibly powerful card that protects your entire board:

This modal spell can deal damage, make your creatures indestructible, or give one of them double strike until the end of the turn. It is a safe, popular option.

Cards We Removed

To open some space, we'll remove:

Tokens

The original list includes Kaya, Geist Hunter, which doubles the number of tokens you create until the end of your turn. To help her with this mission, we added Anointed Procession.

And, of course, besides our commander, this list plays multiple cards that create tokens:

Cards We Added

Zurgo, Thunder's Decree is essential for this list because, with it, you won't have to sacrifice the tokens you create with your commander in your next end step.

Charismatic Conqueror disrupts your opponents, and Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon creates Gnome tokens.

To make sure you'll actually be able to attack with your creatures and tokens, we removed Twilight Drover and Aron, Benalia's Ruin. In their place, we added Rising of the Day and On Wings of Gold.

Cards We Removed

Here's our list:

As Neriv, Crackling Vanguard interacts with tokens that have different names, we must focus on creating different tokens if we use him as our commander.

So, we added cards like Bonehoard Dracosaur, Bitterblossom, Skrelv's Hive, Bitterthorn, Nissa's Animus, Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff, and Iraxxa, Empress of Mars.

Mardu is one of the most fun three-color combinations.

With white, we can explore incredibly efficient removals. With black, everything on the board is a valuable resource to draw cards and remove whatever you want. With red, we get to be fast and aggressive, and mow down our opponents with our small army.

The original list is already a fun, strong precon that you can use against other precons on casual tables without much issue.

What did you think of this list? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!