Upgrading Commander Precon - Creative Energy (Satya, Aetherflux Genius)

Modern Horizons 3 is finally among us! To make things even more exciting, Commander players got a pleasant surprise with this set: despite Modern-focused, we got four new precon Commander decks!

Of course we had to upgrade them. Today we decided to upgrade Creative Energy, a deck that focuses on energy counters, with Satya, Aetherflux Genius as our commander!

This is a Jeskai deck, a great combination for the energy archetype, particularly considering that, not too long ago, we also got Dr. Madison Li's Fallout precon with an energy theme. This means we have a wide variety of cards to upgrade Creative Energy.

The original list offers you both Satya, Aetherflux Genius and Cayth, Famed Mechanist as commanders. We picked Satya to focus on creating energy, so we'll build an alternative list for Cayth at the end of this article. It'll focus on her ability, which fabricates 1 and gives fabricate 1 to other non-token creatures, besides also letting you blink creatures to create even more tokens later on.

Satya is better if you want to create energy counters, and his ability, which copies creatures, is also quite strong, so we thought it would be a great idea to explore him a bit better. We'll use as many cards that boost his ability as we can in our build to create even more energy counters, keep the copy Satya creates on the board, and thus win by creating creatures and value from them.

Cards We Removed

Even though we removed a significant amount of mana rocks, it's for the greater good. Most of them cost 3, and others were just too risky, like Midnight Clock and Coveted Jewel.

We also removed a few other creatures that weren't efficient for this deck's overall game plan, like Myr Battlesphere, Silverquill Lecturer, Angel of Invention, and many others we listed above.

Our goal was to add in their place cards that were more responsive, tools to create more energy counters with this deck, as well as more card draw, and more ways to interact with our opponent's board. We also removed 4 basic lands because 38 lands is too much. But don't worry: we kept 35 lands in our final list, and a MDFC.

Creating More Energy

To create more energy counters with our strategy, we brought creatures like Guide of Souls and Brotherhood Scribe. Guide of Souls gives us a little bit of lifegain, and thus gives us more resilience, considering Satya will always copy a creature when you attack with him. The interesting detail about Guide of Souls is that he will give one of our attacking creatures evasion and +1/+1 counters if we pay 3 energy counters.

It is quite easy to hit Brotherhood Scribe's metalcraft to create another energy counter, and he also buffs our creatures any time we gain energy counters, one by one.

Dr. Madison Li, who we mentioned before, was essential if you consider the number of artifacts we use in this deck. She'll really help us with her energy counters, besides all her other abilities: evasion through trample, haste for more aggressive plays, card draw to keep our hand full throughout the match, and even the chance to reanimate important artifacts, like Aetherworks Marvel, Aether Refinery, or Bespoke Battlewagon.

Still from the Fallout set, we have The Motherlode, Excavator. Nowadays, at least one of the (usually four) Commander players uses 2 or more colors in their deck, which means there's always one player with many nonbasic lands. So, The Motherlode is a great energy source. Not to mention its second ability, which destroys many problematic lands in this format: Cavern of Souls, Cabal Coffers, Reliquary Tower, among others, and also grants you a type of evasion - after all, only flying creatures will be able to block.

Behemoth of Vault 0 works really well as a target for Satya's ability; it'll create 4 energy counters when it enters the battlefield, and is a way to destroy your opponent's nonland permanents, if you sacrifice it through your commander's ability. The fact it's also a 6/6 with trample is quite a bonus as well.

Finally, the last cards from Fallout we added to create energy counters were Helios One, which also destroys nonland permanents besides creating energy, and Electrosiphon. Even though this is the only counter in this deck, you can use it at the right time to counter a problematic spell, or to counter expensive spells, like Blasphemous Act. You'll also get a lot of energy as you do it.

Now, let's discuss one of the if not the most important win condition in Creative Energy: Aether Revolt. This card, which carries the name of the set that brought us energy counters, "redirects" the damage dealt by energy counters to any target. Furthermore, its revolt ability gives you a little bit more damage and is even quite irrelevant when you compare it to the damage you'll "redirect" whenever you gain energy.

If Aether Refinery is on the board, and you cast or copy an Aethertide Whale, you'll deal 12 damage to any target. You can also double this damage with a few cards we'll show soon.

As a way to draw cards fast, we use Tune the Narrative and Rush of Inspiration, which is a good MDFC for this deck in particular. Cheap card draw is always welcome, and these two will keep our hand full whenever we lose our gas.

Finally, we use Wrath of the Skies to create energy or remove something in a pinch. Even though this deck has great removals, like Austere Command and Farewell, one more won't hurt, particularly as we'll be able to remove cheap permanents with it if we use less energy counters.

Answers and Synergies

Obviously, we had to add Panharmonicon to this list. Considering we play cards like Aethertide Whale, Combustible Gearhulk, Filigree Racer, and all the other artifacts and/or creatures with ETBs, Panharmonicon will create even more energy counters for us. By the way, this is the card that will let you turn the 12 damage we mentioned before into 24 damage.

As answers, we use just two cards: Generous Gift and Cyclonic Rift. Generous Gift will deal with any problematic permanent at instant speed, and Cyclonic Rift will possibly be a finisher for us if we have a good board. It can also give us some room to breathe if we have to use it defensively.

Finally, we also brought Unwinding Clock. As we have cards like Aether Refinery, Aetherworks Marvel, Bespoke Battlewagon, and Conversion Apparatus, Unwinding Clock will be a great ally to us, as it will help us progress our game plan.

This is our upgraded list! We changed a total of 15 cards, and all give Creative Energy more strength and resources to develop its game plan and mechanic. It is quite different from Fallout's energy deck, as it focuses more on energy counters and, consequently, can do a lot more.

Alternative List with Cayth, Famed Mechanist

As we said before, we also built a Cayth, Famed Mechanist list that focuses entirely on creating tokens to deal damage with them as you play cards like Impact Tremors, Purphoros, God of the Forge, Warleader's Call, and similar.

Then, we added some cards to double these tokens, like Mondrak, Glory Dominus, and Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation. Finally, we added a few cards to interact with ETBs: Panharmonicon, Brago, King Eternal, Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines, and Nahiri's Resolve.

Satya is a great commander with a great game plan, as well as Cayth. These are two incredible commanders that will inspire many builds: ETBs, tokens, copies, energies - the sky is the limit for anyone who wants to focus on them!

What did you think of our list? Do you prefer Cayth? Or even Eldrazis? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below!

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!