With the release of Lorwyn Eclipsed, Magic is introducing a new wave of sealed products for Standard—the Theme Decks. These are 60-card lists built around a specific theme. These decks will be available alongside every in-universe release in 2026 and offer an accessible entry point into both the game and the Standard format.
It's worth noting that, while legal, the primary goal of Theme Decks is not to replace the Challenger Decks released up until 2022. Challenger Decks used an established structure of a known format archetype, providing a pick-up-and-play product for players to jump straight into the format at their local store.
The Theme Decks, on the other hand, seem to target a more casual audience rather than competitive Friday Night Magic events, to the point of not even including a Sideboard.
According to the official Wizards page, they were made to play against other 60-card Theme Decks. Both the lists and the themes on the product box seem to steer almost completely away from providing an easy entry into playing tournaments at your local store.
For the tabletop game, Theme Decks become—despite everything above—the best entry point for a new player into Standard. Therefore, we are presenting in this series of articles upgrade guides for each one, focusing today on the 
Angels deck.
Theme Deck: Angels - Decklist
The list straight from the box proposes a strategy based on Angel creature-type interactions with a light green splash for ramp and targeted answers.
The core of its strategy involves, essentially, accumulating angels on the board and using Lyra Dawnbringer and Youthful Valkyrie as the primary win condition, attacking through the air and gaining life to hold off the opponent's pressure.
The deck runs a "mini-toolbox" with Starfield Shepherd, which allows you to search for creatures with mana value one and put them into your hand. The preferred target will almost always be Pawpatch Recruit, but Llanowar Elves and Lightstall Inquisitor are other good targets, and you can always use it to find a Plains to guarantee your land drop.
The card advantage package relies on the interaction between Exemplar of Light and Inspiring Overseer. Overseer's ETB guarantees a draw and one life, triggering Exemplar of Light for another draw and a +1/+1 counter. Exemplar also has good synergy with Pawpatch Recruit to draw cards when a creature is targeted by spells or abilities.
Personify, a new card from Lorwyn Eclipsed, also works as card advantage when it targets Inspiring Overseer or Starfield Shepherd, but it serves to protect practically any creature you control.
The removal suite seems a bit lost and unfocused. Split Up in a deck full of creatures assumes your opponent will have a better board than yours and/or that we can use it to "turn the corner" when all creatures are tapped, while Ride's End depends on a creature being tapped to cost less mana. This leaves just a single copy of Get Lost as uncoinditional targeted removal.
Upgrade Guide - Angels
Both Theme Decks in Lorwyn Eclipsed seem designed to offer the player multiple routes without focusing specifically on any one. In the case of Angels, there are three possible routes, each requiring different types of upgrades.
In theory, a sub-theme of +1/+1 counters is also possible, but that requires stepping outside the Angels scope and focusing entirely on a Selesnya Aggro build with cards like Ouroboroid and more copies of Pawpatch Recruit.
For this list's upgrades, we'll focus on the three central themes, aiming to ensure some consistency and synergy between them. Angels and Lifegain will be the priority, as cards from both themes tend to work well together, while the toolbox aspect will be the secondary focus.
Maindeck
OUT
Let's start with the obvious: without Collected Company or similar cards to justify mana dorks, the splash does very little for this list.
There are some good toolbox options in green, but not only would it require a significant mana base investment to maintain the splash, it would also cause a considerable loss of consistency for casting Giada, Font of Hope and Youthful Valkyrie—without them, it's much easier to abandon the original list's design entirely and just follow the Badgermole Cub, Ouroboroid, and Virtue of Loyalty route.
IN
Without green, we can include a full set of Abandoned Air Temple, which interacts with our go-wide plan, plus two copies of Soulstone Sanctuary as a complementary threat. We reduced the land count from 24 to 22 since we've eliminated the color access difficulty while keeping our list's mana costs low.
OUT
Although it's an angel we can find with Starfield Shepherd, Lightstall Inquisitor is excessively redundant, and we need tools with more synergy with the Lifegain package. On the other end of the spectrum, Lyra Dawnbringer costs too much mana without Llanowar Elves, while three copies of Exemplar of Light seem a bit too much.
Personify is a card we could consider keeping as it interacts well with the package we're proposing and protects our creatures, but paying two mana for a reactive spell that doesn't interact with the opponent's board isn't exactly where a go-wide deck wants to be.
IN
We're adopting the full Lifegain-on-ETB package with Hinterland Sanctifier and Haliya, Guided by Light, which guarantees extra life whenever a creature enters and synergizes with both Exemplar of Light and the inclusion of Resplendent Angel—another card to trigger Giada and Youthful Valkyrie while also capable of building an army on its own.
It's worth noting that Haliya provides extra draws whenever you gain three or more life in a turn, which creates potential "combos" with Starfield Shepherd if we have Sanctifier in play, since the two ETBs will guarantee four life in one turn.
IN
Speaking of Starfield Shepherd, we're also including a "mini-toolbox" for it. Momo, Friendly Flier or Hinterland Sanctifier will usually be the primary targets, but Zack Fair allows you to proactively protect a creature from removal, while Curious Farm Animals deals with artifacts and enchantments and guarantees the three life needed to trigger Haliya, Guided by Light.
OUT
IN
Since our removal package was very scattered, we're replacing it with Sheltered by Ghosts, whose Ward and Lifelink effects make it easier to trigger Exemplar of Light and Resplendent Angel.
Sideboard
The original list doesn't have a Sideboard, but if we're preparing the deck for Standard, we need to consider what to add for various matchups without being too specific to an open Metagame. The choices below aim to universalize answers for specific cases, rather than focusing exclusively on the current scene, given how quickly it can change with seven releases a year.
Rest in Peace handles graveyard-based decks for as long as it stays in play. Today, those strategies revolve around Reanimator with Superior Spider-Man and Lessons with Accumulate Wisdom.
Requisition Raid deals with artifacts and enchantments without losing usefulness when we have the better board. It's essential for a format full of these card types, like Stormchaser's Talent and Monument to Endurance.
Aven Interrupter interacts with the stack for a turn, protecting us from potential sweepers and also answering counterspells and similar effects.
We're taking the copies of Split Up and Get Lost and adding them to the Sideboard for games where they are more necessary, while Seam Rip provides cheap, early-game, and nearly unconditional interaction against various permanents.
Theme Decks: Angels - Upgraded List
With the changes above, your deck will look like this:
We now have a Mono White Angels deck where the Lifegain theme with Haliya and Hinterland Sanctifier works well with Resplendent Angel and Exemplar of Light, which in turn interact with Giada, Font of Hope and Youthful Valkyrie. This allows for a strategy with strong synergy, plus the bonus of not needing to invest heavily in dual lands while still getting the most of Abandoned Air Temple, one of the best cards for white Aggro decks today.
Regarding the maindeck, I don't believe there are further upgrades that can be made while staying true to the Angels and Lifegain themes. Trying to improve it more deeply would, for now, culminate in abandoning the central themes in favor of other possible lines.
However, the sideboard can be constantly refined with new inclusions for specific Metagames, such as Clarion Conqueror against Badgermole Cub and Kaito, Bane of Nightmares, or Spectacular Spider-Man against sweepers.
Wrapping Up
That's all for today!
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!
Thanks for reading!
Sign in and join the conversation
— Comments 0
, Reactions 1
Be the first to comment