Upgrading Commander Precon - Grand Lacerny (Gonti, Canny Acquisitor)

Outlaws of Thunder Junction brought us 4 fascinating new precon Commander decks. And what can possibly be cooler than a deck whose theme represents perfectly what an outlaw does for a living?

Today, we'll show you how to upgrade one of these precon decks. More precisely, Grand Lacerny, which steals spells from your opponents and brings the Kaladesh outlaw Gonti, Canny Acquisitor as your commander!

This is a Sultai deck, which is a bit of an unusual combination for this type of mechanic if I do say so myself. However, the cards in its previous version - Gonti, Lord of Luxury, Hostage Taker, Villainous Wealth, and Fallen Shinobi - proved to me it is not that unusual after all.

The original precon list offers you two possible commanders: Gonti, Canny Acquisitor and Felix Five-Boots. We decided to keep Gonti in our Commander Zone so we take advantage of this deck's central mechanic and steal even more cards from our opponents. Its effect, which discounts the cost of the cards you steal, makes it even more valuable, particularly in the upgraded list.

However, Felix will still be in our build after we upgrade it, both because it triggers Gonti an extra time and because we have many creatures with abilities that trigger through combat damage.

And, of course, we'll also show you a list centered around our other commander. Our goal is to extract 100% of its triggered ability, and deal combat damage an extra time multiple times. Felix is fascinating even in the original list, specially when we consider it includes cards like Thief of Sanity, Edric, Spymaster of Trest, and Fallen Shinobi, for instance.

As for a few of the cards included in this precon, I'll be completely honest with you: It is shameful to include, in this day and age, cards that are arguably too weak and mostly senseless, like Darksteel Ingot and Prismatic Lens, in a build like this. These cards are incredibly inefficient for what this deck wants to do, particularly because Gonti, Canny Acquisitor's ability uses mana of any type to cast the spells that you exiled from the top of your opponents' decks. So, these cards are just bad mana rocks, and that's why we removed them.

A few other cards in fact do help us steal cards, like Dazzling Sphinx, Diluvian Primordial, and Extract Brain, but we removed them anyway. We needed to open some space to add new, better cards, and, as the cards above weren't interesting enough for us, they had to come out.

We also removed the "signet lands" in the original list mostly because they get in our way if we want to play cards like Sol Ring, Slither Blade, or Triton Shorestalker on turn 1, for instance.

Ramp and Answers

This deck had just a few removals, and also not a lot of ramp. So, we added Cultivate and Farseek as ramp.

Even though it's just two cards, the original deck itself already had Kodama's Reach, Nature's Lore, and Rampant Growth, so our total number of ramp cards in the end is reasonable and enough for what we want to do.

As answers, we brought instant spells that are more generic and target any type of permanent. That's Assassin's Trophy, Tear Asunder, and Beast Within. Once again, we added just a few cards, but we'd rather have more answers ready than work with the limited number of removals the original list had.

Stealing Spells and Triggering Abilities

As we kept Felix Five-Boots in this list, and as we also have several creatures and effects that interact with abilities that trigger with combat damage, we added more ways to do this.

Grim Hireling brings us recursion with Treasures whenever we deal combat damage to a player. This means that, if we deal damage to one of our three opponents, we'll create three Treasures, or six, if Felix Five-Boots is on your board. Its second ability is quite useful because it removes one of your opponents' problematic creatures.

We also added Toski, Bearer of Secrets to our list to deal combat damage. It will also draw us cards any time one of our creatures deals damage. Considering that's the whole purpose of our deck, and we have many creatures with evasion ("can't be blocked", more specifically), this card may give you a lot of value throughout the game.

And it's an Indestructible creature, so it will survive most global removals.

Gríma, Saruman's Footman is incredibly useful: it will steal you an instant spell or sorcery any time you deal combat damage with it. It replaced Dazzling Sphinx because it costs one less mana, and it will deal combat damage guaranteed because it can't be blocked. I was very surprised when I saw Outrageous Robbery wasn't in the original list. It might because it is a recent card, but I'll still add it to our upgraded deck.

Outrageous Robbery is even more interesting because it is an instant. It is basically like Gonti's ability, but it happens multiple times at once.

Speaking of redundancy for our commander's ability, Rogue Class will also give us that, but at long-term as well. In total, you'll invest 9 mana to get it to its level 3, but it has great pros.

At level 1, any time one of your creatures deals combat damage, you'll exile the top card in your opponent's deck, and not only one card for each combat, like Gonti. At level 2, your creatures get Menace - a great type of evasion. After all, we want to deal combat damage as much as we can. And, finally, its level 3 lets you cast the cards you exiled.

Stealing even more resources will always be interesting in this build, considering we'll take them from our opponents (which will help us down the line), and also either use them or leave them to rot in exile. Rogue Class is definitely another card that could easily be in the original precon list.

Tasha, the Witch Queen is a must in any deck that steals cards. Not only because you'll put page counters on the cards you exile, but because this deck's entire mechanic lets you create several 3/3 black Demon tokens with her. They are great blockers and will even be useful when you want to put pressure on your opponents. You'll even be able to do this on your opponents' turns, so it works really well with Mind's Dilation. Additionally, its Allegiance abilities replace Diluvian Primordial nicely long term.

In a few situations in Commander, the more redundancy the better, and that is particularly true for this build. Court of Locthwain will let you not only draw more cards because of the Monarch, but also steal more cards from the top of your opponents' decks.

Cards like Sage of the Beyond, Doc Aurlock, Grizzled Genius, and Gonti itself will discount the cost of the cards you steal, so, even if we're not the Monarch, you'll play them for less mana thanks to these cards. However, if we're still the Monarch, we'll cast them for free, and won't have to worry about spending any mana.

Finally, we added a bit of Phyrexia with Breach the Multiverse. Considering we can't access Etali, Primal Conqueror because of our colors, why not use its "black version"? Breach the Multiverse is quite popular nowadays in multiple decks because it reanimates up to 4 creatures and/or planeswalkers, and also matches the "stealing" mechanic.

You'll be able to reanimate Tasha, the Witch Queen, for instance, if it's destroyed, or even any other useful creature in your graveyard, like Brainstealer Dragon.

This is our upgraded list! We changed very little: just 13 cards, to be exact. However, the few cards we added will already make the world of difference in most games - more answers, stealing, tokens, exiling the top card in our opponents' decks, and much more.

Each match will be different because you'll steal from different opponents and decks!

Alternative List with Felix Five-Boots

Felix Five-Boots got its own list, and, obviously, we just had to add its five boots: Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots, Winged Boots, Trailblazer's Boots, and Lavaspur Boots.

Jokes aside, these boots work both because of their Haste and because they'll give you some type of evasion to deal combat damage as much as you can. It is relatively similar to our original and upgraded list. However, in this Felix build, we used great cards, like The Key to the Vault, Grazilaxx, Illithid Scholar, and Ojer Kaslem, Deepest Growth because they make a lot of sense with your commander's ability.

I was surprised to see Gonti come back, particularly in a Sultai deck. I got to play on tabletop with all the other Outlaws of Thunder Junction precon decks, and I truly enjoyed Grand Larceny, in particular. This deck is a jack-of-all-trades, and stealing your opponents' resources is a lot of fun.

Did you like our upgrade? Do you prefer Felix Five-Boots in your command zone? Would you give him all his boots? Tell us your thoughts in the comment section below!