Upgrading Commander Precon: Revival Trance (Terra, Herald of Hope)

Here at Cards Realm, we've already upgraded the new Limit Break precon, piloted by Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER. Now, it's time to explore more possibilities with another Final Fantasy precon!

In this article, we'll work on Revival Trance, a Mardu list commanded by Terra, Herald of Hope. This card interacts with the graveyard and proves hope never dies (and neither do your creatures).

The mysterious Terra Branford was born with the gift of magic, an ability considered lost for a thousand years. She was forced to fight for the Gestahlian Empire as a living weapon.

She is a playable character in a good variety of Final Fantasy titles. In Magic: The Gathering, she is a Human in Mardu colors.

In your combat turn, Terra gains flying until the end of the turn (a reference to her Trance ability in the games).

If you're playing Terra, your graveyard must be full. That's why, at the beginning of combat on your turn, you'll mill two cards.

When she deals combat damage to a player, you may pay two generic mana to return a creature with power equal or less than 3 from the graveyard to the board, tapped.

This deck's alternative commander is Celes, Rune Knight!

She was a general in the Gestahlian Empire and a well-renowned Rune Knight, but she becomes disillusioned with the wars and eventually rebels against the Empire. Celes then joins a rebel group, and fights against the Empire however she can.

Celes' abilities interact really well with Terra's.

When she enters play, you may discard any number of cards and then draw that same number plus one.

Her second ability states: whenever one or more other creatures you control enter, if one or more of them entered from a graveyard or was cast from a graveyard, put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control.

Together, these legendary creatures will fill your graveyard, bring back to the board an army of creatures from there with multiple effects, and make sure you win!

Now that you know the two commander options for this deck, let's take a look at the original list!

A brief look already shows how the original list has potential for reanimate, even straight out of the box. But we can add some really interesting cards to upgrade it.

Let's start with cards that fill the graveyard.

Cards That Fill The Graveyard

As you can see, this deck already comes with many cards that "fill the graveyard".

Cards We Added

Having creature cards in the graveyard is critical for Terra, however, we needed to add a variety of different cards and effects to take advantage of this.

Here's what we added:

With Syr Konrad, the Grim, we'll deal damage to our opponents when creatures enter the graveyard from anywhere. Furthermore, this Knight's activated ability lets us pay two mana to make each player mill a card.

Recently, we built a deck entirely around Tersa Lightshatter, but, in this list, she is one of our valuable 99 cards.

With this Orc, we'll be able to mill up to two cards and draw two others. Then, when we attack with her and if we have seven or more cards in the graveyard, we'll exile a random card from there that we can play that turn.

This deck includes cards with more than 3 power that Terra won't be able to reanimate, which makes Tersa a valuable addition. With her, we'll be able to bring these creatures back to life without any drawbacks.

As for Altar of Dementia, we added it to sacrifice creatures and put cards in the graveyard, but, in emergencies, we can use it on our opponents.

One of our honorable mentions is Braids, Arisen Nightmare.

Braids won't fill our graveyard all at once, but it lets us sacrifice something in our end step. This effect will force our opponents to sacrifice their resources, or attack their life points and draw us more cards.

It is incredibly powerful, and we can also reanimate it with Terra. So, if we don't have any resources to sacrifice with it, we can sacrifice this card itself and then return it to the board on the following turn.

Another honorable mention is Vile Entomber.

We can also reanimate this Zombie with our commander. It lets us look for a card in our deck and put it in our graveyard. In all, this is a very efficient tutor that will help us get creatures like Meteor Golem to remove threats.

Cards We Removed

To open up space for the three cards above, we decided to remove:

Gau, Feral Youth is a value-based creature, but also an easy target for removals. We decided to swap it for Syr Konrad, whose effect is stronger, but, if you'd like to keep it, it's not a bad call.

As for Gogo, Mysterious Mime, it seems more fun in other decks, maybe one entirely built around it, as its effect doesn't really go with the rest of the cards in this deck.

Archfiend of Depravity's effect is powerful when we need to remove resources from our opponents and control their board, but they'll have a lot of time to answer it before its ability triggers. We also can't reanimate it with our commander. So, this card often doesn't last on the board before it does anything.

Reanimate

We talked about filling our graveyard. Now we need cards to bring back whatever ends up there.

Another honorable mention is Edgar, Master Machinist, which caught us completely off-guard. The artifact it brings back from the graveyard will enter play tapped, but it has no other drawbacks (like life loss, for instance), and can give you a mana rock or protection.

Cards We Added

We added a few more fun cards to reanimate our creatures.

Virtue of Persistence can reanimate creatures from any graveyard, including your opponents', and bring them straight to your board. You can also use Living Death to clear your opponents' board and fill yours.

Cards We Removed

Even though Setzer, Wandering Gambler creates a token, it is a bit lost in this list because it doesn't play many Vehicles. We can't reanimate Angel of the Ruins with Terra's effect, and it is too expensive for something that doesn't win the game and is not that great in this list.

Interceptor, Shadow's Hound gives menace to your Assassins, but your deck doesn't play any Assassins except Shadow.

In this alternative list, we'll play our other commander, Celes, Rune Knight!

We added more reanimate spells to this list, such as Ayara, Widow of the Realm, Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate, and Sheoldred, Whispering One. Ayara is a way to sacrifice something and reanimate something else at the beginning of combat, and Sheoldred reanimates cards and forces your opponent to sacrifice something of their own.

We've also kept a few cards from our upgraded Terra list, like Living Death, and Victimize.

Celes might not reanimate anything, but she will let us discard the cards we don't want in our hand to draw new ones. Later on, we can reanimate these discarded cards straight from the graveyard and buff our creatures even more to set up explosive attacks.

Terra is this list's official commander. Once we tested her, we saw everything we could do to upgrade this deck even more.

But, when we tested Celes as the commander, we struggled to make this deck work, as her effect doesn't reanimate anything from the graveyard. However, for a deck built from scratch, Celes is quite fun, and this is the list we recommend if you'd like to focus on her.

Terra is valuable in this precon. Her ability, which mills cards to give her flying, is very valuable if your plan is dealing commander damage.

Overall, this list is quite fun, and, with the right upgrades, can compete on casual tables but not stand out too much. You'll have a good board throughout the entire game until you finally win.

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

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!