Upgrading Commander Precon - Jump Scare! (Zimone, Mistery Unraveler)

Duskmourn is finally here! This set, themed around scary movies, brought us several new mechanics, which, in turn, also brought a lot of value to our beloved Magic: The Gathering. And, of course, it also brought us 4 new Commander decks and made everyone who enjoys this casual format incredibly happy.

They include incredibly interesting commanders. Today, we decided to use Zimone, Mystery Unraveler as our commander and turn this precon into a Landfall deck that explores a new mechanic: Manifest Dread!

This is a Simic deck, a color combination known for its strength and speed in Commander. There are many great cards in the original list, like Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait, Scute Swarm, Worldspine Wurm, and Ashaya, Soul of the Wild.

Its base mechanic explores the combination of Landfall (an ability known for triggering effects when lands enter the battlefield), and Manifest Dread, which lets you look at the top cards in your deck, place one face-down on your board as a 2/2, and then put the other in your graveyard.

Zimone combines these two mechanics because it lets you use Manifest Dread the first time Landfall resolves in your turn, and then lets you turn a face down permanent face up whenever Landfall resolves extra times later on. We have a lot of support for these two abilities, including a lot of ramp and also effects that trigger when you turn them face up.

So, we'll make a lot of changes to this list!

Our alternative commander, Kianne, Corrupted Memory, will unfortunately stay out of this list, but we'll dedicate an entire list to her at the end of this article, as usual. Kianne is more versatile than Zimone, so we can build many types of decks around her. With this in mind, we'll show you a Simic list for Kianne later on.

Cards We Removed

The original precon list is quite strong and consistent, but we obviously had to remove many cards to make it even stronger.

Besides the aforementioned Kianne, we also removed cards that seem great, but can easily be replaced, like Greater Tanuki, Beanstalk Giant // Fertile Footsteps, and Kefnet the Mindful. Other cards are just weaker, like Skaab Ruinator and Aether Gale.

The original list included 38 lands: we lowered this number to 36 by removing one basic land of each type, and Overflowing Basin. This land may disrupt turn 1 plays with Sol Ring.

Ramp and Recovering Resources from the Graveyard

Manifest Dread, by default, forces us to put a card in our graveyard. This is good and bad at the same time: we get to filter cards we don't want at that moment, but they can also be useful later on.

With this in mind, we added cards like Eternal Witness and Timeless Witness to recover these lost resources. Keep in mind that their abilities only trigger when they enter the battlefield, and not when you turn them face up. So, when you trigger Zimone's Manifest Dread, don't put these creatures on your board as face down 2/2s.

You can also lose lands to your graveyard. To deal with that, we brought you a few options to play lands directly from your graveyard: Conduit of Worlds and Walk-in Closet // Forgotten Cellar.

Conduit of Worlds lets us play permanents from our graveyard, and thus gives us double the value. It recovers lands and permanents from our graveyard, even though we'll need to meet a condition to cast cards directly from there. Walk-In Closet // Forgotten Cellar plays a similar role, but it lets us do this whenever we want. It all depends on which side of this Room we play first, and which side we save to use later on.

As the game goes on, these cards, which extend our game strategy to our graveyard, can be the difference between winning and losing in later turns.

Finally, we have our ramp. This deck plays great options, like Growth Spiral, Cultivate, Rampant Growth, Sakura-Tribe Elder, and Explosive Vegetation, for instance.

So, we added similar cards: Kodama's Reach and Planar Genesis, which definitely stands out. This card lets us pick a card from the 4 top cards in our deck, and works both to ramp and to put another card in our hand to use later on.

I'll stress that we added Fabled Passage to our upgraded list as well, considering we are working with a Landfall theme and this land lets us trigger Landfall twice on the same turn.

Interacting with Face Down Cards and Other Resources

As one of its main mechanics is Manifest Dread, the best thing we can do is add more interactions to explore this mechanic the best way we can. Duskmourn itself brought us great cards that interact with Manifest Dread and weren't included in the original list, so we added them to our upgraded list.

Hauntwoods Shrieker was a must, particularly as it lets us turn creature cards face up for just 2 mana. This feeds our commander if we can't play more than one land per turn, and lets us reveal surprises like Worldspine Wurm, Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait, or Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle, which will be quite worrying for our opponents.

An interesting detail about Arixmethes is that it is the opposite of Eternal Witness and Timeless Witness's ETB, which doesn't work with Manifest Dread. Arixmethes is a creature immediately after we turn it face up, so we don't need to remove its Slumber counters because it won't have any if we put it in play with Manifest Dread.

Paranormal Analyst is one of the best cards in the deck precisely because it fixes the Manifest Dread's problem: it recovers the card we put in your graveyard, and this turns a problem into an advantage. Every time we use Manifest Dread, we'll get a 2/2 creature and a card in our hand for as long as Paranormal Analyst is on the board. This puts resources straight in our hand, and thus gives us more options to play and doesn't force us to try to recover lost cards.

Threats Around Every Corner is basically perfect for Zimone: any time a face down permanent enters our battlefield, we can search for a basic land in our deck and put it in play face down. This means your Zimone will be able to Manifest Dread and then, straight away, we'll be able to turn that permanent face up. It is great with the commander we picked for this upgraded Jump Scare! decklist. It also triggers the Landfall of great cards that were already in the original list, like Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait, Scute Swarm, and Tatyova, Benthic Druid.

And finally, we added a few cards from Duskmourn: Abhorrent Oculus. We can cheat out its additional cost through Zimone's Manifest Dread, and this scary flying eye activates Manifest Dread whenever it is our opponent's upkeep. As Commander is a multiplayer format, when it is our turn again, we'll have 3 face down creatures to use. To support these face down creatures, we added an array of cards that interact with face down permanents.

Vannifar, Evolved Enigma, for instance, buffs all our face down creatures with +1/+1 counters, as they're all colorless. We can also put a face down permanent in play through its Cloak, and then turn it face up with Zimone. Brine Elemental is a great card to do this because it locks down opponents by skipping their untapping steps. We don't even need to pay for its Morph cost!

We also added Secret Plans to draw many cards. After all, we'll constantly turn permanents face up with Jump Scare!, and drawing a card whenever we do this will be a great advantage. And, to complement the great and fearsome creatures in this precon, we added Koma, Cosmos Serpent.

This creature is incredibly strong and practically pops up in every Simic deck, including Jump Scare! The fact it can become indestructible, or lock down enemy permanents with activated abilities and, at the same time, help you build your board with 3/3 Serpents whenever it is your upkeep makes it a great help for this strategy.

This is our upgraded Jump Scare! decklist. As we said before, the original list is already quite strong, so, with just 15 alterations, it is even more interesting. This deck will truly scare away your opponents with its power and mechanic!

Alternative List with Kianne, Corrupted Memory

This Kianne, Corrupted Memory list focuses on drawing cards and buffing your commander with +1/+1 counters. It also plays several creatures, many answers, and a lot of recursion. We built it in the most Simic way possible, like we mentioned before!

It also includes many win conditions besides just combat damage, like Laboratory Maniac, Simic Ascendancy, Triskaidekaphile, Twenty-Toed Toad, and Psychosis Crawler.

This precon really impressed me. It has incredibly strong cards with great synergies that interact really well with each other. As its base is also already great, we just had to make a few changes to make it even stronger. If every precon had a mechanically solid base like this, we'd certainly struggle to even decide which deck to buy. It would also give us a lot more variety in general.

Did you like this upgraded list? Do you prefer Kianne as your commander? Would you change anything? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below!

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!