Maximizing the Potential of Lorehold Spirit: A Comprehensive Upgrade Guide

Secrets of Strixhaven brings with it five new Commander precons, so it's time once again for my precon upgrade guides! Lorehold Spirit is a unique White/Red Graveyard deck with a Spirits subtheme. We fill our graveyard by discarding cards (Faithless Looting) and milling (Fateful Tempest), then recur (Sevinne's Reclamation) or exile those cards for value (Augusta, Order Returned). That's classic Graveyard stuff, but what sets this deck apart is that we have tons of brand new cards that reward us just for having cards leave our graveyards -- Spirit of Resilience, Advanced Reconstruction, Primary Research, and most importantly our commander, Quintorius, History Chaser! So if you like the sound of a unique style of Graveyard deck in non-traditional colors, then Lorehold Spirit is the deck for you!

First, let's look at the stock list to see how well it accomplishes its goals: Lorehold Spirit has two themes: Graveyard and Spirits. But how supported are these themes? For the Graveyard theme, I count: 11 graveyard-filling cards, 6 cards that discard (Faithless Looting), 5 cards that mill (Advanced Reconstruction), and uhh that's it? 15 cards that reward you for having cards in graveyard, mostly recursion (Venerable Warsinger) but also a few cards that use the graveyard as fuel (Augusta, Order Returned) or just want to chill in there (card-ref:Anger) 7 cards that reward you for having cards leave your graveyard, nearly all new stuff like Relic Retriever. There's also 3 cards that specifically reward you for discarding (Currency Converter).

The ratios are a little off to me. Generally speaking, when building a deck you'd want more setup cards than payoff cards to make sure the payoffs are working properly. In this case, I would expect more ways to fill the GY than rewards for doing so, but it's the opposite. Granted our commander, Quintorius, History Chaser fills the GY so the ratios are a bit closer in practice, but still, it's something to keep in mind during upgrading.

As for Spirits, I count: 25 Spirits, 19 spirit creatures plus 6 cards that create spirit tokens, most notably our commander, 5 Spirit support cards, again most notably the commander. So while there's a lot of Spirits in this deck and you'll often have a board full of them, the precon isn't focusing too much on supporting them. It's a secondary theme that functions well but isn't the focus.

It's also worth mentioning that there are 12 cards that care specifically about low mana value permanents: 7 cards that care about permanents mana value 3 or less (Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle), 2 care about mv 4 or less (Angel of Indemnity), 2 care about mv 3 or less but can sometimes get higher mv (Guardian Scalelord), and 1 cares about mv 2 or less (Lorehold Charm). These cards lean towards caring about creature permanents the most. But more importantly, this is a big chunk of cards that don't care about instants or sorceries.

There's also 6 "impulse draw" cards (Conspiracy Theorist) that give you a small time window to play the exiled card, which also encourages lower mana value to increase the likelihood you can play them. This means that high mana-value cards are somewhat discouraged in the deck, especially instants and sorceries.

The Good: Lorehold's unique schtick in Strixhaven is about rewarding you for cards leaving your graveyard, which excites me personally since it's fresh unexplored territory and I love exploring new stuff. But it also happens that the new cards they designed to support this new design space are very strong! Quintorius, History Chaser is an absolute powerhouse of a commander. Like most face commanders, it's a pushed value engine that both supports the deck's game plan while also drawing you cards in the process. The handful of other "leave the graveyard" payoffs are great too, like Relic Retriever, Advanced Reconstruction. It's not a lot unfortunately, but as usual, our commander does a lot of the heavy lifting.

The precon's Discard mini-theme is particularly powerful with Quintorius, History Chaser: the cards Conspiracy Theorist, Containment Construct, and Currency Converter generate a ton of value when you discard and create a 3/2 spirit with Quintorius. If you want to upgrade this deck to make it stronger, expanding this Discard theme would be the first thing I'd do. Also, while there aren't a lot of "leave the graveyard" payoffs in the deck, the good news is they synergize with all the more generic Graveyard stuff the deck is doing, mostly reanimation with amazing cards like Excava, the Risen Past and Angel of Indemnity.

The Bad: As I mentioned when looking at the ratios, there are way more payoff cards than setup cards for our main Graveyard theme, when it should be the other way around. The deck is relying on Quintorius, History Chaser to set the graveyard up for us, but relying too much on our commander can lead to inconsistency issues, especially if it gets hated out. A lot of cards in the deck care about low mana value permanents (e.g. Excava, the Risen Past) so the relatively high mana curve of the deck isn't ideal, and we could definitely shave off a few more instants/sorceries too.

There are also a few subpar card inclusions here. There's a bunch of relatively subpar spirits in here like Kami of Ancient Law and card-ref:Drumbellower that don't do much in the deck. I wonder if at some point the precon was designed with a bigger focus on Spirit payoffs, but the finished product barely cares about Spirits, so it really didn't need to cram in all these pretty bad spirits to keep the count up. Wave of Reckoning is the most baffling decision to me though. This is a card you tend to see in High Toughness decks like Treefolk which often make the sweeper one-sided, which is strange when the bulk of our army is 3/2 spirits. Even if the deck wanted this sweeper -- which it doesn't -- there's a strictly better option available with Solar Blaze. I get Wave is an expensive card that needs a reprint, but surely there was a better-suited expensive card they could've reprinted here instead? Also, 37 lands is a tad low. Especially when one of them is Lotus Field. For upgrades, I definitely want to add more Graveyard setup cards and start cutting subpar cards.

Add These: As usual, I'm dumping a whole bunch of cards to add and then an equal amount of cards to cut. Feel free to pick and choose among them however you like. I've purposely left out $20+ cards and game changers. A general rule of thumb is to focus on increasing the amount of low mana value permanents since the deck cares specifically about that. I think the best way to optimize Lorehold Spirit is by focusing on its Discard subtheme. The deck already runs Conspiracy Theorist, Containment Construct, and Currency Converter and they all work so well with our "leave the battlefield" theme, so focusing heavier on this is a no-brainer.

So first let's add a stronger Discard package: Bag of Holding, Banon, the Returners' Leader are the two best upgrades here, they both discard and trigger our commander each turn. Tersa Lightshatter and Joshua, Phoenix's Dominant also discard, also trigger commander, also play well with our Graveyard theme. The Restoration of Eiganjo, Seasoned Pyromancer same thing. Leaning more into Discard, let's add some Discard payoffs: Inti, Seneschal of the Sun and Veronica, Dissident Scribe repeat discard and impulse draw. Brass's Tunnel-Grinder discard and eventually ramp and discover. Ivora, Insatiable Heir and Cool but Rude repeat discard and big beats. Vault 21: House Gambit repeat discard and eventual ramp. Surly Badgersaur and Monument to Endurance don't discard themselves but provide absurd value when discarding. Drownyard Temple discard fodder that comes back as ramp and triggers commander. To trigger these discard payoffs more, let's add a bunch of cycling lands, 1-2 mana to cycle. These also let us go higher in land count without risk of flooding, and can be reanimated from the graveyard: Ash Barrens, Capital City, Desert of the Fervent, Desert of the True, Drifting Meadow, Forgotten Cave, Secluded Steppe, Smoldering Crater. Next, I suggest upgrading the draw engines of the deck: Ark of Hunger does everything the precon wants, it's awesome. Bennie Bracks, Zoologist and Caretaker's Talent can potentially draw multiple cards per turn cycle, and it's not even restricted to creature tokens so treasures and stuff work fine too. Then I highly recommend swapping the ramp package to focus exclusively on turn 2 ramp. It's a subtle change, but the difference between turn 3 Quintorius, History Chaser and turn 4 is enormous. I can't overstate how much better the deck runs if you're consistently getting the commander out on turn 3! Boros Signet, Fellwar Stone, Talisman of Conviction, and Ornithopter of Paradise are all mana-fixing ramp. Okay, last card but a great pickup here: Spiteful Banditry. It's a solid sweeper, ramps a bit too, but best for us is it's a 2mv permanent that we can easily recur. All the cards in a list: Cut These: The things we're focusing on Lorehold Spirit are: Graveyard, Discard, Low MV permanents, Casting a turn 3 Quintorius, History Chaser. So anything that doesn't fit these main focuses is cut. A few cards fit the focus but are cut for being the weakest of the bunch. Upgraded List: Here's how the deck looks like with the swaps made: Further Upgrades: If budget is no obstacle and you want to play a more high-powered version, the single biggest upgrade to the deck is Underworld Breach, it's one of the best recursion spells in the game and it works especially well here. There's also the usual suspects...