Precon Upgrade Guide
Calling All Angels Upgrade Guide
What to cut, what to add, and how to play the mono-white Angel precon from the Foundations Commander decks, commanded by Giada, Font of Hope.
Foundations Commander Decks
Calling All Angels
Cast Angels and attack in the air. Few precons have fewer moving parts. Out of the box, before any upgrades. How we rate precons
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Quick verdict
Calling All Angels is the simplest deck in the Foundations lineup, which suits a first Commander deck. You cast Angels, gain life and attack in the air. Giada is a two-mana commander who makes every Angel after the first bigger than the last and taps for the white mana to cast it, so the deck does something useful from turn two onward rather than waiting on a six-drop. Its real weakness is the same one every mono-white deck has: once the hand is empty there is very little in the 99 that refills it, and the deck's answer to a board wipe is to rebuild from the top of the library one card at a time.
TurnZero rates Calling All Angels a 3 out of 5 on strength and a 1 out of 5 on difficulty, the lowest piloting demand of the five Foundations decks. See it alongside every other precon we cover on the precon directory.
How the precon plays
Giada, Font of Hope does two jobs at once. Every other Angel you control enters with an additional +1/+1 counter for each Angel you already have, so the third Angel arrives as a 5/5 and the fifth arrives enormous. She also taps for {W} that can only be spent on Angel spells, which is a full mana of ramp on a two-drop body. The deck is built to stack those triggers: play a cheap Angel early, and every expensive one later is bigger than printed.
Righteous Valkyrie and Bishop of Wings turn the Angels entering into life gain, and Valkyrie gives the whole board +2/+2 once you are seven life above where you started. A deck with this much incidental lifegain crosses that line on its own. Lyra Dawnbringer and Sephara, Sky's Blade are the top end: Lyra makes the other Angels bigger and lifelinked, and Sephara gives every flier indestructible, which is the closest this deck comes to board-wipe insurance. Speaker of the Heavens is the one-drop that keeps making 4/4 Angels for free once the life total is up.
A secondary thread runs through the deck: Angelic Sleuth, Merchant of Truth, Wojek Investigator and Search the Premises all investigate, and the Clue tokens are the deck's main way of converting a stalled board back into cards.
What works out of the box
Righteous Valkyrie ↗
Gains life on every Angel or Cleric that enters, then gives the whole team +2/+2 once you're seven life up. The single best payoff in the 99.
Lyra Dawnbringer ↗
A 5/5 flying first striker that hands the rest of the Angels +1/+1 and lifelink. Hard to attack into and hard to race.
Sephara, Sky's Blade ↗
Costs {W} plus tapping four fliers instead of seven mana, and gives every other flier indestructible, which protects the board from a wipe.
Speaker of the Heavens ↗
A one-mana creature that makes a 4/4 Angel every turn once you're seven life up, which this deck gets to on its own.
Archangel of Tithes ↗
Taxes both attacking you and blocking your Angels. In a four-player pod it buys whole turns of not being attacked.
Austere Command ↗
The most flexible wipe in the deck: pick the two halves that hit the table and miss your own board.
What needs improvement
Card draw is the gap. Endless Atlas, Tome of Legends and the Clue package are real, but they are slow, and a mono-white deck that empties its hand by turn six has no natural way to refill it. Secret Rendezvous and Cut a Deal both draw the table cards alongside you, which is fine at a kitchen table and bad against anyone with a payoff. See how much card draw a Commander deck needs → for the number to build toward.
The mana base is 32 Plains plus four utility lands, which is reasonable for a beginner deck. Ramp is light: Sol Ring, Arcane Signet and three two-mana rocks. Giada's own mana ability covers some of that, but only for Angel spells. See the Mana Rocks Guide → for what to add.
10 cards to cut
Each of these has a real function, but a stronger card does more for this specific 99.
Secret Rendezvous draws you three cards and hands an opponent three as well. Symmetrical draw in a deck with no way to punish it is a card you are casting for the table.
Cut a Deal has the same problem at a smaller size: three opponents each draw before you draw three.
Segovian Angel is a 1/1 flier with no text. It turns on Giada's counter math, and that is the whole of its contribution.
Seraph of the Sword prevents combat damage dealt to itself and nothing else. A four-mana 3/3 that blocks well is not what this deck is short of.
Thraben Watcher is a four-mana 2/2 whose anthem duplicates Always Watching for two more mana.
Dazzling Angel gains one life per creature. The deck already has Righteous Valkyrie and Bishop of Wings doing it at a scale that matters.
Angel of Vitality adds one to each life-gain event, a modifier on a modifier when the deck wants bodies and cards.
Exorcise is a sorcery-speed answer that can't touch a creature with power 3 or less. The deck already runs Swords to Plowshares and Fateful Absence.
Invoke the Divine is three mana for what Destroy Evil does for two, and the four life rarely decides anything.
Temple of the False God produces no mana until you already have five lands, which makes it a land that is blank exactly when you need a land.
First upgrades
Budget, first
Herald's Horn ↗
Name Angel: every Angel costs one less, and each upkeep an Angel on top of your library goes to your hand. It draws on the deck's own creature type, so Giada's counters never switch it off.
Everflowing Chalice ↗
Scales with whatever mana you have spare and fixes the deck's thin ramp, which is three two-mana rocks and Sol Ring.
Generous Gift ↗
Three mana, destroys any permanent. Mono-white's answer to the artifact or enchantment the deck otherwise can't touch at instant speed.
Next
Esper Sentinel ↗
Taxes every noncreature spell the table casts and draws you a card when they don't pay. The best one-mana card-advantage engine in the color.
Teleportation Circle ↗
Blinks an Angel or an artifact every end step, re-triggering Giada's counters and the deck's enter-the-battlefield lifegain for free.
Flawless Maneuver ↗
Free protection for the whole board while you control your commander. It is the cleanest answer to the wrath this deck fears.
Angel of Destiny ↗
Once you are fifteen life above your starting total, each player it attacked that turn loses the game. That turns the deck's lifegain into a second way to win.
Higher-investment
Smothering Tithe ↗
Turns every opponent's draw step into Treasure, which is both the ramp and the fixing a mono-white deck never otherwise gets.
Land Tax ↗
Keeps the hand full of Plains in a deck running 32 of them, and fuels the card filtering the 99 lacks.
Cathars' Crusade ↗
Every Angel that enters puts a +1/+1 counter on the whole board, stacking with Giada's own counters. The single biggest scaling effect this shell can add.
Win conditions
The upgraded deck wins the way the precon already wanted to: land Giada, Font of Hope early, add an Angel every turn so each one arrives larger than the last, and turn Righteous Valkyrie's +2/+2 into a board that ends the game in two swings. Sephara, Sky's Blade and Flawless Maneuver are what let that board survive the wipe that used to reset it, and Lyra Dawnbringer makes racing in the air impossible for most tables.
The upgraded 99, in shape
The finished list keeps the Angel core untouched (Giada, the lords, the lifegain payoffs, the top end) and spends its ten freed slots on the two things mono-white typal decks usually lack: cards and protection. The symmetrical draw spells and the redundant small fliers come out; a draw engine, a free protection spell and real ramp go in. The deck still plays the way a new player learned it on night one, which is why you upgrade a beginner precon rather than rebuild it.
Who should buy this precon
The right pick for a first Commander deck, and the easiest of the five Foundations decks to pilot correctly on the first night: there are no counters to track beyond the ones Giada puts on, no sacrifice loops, and no decision harder than which Angel to cast. It is a weaker fit for a player who already owns a white deck, since much of the 99 is the standard mono-white staple set, or for anyone who wants a precon with a combo or an engine to discover.
Track Calling All Angels from your first game.
Load the stock list into TurnZero HQ for free and play it as it comes. When you make your first swaps, save them as a new version. TurnZero HQ keeps a win rate for each version, so you can see whether the upgrades helped instead of guessing.
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