Precon Upgrade Guide
Dance of the Elements Upgrade Guide
What to cut, what to add, and how to play the five-color precon from Lorwyn Eclipsed, commanded by Ashling, the Limitless.
Picking this precon up?
Shown here is the commander's card art, not the box.
Buy Ashling on TCGplayer →Quick verdict
Dance of the Elements is for a player who wants a five-color Elemental typal deck built around Evoke: cast creatures for cheap and sacrifice them, then get a copy back when the real payoff wants it. It's good out of the box for a table that plays a normal pace of Commander, since the deck's mana dorks and landfall payoffs let it ramp into its five-color demands faster than most piles this color-hungry. Its biggest weakness is that Ashling's copy trigger only fires off sacrificing a nontoken Elemental, so a hand that never gets to sacrifice anything leaves a lot of the deck's actual power sitting unused.
TurnZero rates Dance of the Elements a 3 out of 5 on strength and a 3 out of 5 on difficulty, with Evoke timing asking a player to plan a turn ahead. See it alongside every other precon we cover on the precon directory.
How the precon plays
Ashling, the Limitless grants every Elemental permanent spell cast from hand Evoke for four generic mana, and whenever a nontoken Elemental is sacrificed, creates a hasty copy of it that sticks around only if you pay its full color-intensive cost by your next end step. That turns cards like Fury and Endurance , which already have their own Evoke cost, into double value: cast cheap, sacrifice, then get a second copy for free.
Risen Reef and Smokebraider keep the mana and land drops coming every time an Elemental enters, feeding a deck that needs all five colors online quickly. Omnath, Locus of Rage and Horde of Notions are the payoffs: Omnath turns every land drop into a 5/5 and punishes anything that dies, while Horde can recur any Elemental in the graveyard for a full five-color activation. Maelstrom Wanderer and Muldrotha, the Gravetide round out the top end with cascade and graveyard value.
Ashling, the Limitless vs. Mass of Mysteries
Both commanders push the same Elemental shell, but they ask for different things from the board to pay off.
Ashling is the better fit for a build that adds real sacrifice outlets to trigger the copy ability consistently. Mass of Mysteries rewards a build that's already reliably hitting five colors and wants to turn that fixing into a wide, myriad-boosted attack instead.
What works out of the box
Risen Reef ↗
Digs for a land or a card every time an Elemental enters, keeping the five-color mana flowing.
Omnath, Locus of Rage ↗
Turns every land drop into a 5/5 token and punishes the table whenever an Elemental of yours dies. A real payoff for the deck's own plan.
Fury ↗
Evoke for a single exiled red card removes two creatures or planeswalkers on the way in, on top of double strike if hard-cast.
Horde of Notions ↗
Recurs any Elemental from the graveyard for a full five-color activation, a genuine engine once the mana is online.
Selvala, Heart of the Wilds ↗
Draws cards off the table's own big creatures and taps for a huge burst of mixed mana once she's attacking.
Muldrotha, the Gravetide ↗
Replays a permanent of each type from the graveyard every turn, insurance against exactly the removal this deck fears.
What needs improvement
Five colors is always the hardest manabase to build, and this precon's mix of thriving lands, tri-lands, and mana dorks is a good start but worth reinforcing early. See the Land & Mana Base Guide → before anything else, since more fixing is the highest-leverage upgrade this exact 99 can get.
The bigger gap is Ashling's own trigger: the base 99 doesn't run much in the way of dedicated sacrifice outlets, leaning entirely on creatures dying to combat or removal to get the copy ability online. See the Tribal archetype guide → for how typal decks like this one typically add more of their own enablers instead of depending on incidental deaths.
10 cards to cut
Each of these has a real function. None of them earns its slot in this specific 99.
Timeless Lotus enters tapped and only breaks even the turn it matters, too slow a ramp piece without an untap effect to pair it with.
Descendants' Fury asks you to sacrifice your own attacker to dig for a random creature, working against a deck that wants its board to stick around and keep attacking.
Shimmercreep is a modest drain on a menace body, replaceable next to the deck's much stronger Elemental ETBs.
Ingot Chewer only answers artifacts, a narrow removal option next to the deck's broader answers.
Foundation Breaker does the same narrow artifact-or-enchantment job as Ingot Chewer, redundant in the same 99.
Hoofprints of the Stag needs four card draws banked before it does anything, too slow a payoff for a two-mana enchantment.
Crib Swap hands the opponent a real 1/1 shapeshifter body in exchange for the exile, a fair but replaceable rate.
Jegantha, the Wellspring is built as a Companion; as a five-mana creature in the maindeck it's just a 4/4 menace body with no other impact on the board.
Flamebraider duplicates Smokebraider's exact mana ability in a redundant slot without adding anything new.
Slithermuse only draws cards if a chosen opponent already has more cards in hand than you, a narrow condition on top of a leaves-the-battlefield trigger.
First upgrades
Budget, first
Wayfarer's Bauble ↗
More of the fixing this exact five-color manabase needs most, for one mana.
Swords to Plowshares ↗
Premium one-mana removal, a clean addition next to the deck's existing answers.
Next
Skullclamp ↗
Turns any small Elemental copy or Shapeshifter token the deck makes into two cards, and doubles as a sacrifice-adjacent outlet on its own.
Heroic Intervention ↗
Protects the board, and specifically Omnath and the Elemental suite, from exactly the wipe this deck fears most.
Beast Whisperer ↗
Draws a card off every creature cast, refilling the hand as Evoke burns through it.
Higher-investment
Doubling Season ↗
Doubles the deck's Elemental copy tokens and any +1/+1 counters it picks up along the way. A strong fit for the copy-and-sacrifice plan.
Rhystic Study ↗
The format's best pure card-advantage engine, funding the deck's demanding five-color curve.
Smothering Tithe ↗
Punishes the table for drawing extra cards while the deck's own ramp keeps doing its job.
Win conditions
The upgraded deck still wins the way the precon wants to: ramp through the five-color demands with Risen Reef and the deck's mana dorks, cash in Evoke creatures for copies off Ashling, the Limitless , and let Omnath, Locus of Rage turn every land drop and every Elemental death into damage across the table. Heroic Intervention protects that board from the single board wipe that would otherwise reset several turns of ramp and sacrifice value at once.
The upgraded 99, in shape
The finished list keeps the precon's core engine untouched (whichever commander leads, Risen Reef , the Evoke package, Omnath, Locus of Rage as a payoff) and adds the protection and card advantage it was missing to turn a color-hungry ramp deck into a consistent one. The redundant and overly narrow removal is gone, replaced by broader answers and real interaction. The deck still plays the same Evoke-and-sacrifice game it always did; it just gets to its five colors faster and survives long enough to cash in on them.
Who should buy this precon
A good fit for a player who enjoys Elemental typal synergy and doesn't mind planning Evoke and sacrifice timing a turn ahead, and for anyone drawn to a genuinely five-color good-stuff shell without having to build one from scratch. It's a weaker fit for a player who wants a low-variance, straightforward precon, since a demanding manabase and conditional triggers both ask for a bit more patience than most.
Track how the upgrades actually perform.
TurnZero HQ keeps a win rate per deck version, so you can change ten cards, play ten games, and see the difference instead of guessing.
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