Precon Upgrade Guide
Lorehold Spirit Upgrade Guide
What to cut, what to add, and how to play the Boros precon from Secrets of Strixhaven, commanded by Quintorius, History Chaser.
Picking this precon up?
Shown here is the commander's card art, not the box.
Buy Quintorius, History Chaser on TCGplayer →Quick verdict
Lorehold Spirit is for a player who wants to move cards out of the graveyard for value and get a Spirit token or a recurred permanent every time. It's good out of the box for a table that plays an aggressive, recursive midrange game, since the deck's mix of self-mill, discard, and reanimation keeps making 3/2 flying Spirits almost every turn without much extra effort. Its biggest weakness is that a lot of its payoffs need cards actually leaving the graveyard, not just sitting in it, so a deck without that push does far less than it looks like it should on paper.
TurnZero rates Lorehold Spirit a 3 out of 5 on strength and a 3 out of 5 on difficulty, with the graveyard triggers rewarding a bit of sequencing to chain together. See it alongside every other precon we cover on the precon directory.
How the precon plays
Quintorius, History Chaser is a planeswalker commander that makes a 3/2 red and white Spirit token whenever one or more cards leave your graveyard, so the deck leans on Faithless Looting , Conspiracy Theorist , and Containment Construct to discard and then play cards back out of the yard, each one triggering another token. Excava, the Risen Past does the same job from the other direction, reanimating a cheap permanent straight into a flying Spirit body every time she attacks.
Sun Titan and Serra Paragon turn the graveyard into a second hand for anything costing three or less, while Laelia, the Blade Reforged and Atsushi, the Blazing Sky keep exiling and replaying cards to grow or replace themselves. Moonshaker Cavalry is the deck's closer: flying and a team-wide pump sized to the board once the Spirit tokens have piled up.
Quintorius, History Chaser vs. Excava, the Risen Past
Both commanders make Spirit tokens off the graveyard, but they get there through very different triggers.
Quintorius is the better fit for a build that leans harder into discard outlets and self-mill to keep the graveyard trigger firing every turn. Excava rewards a more straightforwardly aggressive build, since her value only shows up once she's actually attacking.
What works out of the box
Sun Titan ↗
Returns a permanent costing 3 or less on entry and on every attack. A real recursion engine on a 6/6 body.
Skyclave Apparition ↗
Exiles a nonland permanent costing 4 or less on entry, premium interaction in this shell's colors.
Laelia, the Blade Reforged ↗
Exiles and casts extra cards off attacking, growing herself every time cards leave the graveyard by other means.
Serra Paragon ↗
Replays a land or a cheap permanent from the graveyard every turn, on a flying body.
Conspiracy Theorist ↗
A cheap, repeatable loot that feeds Quintorius's trigger on command.
Moonshaker Cavalry ↗
The deck's actual finisher: flying and a team-wide pump once the Spirit tokens have added up.
What needs improvement
The manabase is a solid two-color base already; see the Land & Mana Base Guide → if the basics ratio needs adjusting as upgrades come in. The curve is fairly low overall, which is good for consistency but leaves the deck light on real payoffs past five mana; see What Makes a Curve and Why It Matters → for how to weigh adding one or two bigger recursion targets.
The bigger gap is that several cards in the base 99 don't actually push cards out of the graveyard themselves, leaning entirely on the few that do. See the Graveyard Recursion archetype guide → for how decks built this way typically add more of their own enablers instead of depending on a handful of cards to carry the whole plan.
10 cards to cut
Each of these has a real function. None of them earns its slot in this specific 99.
Millikin mills yourself for colorless mana with no real self-mill payoff to make that trade worthwhile in this specific 99.
Claim Jumper only tutors a land if an opponent already has more than you, a narrow condition for a three-mana body.
Kami of Ancient Law is a one-mana body that only answers a single enchantment, well below the deck's other interaction.
White Orchid Phantom 's land disruption is minor and lets the opponent simply fetch a replacement basic.
Fateful Tempest depends on a multiplayer vote to matter, unreliable when the table doesn't vote the way you need.
Perpetual Timepiece is a slow mana rock whose mill upside doesn't feed this deck's actual graveyard-leaving triggers.
Relic Retriever only makes a Treasure if a card already left your graveyard that turn, a conditional trigger on top of a small body.
Remorseful Cleric is one-shot graveyard hate the deck rarely needs, since most tables aren't racing it on graveyard resources.
Squee, Goblin Nabob is a 2/2 with no ability of its own beyond returning to hand, doing very little for the slot even with discard support.
Currency Converter is a weak filtering body that competes with the deck's better discard-and-recur pieces for the same job.
First upgrades
Budget, first
Wayfarer's Bauble ↗
Cheap ramp and fixing that also feeds the graveyard once it's spent.
Skullclamp ↗
Turns any small Spirit token that would otherwise just attack once into two cards.
Next
Solemn Simulacrum ↗
Ramps, fixes, and draws a card when it dies, giving Sun Titan and Serra Paragon another cheap target to recur.
Chimil, the Inner Sun ↗
Protects your own spells and adds a free card most end steps, a strong general-purpose upgrade in any two-color shell.
Higher-investment
Win conditions
The upgraded deck still wins the way the precon wants to: chain discard and recursion into a steady stream of 3/2 flying Spirits off Quintorius, History Chaser or reanimated bodies off Excava, the Risen Past , then close with Moonshaker Cavalry 's team-wide pump once the board is wide enough. Deflecting Swat protects the engine piece that's actually carrying the game, and Smothering Tithe keeps the mana flowing to recast whatever gets answered along the way.
The upgraded 99, in shape
The finished list keeps the precon's core engine untouched (whichever commander leads, Sun Titan , Serra Paragon , the Spirit-token trigger) and adds more of the deck's own real enablers instead of leaning on a handful of cards to do all the graveyard work. The narrow, low-impact filler is gone, replaced by more ramp, more card advantage, and real protection for the commander. The deck still plays the same recursive, Spirit-first game it always did; it just does it more consistently.
Who should buy this precon
A good fit for a player who enjoys a recursive, value-dense midrange deck and doesn't mind sequencing discard and graveyard triggers to keep the tokens coming. It's a weaker fit for anyone who wants to just cast big threats and attack, since a lot of this precon's real power is tied up in setting up its graveyard triggers correctly.
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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