Precon Upgrade Guide
Wakanda Forever Upgrade Guide
What to cut, what to add, and how to play the Selesnya precon from Marvel Super Heroes, commanded by T'Challa, the Black Panther.
Picking this precon up?
Shown here is the commander's card art, not the box.
Buy Wakanda Forever on TCGplayer →Quick verdict
Wakanda Forever is for a player who wants a grindy, good-stuff Selesnya deck: stack up Vibranium tokens and artifacts, grow T'Challa or draw cards off Shuri, and take the monarch to keep the cards flowing every turn. It's good out of the box for casual multiplayer, where the monarch bounces around and the deck's incremental value has time to add up. Its biggest weakness is exactly that patience: it has far more ways to gain small advantages than to end a game quickly, so a table that punishes a slow start will get there before this deck does.
TurnZero rates Wakanda Forever a 3 out of 5 on strength and a 3 out of 5 on difficulty. See it alongside every other precon we cover on the precon directory.
How the precon plays
T'Challa, the Black Panther makes a tapped Vibranium token whenever he enters or attacks, and every artifact spell you cast with mana value 4 or greater grows him by two +1/+1 counters, so the early turns are about deploying ramp and artifacts to feed him. Palace Jailer and King Solomon's Frogs both take the monarch, which is this precon's actual card-advantage engine: an extra card every end step for as long as nobody hits you.
Once the artifact count climbs, payoffs like Sword of the Animist , Trading Post and Solemn Simulacrum keep converting that count into more mana and more cards, and Wakandan allies ( Okoye , Nakia , M'Baku , W'Kabi ) round the board out into a genuine go-wide plan rather than a solo Black Panther beatdown. Martial Coup is the deck's closest thing to a single card that both stabilizes and closes: a board wipe and an army in the same spell.
T'Challa vs. Shuri, the Black Panther
Wakanda Forever ships with a genuine alternate commander in Shuri, and the two build meaningfully different games from the same 99.
T'Challa is the better fit if the upgrade path leans into a handful of genuinely expensive artifacts. Shuri is the better fit for a build that leans harder into cheap artifact count and the deck's existing go-wide Wakandan allies, since lifelink also buys time against a table full of aggressive decks.
What works out of the box
T'Challa, the Black Panther ↗
Free artifact ramp on a stick that turns into real size once bigger artifacts start landing.
Palace Jailer ↗
Removal and the monarch in one four-mana body. The deck's best single card.
Solemn Simulacrum ↗
Ramps, fixes, and draws a card when it dies. A precon staple for a reason.
Sword of the Animist ↗
Turns every attack into another land, feeding both the artifact count and the mana base.
Martial Coup ↗
A scalable board wipe that leaves you with an army when the dust settles.
Trading Post ↗
Converts spare artifacts, life, or a creature into whatever the board actually needs that turn.
What needs improvement
Too many of the deck's artifacts do nothing on the turn they enter, which is fine for a grindy plan but slow against a table with real pressure. See What Makes a Curve and Why It Matters → for how to weigh a card's immediate impact against its long-term value when deciding what to trim. The manabase is a reasonable two-color base already; see the Land & Mana Base Guide → if the basics ratio needs adjusting as upgrades come in.
The bigger gap is defending the monarch once you have it and protecting the board from a wrath, since a deck this invested in artifacts and counters loses more to a single board wipe than most. See the Artifacts archetype guide → and the Go-Wide archetype guide → for how decks built this way typically shore up both problems at once.
10 cards to cut
Each of these has a real function. None of them earns its slot in this specific 99.
Fleecemane Lion is a solo hexproof threat that neither makes nor cares about artifacts, off-plan for a deck built around going wide together.
Coveted Jewel hands itself and three cards to whichever opponent hits you unblocked, a real liability in multiplayer rather than a safe draw-three.
Divine Visitation needs heavier, more reliable token production than this precon actually has to be better than a blank enchantment most games.
Meteor Golem is seven mana for a single removal ETB, well above the cost of the instant-speed removal already in the 99.
Panther Robot needs an enormous artifact count already on board before it's even castable, awkward in a deck that isn't that fast.
Mind's Eye only draws off opponents' extra draws, which nobody at the table reliably provides. Passive and situational.
Loyal Guardian is a win-more payoff that only matters once the board is already wide, rather than an enabler that helps it get there.
Panther Habit is slow and passive, converting damage you weren't going to take anyway into counters. It doesn't advance the plan.
N'Yami-Class Mother Ship costs six mana and needs Crew 3 in a deck without much reliable crew fodder up front for the value it provides.
Conduit of Worlds is a clunky value engine that competes with the deck's own artifact payoffs for mana without fitting the counters or monarch plan directly.
First upgrades
Budget, first
Wayfarer's Bauble ↗
Cheap ramp and fixing that also adds to the deck's own artifact count.
Skullclamp ↗
A Vibranium token or small ally that would otherwise just sit there becomes two cards when it dies.
Next
Heroic Intervention ↗
Protects the whole board (and the monarch's card advantage) from exactly the board wipe this deck fears most.
Beast Whisperer ↗
Draws a card off every creature cast, refilling the hand as the go-wide plan empties it.
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
Doubling Season ↗
Doubles both the Vibranium tokens T'Challa makes and the +1/+1 counters he grows with. The single best fit for this exact game plan.
Anointed Procession ↗
A second token doubler, stacking with Doubling Season for a genuinely wide board fast.
Smothering Tithe ↗
Punishes the table for drawing extra cards while the monarch is already doing the same job for you.
Win conditions
The upgraded deck still wins the way the precon already wants to: a wide board of Vibranium tokens and Wakandan allies, grown by Doubling Season and Anointed Procession into more than the opponents can profitably block, closed by Martial Coup 's army mode or a straightforward alpha strike once T'Challa or Shuri has grown large enough to matter. Holding the monarch behind Heroic Intervention buys the extra turns of card advantage the deck needs to get there.
The upgraded 99, in shape
The finished list keeps the precon's core engine untouched (T'Challa or Shuri, Vibranium tokens, Sword of the Animist , Trading Post , Solemn Simulacrum ) and doubles down on it with Doubling Season and Anointed Procession layered on top. The slow, do-nothing artifacts are gone, replaced by cheaper ramp and a genuine protection package ( Heroic Intervention ) the precon never had. The deck still plays the same patient, go-wide game it always did; it just gets there faster and survives the board wipe that used to end its run.
Who should buy this precon
A good fit for a player who enjoys a grindy, incremental-advantage deck and doesn't mind giving up the monarch a few times along the way, and for anyone drawn to Wakanda's cast who wants a go-wide shell built around them. It's a weaker fit for a table that plays fast, high-pressure decks, since this precon's own plan needs several patient turns to get rolling before it can compete.
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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