Precon Upgrade Guide
Wretched Ranks Upgrade Guide
What to cut, what to add, and how to play the mono-black Zombie precon from the Foundations Commander decks, commanded by Ghoulcaller Gisa.
Picking this precon up?
Shown here is the commander's card art, not the box.
Buy Wretched Ranks on TCGplayer →Quick verdict
Wretched Ranks is the strongest of the five Foundations decks out of the box, and it is not close. Zombie typal has thirty years of printed support behind it, and this 99 collects a real share of it: four lords, three separate token engines, genuine recursion, and a commander who converts one large creature into a pile of 2/2s at instant speed. The catch is that it is also the deck most likely to draw the table's attention — a board of Zombies backed by Undead Warchief and Death Baron reads as a threat two turns before it actually is one.
TurnZero rates Wretched Ranks a 4 out of 5 on strength and a 2 out of 5 on difficulty. See it alongside every other precon we cover on the precon directory.
How the precon plays
Ghoulcaller Gisa sacrifices another creature for {B} and makes 2/2 Zombies equal to that creature's power. Pointed at Grave Titan that is six Zombies; pointed at a creature that is about to die to removal anyway, it is free value. She is a sacrifice outlet and a token engine in one card, which is why the rest of the deck is built out of things that are worth sacrificing and things that get better when you have a lot of bodies.
The lords are the payoff: Death Baron gives every Zombie deathtouch, Undead Warchief gives them +2/+1 and makes the Zombie spells cheaper, and Lord of the Undead and Cemetery Reaper add +1/+1 alongside their own recursion. Endless Ranks of the Dead compounds a wide board into a wider one every upkeep, Diregraf Colossus tokens off every Zombie spell, and Army of the Damned makes thirteen at once and can be cast a second time from the graveyard.
Recursion is what keeps the deck going through removal: Gravecrawler comes back from the graveyard for one mana whenever you control a Zombie, Oversold Cemetery returns a creature every upkeep, and Undead Augur and Midnight Reaper turn the deck's own deaths into cards.
What works out of the box
Grave Titan ↗
Six power across three bodies for six mana, two more Zombies every attack, and the single best creature to feed Gisa. The deck's best card by some distance.
Endless Ranks of the Dead ↗
Doubles a wide board over two turns and never stops. The card that turns a good board into an unanswerable one.
Death Baron ↗
Deathtouch on every Zombie makes a board of 2/2 tokens effectively unblockable and impossible to attack into.
Gravecrawler ↗
A one-mana recursive body, which is both free Gisa fuel and an infinite sacrifice loop waiting for the right outlet.
Diregraf Colossus ↗
Enters with a counter for every Zombie in the yard and tokens off every Zombie spell after. Rewards the deck for doing what it was already doing.
Gray Merchant of Asphodel ↗
Drains the table for your devotion to black, which in a mono-black deck full of double-black lords is regularly six or more.
What needs improvement
The deck's card draw is almost entirely life payment — Phyrexian Arena , Graveborn Muse , Ambition's Cost , Night's Whisper , Sign in Blood and Castle Locthwain all bill you for the cards. Graveborn Muse in particular draws one card per Zombie every upkeep, which on a wide board is how this deck loses games it was winning. Adding lifegain or a non-life draw source is the highest-leverage change. See how much card draw a Commander deck needs →.
Removal is also narrow: Go for the Throat can't hit an artifact creature and Mutilate and Necrotic Hex are symmetrical sweepers in a deck that is usually the one with the widest board. See how much removal to run →.
10 cards to cut
Each of these has a real function. None of them earns its slot in this specific 99.
Necrotic Hex costs seven and makes every player sacrifice six creatures — including you, the player most likely to have six. Six Zombies back is not worth losing the board you built.
Mutilate gives all creatures -1/-1 per Swamp, which kills your own 2/2 token army before it kills anything relevant.
Wight of Precinct Six is only large if the opponents' graveyards are, which is a stat you don't control and that graveyard hate can reset.
Soulless One counts Zombies everywhere, so it is enormous exactly when you already have the board and small when you need help.
Razorlash Transmogrant can't block and costs {4}{B}{B} to return unless an opponent has four nonbasics. Too conditional for a recursion slot.
Marchesa's Decree is monarch plus one life per attacker. The monarch is real; the deck is already the table's target, and handing it over is more likely than keeping it.
Geier Reach Sanitarium draws every player a card for two mana. A colorless land that helps the table in a deck that needs black mana for double-black lords.
Consumed by Greed makes one opponent sacrifice their biggest creature, and gifting a card to do it hands the strongest player a free draw.
Ambition's Cost is four mana, three cards and three life in a deck already paying life for everything else it draws.
Infernal Idol is a three-mana rock that taps for one black. Charcoal Diamond already does that a mana cheaper.
First upgrades
Budget, first
Zombie Master ↗
Gives every other Zombie swampwalk and regeneration — against any deck with a Swamp the whole token army becomes unblockable.
Village Rites ↗
One mana, sacrifice a creature, draw two — the deck is full of creatures that were about to die and Gisa is already asking for them.
Bontu's Last Reckoning ↗
A three-mana wipe for a deck that rebuilds off Gravecrawler and Oversold Cemetery faster than anyone it wipes. Your lands don't untap next turn, so cast it on a turn you were done anyway.
Next
Zombie Apocalypse ↗
Returns every Zombie from your graveyard to the battlefield and destroys all Humans. The rebuild button this deck's plan is built to use.
Ashnod's Altar ↗
A free sacrifice outlet that makes mana, which with Gravecrawler turns the deck's recursion into a genuine engine.
Bolas's Citadel ↗
Casts off the top of the library for life in a deck with a low curve, and the life payment is the same resource the deck already spends.
Cabal Coffers ↗
With 33 Swamps this is the ramp mono-black is built around, and it fixes the deck's inability to cast two lords in a turn.
Higher-investment
Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver ↗
A second Zombie commander's worth of value in the 99: a Decayed token whenever a Zombie dies, and a card whenever you sacrifice one.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth ↗
Makes every land a Swamp, which turns on Cabal Coffers, Tendrils of Corruption and Consuming Corruption at once.
Living Death ↗
Swaps the table's graveyards onto the battlefield — a blowout in the one deck that fills its own yard on purpose.
Win conditions
The upgraded deck wins two ways. The first is combat: a wide Zombie board under Undead Warchief and Death Baron that deathtouch makes unprofitable to block. The second is drain — Gray Merchant of Asphodel , Vengeful Dead and Ayara, First of Locthwain convert the same board into life loss that doesn't care about blockers, and Ashnod's Altar plus Gravecrawler turns those triggers into a loop the table has to answer immediately.
The upgraded 99, in shape
The finished list cuts the symmetrical sweepers and the conditional bodies, and keeps every lord, every token engine and every recursion piece. The freed slots go to a free sacrifice outlet, a non-life draw source, real ramp in Cabal Coffers , and a rebuild spell that punishes the wipe this deck attracts. It is the same Zombie deck that came in the box, playing the same game, with the two cards that used to kill its own board taken out of it.
Who should buy this precon
The pick for a new player who wants the strongest of the five decks and doesn't mind being looked at for it. It also has the longest upgrade runway: Zombie typal is one of the best-supported archetypes in Magic, so almost every card added to this shell has an obvious job. It is a weaker fit for a player who wants to stay quiet at the table — this deck is visibly ahead well before it can actually win, which in a four-player pod is its own kind of difficulty.
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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