Challenge: Precon Skeleton Upgrade
27 July 2026
The idea: buy one Commander preconstructed deck (any recent precon works, typically £30-40) and build from it as-is. You're allowed a fixed number of upgrade swaps — say 10 — where you cut a card from the precon and add a replacement, but each individual replacement card must cost under a small cap (e.g. £5). No stacking unused swaps into one expensive upgrade.
Why it stays interesting
The precon's identity and game plan mostly stays intact, so the pod sees a real variety of strategies (whatever that season's precons happen to be), and the swap limit forces genuinely hard choices about which 10 cards actually move the needle most.
Cost control
Two caps working together: the precon itself is a fixed, known price, and each swap has its own small individual ceiling — so total spend per deck is naturally bounded no matter how many swaps you use, and nobody can quietly turn "10 upgrades" into one deck-warping £150 card.