What’s up, precon aficionados? Welcome back to another EDHREC precon guide for Bloomburrow. Today we’re digging into the Jeskai go-wide token deck Family Matters, led by Carl Winslow. Oops, I meant Zinnia, Valley’s Voice.

Who Are the Commanders for Family Matters?

Zinnia is a 1/3 Bird Bard (that’s as fun to say as Lizard Wizard) for three mana () with flying that gives all of our creature spells offspring 2, which means we can tack an extra two generic mana onto any of our creature spells to make an additional 1/1 copy of that creature. Zinnia also gets +X/+0, where X is the number of other creatures we control with base power 1 (so at least all of the offspring tokens). 

So we know this deck wants to go wide with small creatures and tokens, but also go tall with Zinnia getting big enough to potentially kill with commander damage. 

Our backup commander is Arthur, Marigold Knight, a 4/5 Mouse Knight for five mana () with haste. When Arthur and at least one other creature attack, we look at our top six cards, and we can put a creature card from among them onto the battlefield tapped and attacking. At end of combat, that creature goes to our hand. We’ve seen similar effects in Ilharg the Raze Boar and Winota, Joiner of Forces.

Here’s the full decklist:

What Are the Themes and Strategies of the Deck?

This is a token deck through and through. Zinnia’s ability to give all our creatures 1/1 copies means that we’ll be overloading the board with babies. But what use are they, aside from making Zinnia bigger?

Making offspring is a great way to double up on powerful enter-the-battlefield effects, and this deck is full of them. Solemn Simulacrum, Inferno Titan, Angel of the Ruins, Cloudblazer, and Skyclave Apparition are just a few. But even better are the creatures with alliance, a keyword from Streets of New Capenna that triggers whenever creatures enter our board. We find this on Rose Room Treasurer, who makes us Treasures and deals damage, as well as Devilish Valet, whose power doubles every time a creature enters our board. Valet is an underloved card, and I hope this deck shows how great it is to more people. For example, with Valet on the board, cast Siege-Gang Commander and pay two for the offspring. Two Siege-Gangs enter, along with six Goblin tokens. Valet’s power will double eight times, making it a 256/3 with trample. That’s lights out for one opponent, or two if you have an offspring copy of Valet. 

Another powerful enters ability is Junk Winder, which taps down a permanent whenever we drop a token. Winder is an exceptionally powerful card, as it taps down threats past our next turn, and can keep them down as long as we keep making tokens. 

Speaking of tokens, Zinnia’s not the only one making them here. We’ve also go Thopter Engineer, Stolen by the Fae, Martial Coup, Elspeth, Sun’s Champion, and more. You’ll never go hungry for 1/1s with this deck.

Speaking of 1/1s, let’s talk about the best card in the deck: Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive. This Human Rogue makes it so that every single offspring we make is unblockable. This is great with draw triggers like Curiosity Crafter and Bident of Thassa. They don’t have to just be 1/1s though. Attack with your army of offspring and other 1/1s, wait for your opponents to declare no blocks, then pump them at instant speed with Jazal Goldmane. Or you could do extra combats with Combat Celebrant.

How Do You Play Family Matters?

Unlike Animated Army, this deck has a more average-sized ramp suite. Though it must be said, it could use a little more. Although our average mana value is a respectable 3.55, we should consider all of our creatures to cost two more mana than what’s on the card. Because if we’re not offspringing, we’re not playing the deck right. So that two-mana Spirited Companion actually costs four mana, the five-mana Boss’s Chauffeur actually costs seven mana, and so on. When picking opening hands, ramp is key. 

The deck is strongest when you have a lot of creatures with evasion. Thankfully a lot of the creatures have flying, like Selfless Spirit and Inspiring Overseer. This makes Luminous Broodmoth a bit of a strange inclusion in the deck, not only because we have many flyers, but also because we won’t get the offspring trigger when the creature comes back after death. Still, it has its uses. If we have two copies of a creature, say Solemn Simulacrum, on the board with a large attacker coming, we block with the nontoken version. It dies and comes back. Value. 

Arthur, Marigold Knight is a great commander…but not for this deck. The reason is that too many of our creatures are too small to attack safely. If you trigger Arthur’s ability, you’re likely to end up pulling something like a Spirited Companion or Loyal Warhound from the top. These both easily die in combat, and don’t get their full value from having offspring. You might also get larger attackers, like Sun Titan or Inferno Titan, but those big creatures are far fewer in the deck. If it made the new creatures indestructible like Winota, Joiner of Forces does, you’d be doing great. Sadly, the deck just isn’t built for Arthur.

What Are the New Cards in Family Matters?

Let’s start with the critters. Agate Instigator is a 1/3 Lizard Rogue that deals one damage to each opponent whenever another creature enters our board. But wait, there’s more! It’s not just an Impact Tremors on a creature like Witty Roastmaster. It also has offspring , meaning we can pay that to make an additional Instigator. So for four mana we can get a much more killable Purphoros, God of the Forge effect. But keep in mind that the offspring is a token, so token doublers like Anointed Procession will love it. Also, it should be noted that Zinnia grants all of our creature spells offspring 2, so if she’s on the board, Instigator can technically get two offspring tokens since it has the offspring ability twice.

Pollywog Prodigy is a 1/3 Frog Wizard with evolve (whenever a creature enters our board with greater power you put a +1/+1 counter on Prodigy). And whenever an opponent casts a noncreature spell with mana value less than Prodigy’s power, we get to draw a card. This is….pretty awesome. Along similar lines as Rhystic Study and Mystic Remora, this is a card that can easily get out of hand in low-mana pods. Which tends to be the case for most cEDH games, yes? I wager this critter is going to see a ton of play.

Rapid Augmenter gives haste to our creatures with base power 1, and gets a +1/+1 counter and can’t be blocked any time we drop a creature we don’t cast. This includes all tokens, obviously, but also anything that gets blinked or returned from the graveyard. I imagine it’s gonna do huge work in decks that can make a lot of tokens really quickly, like The Locust God.

Jacked Rabbit brings back the ravenous keyword from Warhammer 40k. It’s also a token powerhouse that pumps out baby bunnies whenever it attacks. We know how popular Adeline, Resplendent Cathar is, so I’d expect this to follow suit, although less so since it can’t be your commander.

Next we’ll switch over to enchantments, with Murmuration, which gives our Birds +1/+1 and vigilance, in addition to creating a 1/2 Bird token at our end step for each spell we cast that turn. It’s a bit on the pricey side for what storm decks are looking to spend on enchantments, but even one token per turn can be good, especially if you need flying blockers.

Fortune Teller’s Talent is the Class card for the deck, and on its first level we can look at our top card. For four mana we move to level two and we can play cards from the top of our library as long as we’ve cast another spell this turn. For three more mana we move to level three, which reduces the cost of spells we cast from anywhere other than our hand by . It’s almost like a gradual One with the Multiverse. Much easier to cast, but we get a bit less for our eight mana.

Our last enchantment is Echoing Assault, which gives all of our tokens menace, and when we attack a player we can make an offspring token copy of one of the creatures attacking them. This is incredibly solid in go-wide token decks (I plan to get one for my Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon deck for sure). The fact that it can trigger three times a turn if we attack every opponent is wild.

Our last card is our only non-permanent new spell, but it’s a doozy. Calamity of Cinders deals six damage to all untapped creatures and has convoke, so we can tap our creatures to cast it and keep them safe in the process. Where this suffers is when our opponents are being aggressive and attacking with all their best creatures each turn. In those cases, this will be really bad. But when we get in those situations where everyone has a strong board so everyone is scared to attack, this helps to clear things up a bit.

Is Family Matters Worth Buying?

Is the deck any good? Here’s my final grade:

B

This precon does an exceptional job at creating tokens. And this is one of the best packages of new cards I’ve seen in a precon, with instant classics like Pollywog Prodigy, Rapid Augmenter, and Jacked Rabbit all having massive potential. 

The deck plays well for the most part, although it could use a bit more ramp to account for the extra two mana for offspring. And while there aren’t a ton of great reprints, the ones we have are fantastic, with Helm of the Host and Luminous Broodmoth both being $10+ cards before the reprint, as well as format staples like Combat Celebrant and Curiosity Crafter.

So what’s stopping this deck from having a higher grade? The backup commander, Arthur, Marigold Knight. Arthur is a lot of fun, and should see a decent amount of decks made, but he’s completely out of place in this deck.

Can I make this precon better? Find out in my Upgrade Guide. And stay tuned for more precon guides, here on EDHREC.

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