The Brothers' War
Nov 2022
Relive the war between Urza and Mishra, two brothers whose conflict tore Dominaria apart and set the stage for millennia of Magic history.
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The Brothers' War Precon Decks — click to analyze
The War That Defined Dominaria
The Brothers' War retells one of Magic's most pivotal historical events: the catastrophic conflict between the artificer brothers Urza and Mishra, whose rivalry tore Dominaria apart and culminated in the detonation of the Golgothian Sylex — an event whose magical shockwave is still felt millennia later. The Commander precons for this set put players in command of each brother's war machine, with Urza's disciplined Esper engineering facing off against Mishra's volatile Grixis constructs.
Both decks celebrate Magic's artifact and construct heritage, featuring Powerstones — the magical energy source central to the brothers' conflict — and the Unearth mechanic, which allows artifact creatures destroyed in battle to return one final time.
Urza's Iron Alliance — The Artificer's Perfection
Urza, Chief Artificer, commands the most disciplined and organized artifact strategy in Commander precon history. The Iron Alliance is an Esper (white/blue/black) artifact army where Urza's ability gives all your artifact creatures menace and creates a Construct token whenever you tap down for mana with Powerstones.
The deck's power comes from the compound interest of its artifact synergies — each new artifact improves your mana generation, which funds more artifacts, which creates more Construct tokens, which improves your combat capabilities. Players who enjoy building dense artifact networks and watching each piece multiply the value of every other will find Urza's Iron Alliance one of the most satisfying precons to pilot.
The Unearth mechanic provides resilience against removal, allowing your most valuable artifact creatures to return once after death. This recursive element ensures the Iron Alliance maintains combat presence even when opponents invest heavily in removal.
Mishra's Burnished Banner — The Dark Mirror
Mishra, Eminent One, represents the dark mirror of Urza's perfectionism — where Urza refines and improves, Mishra copies and multiplies. This Grixis (blue/black/red) artifact deck creates modified copies of your artifact creatures at the beginning of each combat, generating temporary tokens that have haste and can attack immediately.
The deck's copy strategy creates interesting resource management questions: which artifact creatures provide the best value when copied, and how do you sequence your copies to maximize combat damage? The modified copies that Mishra creates inherit the base creature's abilities, making creatures with powerful activated abilities or triggered combat effects particularly valuable.
Mishra's Burnished Banner is the more aggressive of the two brothers' War precons, winning through combat pressure rather than the Iron Alliance's resource accumulation. Players who enjoy combat-focused artifact strategies will find this deck their preferred approach to the brothers' eternal conflict.