Boxed Precon Breakdown

The deck comes with several commander options but for the sake of being an upgrade guide, let’s keep Rin and Seri, Inseparable at the helm. This means we’re mainly on the lookout for more Cat, Dog and token synergy, while at the same time not shying away from decent card options ‘because they’re neither Cats nor Dogs’.

I know some of you will want to keep your deck uniform with those creature types, but out of the box it already makes citizen and warrior tokens on top of already breaking theme by leaning into Shapeshifters like Taurean Mauler so I didn’t feel too bad adding creatures that don't tick the Cat-Dog box.

Raining Cats and Dogs is very light on instant speed responses and removal compared to other decks so we need to make room to fit those. I’m also not a fan of an effect like Warp World, especially for online webcam play. When you’re not sitting at the same physical table, that card seems less than desirable to resolve. Adding to this, what little ‘in response’ cards it has are all white and I’d like to vary the response package by adding some more colors to it. Path to Exile is obviously good, I just want more options.

There’s only one board wipe, mainly because the deck can’t rebuild well after a wipe hence it doesn’t seek to wipe and shoot itself in the foot. I’d like to slot some board wipe protection for those scenarios and find room for at least one more board wipe on top of Dusk//Dawn.

The deck already has some finishing potential, but almost all of those are ‘visible’ finishers. ‘Here’s a Mirror Entity, and while I don’t have the mana to turn that into a kill this turn, I will next turn’. Those types of cards are fine, but another instant speed ‘didn’t see that one coming did you’ card definitely wouldn’t hurt. The deck as a whole could do with some anthems and ways to make the tokens more threatening or difficult to block too.

I really like the current mana curve topping out at three, meaning we’re putting down several engine pieces and enablers right before we cast Rin and Seri, so I’m going to attempt to keep the curve and mana value similar with the upgrades. I feel the deck does an okay job at ramping so I didn't want to make too many changes there either. Some of the lands felt a little slow so for the sake of not perpetually being one (or several) turns behind some taplands like Scattered Groves and Sheltered Thicket will have to go.

I also felt 38 lands was quite over looking at the mana value and curve, and you’ll notice the upgraded deck runs ‘only’ 34 lands. I realize some of you may feel this is on the lower end, but with the curve, ramp, and draw options present in the deck, I didn’t feel like this deck wanted to run much more than that. ‘Ideal land count to ramp to draw ratio’ is a topic that’s been discussed often enough so let’s not make this upgrade guide about that. If you’re not comfortable with the land count, feel free to run more.

Cuts

All in all, some of the stock cards just weren’t all that great. The deck plays fine out of the box, but there’s definitely room for improvement. Some card weren’t synergistic enough, or the effect they tried to provide in the deck could be done for less mana and/or not at sorcery speed. You can’t add cards without removing some, so let’s get to the list of cuts I made in alphabetical order (excluding lands):

Bloodline Pretender
Cast Out
Cursed Mirror
Greater Tanuki
Hightcliff Felidar
Hungry Lynx
Komainu Battle Armor
Lurking Predators
Oreskos Explorer
Phabine, Boss’s Confidant
Seth’s Tiger
Showdown of the Skalds
Stalking Leonin
Warp World

Some of these like Komainu Battle Armor got cut quite late in the upgrading process, but if my options are a reconfigure equipment that’s 4 to equip or a Doubling Season, I wouldn’t have to think long which card I’d rather see on the battlefield. I apologize for cutting a card as cute as Greater Tanuki!

Others were quite easy to replace. Oreskos Explorer only working if you’re behind? The deck has a similar effect in Loyal Warhound too, which I ended up keeping in the end. There’s another easy cut if you were looking to make further upgrades, for something like Land Tax for example. I deliberately left breathing room for our Low Power environment so you could still further upgrade the deck if you wanted.

New Cards

Let’s list the upgrades I made, excluding lands, in alphabetical order:

Akroma’s Will
Beast Whisperer
Beast Within
Blasphemous Act
Clever Concealment
Doubling Season
Generous Gift
Grand Crescendo
Heroic Intervention
Idol of Oblivion
Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist
Prava of the Steel Legion
Return to Nature
Shamanic Revelation
Shared Animosity
Tesak, Judith’s Hellhound
Universal Automaton
Warleader’s Call

I don’t usually play creature heavy deck so others told me to aim to have roughly 30 creatures. Let’s go over those creatures before moving on to the rest of the changes!

Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist

Mirri brings a lot to the table. We’re on a go wide token spam strategy, and when Mirri attacks our tokens become harder to block. Not only do we need many tokens to connect to whittle down our opponent’s life totals, initially they’re not all that big. Our face commander’s tokens are just 1/1s, and Mirri swinging with them will make them survive for longer.

After you attack, with a tapped Mirri, you’re safeguarded from retaliation as only a singular creature can now swing your way. There’s a neat interaction with Mirri’s first strike and Basilisk Collar which is already in the deck making it so she’ll probably survive for many attacks too!

Tesak, Judith’s Hellhound

Tesak provides +1/+1 counters for our Dogs and haste for every creature we have with +1/+1 counters on them. Unleash being optional means we’re not forced to go down blockers either. Creatures we control with counters on them having haste seemed like a nice bit of synergy with Felidar Retreat’s second option. I hope you’re ready for the vigilance-haste-countered up zoo because it’s coming your way. Is this where I make the obligatory ‘Who Let the Dogs Out?’ joke for Tesak and unleash?

While the vigilance won’t matter for your Dogs since they can’t block if unleashed, your other creatures won’t mind. Lastly, Tesak can provide us with a solid amount of mana during combat, making it easier to activate Jazal Goldmane or Mirror Entity or pay a higher X cost for White Sun’s Zenith. Just make sure to use the mana before moving to the declare blockers step!

Universal Automaton

I’d been going back and forth on Universal Automaton and whether or not it was worth it before I finalized the list. At face value, you make 1 cat and 1 dog with Rin and Seri out for a singular mana which is fine, but we have more tools in the deck to get more value out of it. With cards like Whitemane Lion, Fleetfoot Panther, and Temur Sabertooth, it’s quite easy to cast this card several times per turn, triggering Rin and Seri and our ‘whenever you cast’ or ‘whenever ~ enters’ effects several times. It also gets the benefits of all Cat and all Dog related anthems.

Beast Whisperer

Beast Whisperer certainly won’t mind a scenario where all of the above is happening either. 31 Total creatures definitely felt like it was a strong enough draw engine to slot in, and I much prefer a card like that over the impulse draw Showdown of the Skalds provides. While a card like Keeper of Fables isn’t bad, it certainly can’t hurt to draw a few more cards more consistently.

Prava of the Steel Legion

The final creature I added is Prava of the Steel Legion, which makes our tokens a lot larger on our turn, making it easier to attack opponents who might have bigger creatures than us. This only happens on our turn, so I went back and forth between Prava and Intangible Virtue but for the sake of ‘cat-ness’ I stuck with Prava. Having the ability to create a token to block with at instant speed in a pinch felt like a nice bonus on top.

I mentioned instant speed responses – be those removal, protection, finishers or otherwise – being too unicolor and not plentiful enough and board wipes being seemingly absent from the deck so let’s go over those.

Generous Gift, Beast Within

Generous Gift and Beast Within felt like no-brainers. These can destroy any permanent, and we currently had little to no means of dealing with problematic permanents, including lands. Yes, you’re providing your opponent with a 3/3 and while our commander only makes 1/1s, we have plenty of anthems, bigger token makers and keywords in the deck to ensure it shouldn’t be that big of an issue. I also like that this deck can run both, and I wish we had a similar spell in red that wasn’t Chaos Warp just so we could run all three.

Return to Nature, Blasphemous Act

Solely relying on Lion Sash to deal with graveyard players didn’t feel like enough, on top of Feline Sovereign and Qasali Slingers requiring a board to destroy artifacts and enchantments so Return to Nature found its way into the deck as a multipurpose removal tool. It’s not the most exciting card to talk about, but it does get the job done. Blasphemous Act should close to always just be a singular red mana to cast so it felt like the best option for our second board wipe in the deck. I’d like to run more board wipes, but we’re very creature-reliant.

Heroic Intervention, Clever Concealment

The base deck was quite susceptible to wipes, so Heroic Intervention is a solid option to prevent opponents – or your own spells – from resetting your board. Clever Concealment has convoke so can come out for free if the board is developed. Is Ajani depicted in Heroic Intervention enough to be considered on theme?

Our commander’s Dog tokens on top of the tokens from Kitt Kanto, Prava, Brimaz and Oketra’s Monument can all convoke for white mana, which seemed like enough of them to play Clever Concealment over Teferi’s Protection under the assumption we could cast it for zero mana. It’s a third of the price too!

Grand Crescendo, Akroma’s Will

Grand Crescendo still feels like an underplayed card – it made our top cards of 2022 article – and in this deck it can do so much! Pay zero for X to save your creatures, or sink 10 into X before your turn with Anointed Procession and Impact Tremors out to shoot everyone at the table for 20 damage before you untap.

Akroma’s Will can be used offensively while you’re attacking, or defensively to save your board by picking the second option which has indestructible and protection from all colors. It’s a great instant speed finisher and in an emergency situation a removal prevention tool all in one go!

Warleader’s Call, Shared Animosity

Now that we have the ability to respond at instant speed, we could do with making our tokens more threatening and annoying to block. I really like Impact Tremors and we recently got a card that has the same effect AND is an anthem on top! How can we not add Warleader’s Call. This affects all our creatures, not just our tokens and is quickly becoming one of my favorite cards in the upgraded deck.

I hope you’re ready for combat related math, because Shared Animosity was too good not to add. Make sure you get the rules interaction between it and your changelings or Maskwood Nexus right. It doesn’t matter how many creature types are shared between one creature and another, they either do or do not share a type. Count the number of creatures, not the number of types.

Idol of Oblivion, Shamanic Revelation

I don’t think a deck can realistically run ‘too much’ card draw and with the amount of token-making sources in the deck, I was surprised to not see Idol of Oblivion in the stock precon. We shouldn’t have an issue fulfilling the ‘if you created a token this turn’ clause, it’s cheap to cast, and can turn into a decent beater. Account for Anointed Procession already being in the deck and a card like Jetmir, Nexus of Revels giving the now 2 8/8 tokens vigilance, trample, double strike and +2/+0 and Idol of Oblivion turns into a great late game card too.

Shamanic Revelation is not the best card draw option in our colors, but oftentimes our board will be entirely tapped down, so the bonus life gain it provides certainly isn’t bad. With the anthems and +1/+1 counters options we added and the ones that were already present in the deck, having several 4 power creatures on board shouldn’t be that difficult.

Doubling Season

‘And then I added Doubling Season because the card is good?’ That’s all I had written down for it initially. We already run a token doubler with Anointed Procession, so I added another one for redundancy’s sake. It could have been Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation or Parallel Lives, but I felt there were quite a few +1/+1 counter cards in the deck, like Felidar Retreat, Taurean Mauler, Lion Sash and the newly added Tesak, Judith’s Hellhound that made me pick Doubling Season instead. So, about that Idol of Oblivion…

With the changes made, we now have better finishing potential and more access to board wipe protection while finding a slot for another boardwipe ourselves. Another token doubler, some +1/+1 counters, haste and several combat related nuisances for our opponents to figure out while we smack down more tokens than before. There’s still room for more upgrades. Spicing up the land base with some fetches or proper duals would be smart.

This deck can be found on our Low Power Hub on Moxfield, a collection of decks all good to play as-is within our Low Power environment on the server. Did you buy the Raining Cats and Dogs Secret Lair Deck? Are you planning to keep it as is or are you making your own upgrades? Let us know on Twitter!

Articles like these are made possible and kept ad-free due to the support of all of our Patreon, Twitch, and Discord subscribers. Come check us out on Discord to chat about all things Commander and play curated games with people from all over the world!

“This article is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards.
Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.”

Upgrading the Raining Cats and Dogs Secret Lair Deck

How to Beat Farewell in Commander

Our Top 10 Cards for Murders at Karlov Manor