The Calling All Angels upgrade I’d make first involves putting Equipment on a two-mana creature and leaving several perfectly respectable Angels in the box. Giada, Font of Hope has flying and vigilance. She’s already available every game. Giving her something useful to do while attacking seems a better starting point than shopping for another seven-mana flyer and hoping the deck gets there.
Calling All Angels released on October 2 as one of the five Foundations Commander decks. Our earlier look at those decks was written before the lists were public. The confirmed Wizards list gives us something much more useful to work with: a mono-white shell with 38 lands, plenty of removal, and several draw engines already included.
I’m interested in two things here: making the early turns produce more cards, and making a destroyed board less miserable. Five swaps get us started. The additions total $8.38 at the checked Scryfall prices, before shipping, and they’re spread across products you might already have opened or taken apart. I’d search the collection before turning that table into an order.
My first five Calling All Angels upgrades
These cuts are from the unmodified deck. Prices are Scryfall USD snapshots checked October 8, 2026, for the exact non-foil printings linked below. An older copy with the same rules text works just as well; these editions make the price comparison reproducible.
| Take out | Put in | Reference printing | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search the Premises | Mask of Memory | Commander Legends, cmr/324 |
$0.42 |
| Secret Rendezvous | Conjurer’s Mantle | March of the Machine Commander, moc/12 |
$2.45 |
| Invoke the Divine | Generous Gift | Marvel Super Heroes Commander, msc/133 |
$0.93 |
| Reya Dawnbringer | Jackdaw Savior | Bloomburrow, blb/18 |
$0.48 |
| Defy Death | Angel of Indemnity | Outlaws of Thunder Junction Commander, otc/9 |
$4.10 |
If you own the first four additions, the remaining reference cost is $4.10. If you own all five, you can try the changes without buying another card. Check that those copies are actually available, though. A card sleeved into another Commander deck is already doing a job, and moving it means that deck now has a hole.
Card Kingdom’s budget upgrade guide also makes a good case for Equipment and these recovery creatures. My cuts differ in places, especially the nine-mana Angel, and I’d leave the land count alone for the first few games. We can argue about shaving a land once the deck has actually drawn some opening hands.
Giada can carry the draw engine
Mask of Memory costs two mana to cast and one to equip. When the equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, you can draw two cards and discard one. On Giada, that means a turn-two commander can start filtering cards on turn three if you have the mana, a safe attack, and the Equipment. Flying helps her get through. It doesn’t guarantee it.
The sequencing is useful. Giada’s vigilance lets her attack without tapping, so after combat she can still tap to help cast an Angel you’ve just drawn. Her mana ability is restricted to Angel spells. You’ll need your lands or another mana source to cast the Mask, pay an equip cost, or cast Jackdaw. She also needs to have been under your control since the start of your turn before she can attack or use that tap ability, unless something gives her haste.
Search the Premises asks opponents to attack you or your planeswalkers before you get Clues, then each Clue needs another two mana to become a card. Sometimes that works beautifully. Against a table that spends three turns developing and ignoring you, the four-mana enchantment can sit there while your hand gets smaller. I’d rather try spending three mana across casting and equipping the Mask, then see whether Giada can connect.
Conjurer’s Mantle is a different bet. It costs two to cast and one to equip, gives +1/+1 and vigilance, and triggers when the equipped creature attacks. You look at six cards and can put one that shares a creature type with it into your hand. Equipped to Giada, that’s a search among those six for an Angel. Combat damage isn’t required, which helps when every opponent has found a flying blocker.
The vigilance is redundant on Giada. I’d still use her to carry it while she’s a safe attacker, and move it to another creature when that makes more sense. The six cards can miss. There are plenty of turns when what you need is a land or removal, and the Mantle leaves those on the bottom. That’s why I like trying it alongside the Mask rather than treating it as a replacement for every other draw source.
Secret Rendezvous gives you three cards and gives a chosen opponent three cards. There’s a political use for that, and I can imagine keeping it in a very friendly pod where the deal actually sticks. I don’t know how much your group honors that kind of bargain. I’d prefer repeatable access to Angels, with the possibility of attacking someone else next turn if diplomacy goes badly.
Generous Gift keeps the three-mana instant slot occupied while widening what you can answer. Invoke the Divine destroys an artifact or enchantment and gains four life. Gift destroys any target permanent and gives its controller a 3/3 Elephant. Losing the life gain can matter in this deck, but having an answer to a troublesome creature or planeswalker is a trade I’d make. There are still other removal spells in the box; this change doesn’t need a full rebuild of that package.
The Bird that gets your Angels back
Jackdaw Savior is a three-mana flying Bird Cleric. Giada won’t give it counters or help pay for it, which makes it a slightly awkward guest in an Angels deck. Its death trigger is enough for me to try it anyway.
Whenever Jackdaw or another creature you control with flying dies, its ability can return another target creature card with lesser mana value from your graveyard to the battlefield. Lesser than the creature that died. A six-mana Angel dying can recover a cheaper creature. A two-mana Giada dying gives you a much narrower choice, and the counters she’s handed out don’t change anyone’s mana value.
During a destroy-all-creatures wipe, Jackdaw sees the other flyers dying alongside it and can trigger for them. Creatures that died in that same event can be legal targets once you put the triggers on the stack, provided each target meets the relevant mana-value restriction. You still need to choose legal targets and resolve the triggers carefully. An exile wipe doesn’t give you those death triggers, and graveyard exile can spoil the recovery.
Reya Dawnbringer costs nine mana and returns a creature at the beginning of your upkeep. I like the extravagance of that card. Nine mana, an entire turn cycle of everyone looking at it, and then you get to start. There’s something wonderfully unreasonable about the patience it asks for. But this deck already has expensive creatures, and Jackdaw can arrive much earlier and sit beside them.
Angel of Indemnity takes the other recovery slot. It’s a six-mana flying lifelinker whose enter-the-battlefield ability returns a permanent with mana value four or less from your graveyard. That includes Giada, the Equipment above, and Starnheim Aspirant, which the precon already includes. It won’t return the enormous Angel you were hoping to bring back with Defy Death. Keeping Defy Death instead is reasonable if that’s the problem your games keep producing.
Okay, yes. Six mana is still six mana. I’m cutting a five-mana spell for it and asking the deck to handle that. The appeal is getting a flying body, lifelink, and a smaller permanent back in the same play. I’d try that before spending more on the slot, and I’d swap back if the card keeps waiting in hand.
Find the five copies before ordering them
Start with card names rather than these exact editions. An Equipment box, dismantled Commander precons, and your Bloomburrow stack are sensible places to look. In Eldwyn, I’d check the collection for each name and confirm where the copy lives before setting it aside. The want-list check against your collection is useful here because the table has five additions, while your actual shopping list might have one.
Keep the removed cards together with the deck’s original list. That makes the experiment easy to reverse. I’d also keep Day of Judgment for now. A creature deck still sometimes needs to reset a board, and owning a new recovery creature doesn’t mean it’ll be in play when you need it.
After a few games, write down which problem actually happened: missed land drops, an empty hand, or no way back after removal. The collection-first Commander approach works better when the next substitution answers something you’ve seen. I’m especially curious whether the Mantle misses often enough to be annoying. Put it on Giada, attack a few times, and keep those six-card reveals honest.