EDHREC remasters Marath precon as a cleaner counters deck

Nature of the Beast is worth revisiting if you want the commander to do the heavy lifting. Marath, Will of the Wild already carries a powerful rules text and a sky-high combo ceiling; the original precon’s problem was never the legend, it was the clutter around it. EDHREC’s remaster treats the deck like a cleanup job, not a nostalgia tour, and that makes it a useful guide for anyone deciding whether to upgrade, what to cut, and what still matters.

Why this precon still matters

Commander 2013 landed on November 1, 2013, after being announced at the Magic panel at San Diego Comic-Con on July 20, 2013. The release consisted of five 100-card shard-colored decks, each with 15 new cards, and that makes Nature of the Beast part of an early experiment in what a Commander precon could be right out of the box. It also arrived during the moment when Wizards was starting to build more identity into the command zone itself, with cards like Opal Palace and the ability word Tempting offer helping define the product’s direction.

That historical context explains why the deck feels both recognizable and unfinished. Early Commander precons often had a strong idea buried inside a pile of mismatched synergies, and Nature of the Beast is a classic example. The remaster works because it does not pretend the deck was already polished, it asks what the deck was trying to be all along.

What the original list was actually doing

The original Nature of the Beast list wandered through a lot of Naya territory at once. It carried 42 lands, but it also packed in cards like Curse of Predation, Curse of Chaos, Mystic Barrier, Spawning Grounds, Warstorm Surge, Where Ancients Tread, Tempt with Discovery, and Wrath of God. That mix tells the story: some creature value, some enchantment clutter, some combat math, some big-board payoff, and not enough pressure in one clear direction.

That is exactly why a remaster makes sense. The old shell had cards with real power, but they were arranged like a toolbox with the drawers thrown open. A modern rebuild keeps the pieces that support Marath’s game plan and stops pretending every good card belongs just because it is playable in Naya.

Why Marath is still the real draw

Marath, Will of the Wild is not a fair commander in the narrow sense, and the card text makes that obvious. It enters with +1/+1 counters equal to the mana spent to cast it, then its activated ability lets you remove counters to add counters, deal damage, or make an X/X green Elemental token. That means one card can scale, ping, and produce board presence without ever needing much help.

The hidden truth is how often Marath turns into a combo commander. EDHREC’s combo database lists more than 1,500 Marath combo entries, and the commander shows up in shells built around cards like Ashnod’s Altar, Cathars’ Crusade, Hardened Scales, Mana Echoes, and Food Chain. That ceiling matters because it proves the deck was never really about random value creatures. It was always a counters engine waiting for the rest of the list to catch up.

What aged well, and what feels obsolete

The pieces that aged best are the ones that let counters convert into real game actions. Marath’s own ability still rewards efficient mana, repeatable counter movement, and token production, which means the best support cards are the ones that either grow the commander or profit from the commander being on the table. Hardened Scales-style effects, sacrifice outlets like Ashnod’s Altar, and board payoffs like Cathars’ Crusade all line up with what Marath is already built to do.

What aged badly is the loose filler. Curses, stray combat tricks, and enchantments that only partially support the plan feel much less convincing now than they did in 2013. The same goes for a land package that does not reflect how modern precons are built. Current Commander decks are much more polished in mana and curve, so a Nature of the Beast remaster has to start by making the deck cast its spells on time.

• Keep the cards that scale Marath or convert counters into damage, tokens, or extra mana.

• Cut the scattered enchantment and combat-trick cards that do not advance the counters plan.

• Fix the mana base first, because a clean curve matters more now than it did in the original list.

How to approach the $120 remaster

EDHREC’s remaster gives itself a hard $120 budget ceiling for reprints, and that constraint is smart. It forces the upgrade path to preserve the original precon’s identity instead of rebuilding the deck from scratch. In practice, that means the new version should look like a real counters deck that still remembers where it came from.

The best upgrade path is the one that lets Marath stay flexible. You want enough counters support to make every activation matter, enough token support to turn excess mana into pressure, and enough utility to keep the deck from folding when the table starts interacting. That is a cleaner plan than the old “good cards in Naya” approach, and it is the reason the remaster can feel modern without losing the commander’s original personality.

For players comparing Marath with newer Naya options, that is the key distinction. A lot of newer commanders may be more narrowly focused, but Marath still gives you a command zone engine, a removal tool, a token maker, and a combo shell in one card. If you want a commander that can genuinely justify a counters package instead of merely wearing one, Marath remains a very attractive upgrade target.

Nature of the Beast still teaches the same lesson it did on release: the commander was never the problem. The right revisit does not force Marath into a new identity, it finally lets the precon’s best idea become the whole deck.