Lorehold Spirit arrives as a Boros graveyard deck led by Quintorius, History Chaser, but the precon hides a very different commander in the same box. If you want to turn the deck from a Spirit-focused value strategy into a much more aggressive recursion engine, Excava, the Risen Past is the card worth building around.
Excava costs and already has flying and haste, which means she can usually attack immediately. Whenever she attacks, you may return an artifact, creature or non-Aura enchantment with mana value 3 or less from your graveyard directly to the battlefield. The returned permanent receives a finality counter and becomes a 1/1 flying Spirit creature in addition to its other types.
That creates a fascinating deck-building restriction. Expensive bombs are much less interesting than cheap permanents with powerful utility, enters-the-battlefield abilities or sacrifice effects. If they eventually die with a finality counter, they are exiled instead of going back to the graveyard, so you cannot blindly recur the same card forever. But Excava gives you enough free value that you do not always need to.
The best Lorehold Spirit upgrade therefore focuses on filling the graveyard efficiently, increasing the quality of Excava’s three-mana targets and using finality-counter manipulation selectively when a permanent is worth recycling again.
The Stock Deck Is Better Suited to Excava Than It First Appears
Although Quintorius, History Chaser is the face commander, Wizards already filled Lorehold Spirit with cards that work extremely well under Excava. The deck contains a substantial recursion package and several cheap permanents that remain useful even after Excava turns them into 1/1 Spirits. The official list includes Selfless Spirit, Remorseful Cleric, Skyclave Apparition, Teshar, Ancestor’s Apostle, Containment Construct, Millikin, Perpetual Timepiece and Currency Converter, among other graveyard-friendly pieces.
Selfless Spirit is particularly good because Excava can return it, use the flying 1/1 body in combat, and still leave its sacrifice ability available to protect the rest of your creatures. Remorseful Cleric works similarly as repeatable-looking graveyard interaction, while Skyclave Apparition gives Excava a removal spell attached to a permanent she can bring back.
Containment Construct works beautifully with cards such as Faithless Looting and Seize the Spoils, allowing discarded cards to remain playable for the turn rather than simply becoming graveyard fuel. Perpetual Timepiece can mill cards directly, and Millikin combines mana acceleration with another way to put potential Excava targets into the graveyard.
Even the face commander should not automatically be removed. Quintorius, History Chaser creates a 3/2 Spirit whenever one or more cards leave your graveyard, which Excava naturally causes every time she attacks and returns something. His +1 ability also lets you discard a card, draw two and mill another, directly setting up future attacks. Wizards designed Lorehold Spirit around cards leaving the graveyard, and Excava simply turns that same foundation into a more focused reanimator strategy.
Best Lorehold Spirit Upgrades
Power Conduit remains one of the cleanest additions from the original version of this guide. Excava gives a returned permanent a finality counter, and Power Conduit can remove a counter from one of your permanents to place a +1/+1 counter on a creature or a charge counter on an artifact. That means a card Excava resurrected can later die normally and return to the graveyard, ready to be excavated again.
The important difference is that I would treat this as a value engine, not the entire identity of the deck. We do not need to remove every finality counter. Save that effort for permanents whose abilities are genuinely worth recurring several times.
Scholar of New Horizons fits that philosophy perfectly. It is cheap enough for Excava to return and can remove a counter from a permanent you control as part of its ability to find a Plains. A finality counter that looked like a restriction can therefore become part of a ramp effect, and the resurrected Scholar becomes eligible to go back to the graveyard normally later. Excava players have independently gravitated toward exactly this interaction because it provides value even when there is no finality counter worth removing.
Cathar Commando is another excellent target. It costs only two mana, has flash and can sacrifice itself to destroy an artifact or enchantment. Discard or mill it early, bring it back with Excava and the deck effectively gains access to repeatable utility without having to hold a removal spell in hand. Because sacrificing a permanent carrying a finality counter would normally exile it, removing that counter first with Power Conduit or Scholar makes repeated recursion possible.
For additional card flow, Priest of Ancient Lore is wonderfully uncomplicated. Returning it draws a card and gains a life, leaving behind an evasive 1/1 Spirit afterward. Excava does not need every target to be spectacular; low-cost permanents that replace themselves make the commander much more consistent over a long game.
I also like Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd. Phelia can temporarily exile another nonland permanent and return it later. When an Excava-reanimated permanent leaves the battlefield and comes back, it returns as a new object, meaning the finality counter and the continuous effect turning it into a 1/1 Spirit are no longer attached to it. That allows you to rescue particularly valuable permanents from Excava’s temporary condition while also reusing enters-the-battlefield abilities. This interaction has become one of the more natural directions for dedicated Excava builds.
Finally, Altar of Dementia gives the deck a free sacrifice outlet and a way to fill its own graveyard. It costs only two mana, so Excava can recover it if it gets milled or discarded. Sacrificing creatures to mill yourself creates more potential targets, while larger creatures can also be used offensively against opponents when that matters.
That gives us a much healthier upgrade philosophy than simply stuffing the deck with expensive Boros cards: cheap permanents that are useful when drawn, useful in the graveyard and useful again when Excava attacks.
What Should You Cut?
The stock deck contains several expensive cards that make sense for Quintorius, History Chaser or a broader Spirit strategy but become less important once Excava is the commander. Because Excava can only return permanents with mana value 3 or less, every expensive permanent needs to justify why it cannot participate in the primary recursion engine.
Moonshaker Cavalry is undeniably powerful, but eight mana is a huge investment and Excava can never bring it back. It makes much more sense in a wide Spirit-token build where a giant flying finisher ends the game immediately. In a streamlined Excava list, that slot can become another card that functions at multiple stages of the game.
Guardian Scalelord has a useful recursion ability, but six mana again puts it well outside Excava’s range. The upgraded deck would rather let the commander provide its recurring reanimation while spending card slots on permanents she can actually retrieve.
Balefire Liege is another strong card whose five-mana cost and red-white spell payoff fit a different style of deck. Excava is much more interested in permanents entering, leaving and returning from the graveyard than repeatedly casting multicolored spells.
Secret Rendezvous is an easy efficiency cut. Giving an opponent three cards in order to draw three yourself can be politically useful, but Lorehold Spirit already has access to discard-draw effects, graveyard recursion and engines such as Tocasia’s Welcome that generate cards without giving an opponent the same advantage.
I would also trim Patchwork Banner in an Excava-focused version. It is perfectly reasonable in Spirit tribal, but we are no longer trying to maximize a single creature type. Excava turns returned permanents into Spirits, yet their utility abilities matter much more than giving the resulting 1/1 bodies another +1/+1.
A clean first round of changes would therefore be:
Out: Moonshaker Cavalry, Guardian Scalelord, Balefire Liege, Secret Rendezvous, Patchwork Banner
In: Power Conduit, Scholar of New Horizons, Cathar Commando, Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd, Altar of Dementia
Priest of Ancient Lore would be one of my next additions if you want even more low-cost ETB value.
Finality Counters Are a Resource, Not a Problem You Must Solve
It is tempting to look at Excava and immediately build the entire deck around Solemnity. Since Solemnity prevents counters from being placed on permanents, cards returned by Excava would not receive finality counters at all. The interaction is real, and Solemnity itself costs three mana, meaning Excava can even return it from the graveyard.
But I would not make that the only way the deck functions.
A permanent with a finality counter is not automatically bad. Excava already paid zero mana to return it, turned it into a flying attacker and gave you another chance to use its static, triggered or activated abilities. If Priest of Ancient Lore comes back, draws a card, attacks for a few turns and is eventually exiled when it dies, you have still received excellent value from the attack trigger.
Counter removal becomes important for cards you specifically want to loop. Selfless Spirit is much stronger when it can sacrifice itself, return to the graveyard and eventually be excavated again. The same is true for Cathar Commando or other permanents designed to sacrifice themselves for utility.
This is why Power Conduit and Scholar of New Horizons are so appealing. They do something useful while selectively rescuing the cards worth reusing.
Blink effects provide another route. If Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd exiles a permanent returned by Excava and that card comes back later, it returns as a completely new permanent without its old finality counter. It also returns in its normal form rather than remaining a 1/1 Spirit created by Excava’s effect.
That can be particularly relevant for noncreature permanents. Excava can return an artifact or non-Aura enchantment and turn it into a 1/1 flying creature, but being a creature exposes that permanent to creature removal. Blinking it resets the permanent back to its normal characteristics.
The best Excava builds therefore do not panic whenever a finality counter appears. They ask a much more useful question:
Is this particular permanent valuable enough that I want to use it again?
Fill the Graveyard Without Throwing Away Your Hand
Excava cannot do anything if the graveyard contains no legal targets, so the upgraded deck needs a steady stream of cards moving there. Fortunately, Lorehold Spirit already includes several excellent tools.
Faithless Looting is almost perfect. Draw two, discard two, put the best Excava targets directly where you want them, and later cast Looting again through flashback. Currency Converter turns discarding cards into additional value, while Containment Construct can let you play cards you discard when you do not want them to remain in the graveyard.
Perpetual Timepiece mills two cards at a time and doubles as graveyard protection if an opponent attempts to exile everything. Millikin mills while producing mana, which is exactly the kind of low-opportunity-cost graveyard setup the deck wants.
The face commander Quintorius, History Chaser is particularly interesting here. His +1 lets you discard a card, draw two and then mill a card, while his triggered ability creates a 3/2 Spirit whenever one or more cards leave your graveyard. Excava causes a card to leave your graveyard every time her attack trigger successfully returns something, so keeping Quintorius in the 99 gives the deck another payoff for its normal game plan.
What I would avoid is overloading the deck with dedicated self-mill spells that do nothing else. Boros does not have the same graveyard infrastructure as Golgari, and Excava only returns one permanent per attack. You do not need thirty cards sitting in the graveyard. You need a small selection of good targets available consistently.
Discard effects are often better because they give you control over which permanent goes into the graveyard rather than hoping a random mill effect hits the right one.
The Mana Base Mostly Needs Small Improvements
Lorehold Spirit is only two colors, and the stock mana base is already reasonably well equipped. Command Tower, Battlefield Forge, Clifftop Retreat, Rugged Prairie, Furycalm Snarl, Exotic Orchard and Fabled Passage give the deck a solid Boros foundation. The official list also includes Archaeomancer’s Map, Claim Jumper, Arcane Signet, Fellwar Stone and Mind Stone, so basic acceleration is not a major weakness.
The easiest improvements are simply the tapped lands. Lorehold Campus, Temple of Triumph, Study Hall and Terramorphic Expanse can all cost tempo, particularly because Excava costs four mana and has haste. The ideal curve often involves casting her and attacking immediately, so missing that fourth land drop or having it enter tapped can effectively delay the engine by an entire turn.
I would not replace everything at once. Start with the lands that enter tapped without providing enough utility in return and move toward untapped red-white sources according to budget.
Emeria, the Sky Ruin deserves separate consideration. It enters tapped and asks for a large number of Plains before its recursion ability becomes active, so it is slower than Excava wants. But because the deck already plays heavily toward white and recursion matters, I would test it before automatically cutting it. Whether it survives the upgrade depends on how aggressively you rebuild the rest of the mana base.
Our Mana Base Upgrade Guide is useful here because Lorehold Spirit does not need expensive lands so much as it needs to stop losing turns unnecessarily.
How the Upgraded Lorehold Spirit Deck Wins
The upgraded deck should begin by developing mana and putting a few carefully chosen permanents into the graveyard. A discarded Selfless Spirit, Cathar Commando or Skyclave Apparition is not a lost card. It is ammunition for the first Excava attack.
Because Excava, the Risen Past has haste, the engine starts immediately. Cast her, attack and return whichever cheap permanent has the most impact on the current game. One turn that may be removal. Another turn it may be card draw, graveyard hate or protection.
The returned permanent is only a 1/1, but that is often an advantage rather than a drawback. It has flying, so it contributes evasive pressure, and cards such as Tocasia’s Welcome naturally reward small creatures entering your battlefield. EDHREC data for current Excava builds reflects just how well Tocasia’s Welcome, Faithless Looting, Selfless Spirit and Quintorius continue to support this approach.
As the game progresses, cards such as Power Conduit and Scholar of New Horizons let the best utility creatures lose their finality counters so they can die and be used again. Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd can reset another important permanent entirely, while Altar of Dementia turns expendable creatures into more graveyard fuel.
Quintorius, History Chaser then gives the deck a natural way to build a wider army. Each successful Excava return causes a card to leave your graveyard and can create another 3/2 Spirit. Once enough Spirits have accumulated, Quintorius’s -4 granting double strike and vigilance can turn what looked like incremental graveyard value into a lethal combat step. His rules text confirms that multiple cards leaving simultaneously only create one trigger, but Excava normally moves one card at a time anyway.
That gives the deck a satisfying progression. Early graveyard setup becomes free permanents. Free permanents become incremental card advantage and disruption. Those creatures eventually become an evasive Spirit board capable of actually finishing the game.
PreconForge Verdict
Lorehold Spirit already contains an unusually strong Boros graveyard foundation. The stock deck gives you Faithless Looting, Currency Converter, Containment Construct, Perpetual Timepiece, Selfless Spirit, Skyclave Apparition, Teshar, Ancestor’s Apostle and several larger recursion cards.
Switching from Quintorius, History Chaser to Excava, the Risen Past does not mean throwing that shell away. It simply changes which part of it deserves the most attention.
The best Excava upgrades are cheap permanents that remain useful at every stage of the game. Cathar Commando provides removal, Scholar of New Horizons converts unwanted counters into ramp, Power Conduit keeps your best recursion targets cycling, Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd resets them entirely and Altar of Dementia makes sure the graveyard never runs out of options.
Most importantly, do not treat every finality counter as a puzzle that must be solved.
Excava already gave you the permanent for free.
Sometimes the correct move is to squeeze every last piece of value out of it, let it disappear, and excavate something else next turn.
