The Problem with Precons…

Dive into the enchanting world of Commander Preconstructed (Precon) decks with our in-depth guide! Whether you're a seasoned veteran or new to the EDH universe, this video is your ultimate resource for mastering the art of Precons. Discover the thrilling joys and common challenges of starting with a Precon deck, and learn how to transform these ready-to-play sets into a customized arsenal that reflects your unique style and strategy.

[@Joke_Of_All_Trades]

This honestly is a bad take. I have played many precons that have lasted as long as decks way more expensive and optimized and have never been taken out turn 6 as you say. Precons such as the ixalan dinosaur precon, the M.O.M. knights precon the fallout dog meat precon and the hobbit precon have, with little to no upgrades, won or held their own in games. So either you are using absolute bottom of the barrel low power precons or you have a play group that is expressly targeting the precon because i have never seen the ones i play preform as bad as you said.

[@mtgmookie]

I said in the video that one or two precons are pretty strong, and can win some of their own games. Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated!

[@Joke_Of_All_Trades]

@mtgmookie I think it's closer to 1 or 2 PER set of 4 it is not only 1 or 2 total its more like 30-40 percent of all precons are of high quality and others need a little mana fixing or some extra synergy cards and you pay ~$45 for what is usually 100-145 worth of card precons are almost always worth it a very small amount are not worth buying and never buy on mark up.

[@josephcourtright8071]

You say its a bad take. But that was 100% may experience with commander. First game I convinced everyone to play precons. It was okay. Next week people played their own decks. Probably the 2nd worst experience I've ever had in a card game. They weren't even playing anything that crazy. I made the choice to quite commander rather than upgrading my deck.

[@mtgmookie]

@josephcourtright8071 Thank you

[@gehnzou1]

My Wilhelt the Rotcleaver was cool, but then I turned it in to "you either all kill me as quickly as you can or I win every game." I put a good amount of money into my precon over the last year and I love that it is now the biggest threat in my pod. Fastest win was turn 5. Adding and subtracting, little tweaks here and there. I think that's what I enjoy about the precons as a new player is you can learn it, break it down and rebuild it while learning about mana curve and how to play. Usually very affordable and you get everything you need in one box except sleeves and dice for counters. I love undead and zombies so I saw Wilhelt and was like "cool, he does zombie stuff." Now, as I approach my one year anniversary of starting to play magic, I wanted a new deck. I was thinking "maybe not get a deck that goes infinite"... So I just got Stella Lee, Wildcard. I'm sure she won't go infinite... Right? ....

[@mtgmookie]

Thanks for sharing your experience

[@nerdgoodness7656]

I mean, you made good points, but if you compare old data/deck reviews from previous commander decks, you'll see that every deck has bulk cards or things that aren't synergistic with the commander. That's part of the fun of upgrading the decks, after all. Plus with the price of some singles in precons, it's better to bite the bullet and buy the precon instead of the single. Especially when that single is $20-30.

[@mtgmookie]

Thanks for the Feedback!

[@Kylora2112]

I think one of the problems *is* the sheer amount of trash in the precons, though. And it's not just a price factor, since you can a solid, coherent, effective commander deck for under $40 (and most of the precons have over $100 in card value). I just built a Shelob, Child of Ungoliant deck for $35 that's a higher power level than any of the base precons, so it's not just a value/investment issue. I'm not saying WotC needs to start throwing in Demonic Tutor and Dark Ritual into every black deck, but man, they should at least have some decent deck building tech so it can at least do something out of the box. One great thing Yugioh does is making it so 3 copies of a $10 structure deck gets you 95% of the way to a competitive deck (just need to invest in some core extra deck and interaction staples), but obviously that can't work in a singleton format (also, Yugioh deck building is a hell of a lot more modular than MTG, where most of your interaction and side deck are meta calls and you can deck hop a lot more easily).

[@TheJmarco24]

Audio is soo low i have to up my volume to 300% just to hear anything.

[@mtgmookie]

Sorry about that

[@Solidus-]

Precons are worth if you’re gonna upgrade

[@mtgmookie]

Agreed

[@MattHorton]

You can build Arcades for $43 fwiw. But also Tinker Time was also my first deck. It blows. And that Command Zone upgrade sounded cool but never worked.

[@mtgmookie]

Thanks for the feedback, but I was saying Arcades can be built with some really expensive cards.

[@MattHorton]

For sure! Wasn't meant as a tear down. I just know because I did it and it whips 😅

[@Pupalah]

Slow down. Breathe. Annunciate.

[@bartholomewallen3937]

This video makes it sound like you or someone in your playgroup has had terrible experiences. The video reminds me of magic the Noah though, so if this video was meant to be sarcastic you should work on the delivery of your lines.

[@kasskastrull3676]

Jus wanted to mention that your video volume is way lower than the standard, which means I had to increase the volume to hear anything, but when an ad played it blasted my speakers. Otherwise great video

[@mtgmookie]

Thanks

[@MagicManAleister]

Content of the vid aside, it shows you put a lot of thought and work into this video, kudos on that and I hope you grow into a good sized MTG channel

[@mtgmookie]

Thanks

[@Beaudunk]

Honestly, video wasn't bad. Was fast paced enough to keep my ADHD brain engaged. Will sub for the next one lil boss man.

[@mtgmookie]

Thanks

[@TaylorCrimson-oq2hp]

Dang it’s tough to hear your first precon I mainly use is an example for one of the weakest precons. I’ve made some upgrades to focus on the backup commander, Rashmi and Ragavan. Main problem is I always seem to run out of cards in hand even though I didn’t take out card draw

[@mtgmookie]

Rashimi and Ragavan are probably the better commander, and that precon doesn’t have enough card advantage.

[@jauntyjack]

Don't feel bad. I constantly hear Tinker Time bashed online. But it won the only game I've played against it. There were two non precons in that pod. The guy opened the box in front of us, had no experience of the deck, and was new to the game. It is not as weak as people make it out.

[@ColdShocker1]

Interesting take. You make a lot of great points, its suck your using Tinker Time as your example being its one of my favorite precon of all time. However you are very much right. There are similar precon like this that share these problems that I'm going to go over, but Tinker Time is the weakest maybe of all precons ever printed. It doesn't help that the theme is one of the most niche theme ever (differently named artifact tokens). So its chance of getting support are second to none. That being said when it finally gets support, we get cards like {Transmutation Font} that tbh are mid. Next the precon itself didn't bring much card to support the theme as well, excluding the commander of course we have {Sandsteppe War Riders} that's it. Which in relating to another video made the commander an [Monolith Commander]. {Rashmi and Ragavan} don't count because they work of the number of any artifacts not referencing the theme of (differently named artifact tokens) so flavor fail. Second because of the them trying to make the niche theme work better they add a bunch of removal that did created a artifact token but were all sorcery speed. In which made the precon much weaker compared to good cards like Path, Swords or even a more synergistic card for their precon like {Murderous Rider} for Knights. Also funny enough because of the niche theme you're also waiting for other token artifacts themes to get more support like {Map/Junk/Incubate/Blood} to steal from them and add to upgrading your deck. In which all those themes were created for there own set, and will most likely not get any more new cards relating them in the future. [See how long ago Crimson Vow was release and we haven't gotten a new Blood Token card until {Transmutation Font}]. Hope to get feedback on what you or your community thinks about these points I bring up. BUT LETS BE HONEST I'VE DONE THE RESEARCH FOR THIS DECK AND WE ALL KNOW I'M COOKING. lol.

[@mtgmookie]

You are cooking! Thanks for your opinion!

[@rossstone3885]

Well put!

[@mtgmookie]

Thank you!

[@Ohkapi]

Hello , thanks for making this video. I followed the "buy singles instead of precon for 2 months, turned out getting 1 to 2 precon instead of just useful singles swift my mtg gaming quality. in the end I did not have to micromanaging which cards to construct into a deck. Have to say all my bad mtg gaming experiences were when anyone (includes me) using non-precon

[@Ohkapi]

my first precon is Painbow (30USD) followed by Gavi's Timeless Wisdom (18 USD) minus that Fierce Guardianship card. The starter commander decks Chaos Incarnate and Grave Danger are both powerhouse and so much fun to play. less than 20 USD each. 28 USD for Sneak Attack precon. Wins everytime against any precons I have listed. I am not saying all precons are powerful / fun to play, but playing precons without adding/take away cards are ease and almost balance as long as other players are using their precons without upgrades

[@mtgmookie]

Thanks for sharing!

[@mtgmookie]

Playing Precons against Precons are a very fun way to play magic; I agree with you.

[@SwedeRacerDC]

I can see how other people are reacting the way the are, but you raise a lot of great points. The thumbnail image of The MOM Knights deck not being worth it is pretty much clickbait. As you stated in the video, some are better than others and typically dominate. I agree that MTG has a lot of precon problems. One being that there are literally a lot of them. Too much these days. We used to have 4-5 rather focused decks per year with a ton of value packed in. I'm still using some of those commanders and a lot of the building blocks of those decks are still very useful today. I think you did a great job, so don't hear my criticism as not liking the video, but I wanted to offer a more constructive take to some criticisms I have seen so you have more of a direction to go with it. Besides the mana base, one of the big underlying issues that causes such variability between the strength of each deck out of the box is that each deck is designed not around a single theme or even commander, but that they often have different ideas for commanders that fit into the same color combination. For instance, both Doctor Who and Fallout villain based decks have very different key commanders in them. You could theoretically plug and play usually 3 or more commanders for each deck. Let's zero in on Ceasar and Mr House. The deck is built more around Ceasar, but Mr. House was iconic and needed to be shoved somewhere. Wizards thinks: "Why not throw him in this deck?" From the perspective that they have too many decks already, I agree. But clearly, they want to be in completely different decks. Let's look back at one of the best Mardu decks ever printed. Vampires under Edgar Markov! As it is, the other two featured commanders fit into that deck, since they're both vampires and support him. But they both could have decks built around them. The Wizards deck from the same release has Marisil the Pretender, who kinda stood out as completely his own thing and barely fit in. The other Wizards were much more effective in that deck. He was handcuffed and barely effective without being built around. Thus, the Wizards deck was the worst one from that year, and we got two very busted commanders from EdgUr

[@mtgmookie]

Thanks for the feedback!

[@mtgmookie]

You make very good points!

[@89qwyg9yqa34t]

You missed a bigger issue with all new precons. When you check the value of them, they're always $90-$100 in value, but weirdly if you were to just buy the singles of things you don't have, you won't spend more than $20. Additionally, the precon version of a card is sometimes 10x higher than the pack version, which makes sense on no level. Somebody is artificially setting prices to affect sales. Cavalry Charge was a huge example of this. I preordered it for $35 and it was stolen off my doorstep, so I ordered just the cards and I have a screenshot of Conjurer's Mantle at $11.42 from the deck and $1.20 from the collector packs, both at TCGPLayer.

[@mtgmookie]

I should’ve added that!