Are Precons Solved?
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on Sept. 13, 2022, 12:21 p.m. by Niko9
I mean, I don't think that commander will ever be a solved format just because of how much variance can and will exist in a casual format, but I was looking at the precons from Dominaria United like, hmm, these feel very samey. And come to think of it, I don't remember a really unique precon for a while now, maybe back to Eldraine with knights and faeries.
It absolutely might just be me, but when I'm looking at any newer precon it's a list of, ramp, draw, and then some kind of theme based pay off. So, I guess that makes me wonder, how much are these decks being made to be decks and how much are they being made to be taken apart? Printing more slotable cards to decks that people already have is a viable way to sell commander decks, but seriously, it's so hard to get into these lists anymore. A legends matters should feel like an epic planes-wide team up of heroes, but it plays like, Sol Ring and Fellwar Stone and Night's Whisper until you do a thing.
So my question is, are precons starting to run into a place where they are solved decks? I get that they typically don't have a lot of tutors, so maybe it's that they turn out this way because that's what a low-tutor and low-expense land base deck looks like, but still, still.
Again, maybe it's just me, but I used to look at decks and they seemed so fun and synergistic, and now the newer ones look a lot like decent cards thrown together with a theme spray painted over top.
What do you all think? Am I letting the nostalgia of decks like Breya cloud my memory of them, or are these newer ones just feeling a little more rushed to put out?
FormOverFunction says... #3
Once you’ve been playing long enough... [gestures at matrix screen] you just see “blonde”... “brunette”... “redhead”... ;p
September 13, 2022 2:17 p.m.
FormOverFunction Yep, kinda pretty much : )
And I do agree TheOfficialCreator that a lot of the commanders are great. Tiamat was one of my favorite new decks, and there have been some really good ones. I guess I just wish they printed more support for different strategies to help them in EDH. Things like mill, discard, combat damage, combat tricks, things like that have always struggled in commander, but rather than print new cards to make alternate strategies stronger (which I feel like is kinda the benefit of commander only sets) it's like, nope, we're going to give you more of the same commander deck that's been being pushed to the front for a while.
September 13, 2022 4:19 p.m.
plakjekaas says... #5
Precons need to be both a decent way to start new players into their Commander journey, as well as still be interesting enough for enfranchised players, to be considered successful. All the community-driven "Top 10 reasons your commander deck sucks"-listicles have sped up the format into a "if you aren't ramping and you aren't drawing cards, why are you even playing?"-kind of place, and the precons need to follow the template enough to even participate in a random EDH game at some LGS. Precons feeling "solved" is a symptom of that efficiency-driven way to build your deck that has become budget enough now to be in reach for everyone. Even though you can't "solve" the format because of its immense diversity, the most efficient cards for each job have been known, and you're doing yourself a disservice by not playing them if you "want to compete with and crush your friends".
At the same time, the Precons must leave room for growth, not feel as a finished product already, so players will be encouraged to find other cards, better cards to improve the decks with. I can imagine that's a finicky balance, and where the early precons were not up to the standard and mostly plundered for cards for other decks, the newer ones are a lot more streamlined and powerful, and bought to play straight out of the box, so that you'll have a deck for lower-power tables if you need one.
September 13, 2022 4:52 p.m.
plakjekaas I have to disagree a bit, though I do think that you are right on a lot of points. If these decks were made aftermarket, like how cark kingdom has the duel decks (might have the name wrong there) then I'd understand it more that they were following a template. But it's wizards and they are printing new cards for the precons, so there is infinite space to make a deck fun and interesting as well as viable. They could make a mill deck that can assemble an engine in a competitive time and goes off. They could make a deck of weenie creatures that get great combat tricks that all would be too powerful for standard, but in commander it's just on this side of effective. They could make a legends deck where the powers of said legends work together perfectly and it feels like assembling a dream team on your board that starts at 1 cmc and grows. The part that hurts is that it seems like they are choosing to keep things stagnant.
Maybe part of it is that I really don't like templates as it can artificially constrain brewing, and just to see that same constraint in a printed product is understandable but also underwhelming.
September 13, 2022 5:28 p.m.
Gidgetimer says... #7
The newer commander decks are much better as functional decks than the C13-C18 lists were (I never played with the 2011 release, so I have no opinions on those decks). A side effect of selling decks that are functional out of the box is that a good number of card slots are going to be taken up by ramp and interaction. Decent ramp and interaction looks pretty samey, but since they have decided to stick with a single strategy instead of cramming in 3 related strategies the useful cards for any one commander have remained constant, there are just no longer 2 other commanders that also have cards intended for them.
I do think that tying them to premier sets is a mistake. Because this does make them rushed out and they are trying to highlight a certain set's cards so it takes away a good deal of breadth from the card pool to support strategies. I would prefer them going back to a single commander release per year with this new focus on a single plan and making it playable out of the box. Going back to a single release would also let them have more new cards in the deck since they only need to worry about the effect of a single release on eternal formats each year.
September 13, 2022 10:03 p.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #8
Well, what I kind of feel like is there is only so much each color can do. Take Gogari. What is it Golgari can do?
Let's go ahead and leave ramp and draw out of this. We are looking for styles of play, not actions that everyone deserves in their game.
So what can Golgari do, realistically? Easy enough to make a budget precon deck out of. Reanimate? Tokens? Maybe a deck packed with removal?
How about Boros. Well combat focused, easily.
Let's go there colors. Jund? Some degree of sacrifice for value. Esper? Control. Naya? Creature and / or enchantment value. Bant? Same thing but wide instead of tall, and slower paced for the balance of better control.
Honestly, there is really only so many designs you can build around a color pairing. Rakdos? Well you're likely going to be doing some sort of removal based deck and often times tribal of one form or another.
Azorius? Slow burn and control. War of attrition.
How about mono colors? Green? Ramp (I know, leave it out) for big dumb monsters. White? Go wide. Red? Go fast.
This is why I believe Strixhaven was not only inevitable, but necessary. WOTC needs to almost reinvent the wheel in order to draw more potential out of these colors. After what, nearly 30 years, everything that can be done, has been done. And this is why we are now seeing D&D and Warhammer and other sets. Because honestly, MTG has run out of ideas.
It wouldn't surprise me if a few years ago, some execs and managers had a collaboration meeting to hammer out new ideas, came up with a writers block and someone said half heartily and jokingly that they wished they could do a Harry Potter or LOTRs set. Some admiration and agreement ensues with head nods. Jokes, ideas thrown around about how Harry would definitely be Jeskai or what if Voldemort was a Planeswalker but has no subtype since you aren't supposed to say his name. Then legal got on track and said they can't. And someone was bold enough to ask:
- "...why not?"
So I wouldn't say that precons are "solved", per se. Rather, precons have finally hit their wall.
September 14, 2022 6:56 p.m. Edited.
TypicalTimmy Maybe saying they hit a wall is a better way to describe it. With the amount of decks they do now, it's just easy to say, hey Rampant Growth because we know exactly how good rampant growth is in the format. It's goodish and it will always be goodish. I guess that maybe their problem in design is very similar to my problem with the precons as a player. They want a known commodity that will play nice with the format and be decent out of the box, and at the same time, things that are a known commodity are inherently less interesting to me as a brewer.
Thanks : ) I think that in a weird way you got it rolling to where I actually got to the bottom of why I struggle with precon season, and honestly, I didn't actually expect to get there. Nice one!
September 14, 2022 8:03 p.m.
Also, yep, Strixhaven just really hurt. I don't mean to give their creative too much flak, because they do a great job sometimes (I am really enjoying Dominaria United), but wow, Strixhaven. Saying that wizardry school is a genre is like making a card called "retractable multicolor laser sword"
September 14, 2022 8:10 p.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #11
I love how they tried and actually succeeded halfway.
Boros concerning itself with artifacts and history feels so right.
Golgari stepping aside from death and tokens to focus on the life and death cycle (through death and tokens) was a nice attempt.
But Simic and Izzet were the same. Tokens / counters and spell slingers.
Orzhov just felt... Bad.
I'd love to see the other five.
Rakdos could be artificers. Black smiths, welders, fabricators, etc.
Gruul could be animal handlers. Still Zoo, but less stompy. Like the Selesnya version of Gruul.
Selesnya could be sportsmanship. Politics. Think like the varsity leagues and olympics.
Azorius could be the student body reform.
And who am I missing here. Dimir? Dimir could be... Idk. Uh... Drama club XD
September 14, 2022 8:16 p.m. Edited.
How about dimir as a sirens/gorgons goad type deck that would encourage a deck to not run much removal. Or dimir could be like a spell cycling, play from exile strategy, something like "exile X cards from your graveyard and you may cast one instant or sorcery from exile this turn"
I mean, I know that play from exile is a space that not everyone would love, but I do like when there is some solution to every problem. The fact that Path to Exile just poofs things always kind of bugged me : )
September 14, 2022 9:09 p.m.
Niko9 I think it's fair to call "wizard school" a subgenre of, or at least known setting for, fantasy. Pre-Harry Potter, you got A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), Discworld (1984-ish, depending on what you count as the first UU story), Wizard's Hall (haven't read this one personally, but I remember the author noting similarities between it and HP), and probably quite a few more I don't know.
TypicalTimmy I figure College is the psychology/sociology/anthropology school. Studying how the mind works, both individually and in groups.
September 14, 2022 9:33 p.m.
I also think that the problem with precons that, at least in my mind, will never see them as fully "solved", is that there is sometimes an obvious difference between them in their value when it comes to new cards and then also obvious differences in price mark-ups. For example, there were precon decks that were really good for 20 bucks and then there are decks from another set that are like 50 or more ... all because they contain new, powerful cards or cards that have characters that are likely to get a lot of love.
The way that the decks play is definitely part of the problem and that it sometimes feels clunky regarding which cards are included and which are not, and the land base is always up and down. But I think the greatest problem is the toss up about whether the decks will be ridiculously expensive or not. Prices do put a lot of people off - yes MTG is an expensive hobby, but it shouldn't bar someone just because they only have a certain spending budget.
legendofa I completely agree that the blue/black college would be the school of psychology, sociology, anthropology and mind magics. That college would have definitely made it difficult for me to pick Silverquill as my college.
TypicalTimmy Come on, Rakdos would be the drama club as well! XD
TheOfficialCreator says... #2
I think part of the problem is that Wizards believes that more reprints is always better for Commander, which is why the precons have so many of them, making them all somewhat similar. There are still a few new cards being made for those decks but they're not as awesome as in the older days.
There is always the factor that they are almost certainly somewhat rushed due to the fact that they are being made MUCH quicker than before, so they probably have a skeleton that they're using now. It's much more efficient but less creative to use skeletons for Commander decks.
It's worth noting that the designs for the Commanders are still very strong, with the exception of ZNR's Commander set commanders, at least in my opinion.
September 13, 2022 1:18 p.m.