Each episode he adds (a certain ammount) of upgrades. And does a post-game review and commentary. "Maybe this (aspect of deck) is still a bit clunky" "that (pet card) should go ... or not? Leave a comment!"
@@wedgearyxsaber It is synergistic. It‘s just weak and can benefit a lot from upgrades. Out of the box you just make a bunch of different artifacts and get a gremlin per turn. It needs stronger payoffs, then it would be great.
Elrond is definitely strong but his strength comes from Blink and Go Wide (mostly Blink), neither are two things the precon deck supports. You're much better off building a deck from scratch around him.
@@tomerabramovici32 very true. I didn't mean to imply the precon should be higher it was not cohesive at all. Just meant I don't hear people talk about how crazy elrond is
I played that Elrond as a blink deck with counter synergy and found that casting him a single time in a game would make me an instant archenemy at every single table. People would rather kill you than give up even a single 1/1 token.
The thing I found really fun about masters of evil is how it works within the meta of the dr who decks. every creature is kinda an annoying threat and there's a tendency to jump out ahead until all the doctors team up and beat you down. the inconsistency is imo a bug not a feature since stumbling lets teh other decks come back. As far as as a deck vs other opposition the whole point imo is to hit people with davros and make daleks.
Love the video content, but your formatting / editing was pretty bad for this. Your facecam covers up the card cost and power / toughness of 1/4 of the cards. Then your text describing the pros / cons covers between 1-2 cards cost and their power / toughness - leaving it so viewers can usually only see 1 card clearly. You have a ton of vertical room. You could have shifted the cards up some to avoid this overlapping issue. I found it very annoying wanting to see this information about the cards, but it being unreadable most of the time. Please consider these changes for next time.
I feel like Masters of Evil is severely underrated. If you can mostly focus the game plan on doing 3 damage and getting davros to trigger every single turn for each of your opponents you’ll have a blast. Villainous choice is a good mechanic and a great starter deck for someone new to commander in my opinion!
I feel like you missed the ideal upgrade strategy to Masters of Evil. With like $25 you can use Missy for a strong control+theft theme with morph and blink shenanigans.
I have upgraded the Bright Palm and oh my lord the tables at my LGS absolutely loathe me. I play Pillowfort / Legends and oh my lawd. But you are right that the 99 is kinda terrible. But it upgrades INCREDIBLY! I still have Bright Palm as the Commander and it is basically a control deck that just wins out of nowhere. I loved it. And it excited me far far more than many of the other decks because it is truly a fun deck bc of how many directions you can go. Teferi's Protection + Sunfall just ends games dropping commander the next turn as an example.
Food & Fellowship has been a favourite deck of mine in terms of flavour, the One Ring slots nicely into that deck with the life gain support. Go wide with small creatures, mana dorks, & gain life. It also offers a variety of removal options.
When you covered the Commodore Guff SuperFriends precon, one very powerful creature you failed to mention as a potential commander in this deck is, Narset, Enlightened Master. One of the most feared KOS Commander's I've ever played against.
I think Uniqueness is a great category to rank them with, but I think to make it more impactful you should more consider the sub-themes and intricacies of playing the deck, over the broad themes. It doesn't feel right that it seems like they can only get an S if they have alt-arts, basically, and it's overly punishing if a broad theme has been produced before; eventually it's gonna be very rare to even get an A, given they more often produce precons than new well supported creature types or mechanical identities. Also felt like this Vampire precon is sufficiently different in focus to the previous one, such that it could be an A, but then aristocrats is not itself a particularly new strategy - so if that's good reasoning for a B, add that in.
Great list Tomer. One suggestion would be a complexity rating? Precons are generally targeted to new players so grading on a complexity scale might be helpful
I can vouch for the Eowyn precon's power. The stock list can be a little rough, yeah, but once smoothed out with a few upgrades that thing is a Kill On Sight beast.
I started playing at the beginning of this year and its really interesting looking at these again with a year later's viewpoint having not thought about them since. A lot of the precons i passed over when i was brand new are strategies i now know actually suit me better than the precons i ended up getting. Particularly the very first one, the red white tokens one, im almost tempted to get it now. Also rip gimbal lol, it was the first precon i got Gifted and i really wanna make him work as a homage to the person who gave him to me... but he's just so weak...
For future editions of these rankings : It can't be all mushed up into "B" tier. It's a "it goes to the square hole" situation. Something in the scoring system needs to change. Maybe originality scores a bit less (maybe 1 to 3 ). My reasoning: It doesn't matter if it's the 3rd vampire precon if it's the first deck someone purchases. Or if someone wants to start one and use it as a base. Or maybe they only want the new legendaries and unique-to-that-deck cards Next suggestion: Something has to be done to better mix regular decks with special editions or IP ones. Either put a "value for money" score (that balances them out) or on different rankings. A 60$ can't compete fairly with a 120$ deck on originality if the 120$ deck is an IP license. The last one gets an automatic "S" tier originality and 5 points... EDIT: Nevermind, I must be a bit blind today. Last minute he ranks it depending on the different stats*
I agree with you on the ranking system. I think that uniqueness is to vague. At the end though, look at the title of the table as the deck rankings shift. It's actually showing the individual criteria ranking for the decks.
Sounds very boring. I'm guessing that's a big reason why a lot more people play these days, that new players would often just be playing / playing against the same few decks over and over?
I am very surprised you did not touch on the fact that kykar is in the 99 which is an amazing replacement commander for kasla and then can go crazy with jeskai accendancy and segovia
For hosts of Mordor. I ripped out every creature that didn't help my orcs amass. I also focused on wraiths so I have nine nazgul and three wraith nobles (at the cost of some lands that I felt I didn't need and other creature cards) I kept most instants and sorceries but replaced some with other lotr set cards I felt were better. Over all I like the deck a lot. It is pretty consistent at being a slow build up/you better not attack me or it will cost you, deck. TLDR, with upgrades I feel it can be an A without upgrades C.
Food and Fellowship immediately became my favorite precon of all time, I'm glad to see that it made the S tier. People were right about the finishing power, but I've enjoyed the work it in for me. I built a casual version of a cEDH deck Abzan Farm that maintains the halfling tribal and uses those cards to generate card advantage. Basically Frodo acts as Tymna and Sam is Ikra.
I've seen Blast from the Past do really well just by cutting most of the sagas and saga support and adding generic legendary payoffs. It's a fantastic deck!
I think that the reason that Gandalf and radagast are in the elf deck is because they are members of the white council, also the food deck has all five main Hobbits as the commander's which is wonderful.
Here to say the list is pretty good. I personally think Timey Wimey could be bumped to an A, but I'm biased, and I have a ton of fun playing that deck just out of box.
Man, I hope they cut back on making a precon with every set. It's clear that some of these got time to cook, but some of them were just thrown together in a jumble. In terms of refining metrics, uniqueness might be able to be broken into design-unique (as-is) and archetype-uniqueness. So to say, Rebellion Rising is a tokens deck (not unique), but is it an interesting take on a tokens deck? I would personally argue not really, since while it has a very slight equipment subtheme, it's fundamentally still just trying to go wide and swing. By comparison, Cabaretti Cacophony had a weird goad subtheme that gave it an alternate avenue to winning than just going wide and swinging out.
1:38:00 Blood Rites is 3rd Vampire precon (1st was Edgar, 2nd was VOC Vampiric Bloodline), this might even be considered fourth depending on how you build C19's Merciless Rage deck lol
I've used the fade Dominion deck a lot and have won quite a bit with it, it doesn't have a whole lot of super powerful cards but the point is to generate a lot of tokens and buff ones on the field when it pops it pops!
Great list, really enjoyed the thorough analysis! But not being able to see most of the card prices is a bummer. Also the point values of the tiers don't really match the value for the individual tier which is odd.
It broke my heart to hear that you had such bad luck with people not wanting to play Planeschase! It's so much fun and every chance we get at my table we try to incorporate it!! I agree!! STOP BEING BORING!!!
I really like the pirates deck, it seems fun and who doesn’t like pirates? How do I upgrade it to make it better? I feel like I could lean into stealing creatures and getting guys from my graveyard back, but maybe I’d just have to lean into one category?
Hey, i Liked the overview of all the commander precons. Especially If you didnt follow all the new releases of the year, it can be a nice way to Update yourself. Thats why i would Focus on that aspect and adjust the criterias a little bit. Some ideas: - interesting/powerful new cards Explanation: for many this is a big reason why they get the new Commander Decks and what makes people excited about new releases. - notable Reprints/Card value Explanation: the financial part is the deciding factor for a lot of people. And while it cant obviously BE the only factor, i think it nevertheless should BE one factor - approach the "uniqueness" category differently Explanation: you basically Always Just Said If There was a Deck of a particular Theme already or Not. And while that Matters, i think you could add a few more dimensions to it. For example, i think that while virtue of valor is an enchantment Deck, the Aura Theme in selesnya is maybe an aspect that is rather unexplored. Also you could add the aspect If There were Commander Options for the Theme before, even If There was No precon to it (for example you Had kumena for merfolks before, so simic merfolks was already well possible to build, even without the precon, in my oppinion the precon didnt really add that much new/uniqueness to the merfolk Theme. But Had been focusing Harder on the explore mechanic, or added a new color, the Level of uniqueness would have Risen. Anyway, Just some thoughts. Love you Talk about Commander, keep it up
I love the food and Friends deck, when I upgraded it I focused on the token side with doublers ( and the creature token tripler ) added chatterfang also a grave pact ( to go with chatterfang to sac squirrels and clear boards, exquisite blood and Dina. As well as some more upgrades that work by using my foods like lighting bolts and just going infinite by gaining life and my opponents losing life and repeating, I also added tutors vampiric, demonic, and a couple others I did add more then that for cards it was more of a complete overhaul then an upgrade.
this was a great video for me and ive been playing for almost a month now. could we see videos of older decks?👀im wanting to look into some of the older sets to like 2020 and your formats just awesome
I got the elven voting deck for 45 bucks, and i wanna take it and get the Galadriel Light of Valinor commander and turn it into a elven protection deck. With how good u scry its gonna be really easy to pull the necessary cards for protecc and elves for attacc
Meaningful commentaries. I think it would have been nice to do a quick summary again at the end, for those of us who don't have the patience to go through all of the video, and then we can listen your commentary on the decks that draw our attention. Personally I believe uniqueness is not really a big factor. I would try to model some "fun" rating. I know it's almost impossible but I'm sure that you could give your personal oppinion at least (and maybe include polls in the comments so people interact more with the video ;) ). Thanks for your efforts, great job!!!
Sliver swarm was such a disappointment considering price tag vs what it offered that it was one of the main reasons for me to drop out of the game. They couldn't even reprint sliver hive
It’s nice to see your take on a list. Though for me personally I don’t really care about uniqueness, I know what I like, I’d rather know how it plays. Like for me personally I think the Sliver precon is one of the worst of the year. It may be unique because it’s the first Sliver precon, but realistically it plays like shit because the mana base is atrocious and it costs you an arm and a leg to buy. That’s more along what I wanna know, but I understand that’s not as important to everyone so you continue doing what you’re doing. It’s still a very well made list.
Yeah as the one person who actually does love planechase, I thought it sucked that you had to get the commanders to get the planechase cards, but I'm happy they were there at all.
Idk, think you were really harsh on the Masters of Evil precon. Consistently performed the best out of all the Doctor Who precons when played at a table together, the others were all really durdelly in comparison.
Agree with pretty much everything except Masters of Evil ranking. It can pretty much 1v4 the bottom decks and still win. The villainous choice was pretty unique and many times it was the main focus of the table, even more so with planar decks. Unlike the Sauron deck which also tried to do many things, it did feel like it was doing many things but with the common theme of being arch enemy supreme of being bad for everyone all the time. Myriad and the choices was pretty unique. Not sure how it got ranked so low and the Sauron deck got a pass by doing worst at the same things. *** Also for the upgrade part. All the Who decks can be upgraded with each other. There is a companion in Masters of Evil. Can put doctors as commander as well as Clara Oswald, and with the Psychic Paper make it a dalek or a cybermen. Can then swap the best cards from each deck. Making Cybermen 7/7 dinosaurs that are unblock able with myriad. Funny thing is the Who decks are the only ones that can fit cards in almost every other deck and be the commanders while keeping the theme and the creature type. Yet you gave most a low grade on upgrade.
Elenda & Azor may not be good as commander for the Cavalry Charge precon, but as a commander in their own deck they can be crazy good. you can make a sweet mix of knight & vampire tribal with the usual anthem effects and such, but also lean into drain synergies or go outright for wheels as your theme.
The Pirate pre-con is so fricking busted- I bought it because of 'eeeey pirates' and because it was dirt cheap in my LGS- just updated it with some bulk I had laying around and it has won 7/10 games - without things like Revel in Riches. It's extremely explosive and you have an answer out of the box to many problems your opponents may play. Highly recommended if you want a ton of interaction and crazy stuff. The commander itself is also WAY better IRL, gies basically beserk with just a few dudes in your GY.
The food and fellowship deck is insane, I’ve upgraded it a bit and Jesus Christ it goes off, at least three combos that have something to do with the other, artifact and token value.
I bought the “Buckle-up” precon deck and switched the Commander to Shorikai then upgraded it and now it’s a cedh deck. It’s quite literally a Honda Civic in terms of how easy it is to build.
Calvary Charge was pretty good. Although not the first knight precon (eldraine black-red-white knights equipment brawl deck which people just made a commander deck) this is the first blue-white-black graveyard knights precon. There are some good knights to add to this precon. I added: Cavalier of Gales Cavalier of Dawn Cavalier of Night Westfol Rider Ayara's Oathsworn Silverblade Paladin Skyhunter Strikeforce Thistledown Liege Guadian of Faith Patriarchs Bidding is also a cool on theme mass reanimation spell to add!
I have the Call for Backup deck and I keep it as a precon to play in my group. It is trash if you play it with the face commander but so much more fun if you play it with the secondary commander.
I turned elven council into an elven +1/+1 scry deck. Win condition: body of research (spell) and simic ascendancy (enchantment). In arena, it is a amazing. In person, haven't tested it yet.
I agree with the fae dominion. It's a just okay deck out of box, I altered it a little though and now it's my favorite to play! even beat a level 8 miirym sentinel wyrm dragon deck!
Great video. I think the quality of the manabase has to be factored in at least a little bit. I also don't value the Uniqueness too much if the deck itself is not super interesting to play. This is why I would rate the Planeswalker Party deck at the very bottom and all the Enchantment decks higher.
Let me save people time and headache, don't bother building Rashmi and Ragavan deck, I tried it and they made it extremely weak somehow. They took 2 broken cards and managed to make it sub-mediocre somehow. You need SO many things to go right, you need them to survive a turn, then to choose a player who have a non-land on top (can use Field of Dreams and Lantern but still) and hope that you can cast the spell and that it will do something. It's just doesn't work and for a 4cmc commander to have so much variance and uncertainty, it's a shame :(
I got the LOTR food and fellowship precon and mirfolk, mirfolk comes ready out of the box I kept my food and fellowship upgrades in universe and its really fun. I got the blood rites and although its OK it is no way as powerful and straight in your face like hakbal is which is why I sold it on to buy masters of evil. I think you were somewhat harsh on that deck, ive played my mirfolk precon with other precons against the masters of evil and the myriad and goading and token making a lot with menace requiring double blockers becomes very frightening very quick and I've seen people turn it into a terrifying burn deck.
Constructive criticism! Please consider placing the card price tags above the cards. They are impossible to see behind the text notes and that Kaldra Compleat fellow (I didn't know germ tokens could speak let alone make tierlists).
Was wondering if Tomer would find Dr. Who to be (in my opinion) just as "They're unique, but they aren't actually all that good or matter..." and got my answer :p
Great list here Tomer, yet I would love to see a more even distribution amongst the tiers… instead of using an objective numerical analysis, perhaps a ranking of how these decks from 2023 compare against each other would be better (ps there’s nothing wrong with giving out D’s or S’s lol)
Just here to tell Tomer that Gylwain was the most fun commander deck I built this year. I know you're tired of same-y enchantress/auras decks, but trust me: many Gylwain decks don't even run Sythis. So ridiculously fun. Keep up the good work, Tomer!
That's fair, Gylwain is more of a Creatures deck than an Enchantress one. No hate to any of the Enchantress commanders either, I know each one has their own twist and resonate with different people, but I wish WOTC focused on different archetypes for a while.
I would like to see you make two decks , same commander and similar strategy but one is budget and one is no budget. Put in duel lands and everything crazy but then like under $50 and compare the expensive vs cheap cards
I put the Scry matters Elrond as the commander and just removed the voting aspect. The first game I played with it with the voting took an additional hour just because of the voting.
For a lot of these, the editor's notes are covering up the editor's notes. Like at no point can we see the price on the card behind Tomer's camera, nor can we see the price on cards behind foreground text. There's plenty of open space for the foreground text to not obscure information!
So I will have to disagree with two of these decks. Slivers when paired with the first sliver actually pops off so well when you upgrade the deck. You mainly swap out the slivers that suck in the deck with slivers that give more mana and token buffs basically makes the deck an overwhelming swarm. Combined with end game bs counter spells and board wipes to help the deck because of its color scheme with the first sliver which gets it up into A tier. As for merefolk, when you swap out some sorcery with instant and counter spells the deck racks up counters, draws cards, places lands and creates tokens on it very fast, has an infinite combo in the precon and can overwhelm players with ease. Players who do not play alot of counters and board wipes are in for a short game if the deck gets to pop off. The potential with merefolk straight out of the deck is a B tier, but jumps straight to S tier when certain upgrades are made that makes it near impossible to play around, especially when this deck plays against blue players. Overall slivers go to A and merefolk go to S because of their potential upgrade that makes them difficult to deal with all around.
Bought the pirate precon on a whim.. it's ok for kitchen table magic.. wish it wasn't all over the place but there you go. Of course if any of the precon decks were good for competitive magic we would see the prices double or triple.. I think all the precons are pretty all over the place in terms of focusing on winning..
Great tier list, but you forgot about the smiling flood for the merfolk deck as one of the commanders. Not that i think it makes much of a difference overall.
I appreciate that you at least tried it. I like doing it every once in a while, but not often. It's important as a community that we're at least receptive to trying different things or else WOTC will never be giving us new things.
I think the planechase is better when there is just one planechase deck in the center everyone uses with all the planes to not give a certain advantage to certain decks by building or bringing your own. More chaos more random.
Far dominion I’m going to have to disagree in upgrade potential. I have added a ton of cards to this deck. If you go with Alela, all black and blue instants and anything with flash become potential adds. Its biggest issue is finding cards to cut after a certain point. Current adds include: Sprite Nobel Progenitors Icon Talion, the kindly lord Wavebreak Hippocamp Skullclamp Rhystic study Faerie mastermind Ice out (I wanted to use the promo card) Staff of the mind Magus Sheoldred, the apocalypse Leyline of anticipation Skyclave relic Sky diamond Mox Tantalite Charcoal diamond Rewind Lofty denial Fierce Guardianship Essence Scatter Drown in the loch Countersquall Bitterblossom I also have 17 other adds on my maybeboard, like Cyclonic rift, mana drain, deadly rolic, faerie harbinger, spellstutter sprite, mistbind clique, faerie tauntings. Plus any future instant, flash or faerie cards that come out in Dimir.
Although you can also criticize the upgradability being control heavy which I realize people don’t always love but in my friend group countering and exiling mesmeric orb, eldrazi’s with annihilator, and other annoying things is a common occurrence that people actually appreciate.
Which of these decks would you ya'll reccommend for a newbie? I recently started playing arena and am still learning (quick learner though), not set on a particular playstyle yet but am leaning towards aggro. Thanks in advance!
@@thesamuraiman normally i would agree, but in case of precons its a good thing i think. New players have the chance to try/choose between a lot different playstyles without spending a lot of money. I think its good for beginners.
I do love this video, alot of thought and time went into, and I do appreciate that, but I would like to see some better editing, some of the prices have been covered and stuff but otherwise really good video
For me one of the most frustrating part of LOTR precons is that barely nobody said Eleven deck was bad, in all the premier games in UA-cam using these precons I saw online, the elves deck always won or at least performed wonderfully, but I think that was just luck and that's not the reality when playing with them more regularly. I've got the four decks for casual games with friends once a month or so, and the Eleven deck sucked (it always was the first losing or second because it wasn't seen as a thread with its bad performing and players focused first on other players). I tried to upgrade all four decks using just cards from LOTR sets (to keep the flavour) and all decks became even better with just a little bunch of changes without loosing their identity or mechanics, while Elves became just slightly better by focusing the deck on scrying while giving them all the treefolk creatures from Hobbits Deck and the rest of the set, providing at least "large green creatures", and still sucked... I'm not confident in my capability for making good decks, I'm quite the noob, but the fact that almost nobody said that this deck was horrendous and even praised it, it really was infuriating hahahahhahahaha.
I started playing commander only recently, but what I get is that people downplay the uniqueness of Gimbal. I get why it's underpowered for being a 5 cmc commander, and the precon definitly lacks support for its playstyle, but its one of the few commanders that wants you to really lean into the theme. You coudl definitly play the same deck with another commander (like rashimi and ragavan) and still pull off the same stuff (playing tens of different named token artifacts) but you wouldn't build the deck in that way because there wouldn't be a reason to. Gimbal gives you that reason. If you only think about treasures and food, yeah, it's boring. But once you start to give out bananas to everyone, note random words on vito's journal, creat mighty ROCKS you're just having a good time
Its kinda funny to me that I bought 2 march of the machine precon not knowing they were that weak, and ive had very little success with the convoke deck, while the +1 counter one with face commander gave me a 1178 power and toughness hydra while comboed with branching evolution 😂
The Uniqueness category is way, way too subjective. When ppl see a deck ranked high or low they assume it's because it's either a good or a bad deck. Who cares how original or unique it is? I don't. As an example of what I mean...I've been away from MtG for 5 years. Every deck on this list was new and/or unique to me. Plus...if uniqueness is somehow related to collectability, well...that's a whole different video imo.
Tip for the editor: put card prices above the cards instead of below them next time, some prices are blocked from view.
this
My wish for 2023 is more Tomer original commander deck techs
2024*
@@Enos666 we've still got a couple days
Second that
In 2024 I’d love to see budget deck tech episodes where you take a commander you enjoy and go through building it!
Each episode he adds (a certain ammount) of upgrades.
And does a post-game review and commentary.
"Maybe this (aspect of deck) is still a bit clunky"
"that (pet card) should go ... or not? Leave a comment!"
Small note: that was actually the third vampire and third human precon. There was one of each of those in our last trip to Innistrad
Ah yes I forgot about those!
It's hard to keep up with 50 pre con commander decks a year lol
@@Jonzin4BeatzNYC true!
Yup from Innistrad: Crimson Vow we got Vampiric Bloodline. Not a bad precon, but definitely at the bottom of the Vampire precon ranking.
Thank you Tomer!
This continuous entry level / budget content is highly appreciated.
Especially nowadays with a gazillion releases.
I think that giving the Gimbal deck a C is very generous and not harsh at all
I've seen that deck in person and it looks like a precon from 2013 I have no clue how you're supposed to use it
@@wedgearyxsaber
It is synergistic. It‘s just weak and can benefit a lot from upgrades. Out of the box you just make a bunch of different artifacts and get a gremlin per turn. It needs stronger payoffs, then it would be great.
Elrond from the precon is insane as a commander. I think it flew way under the radar
Elrond is definitely strong but his strength comes from Blink and Go Wide (mostly Blink), neither are two things the precon deck supports. You're much better off building a deck from scratch around him.
@@tomerabramovici32 very true. I didn't mean to imply the precon should be higher it was not cohesive at all. Just meant I don't hear people talk about how crazy elrond is
I played that Elrond as a blink deck with counter synergy and found that casting him a single time in a game would make me an instant archenemy at every single table. People would rather kill you than give up even a single 1/1 token.
😅
The thing I found really fun about masters of evil is how it works within the meta of the dr who decks. every creature is kinda an annoying threat and there's a tendency to jump out ahead until all the doctors team up and beat you down. the inconsistency is imo a bug not a feature since stumbling lets teh other decks come back. As far as as a deck vs other opposition the whole point imo is to hit people with davros and make daleks.
I think you mean "a feature and not a bug", but Dr. Who fans will be Dr, Who fans.
Love the video content, but your formatting / editing was pretty bad for this. Your facecam covers up the card cost and power / toughness of 1/4 of the cards. Then your text describing the pros / cons covers between 1-2 cards cost and their power / toughness - leaving it so viewers can usually only see 1 card clearly. You have a ton of vertical room. You could have shifted the cards up some to avoid this overlapping issue. I found it very annoying wanting to see this information about the cards, but it being unreadable most of the time. Please consider these changes for next time.
It's free content.
So the content is free from criticism? Stop the dick suck he's not gonna fuck you. @@geeky_gunner
@@geeky_gunnercriticism is still valid
Make it urself
Its free constructive criticism too.@@geeky_gunner
I feel like Masters of Evil is severely underrated. If you can mostly focus the game plan on doing 3 damage and getting davros to trigger every single turn for each of your opponents you’ll have a blast. Villainous choice is a good mechanic and a great starter deck for someone new to commander in my opinion!
I feel like you missed the ideal upgrade strategy to Masters of Evil. With like $25 you can use Missy for a strong control+theft theme with morph and blink shenanigans.
I have upgraded the Bright Palm and oh my lord the tables at my LGS absolutely loathe me. I play Pillowfort / Legends and oh my lawd. But you are right that the 99 is kinda terrible. But it upgrades INCREDIBLY! I still have Bright Palm as the Commander and it is basically a control deck that just wins out of nowhere. I loved it. And it excited me far far more than many of the other decks because it is truly a fun deck bc of how many directions you can go. Teferi's Protection + Sunfall just ends games dropping commander the next turn as an example.
I have it too and it’s so fun to play. I think people sleep on the backup mechanic.
It speaks to me too. Loving the backup, +1/+1 are easy to understand, upgrade it is easy and straight to the points
Food & Fellowship has been a favourite deck of mine in terms of flavour, the One Ring slots nicely into that deck with the life gain support.
Go wide with small creatures, mana dorks, & gain life. It also offers a variety of removal options.
The merfolk deck has the best synergy out of all the other precons. Haven't lost a single game yet using it. Your crazy for not making it S tier.
When you covered the Commodore Guff SuperFriends precon, one very powerful creature you failed to mention as a potential commander in this deck is, Narset, Enlightened Master. One of the most feared KOS Commander's I've ever played against.
I think Uniqueness is a great category to rank them with, but I think to make it more impactful you should more consider the sub-themes and intricacies of playing the deck, over the broad themes. It doesn't feel right that it seems like they can only get an S if they have alt-arts, basically, and it's overly punishing if a broad theme has been produced before; eventually it's gonna be very rare to even get an A, given they more often produce precons than new well supported creature types or mechanical identities.
Also felt like this Vampire precon is sufficiently different in focus to the previous one, such that it could be an A, but then aristocrats is not itself a particularly new strategy - so if that's good reasoning for a B, add that in.
First knight precon you say. I guess Syr Gwyn was technically a brawl precon.
Good point!
I've been using Planeswalker party and for getting it for 40 dollars and upgrading it for 70 dollars, it's been a blast to play with.
Esper Knights has been very fun for me
I just edited the cavalry charge deck and I'm excited to pilot it this weekend. I'm honestly a little worried I'll deck myself though 😂
Should have included the angels precon from the secret lair
too hard to find and expensive if you do..
Great list Tomer. One suggestion would be a complexity rating?
Precons are generally targeted to new players so grading on a complexity scale might be helpful
Complexity is a great idea on precons!
I think this list is pretty bad xD
I would argue heavily against the mediocre pirates, when they are put on the battlefield with 4/4 with haste not to mention the anthem effects
I agree, I made some slight upgrades to this precon and it’s one of my favorite commander decks. It’s a lot of fun and very capable
I can vouch for the Eowyn precon's power. The stock list can be a little rough, yeah, but once smoothed out with a few upgrades that thing is a Kill On Sight beast.
I won a game with on turn 5 and did not even have a single of the cards I upgraded the deck with on the battlefield lol.
Poor Strefan is the vampire cousin that no one talks about anymore.
"All Enchantress decks play the same way" is the exact reason I love Akikthea so much. She has all this text that lets you kill your opponents : )
I started playing at the beginning of this year and its really interesting looking at these again with a year later's viewpoint having not thought about them since. A lot of the precons i passed over when i was brand new are strategies i now know actually suit me better than the precons i ended up getting. Particularly the very first one, the red white tokens one, im almost tempted to get it now.
Also rip gimbal lol, it was the first precon i got Gifted and i really wanna make him work as a homage to the person who gave him to me... but he's just so weak...
For future editions of these rankings :
It can't be all mushed up into "B" tier. It's a "it goes to the square hole" situation.
Something in the scoring system needs to change. Maybe originality scores a bit less (maybe 1 to 3 ).
My reasoning: It doesn't matter if it's the 3rd vampire precon if it's the first deck someone purchases. Or if someone wants to start one and use it as a base.
Or maybe they only want the new legendaries and unique-to-that-deck cards
Next suggestion: Something has to be done to better mix regular decks with special editions or IP ones.
Either put a "value for money" score (that balances them out) or on different rankings.
A 60$ can't compete fairly with a 120$ deck on originality if the 120$ deck is an IP license.
The last one gets an automatic "S" tier originality and 5 points...
EDIT:
Nevermind, I must be a bit blind today.
Last minute he ranks it depending on the different stats*
I agree with you on the ranking system. I think that uniqueness is to vague.
At the end though, look at the title of the table as the deck rankings shift. It's actually showing the individual criteria ranking for the decks.
make your own video
I miss the years when we were excited to get 4 or 5 new decks. Only 4 or 5 decks.
you can choose to buy only 4 or 5 decks only
Sounds very boring. I'm guessing that's a big reason why a lot more people play these days, that new players would often just be playing / playing against the same few decks over and over?
I am very surprised you did not touch on the fact that kykar is in the 99 which is an amazing replacement commander for kasla and then can go crazy with jeskai accendancy and segovia
For hosts of Mordor. I ripped out every creature that didn't help my orcs amass. I also focused on wraiths so I have nine nazgul and three wraith nobles (at the cost of some lands that I felt I didn't need and other creature cards) I kept most instants and sorceries but replaced some with other lotr set cards I felt were better. Over all I like the deck a lot. It is pretty consistent at being a slow build up/you better not attack me or it will cost you, deck. TLDR, with upgrades I feel it can be an A without upgrades C.
I did the same but I also went Wraith token with the 9 nazgul as well. This deck out of the box is a menace as well.
Food and Fellowship immediately became my favorite precon of all time, I'm glad to see that it made the S tier. People were right about the finishing power, but I've enjoyed the work it in for me. I built a casual version of a cEDH deck Abzan Farm that maintains the halfling tribal and uses those cards to generate card advantage. Basically Frodo acts as Tymna and Sam is Ikra.
I've seen Blast from the Past do really well just by cutting most of the sagas and saga support and adding generic legendary payoffs.
It's a fantastic deck!
I think that the reason that Gandalf and radagast are in the elf deck is because they are members of the white council, also the food deck has all five main Hobbits as the commander's which is wonderful.
Here to say the list is pretty good. I personally think Timey Wimey could be bumped to an A, but I'm biased, and I have a ton of fun playing that deck just out of box.
Agreed. If you know what to expect, it can hold its own against other precons.
As a bright palm buyer switch it for shallai and hallar it comes in the deck and is so much better
Man, I hope they cut back on making a precon with every set. It's clear that some of these got time to cook, but some of them were just thrown together in a jumble. In terms of refining metrics, uniqueness might be able to be broken into design-unique (as-is) and archetype-uniqueness.
So to say, Rebellion Rising is a tokens deck (not unique), but is it an interesting take on a tokens deck? I would personally argue not really, since while it has a very slight equipment subtheme, it's fundamentally still just trying to go wide and swing. By comparison, Cabaretti Cacophony had a weird goad subtheme that gave it an alternate avenue to winning than just going wide and swinging out.
1:38:00 Blood Rites is 3rd Vampire precon (1st was Edgar, 2nd was VOC Vampiric Bloodline), this might even be considered fourth depending on how you build C19's Merciless Rage deck lol
I've used the fade Dominion deck a lot and have won quite a bit with it, it doesn't have a whole lot of super powerful cards but the point is to generate a lot of tokens and buff ones on the field when it pops it pops!
Great list, really enjoyed the thorough analysis!
But not being able to see most of the card prices is a bummer. Also the point values of the tiers don't really match the value for the individual tier which is odd.
It broke my heart to hear that you had such bad luck with people not wanting to play Planeschase! It's so much fun and every chance we get at my table we try to incorporate it!! I agree!! STOP BEING BORING!!!
I really like the pirates deck, it seems fun and who doesn’t like pirates? How do I upgrade it to make it better? I feel like I could lean into stealing creatures and getting guys from my graveyard back, but maybe I’d just have to lean into one category?
Hey, i Liked the overview of all the commander precons. Especially If you didnt follow all the new releases of the year, it can be a nice way to Update yourself. Thats why i would Focus on that aspect and adjust the criterias a little bit.
Some ideas:
- interesting/powerful new cards
Explanation: for many this is a big reason why they get the new Commander Decks and what makes people excited about new releases.
- notable Reprints/Card value
Explanation: the financial part is the deciding factor for a lot of people. And while it cant obviously BE the only factor, i think it nevertheless should BE one factor
- approach the "uniqueness" category differently
Explanation: you basically Always Just Said If There was a Deck of a particular Theme already or Not. And while that Matters, i think you could add a few more dimensions to it. For example, i think that while virtue of valor is an enchantment Deck, the Aura Theme in selesnya is maybe an aspect that is rather unexplored.
Also you could add the aspect If There were Commander Options for the Theme before, even If There was No precon to it (for example you Had kumena for merfolks before, so simic merfolks was already well possible to build, even without the precon, in my oppinion the precon didnt really add that much new/uniqueness to the merfolk Theme. But Had been focusing Harder on the explore mechanic, or added a new color, the Level of uniqueness would have Risen.
Anyway, Just some thoughts. Love you Talk about Commander, keep it up
Cavalry Charge is my favorite deck in Commander. I made some spicy upgrades. It's so so good
I love the food and Friends deck, when I upgraded it I focused on the token side with doublers ( and the creature token tripler ) added chatterfang also a grave pact ( to go with chatterfang to sac squirrels and clear boards, exquisite blood and Dina. As well as some more upgrades that work by using my foods like lighting bolts and just going infinite by gaining life and my opponents losing life and repeating, I also added tutors vampiric, demonic, and a couple others I did add more then that for cards it was more of a complete overhaul then an upgrade.
The two decks I bought were A tier and I agree they are super solid out of the box. Lotr humans/Dinosaurs.
this was a great video for me and ive been playing for almost a month now. could we see videos of older decks?👀im wanting to look into some of the older sets to like 2020 and your formats just awesome
I got the elven voting deck for 45 bucks, and i wanna take it and get the Galadriel Light of Valinor commander and turn it into a elven protection deck. With how good u scry its gonna be really easy to pull the necessary cards for protecc and elves for attacc
Meaningful commentaries. I think it would have been nice to do a quick summary again at the end, for those of us who don't have the patience to go through all of the video, and then we can listen your commentary on the decks that draw our attention. Personally I believe uniqueness is not really a big factor. I would try to model some "fun" rating. I know it's almost impossible but I'm sure that you could give your personal oppinion at least (and maybe include polls in the comments so people interact more with the video ;) ). Thanks for your efforts, great job!!!
Sliver swarm was such a disappointment considering price tag vs what it offered that it was one of the main reasons for me to drop out of the game. They couldn't even reprint sliver hive
It’s nice to see your take on a list. Though for me personally I don’t really care about uniqueness, I know what I like, I’d rather know how it plays. Like for me personally I think the Sliver precon is one of the worst of the year. It may be unique because it’s the first Sliver precon, but realistically it plays like shit because the mana base is atrocious and it costs you an arm and a leg to buy. That’s more along what I wanna know, but I understand that’s not as important to everyone so you continue doing what you’re doing. It’s still a very well made list.
Yeah as the one person who actually does love planechase, I thought it sucked that you had to get the commanders to get the planechase cards, but I'm happy they were there at all.
Idk, think you were really harsh on the Masters of Evil precon. Consistently performed the best out of all the Doctor Who precons when played at a table together, the others were all really durdelly in comparison.
Agree with pretty much everything except Masters of Evil ranking. It can pretty much 1v4 the bottom decks and still win. The villainous choice was pretty unique and many times it was the main focus of the table, even more so with planar decks. Unlike the Sauron deck which also tried to do many things, it did feel like it was doing many things but with the common theme of being arch enemy supreme of being bad for everyone all the time. Myriad and the choices was pretty unique. Not sure how it got ranked so low and the Sauron deck got a pass by doing worst at the same things.
*** Also for the upgrade part. All the Who decks can be upgraded with each other. There is a companion in Masters of Evil. Can put doctors as commander as well as Clara Oswald, and with the Psychic Paper make it a dalek or a cybermen. Can then swap the best cards from each deck. Making Cybermen 7/7 dinosaurs that are unblock able with myriad. Funny thing is the Who decks are the only ones that can fit cards in almost every other deck and be the commanders while keeping the theme and the creature type. Yet you gave most a low grade on upgrade.
Elenda & Azor may not be good as commander for the Cavalry Charge precon, but as a commander in their own deck they can be crazy good. you can make a sweet mix of knight & vampire tribal with the usual anthem effects and such, but also lean into drain synergies or go outright for wheels as your theme.
Would love to know where the warhammer 40k precons would slot in.
But there weren't these kinds of round ups for previous years, were they?
The Pirate pre-con is so fricking busted- I bought it because of 'eeeey pirates' and because it was dirt cheap in my LGS- just updated it with some bulk I had laying around and it has won 7/10 games - without things like Revel in Riches. It's extremely explosive and you have an answer out of the box to many problems your opponents may play.
Highly recommended if you want a ton of interaction and crazy stuff. The commander itself is also WAY better IRL, gies basically beserk with just a few dudes in your GY.
The food and fellowship deck is insane, I’ve upgraded it a bit and Jesus Christ it goes off, at least three combos that have something to do with the other, artifact and token value.
Dihada, Binder of Wills was the first Historic Precon, I think.
Great video, as always, Tomer.
Keep up the good work
I will let the eldrazi slide but thats absolutely insane you put masters of evil that low. O_0
This was very fun to listen to! Please save this idea and do it again next year :)
I bought the “Buckle-up” precon deck and switched the Commander to Shorikai then upgraded it and now it’s a cedh deck. It’s quite literally a Honda Civic in terms of how easy it is to build.
Calvary Charge was pretty good.
Although not the first knight precon (eldraine black-red-white knights equipment brawl deck which people just made a commander deck) this is the first blue-white-black graveyard knights precon.
There are some good knights to add to this precon. I added:
Cavalier of Gales
Cavalier of Dawn
Cavalier of Night
Westfol Rider
Ayara's Oathsworn
Silverblade Paladin
Skyhunter Strikeforce
Thistledown Liege
Guadian of Faith
Patriarchs Bidding is also a cool on theme mass reanimation spell to add!
I have the Call for Backup deck and I keep it as a precon to play in my group. It is trash if you play it with the face commander but so much more fun if you play it with the secondary commander.
I turned elven council into an elven +1/+1 scry deck. Win condition: body of research (spell) and simic ascendancy (enchantment). In arena, it is a amazing. In person, haven't tested it yet.
I'm glad I got Pantlaza commander, and I put some upgrades and my commander deck can do major damage.
I collect and use Planechase, I was super happy they were there! :D
My Masters of Evil deck is feared by most of my play group, I’m quite fond of it.
I agree with the fae dominion. It's a just okay deck out of box, I altered it a little though and now it's my favorite to play! even beat a level 8 miirym sentinel wyrm dragon deck!
Great video. I think the quality of the manabase has to be factored in at least a little bit. I also don't value the Uniqueness too much if the deck itself is not super interesting to play. This is why I would rate the Planeswalker Party deck at the very bottom and all the Enchantment decks higher.
Let me save people time and headache, don't bother building Rashmi and Ragavan deck, I tried it and they made it extremely weak somehow. They took 2 broken cards and managed to make it sub-mediocre somehow. You need SO many things to go right, you need them to survive a turn, then to choose a player who have a non-land on top (can use Field of Dreams and Lantern but still) and hope that you can cast the spell and that it will do something. It's just doesn't work and for a 4cmc commander to have so much variance and uncertainty, it's a shame :(
I got the LOTR food and fellowship precon and mirfolk, mirfolk comes ready out of the box I kept my food and fellowship upgrades in universe and its really fun. I got the blood rites and although its OK it is no way as powerful and straight in your face like hakbal is which is why I sold it on to buy masters of evil. I think you were somewhat harsh on that deck, ive played my mirfolk precon with other precons against the masters of evil and the myriad and goading and token making a lot with menace requiring double blockers becomes very frightening very quick and I've seen people turn it into a terrifying burn deck.
Constructive criticism! Please consider placing the card price tags above the cards. They are impossible to see behind the text notes and that Kaldra Compleat fellow (I didn't know germ tokens could speak let alone make tierlists).
Hey Tomer, great video. Must have taken a bunch of prep and effort. Thanks!
Was wondering if Tomer would find Dr. Who to be (in my opinion) just as "They're unique, but they aren't actually all that good or matter..." and got my answer :p
Great list here Tomer, yet I would love to see a more even distribution amongst the tiers… instead of using an objective numerical analysis, perhaps a ranking of how these decks from 2023 compare against each other would be better (ps there’s nothing wrong with giving out D’s or S’s lol)
i cant see the prices on half the upgrade cards and you have all that space above them
Just here to tell Tomer that Gylwain was the most fun commander deck I built this year. I know you're tired of same-y enchantress/auras decks, but trust me: many Gylwain decks don't even run Sythis. So ridiculously fun.
Keep up the good work, Tomer!
That's fair, Gylwain is more of a Creatures deck than an Enchantress one. No hate to any of the Enchantress commanders either, I know each one has their own twist and resonate with different people, but I wish WOTC focused on different archetypes for a while.
Yeah that deck out of the box surprised me the couple of times I've played against it, after I wrote it off.
I would like to see you make two decks , same commander and similar strategy but one is budget and one is no budget. Put in duel lands and everything crazy but then like under $50 and compare the expensive vs cheap cards
I think reprint value should be a factor as well, I personally love the decks that come with high value reprints.
The elf deck needed to be bant so they could add more voting cards like councils judgement
I put the Scry matters Elrond as the commander and just removed the voting aspect. The first game I played with it with the voting took an additional hour just because of the voting.
The card name for your border should be "Soul of Kaldra" 🤔
Blood Rites is the third vampire deck. Vampiric Bloodline is the second one from Crimson Vow.
For a lot of these, the editor's notes are covering up the editor's notes. Like at no point can we see the price on the card behind Tomer's camera, nor can we see the price on cards behind foreground text. There's plenty of open space for the foreground text to not obscure information!
So I will have to disagree with two of these decks. Slivers when paired with the first sliver actually pops off so well when you upgrade the deck. You mainly swap out the slivers that suck in the deck with slivers that give more mana and token buffs basically makes the deck an overwhelming swarm. Combined with end game bs counter spells and board wipes to help the deck because of its color scheme with the first sliver which gets it up into A tier. As for merefolk, when you swap out some sorcery with instant and counter spells the deck racks up counters, draws cards, places lands and creates tokens on it very fast, has an infinite combo in the precon and can overwhelm players with ease. Players who do not play alot of counters and board wipes are in for a short game if the deck gets to pop off. The potential with merefolk straight out of the deck is a B tier, but jumps straight to S tier when certain upgrades are made that makes it near impossible to play around, especially when this deck plays against blue players. Overall slivers go to A and merefolk go to S because of their potential upgrade that makes them difficult to deal with all around.
Bought the pirate precon on a whim.. it's ok for kitchen table magic.. wish it wasn't all over the place but there you go. Of course if any of the precon decks were good for competitive magic we would see the prices double or triple.. I think all the precons are pretty all over the place in terms of focusing on winning..
Great tier list, but you forgot about the smiling flood for the merfolk deck as one of the commanders. Not that i think it makes much of a difference overall.
11:32 Anyone else pause to count, and realize the overlay text about Planechase was one syllable short of being a haiku? No? Just me?
I've played planechase many times and I don't like it. I'll still play when others want to but I think it's generally lame unbalances the game.
I like it but I want to only play 1 game a night with it. Once is enough then it just gets tedious as you get to the least effective plane
I appreciate that you at least tried it. I like doing it every once in a while, but not often. It's important as a community that we're at least receptive to trying different things or else WOTC will never be giving us new things.
I think the planechase is better when there is just one planechase deck in the center everyone uses with all the planes to not give a certain advantage to certain decks by building or bringing your own. More chaos more random.
Ranking the Dalek deck so low is criminal. It's an excellent deck that is fun to play and being the villain with it is extremely easy and satisfying!
Far dominion I’m going to have to disagree in upgrade potential. I have added a ton of cards to this deck. If you go with Alela, all black and blue instants and anything with flash become potential adds. Its biggest issue is finding cards to cut after a certain point.
Current adds include:
Sprite Nobel
Progenitors Icon
Talion, the kindly lord
Wavebreak Hippocamp
Skullclamp
Rhystic study
Faerie mastermind
Ice out (I wanted to use the promo card)
Staff of the mind Magus
Sheoldred, the apocalypse
Leyline of anticipation
Skyclave relic
Sky diamond
Mox Tantalite
Charcoal diamond
Rewind
Lofty denial
Fierce Guardianship
Essence Scatter
Drown in the loch
Countersquall
Bitterblossom
I also have 17 other adds on my maybeboard, like Cyclonic rift, mana drain, deadly rolic, faerie harbinger, spellstutter sprite, mistbind clique, faerie tauntings. Plus any future instant, flash or faerie cards that come out in Dimir.
Although you can also criticize the upgradability being control heavy which I realize people don’t always love but in my friend group countering and exiling mesmeric orb, eldrazi’s with annihilator, and other annoying things is a common occurrence that people actually appreciate.
Slivers deck from Commander Masters is not the first Slivers pre-con deck ever made . There was '' Premium Deck Series Slivers ''
Which of these decks would you ya'll reccommend for a newbie? I recently started playing arena and am still learning (quick learner though), not set on a particular playstyle yet but am leaning towards aggro. Thanks in advance!
Ixalan Dinos or the LOTR humans have good agro-ish strategies and are pretty good out of the box!
Jesus I didn't realize there was so many. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
Quantity > Quality. Bad thing. 😭
@@thesamuraiman normally i would agree, but in case of precons its a good thing i think. New players have the chance to try/choose between a lot different playstyles without spending a lot of money. I think its good for beginners.
I think you are underrating the vampires-deck a bit. Turns out, it's a bit slower, but quite resilient if the games drag out longer.
I do love this video, alot of thought and time went into, and I do appreciate that, but I would like to see some better editing, some of the prices have been covered and stuff but otherwise really good video
For me one of the most frustrating part of LOTR precons is that barely nobody said Eleven deck was bad, in all the premier games in UA-cam using these precons I saw online, the elves deck always won or at least performed wonderfully, but I think that was just luck and that's not the reality when playing with them more regularly. I've got the four decks for casual games with friends once a month or so, and the Eleven deck sucked (it always was the first losing or second because it wasn't seen as a thread with its bad performing and players focused first on other players).
I tried to upgrade all four decks using just cards from LOTR sets (to keep the flavour) and all decks became even better with just a little bunch of changes without loosing their identity or mechanics, while Elves became just slightly better by focusing the deck on scrying while giving them all the treefolk creatures from Hobbits Deck and the rest of the set, providing at least "large green creatures", and still sucked...
I'm not confident in my capability for making good decks, I'm quite the noob, but the fact that almost nobody said that this deck was horrendous and even praised it, it really was infuriating hahahahhahahaha.
I started playing commander only recently, but what I get is that people downplay the uniqueness of Gimbal. I get why it's underpowered for being a 5 cmc commander, and the precon definitly lacks support for its playstyle, but its one of the few commanders that wants you to really lean into the theme. You coudl definitly play the same deck with another commander (like rashimi and ragavan) and still pull off the same stuff (playing tens of different named token artifacts) but you wouldn't build the deck in that way because there wouldn't be a reason to. Gimbal gives you that reason. If you only think about treasures and food, yeah, it's boring. But once you start to give out bananas to everyone, note random words on vito's journal, creat mighty ROCKS you're just having a good time
Loved the video!
But if you're going to have an S rank, you ought to use it! Not a single stock or upgrade S rank given out, only S's for uniqueness.
Its kinda funny to me that I bought 2 march of the machine precon not knowing they were that weak, and ive had very little success with the convoke deck, while the +1 counter one with face commander gave me a 1178 power and toughness hydra while comboed with branching evolution 😂
The Uniqueness category is way, way too subjective. When ppl see a deck ranked high or low they assume it's because it's either a good or a bad deck. Who cares how original or unique it is? I don't. As an example of what I mean...I've been away from MtG for 5 years. Every deck on this list was new and/or unique to me. Plus...if uniqueness is somehow related to collectability, well...that's a whole different video imo.