Hit the Deck(s)!

I've been playing for something like 6 years now, and in retrospect, I buy a surprising number of preconstructed decks.

Not the intro packs, or even the event decks.

But I buy just about every duel deck that's come out since Garruck vs. Liliana, and I buy all of the Commander decks I can.

My last post was about teaching my fiancee to play Magic. While Commander got her hooked, some of our earliest games, where I showed her the basics, were with the Sorin vs. Tibalt duel deck.

I see a post on Reddit about every two days where someone is asking how to get their friend/wife/bookie/kidnapper/grandmother to play the game with them. Being someone who buys the duel decks for parts anyway, I can't recommend them enough to teach someone the basics. They're relatively inexpensive (minus a few outliers, once out of print), have at least one nice reprint in the box (Demonic Tutor, Remand, Regrowth, Knight of the Reliquary, Counterspell), and aren't exactly optimized.

A few slow-time, walkthrough-style games with those (plus a bonus demo of Tibalt is just so damn bad), and she had a good grasp of the basics of the game. Card types, the mana system, the stack, and a few of the more common mechanics (lifelink, trample). Not a bad deal for your money, to be honest. Some will be better than others, in terms of value, fun, and availability. But they aren't bad by any stretch. Hell, the only thing on my Xmas list is the forthcoming Anthology, which includes the first two duel decks (the ones I missed). I'll probably keep those decks together, as tempting as the Tutor will be, just to shuffle them up to play with my friends and fiancee.

The other precons I buy are, obviously, the Commander decks.

In 2011, I was posted to Western Canada after I graduated from university. In and around the move, I only picked up two of the commander decks, the Kaalia one and the Mimeoplasm one. So, that was lucky, as the demand for those two seems pretty significant even today.

But I still wish I'd picked up the others for MSRP when they came out.

It's not an issue, since I'm not exactly a Sol Ring guy, and I have most of the cards from the decks anyway, but I still wish I'd picked them up.

For every release since then, for Commander (and Planechase!) anyway, I've picked up complete sets of decks. I have hardly touched the 2013 decks, but it's nice to keep them in the pocket for lower powered games where I want to just screw around and blow off some steam.

The exception would be Commander's Arsenal, which was an insulting piss-off to Magic players. A friend picked one up and I traded him for the few cards I actually wanted out of it, and we both walked away happy (he found it for closer to MSRP). I have the opportunity to buy an open but complete Arsenal, but I'm probably not going to pull the trigger. $275 CDN isn't even close to what I want to pay, considering I only want the life counter. And even I'm not going to pay that much.

This year's Commander decks in particular were a nice pickup- planeswalker Commanders! Mono-coloured decks present their own unique challenges in Commander. Among these are Iona, ramp in Red and White decks, the inability of Black to deal with enchantments, etc. Colour pie stuff. I have mono-coloured decks built, and they can be powerful if built well, but I have more fun, personally, when I play more than one colour.

So, these decks would be dismantled for parts as well.

A few highlights, for those reading this for inspiration.

Teferi, Temporal Archmage: Mono-blue Superfriends doesn't exactly evoke a sense of overwhelming power. You'd draw a pile of cards, tutor up an artifact, and that'd be that. I have a 5-Colour Superfriends deck that loves having Teferi around, however. Him, The Chain Veil, and Bloom Tender? Provided I have another planeswalker, things start to get ridiculous. My fiancee runs him with a pile of mana rocks (Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Basalt Monolith, Grim Monolith, etc). She very regularly hardcasts Eldrazi. Now, she can do two in a turn.

Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury: Another tribute to Magic's past. Freyalise is one of my favourite oldwalkers, and I am thrilled she finally has her own card. Her art is incredible, but how to use her? Ezuri is a better elf deck. So what does Freyalise bring to the table? I'll put it this way- I've played aainst very few deck that don't use artifacts/enchantments to some degree. This includes creatures that happen to be one of the above types. Freyalise shows up, nukes one every second turn. Her druids block, ramp your mana, and can eventually lead to drawing a few cards. Worth running ooverall? Hard to say. But for as long as my fiancee runs an artifact-heavy Jhoira deck, Freyalise can continue to lead the Planeswalker Initiative.

Nahiri, the Lithomancer: The third deck I ever built was Rafiq of the Many. He went into drydock about 2 years ago when I consolidated all of my singleton ABUR duals into my 5-Colour deck. I rebuilt him when Nahiri was spoiled, deciding to finally go the Voltron route with a deck. I have a matched foil set of the Swords of X+Y, a foil Stoneforge, and a foil Stonehewer. It was time. I hope to pilot the deck tonight for the first time tonight, but on paper, the deck is nuts.

Titania, Protector of Argoth: I was most excited for Titania, by far. I run a lot of fetchlands. Knight of the Reliquary has gone into every deck I can put it in since I started playing Commander. I have a foil Crucible of Worlds. I am hoping with everything I've got that she gets the Nekusar/Riku treatment and is a judge foil soon. I have to run her, but it irks me she isn't foil. Such a fun card. By herself, she forced my fiancee to run Ratchet Bomb. Sad times.

Those are the main ones I've got experience with so far. Daretti is in my fiancee's Jhoira deck, but hasn't come up soon. Maybe tonight?