Need help deciding on a precon Commander deck to buy
Commander Deck Help forum
Posted on Feb. 22, 2019, 1:50 a.m. by Farel
Hello, I was advised to give Commander a try, so I'd want to buy some pre-constructed deck, but I don't know what to choose, and everybody keeps warning me to pick something that feels "right" for me, which is hard, given how I can't find much info on how the deck functions.
I want to know what the deck does, what it relies on to achieve victory, and also, I'd appreciate some info on it having some special traits, like... certain cards which would be useful in multiplayer.
I have managed to restrict my search to 9 decks so far, based on my fondness for UG, but I can't tell if these decks do rely on boosting creatures that much. In any case, here's the 9 decks that I'm debating over buying: -Adaptive Enchantment -Breed Lethality -Devour for Power -Entropic Uprising -Evasive Maneuvers -Guided by Nature -Mirror Mastery -Stalwart Unity -Swell the Host
All help and advise would be appreciated :)
DerektheRed says... #3
this is a ton of info to distill for 9 decks -- I expect you'll get more/better info once you've narrowed it to 2-3. Also, it actually does need to be 'right for you'. What's your preferred play style? You like UG so you want creatures and +1/+1 counters? Something aggressive? Do you love the combos? How flexible or narrow do you want your build options? Etc.
Anyway, here's my two cents based on experience:
Adaptive Enchantment is a straightforward enchantments matter deck. Auras, cards that care how many enchantments you have, etc... It's not super strong out of the box, but is fun to play. Heavy on card draw and making creatures huge with enchantments.
Guided by Nature is elf tribal. Mono-green so tons of ramp and tons of small synergistic creatures.
Breed Lethality is one of the most popular EDH decks. It's powerful out of the box and the commander is crazy. Tons of different directions you can take proliferate, so if you're looking for build flexibility this is a good choice. The precon is based on growing creatures with +1/+1 counters and some shenanigans with moving them around.
Evasive Maneuvers - speaking of shenanigans - is a combo deck based on tapping and untapping things. It can be pretty powerful, and also pretty complex to play. A lot of people hate playing against this commander specifically, so it will draw hate for sure.
Entropic Uprising is also a combo deck, based on cascade. It's fun out of the box, and is capable of huge combo turns with the right sequence of cards. Also fairly flexible.
Mirror Mastery is one of my favorite commanders ever. It plays as both a midrange creature deck and a spellslinger deck, at the same time. Double up on ETB effects, big fliers, burn plus counter magic... super fun. I can't tell you how it plays out of the box cause I built mine from scratch.
Stalwart Unity is a pillow fort / group hug deck. Don't bother if that's not your play style cause it doesn't do anything else.
Swell the Host is a more straightforward UG creature deck, playing small creatures quickly and pumping them up. It's more linear than most of these others.
Devour for Power I haven't played, but Mimeoplasm is another popular commander. Sultai, so obviously lots of graveyard interaction and recursion.
Hope any of that was helpful. If you can ask specific questions or articulate how you like to play, people can probably help you narrow it down.
February 22, 2019 2:50 a.m.
PhotogenicParasympathetic says... #4
I'd also recommend taking a look at the price of the various decks, because most are not available for MSRP anymore. If you're looking to try out commander for the first time and don't want to spend too much on a deck you may not play again, consider that Breed Lethality/Devour for Power/Mirror Mastery/Evasive Maneuvers are likely to be much more expensive than the others on that list, because they are older/have some of the most broken commanders available.
February 22, 2019 4:12 a.m.
triproberts12 says... #5
As said above, most of the decks you mentioned are going to be difficult to find and crazy expensive. Since you're just getting into EDH, I would recommend one of two routes: You could get a precon from this year, or possibly last year if you can find them. Or, you could buy a budget list that experienced deckbuilders on the internet have created and buy the cards from TCGPlayer.
I love MTGGoldfish, and they've broken down this year's precons in detail, as well as for the year before.
Tomer from Goldfish also does an excellent budget commander series, and he's recently started building $50, $100, and $200 iterations of different decks, as well as updating older budget decks he's created to reflect changing prices. I find his decks more fun, but Abe Sargent does a series over at CoolStuff Inc.
February 22, 2019 11:28 a.m.
JaxTheBlueJay says... #6
If you're not planning on playing the deck in standard; God cards are always helpful. Also, there's "Winter's Reclamation" for some land-based strategy; I hear it's really good. "Nezahal" is pretty good too for overall late-game action. That's all I could think of. Hope I could help!
February 22, 2019 4:39 p.m.
First I'd like to thank everyone for their input. I apologize that I didn't respond earlier, as I've been busy this past week.
Now directing myself towards DerektheRed's response: with the things listed by you I can say that I will remove: Guided by Nature, Evasive Maneuvers and Stalwart Unity, from consideration. Leaving us with the 6: Adaptive Enchantment, Breed Lethality, Entropic Uprising, Mirror Mastery, Swell the Host and Devour for Power.
As for your questions: -I enjoy strategies where I summon creatures and form some sort of offensive strategy. Often based on powering up my creatures, and/or using abilities like being unblockable, flying, spell countering to give me an advantage and let me attack away. -UG creatures with counters would certainly be my bread and butter. An aggressive deck with some thought put behind it -I do adore combos, but I do know from experience how tricky they can be to pull off -I think my deck would have to be flexible. Then again, this would be the one point where if it were to lead to 2 options, I'd like to hear both.
Thank you very much once again!
March 1, 2019 5:11 p.m.
DerektheRed says... #8
3 down, 5 to go! A few things in no particular order:
1) You can tag other users in your comments using double brackets around user:username, like so: Farel. They'll get a notification when you do, so it lets people know you've responded. :)
2) Have you looked into price? A few others mentioned it - the difference is meaningful. Here's current Market Price on TCGplayer:
Breed Lethality $135
Devour for Power $90
Entropic Uprising $90
Mirror Mastery $110
Swell the Host $65
Adaptive Enchantment $30
3) Whether or not cost is an issue, based on your play style I'd suggest either Swell the Host or Adaptive Enchantments. Neither are that strong out of the box, but half the fun of a commander pre-con is upgrading it. Both can be plenty strong - and more important, a lot of fun to play - with modest upgrades.
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Swell the Host is traditional Simic - lots of +1/+1 counters and creature tricks (unblockable, etc.) -- it's great timing for this deck, with all the new Ravnica cards ( Incubation Druid , Simic Ascendancy ). It's also flexible - lots of directions to take it, from snake tribal to tokens to +1/+1 counter combos.
Adaptive Enchantments has a sub-commander that might be better than the main commander: Tuvasa the Sunlit . This deck has amazing card draw, and is heavily creature-based because you're playing Auras all game. Add another Enchantress and cards like Steel of the Godhead and Shield of the Oversoul ... Or throw in Rafiq of the Many and Sublime Archangel and make it an Exalted theme. Lots of options.
Good luck and have fun!
March 6, 2019 3:16 a.m.
Thank you very much Derek, you really made this so much easier ^^
March 6, 2019 8:53 a.m.
DerektheRed says... #10
My pleasure! Always happy to help another player get in to EDH. :)
PlatinumOne says... #2
just look up the decklists for each and pick which one you like.
February 22, 2019 2:13 a.m.