This video couldn't have come at a more perfect time. I am getting back into magic for the first time in almost 20 years and was looking for a place to start. Loving all the videos and keep up the great work!
Welcome back! I was out from 2005 through 2019. Yes, culture shock as people mentioned. I am glad planeswalkers aren't as prominent in EDH as they were in 60-card formats when I came back. My word of caution: many precons are overdesigned. What I mean by that is that there are many individual cards with 7+ lines of text and literal mini-games. No one at the table knows what they do and don't care or bother. Cognitive overload is a major theme in these precons. I haven't watched Tomer's video, but he's awesome and might have pointed that out, especially for a couple of the Universes Beyond decks.
@@jochenkirn9468 Thanks for that heads up, I ended up going with the Blame Game precon for now while I wait on the cards to come in for the decks I designed. My group seems to really enjoy the political game, so I'm hoping they'll like playing against this one until my other cards come in :)
Nelly doesn't just goad, she suspects a creature and then goads all suspected creatures. Suspected creatures can't block and have menace. So they are better at attacking your opponents, and can't block - the can't block is still highly relevant if/when you get to to 1 v 1.
@@tomerabramovici32 You are not wrong my friend. The deck itself certainly needs upgrades. But the fact that it is a goad commander that isn't garbage in 1 v 1 is an upgrade on past goad stuff and that is interesting design.
@andrueurbane7361 The deck also only has two sources of Suspect including Nelly herself. So the rate at wich her effect is actually applied is obscenely slow, and given that your in Boros and Nelly costs 4 if your not online by turn 8 you've essentially already lost.
@andrueurbane7361 It is certainly an interesting design, but it's really poorly put together. The deck is a hodge podge of really bad effects that don't actually synergize well. If you break down the deck piece by piece it falls apart pretty bad. The deck has a real identity crisis. It's a mish mash of Goad effects but without the good goad payoffs, Rattlesnake effects in a deck type that wants to force opponents to attack each other with Goad making them mostly useless, and high aggro beaters without an effective enough land base or ramp engine to get them out and working fast.
@andrueurbane7361 I wanted to love the deck but truth be told I completely gutted it, tossed Feather out completely, changed the Commander to Isshin and added in black, and left around 70% of the precon on the cutting room floor. It has gone on to be a unholy terror in my pod turning my mid-range buddy into my own personal nuclear missile.
This is the first year ever I’ve played against out-of-the-box precons that consistently could hang with custom built decks. Especially the duskmorn/bloomburrow ones. (Also to be fair I didn’t play against them all, prob 3/4 of them or so).
For real! Couple days ago at FNM two of my friends just brought untouched pre cons, the Éowyn sheildmaiden LOTR deck, and the Fallout dogmeat deck, and they won every time!
I played the Aminatou deck stock at a game shop against people running fully upgraded decks and won my first game. It’s sneakily powerful. I had so much fun with it that I have decided to keep it. I originally bought the deck to piece out for my cube, but now I’ve been upgrading it.
I turned Desert Bloom into a Cactusfolk/Plant kindred deck and added in some extra land sack spells like Scapeshift for high end payoffs. Really happy with how it turned out and the tribal feel made it more interesting. Love Yuma and Kirri. My favorite deck of the year
You failed to mention the best part about Mothman; how you get to interrupt everyone right after their draw step, by reminding them about the Rad counters they have, and then reminding them how they work every time as its not their deck running a unique ability! Its like having a Rhystic Study-like effect in the command zone! Dya pay the 1? Dya pay the 1? Dya mill the 3? Dya mill the 3? Dya mill the 5? Never gets old!
I played Disa last night for the first time and getting to faithless looting reanimate an archon of cruelty and brood mate tyrant for free felt very strong, and tarmogoyf tokens can just take over. It was a lot of work but it was FUN.
What I did, was go through the chaff at my LGS (not that much of it and sorted by color, at least) and found all the little dorks that make more energy than their mana value when they enter. You copy these for a couple of turn cycles and do not seem like all that much of a threat, but any threat or energy payoff you find will be immediately good to go. (that, or, you play Guide of Souls before Satya and the table lets you make two more copies of it and then you draw Whirler Virtuoso and turns out that's infinite... their fault for not removing Guide on sight, of course)
Olivia Outlaws being a Mardu deck and not a Grixis deck bugs the SHIT out of me. Sooo many Rogues and Pirates are in blue, and *none* of the creature types are related to white. Like…WHY.
@@vaazon I would agree with you if there was already a grixis commander that wants all of these creature types, but there’s not. And white doesn’t bring very many creatures of these types to the table, and the ones they do bring don’t really synergize with Olivia at all. So it still seems pretty pointless to me.
@vaazon literally this. I wouldn't mind mardu if we actually had enough outlaws to make the deck work. Instead, I'm left when with just jamming mardu assassins thanks to the AC set.
I agree with you here. The theme is Outlaws- why would an outlaw be in white? its literally the color of law and order, there are no mono white outlaws, and i challenge anyone to find any white outlaw that's not in this precon. Flavor fail
Bello makes all your non-EQUIPMENT and non-Aura artifacts and enchantments into 4/4 indestructible creatures. But it also does that with enchantment and artifact creatures. At least on your deck breakdown graphic you were only counting up the non-CREATURE artifacts and enchantments. But Bello’s ability actually buffs a solemn simulacrum or eidolon of blossoms and gives them indestructible during your turn. Too bad they didn’t include more of those types of cards in the precon, but it’s useful to consider when upgrading. Enduring and impending creatures are great additions too
The endless punishment precon functions surprisingly well, even without the commander in play. As you said, it is “death by a thousand cuts.” Valgavoth can end an opponent for the last bit of damage, and the Lord of Pain is just hilarious. Just give me some pings! That’s all it needs.
It's my favorite precon out of thr four besides death toll. But unfortunately valgavoth and the deck suffers from not able to protect your creatures or permanents. Once people start seeing you deal burn damage consistently your entire board gets wiped and targeted by everyone. It's the weakest of the 4 precons at least in a base out the box way, once you Buff the deck and add cards to help it, it gets better
People tend to underlevel Disa, with a TINY BIT OF HELP, Pyrogoyf is a MONSTER, i kill people out of nowhere, turboing Disa T3~4 and then Entombing Pyrogoyf+Anger+Barrowgoyf, milling even more stuff, making 2~3 BIG tokens, and people notice HOW STRONG DISA IS.
Tricky Terrain is the precon of the year for me, what a deck. It's so fun out of the box, every time you play it you are looking at different lines to go based on the early land types you draw into. I've kept mine unmodified, I love it.
Loved Endless Punishment. Easily upgraded it to throw in a few more pingers, damage doublers, protection, and card draw. It did awesome for my first time playing with it!
@ I don’t remember everything off the top of my head. Tibalts Trickery and Oblivions Hunger for protection. Curse of Shaken Faith was added to mount further pressure. Mayhem Dominus from Phyrexia for double damage. I took out the one guy who did damage with enchantment mana costs, and I took out the gremlin.
Agree with most picks but I feel like some are just for engagement... Like putting deadly disguise and science up so high then putting graveyard od almost dead last. Do appreciate creative energy being up so high, that deck is very powerful and flew under the radar
I would consider Valgavoth not being in top tier heresy, but you do make a good point about the limitations of the base deck, I have some bias due to playing with an upgraded version of the deck, overall agree with most of the list.
Yeah the base out the box deck has major issues. Mostly with protecting permanents, keeping your stuff on the board and being able to recover once a board wipe happens. Pride of glory and smoke are two enchantments that really help the deck. Limits your opponents on what they can do and keeps your board safe till you can get it set up right. My friends and I played with all four decks and valgavoth lost every single time fresh out thr box. But once upgraded it was a crazy force to handle
I love how wide and diverse the options and themes were. They could’ve just done a bunch of kindred themed decks but instead we got themes of graveyard, enchantments, lands, spell slinging, 5 color plus colorless, new mechanics with rad counters and more investment into energy, etc there was so much that anybody could at least find one they liked if not more and build/upgrade off of them as much as they like
I've been wanting to make a squirrel commander deck for years. The fact that squirreled away came with most of the needed cards is insane, and only needed a few upgrades to go infinite and really combo off
There are actually multiple different infinites in the Creative Energy precon as well. Granted they all take more setup and generally at least 4 cards on board, but they are there.
Re: Infinite Combos, there are actually quite a few now. There's also a 2 card infinite in the Zinnia Family Matters deck, it has Helm of the Host + Combat Celebrant, and the Bello precon has Gruul Turf + Kodama of the East Tree with Rampaging Baloths for infinite 4/4s.
Smashing the two energy decks together (Creative Energy and For Science) gives incredible results. Agree that Valgavoth's precon is overrated. Also while Blame Game doesn't have many draw cards, the games where you see Trouble in Pairs or sometimes Smuggler's Share are just wins.
With a few additions from the main set of Duskmourn(Threats around every corner and/or Paranormal analyst, neither expensive), Zimone feels almost impossible to stop. You just build up your board state so fast. Even after a board wipe, you'll easily just build a new board state. And the big creatures and some salty enchantments makes it hard for the opponents to decide what to remove.
Omo was my 1st pre-con coming back it did take me a minute to learn how it operates but when i did, it became one of my favorites decks to use playing at my LGS sometimes it does to much now haha
Nice list! You missed the infinite combo in the esper duskmourne deck in that you can create infinite 3/3s with a two card combo, the 3/3 that copies target enchantment and the room that turns all of your permanents into enchantments.
Blame Game does deserve it. It's very poorly designed. It's a deck based on Goad and Suspect, with only 2 ways to Suspect a creature and only around 10 ways to Goad. It's mostly a Rattlesnake deck that has to rely on your opponents taking the bait. Otherwise it basically does nothing. The land base is also awful being almost half just janky colorless mana like Throne of the High King, Labyrinth of Skophos, or fucking Kher Keep. It doesn't even have Terramorphic Expanse or Evolving Wilds. The Subcommander is also terrible. Feather does nothing for the deck, when Argus Kos, Spirit of Justice was right there. Yeah it is technically playable. I've won games with the base precon, but only ever because I beat them to death myself with giant angels and never because I've politiced my way there. When you actually dissect the deck and look at what it's trying to do and the level of cards in the deck it's absolutely terrible.
Feels like a classic case of looking at the stats and not actually playing the deck given the rating it received. Certainly a much better deck than Deadly Disguise and Deep Clue Sea.
@@matthewdykeman8149if you upgrade the mana base and add more card draw/protection etc then this deck easily becomes super strong and is easily an A minimum. At base while decent the mana base is ass and it’s not consistent enough.
2:06:54 there's actually a bunch of infininite combos in precons this year. Just in Bloomburrow, Bello had rampaging balloths + kodama + warstorm surge. Zinnia had combat celebrant + helm of the host (and agate instigator if the token can't connect)
I think you've underrated Family Matters. You say it doesn't mesh - have you played it? It does work together far better than it would seem, there's all these little synergies and combos that Zinnia puts over the top by letting you have two copies of any given creature, and enough of them are good enough on their own to try to position yourself for a strong finish. There's certainly a lot more potential in Zinnia in an upgraded or more focused deck, of course.
I got Family Matters and played it as soon as I could. It rather quickly fell off in favour of other decks. To me the off-spring mechanic is too expensive.
I bought both energy decks and merged them and they're really good. I agree with Tomer that the MH3 one was stronger than Fallout. Most of the time I run Satya as the commander but Madison Li is fun too. A great interaction with Satya is copying activated manlands because they don't cost any energy to keep around, allowing you to ramp out token lands very easily. I took lightning runner out because that card comboed so easily.
Managed to get that Eldrazi precon for like $70 from Best Buy, I've yet to test it and have been debating on getting one of the ulamogs and kozilek, butcher of truth for it. Also got that mothman precon for $60, just waiting for that to come in, cant wait.
Graveyard Overdrive is undefeated among my playgroup. All my friends hate it cuz it just destroys everyone and has no mercy whatsoever. It's insane how OP that deck is.
The Jund deck is AMAZING. It pressures everyone, it is fast and it can deal massive damage even if it is the archnemesis. The issue is: It needs a lot of training. Meaning that this was a deck made for Returning players instead of New & returning players.
I play with a friend who play Disa and he did not win but was a true menace in all games he did with it, cool deck, idk for the other C bit seems pretty great too from what I saw
Borca is so much fun! I guess the ratio makes it C tier, but it feels A tier to play! I picked up Yuma on multiple recommendations. Energy Fallout deck really A+? I thought Stella had a stock infinite. And the outlaw deck seemed like a C tier letdown.
I do feel like Disa plays a lot better than she reads but the precon is unfortunate. Right now she's one of the 5 decks I've picked to keep in rotation (reducing the amt of decks I keep on hand is a goal for 2025) but my goodness would she love just 2-5 more goyfs. Great work on the video, as always.
The tricky terrain deck gets insane with some simple upgrades and dropping a mazes end into it. But yes there’s a lot to manage and maintain and a lot of triggers. It gets even crazier if you put some serious upgrades into it. Recommend starting with lord of the unreal, feline sovereign, herald of hoof beats, a couple fetch lands, primeval titan, mossbloom hydra, cryptic gateway, descendants path and it can be a little more Freeform from there. Helm of the host and kindred discovery along with titan of litjara are also great inclusions. Copying an apex Devastator 10 times with aggressive biomancy is HILARIOUSLY busted. Forgot to add a serious bomb in it being Banner of kinship. I’ve dropped it with 64 fellowship counters naming insect and scute swarm on the field.
I appreciate that you evaluate decks based on a framework to compare them to. Lots of folks consider only the power of the commander or specific strong cards. This can lead to skewed ranking by individual card power, or experiential ranking based on magical xmass land games where everything comes together in exactly the right order. You value consistency over variance more than most. It is a refreshing perspective.
Glad to see my girl Omo be in the top spot, she easily my favorite precon this year. And yeah Zinnia is great when build up right, but the precon dont really take advantage of the multiple ETB that they can generate.
Nah you're right with Satya/Creative Energy. It's very strong as a stock list - able to keep up with most decks you'll find at an LGS, or at the very least you can piss everyone off when you cast Farewell lol - and you can upgrade it or change it in a bunch of different ways and it'll always be fun. Satya is waaaay overtuned, but also juuuust specific enough to not lean into degeneracy or the same old same old good stuff cards (at least in Commander with 3 other players to deal with, I think he's in hell-queue in Brawl on Arena)
When our friend group played the Bloomburrow precons against each other, the Family Matters precon felt insanely slow and clunky each time. We were never concerned that the Zinnia player might pop off but were always concerned that the Zinnia players wasn't able to help us slow down the Bello player - who was curb-stomping us no matter who played the deck. The Zinnia deck might be fine in isolation (I'd still give it a B at best) but it was a massive disappointment in the pool of Bloomburrow precons.
Yeah absolutely. The only thing popping up Family Matters imo is it has 6 good board wipes that synergize with the deck. Otherwise what it's "doing" is a lot of nothing
I'm surprised Tomer has Science! that high. I, and most people I've talked to, think it's the worst precon of the year and one of the worst of all time.
The Fallout decks are probably some of the strongest and most fun set of UB deck since Warhammer 40K and I'm glad they got put at the top where they belong.
Hi Tomer, great video. About the Science deck, many people are saying this was great out of the box, but my experience was very frustrating, after playing around 8 to 10 times, even with upgrades and trying a couple of different angles (more artifact matters, more energy, or more recursion), I never saw the deck popping off. Until I combined it with the Creative energy, and now is an ETB deck that runs great with Satya!!
I think Kaust sucks (despite the gorgeous art by Volkan Baga) for a completely different, not power level-related reason: It's design is super rigid in terms of when you have to flip your cards, which goes against the spirit (and main upside) of most morph (and its variants) cards: The surprise factor. If you have to flip bolt bender essentially during your combat step to draw a card with Kaust, you might get nothing out of his trigger, for example. This is not fun design, imho.
@@torinviger Oh yeah, Yarus flew under the radar for me, but he would be high up on my totem pole of choices if I ever were to build a morph/disguise deck.
That Morph deck is THE worst pile of cardboard I have ever sleeved up for commander and I own a "Shoe Tribal" deck. I would create a separate G tier (G for Garbage) just to not insult any deck in F tier.
You did Mirko and Aminatou wrong. Especially Mirko you switch 3-4 cards and you just blast through your deck. Flavor wise it’s probably my favorite of the year.
I think Blame Game is a bit harshly rated, I think its on par with the other MAKM precons, its a little hampered by the card draw, yes, but the stax/goad pieces and politics often mean people keep your commander around so you manage to get the card draw. Plus if you manage to get Trouble in Pairs out, you don't need any other card draw lmao
@@dariocampanella7992 my point was more that compared to the other MAKM decks it was ranked a step below, when I think it's about equal, tbh I think Tomer is slightly underrating Blame Game and slightly overrating the morph deck, but to each their own
Can we get an after budget upgrades ranking? Maybe next podcast with the crew? That would be super cool to see what decks you guys think would be the "best" after only spending like 100 to 300 bucks on upgrades. 🎉hope goldfish sees this. Cheers.
Only one I really disagree with is Animated Army. This precon is straight busted even with the stock list. It's so hard to deal with. Most board wipes people play only hit creatures - as soon as one board wipe goes off, Bello just deletes people from the game. The burst damage this deck outputs is crazy.
I play exclusively unmodified precons on Spelltable, and I've purchased and played (and played against) every deck on this list numerous times. I respectfully disagree with a few of the A+ and As. I felt this was reviewed by list only and not playing most of these as precons. No disrespect to Tomer, I just feel like his evaluations are not from multiple plays of each deck. Ms. Bumbleflower is my newest favorite commander but the precon is all kinds of scattered. Mothman, Ulalek, and Stella DOMINATED their precon-block. For Fallout, it felt like the other 3 were always fighting for LAST place. Olivia is so poorly built, Zinnia is WILDLY inconsistent, Winter is no where NEAR as good as Valgavoth out of the box.
If we're just going off the precon alone endless punishment should be B tier. I love valgavoth and that precon its alot of fun, but its almost impossible to keep permanents on the board because once the opponent sees the chip damage you're doing they all get popped. Valgavoth has no real protection besides ward and alot of the creatures and spell either cost 4 or more mana or does damage to yourself as well as opponents and the creatures have no way of being protected or buffed. The deck needs enchantments like smoke to keep people from swinging at you with multiple creatures or need serious token/creature ramping which thr deck doesn't have. Its sad that some of the cards in the precon and duskmourn set for red only really give you 3 tokens after unlocking a door. A base deck of each duskmourn precon, valgavoth is the weakest
Bought most of precons this year. Deadly disguise is awful even upgraded. 2 mana ramp.... you want/need your commander on 2 to have an attack/flip on 4 3 mana ramp.... you want a creature on 3 to attack on 4 to get your plan going. Decks nowdays make so many tokens, people won't trust your 2/2 face down... and will just block it. If you don't have the commander the deck ain't doing squat. Green in it for ramping is nice, but the mana cost of ramps slows you down 1 turn instead of speeding your plan. Yes you can get lucky and open the perfect hand, but so little scenarios make the deck work. (Yes, I admit, it might absolutely be a skill issue haha) One of the only precon I dismantle instead of upgrading (other being Stella Lee cause I hate to play solitaire) and sold Eldrazi cause I just dislike the miserable experience they bring to a game. BUT.... the clue and suspect decks are SO much fun. Probably my 2 favorite decks. So many ways to win in The clue deck. The suspect deck I just want to create chaos and finish second, i changed a lot of cards for cards that care about players making decisions (more vote cards) and took out most goad/king maker cards. Creative energy is amazing. Disa is a lot of fun, but also a lot of maths (not ideal for end night)
So you're ranking list needs some adjusting because you state it is based off of multiple categories yet alot of these decks who didn't make it par were out in A and A+. I would argue that half of those decks on A+ belong in B a couple in C. I would put endless punishment in C. Sure it's a great deck, but if it falls apart with out the commander then the deck sucks.
Mirical worker a b??? Hahaha hahaha bro, I can't take anything seriously at this point. My play group won't even let me play it because it's too strong. Slow? Yea, powerful? oh hell yes.
Out of the box, Liberty Prime is a better commander for the Fallout Energy deck than Dr Madison Li. The deck is already so good at generating energy that you usually have more energy than you can spend regardless of who’s your commander. What the deck has almost none of is energy payoffs. Dr Madison Ali’s payoffs just aren’t impactful enough since you have to tap her to use them. The deck just durdles for a while then dies without Liberty Prime.
Playing Kaust for a long time. The deck sucks beyond belief. Kaust's first flip can happen on turn 4. You can not speed it up. Most of the time it is turn 5. If Kaust gets killed your deck is a dumpster fire. Even if everything goes right the other decks do more powerful things with less hoops to go through.
I STRONGLY recommend swapping out Kaust as the commander for Yarus and replacing the white cards in the precon with sac outlets, a few big gruul threats that benefit from haste, face down support cards from duskmourn (e.g., Threats around every corner) and some more protection for your commander. I've found the deck plays unbelievably better than Kaust while still running a lot of the same cards.
I don’t understand why wotc keeps trying to make morph work. It literally has been disliked and player-unfriendly since onslaught when it came out, and has never been a success in the several times they’ve tried again. It’s like every 10 years they try it and remember why they didn’t do it for the last 10 years 😂
@ yeah zimone is strong but not because morph is strong, but because simic landfall is strong. Pretty much the only way they’ve “successfully” implemented morph was when the cost is cheated (zimone, kadena, Kaust), and cost cheating principally goes against the game and its resource system. There is no such thing as an “honest” morph deck where you hard cast and flip, especially in 2024. It’s a failed mechanic that they keep trying to blindfolded throw darts at to fix rather than let it die like banding or cumulative upkeep. Also I played against a kadena deck the other day and he had four piles of face downs each with their own flip conditions and keeping track of it was an utter mess
You could speed up flipping to turn 3 with T1 Bloodlust Inciter or Concordant Crossroads, or the like. Not impossible but unlikely and not a way to expect the deck to consistently run, obviously. EDIT: You probably mean the default precon though.
You’re massively underrated grand larceny. Even if you don’t steal anything good it’s still extremely strong. Upgrade it with a bunch of steal payoffs and even if what you steal is meh, you get a lot of busted benefits for it. Tasha the witch queen and tutors that let you steal ANYTHING from anyone’s deck like praetors grasp. Dauthi void walker, opposition agent etc all make the deck go off even harder. It’s easily an A NOT C.
Pre-cons this year were a lot of fun. I bought several and have enjoyed them all. I hope WotC can continue this trend.
This video couldn't have come at a more perfect time. I am getting back into magic for the first time in almost 20 years and was looking for a place to start. Loving all the videos and keep up the great work!
20 years?? Lmao 🤣 bro you’re in for culture shock. Magic has become a wild game
You might want to think long and hard. MTG is unrecognizable now.
@@nightelfuser it’s really not
Welcome back! I was out from 2005 through 2019. Yes, culture shock as people mentioned. I am glad planeswalkers aren't as prominent in EDH as they were in 60-card formats when I came back.
My word of caution: many precons are overdesigned. What I mean by that is that there are many individual cards with 7+ lines of text and literal mini-games. No one at the table knows what they do and don't care or bother. Cognitive overload is a major theme in these precons. I haven't watched Tomer's video, but he's awesome and might have pointed that out, especially for a couple of the Universes Beyond decks.
@@jochenkirn9468 Thanks for that heads up, I ended up going with the Blame Game precon for now while I wait on the cards to come in for the decks I designed. My group seems to really enjoy the political game, so I'm hoping they'll like playing against this one until my other cards come in :)
Grateful to all of the MTGG crew for their work this year, but special shoutout to Tomer for putting in yeoman's work week over week.
What?
Nelly doesn't just goad, she suspects a creature and then goads all suspected creatures. Suspected creatures can't block and have menace. So they are better at attacking your opponents, and can't block - the can't block is still highly relevant if/when you get to to 1 v 1.
Indeed! Still doesn't change the fact that the precon completely falls apart if Nelly gets taken out. The deck is in desperate need of more draw.
@@tomerabramovici32 You are not wrong my friend. The deck itself certainly needs upgrades. But the fact that it is a goad commander that isn't garbage in 1 v 1 is an upgrade on past goad stuff and that is interesting design.
@andrueurbane7361 The deck also only has two sources of Suspect including Nelly herself. So the rate at wich her effect is actually applied is obscenely slow, and given that your in Boros and Nelly costs 4 if your not online by turn 8 you've essentially already lost.
@andrueurbane7361 It is certainly an interesting design, but it's really poorly put together. The deck is a hodge podge of really bad effects that don't actually synergize well. If you break down the deck piece by piece it falls apart pretty bad. The deck has a real identity crisis. It's a mish mash of Goad effects but without the good goad payoffs, Rattlesnake effects in a deck type that wants to force opponents to attack each other with Goad making them mostly useless, and high aggro beaters without an effective enough land base or ramp engine to get them out and working fast.
@andrueurbane7361 I wanted to love the deck but truth be told I completely gutted it, tossed Feather out completely, changed the Commander to Isshin and added in black, and left around 70% of the precon on the cutting room floor. It has gone on to be a unholy terror in my pod turning my mid-range buddy into my own personal nuclear missile.
This is the first year ever I’ve played against out-of-the-box precons that consistently could hang with custom built decks. Especially the duskmorn/bloomburrow ones. (Also to be fair I didn’t play against them all, prob 3/4 of them or so).
For real! Couple days ago at FNM two of my friends just brought untouched pre cons, the Éowyn sheildmaiden LOTR deck, and the Fallout dogmeat deck, and they won every time!
Props to the amount of work you put into compiling all the data! Great video
I played the Aminatou deck stock at a game shop against people running fully upgraded decks and won my first game. It’s sneakily powerful. I had so much fun with it that I have decided to keep it. I originally bought the deck to piece out for my cube, but now I’ve been upgrading it.
I turned Desert Bloom into a Cactusfolk/Plant kindred deck and added in some extra land sack spells like Scapeshift for high end payoffs. Really happy with how it turned out and the tribal feel made it more interesting. Love Yuma and Kirri. My favorite deck of the year
Tomer: nothing before cared about equipment and auras at the same time.
Me: modified?
Arna Kennerud is a great modification commander, also from this year.
You failed to mention the best part about Mothman; how you get to interrupt everyone right after their draw step, by reminding them about the Rad counters they have, and then reminding them how they work every time as its not their deck running a unique ability!
Its like having a Rhystic Study-like effect in the command zone! Dya pay the 1? Dya pay the 1? Dya mill the 3? Dya mill the 3? Dya mill the 5?
Never gets old!
I played Disa last night for the first time and getting to faithless looting reanimate an archon of cruelty and brood mate tyrant for free felt very strong, and tarmogoyf tokens can just take over. It was a lot of work but it was FUN.
Love these videos, always so fun to watch, keep it up Tomer!
Awesome video Tomer! Thanks for all the great info, probs took a while to put together
Satya deck gets overlooked a lot, it is extremely solid and even better with a couple mh3 and fallout additions.
What I did, was go through the chaff at my LGS (not that much of it and sorted by color, at least) and found all the little dorks that make more energy than their mana value when they enter. You copy these for a couple of turn cycles and do not seem like all that much of a threat, but any threat or energy payoff you find will be immediately good to go.
(that, or, you play Guide of Souls before Satya and the table lets you make two more copies of it and then you draw Whirler Virtuoso and turns out that's infinite... their fault for not removing Guide on sight, of course)
I know I'm 2 weeks late but desert bloom also comes with hour of promose
Olivia Outlaws being a Mardu deck and not a Grixis deck bugs the SHIT out of me. Sooo many Rogues and Pirates are in blue, and *none* of the creature types are related to white. Like…WHY.
Variety. We can play a rogue deck with white so that a deck can differ from grixis outlaw/pirate/rogue decks.
@@vaazon I would agree with you if there was already a grixis commander that wants all of these creature types, but there’s not. And white doesn’t bring very many creatures of these types to the table, and the ones they do bring don’t really synergize with Olivia at all. So it still seems pretty pointless to me.
@vaazon literally this. I wouldn't mind mardu if we actually had enough outlaws to make the deck work. Instead, I'm left when with just jamming mardu assassins thanks to the AC set.
I agree with you here. The theme is Outlaws- why would an outlaw be in white? its literally the color of law and order, there are no mono white outlaws, and i challenge anyone to find any white outlaw that's not in this precon. Flavor fail
Bello makes all your non-EQUIPMENT and non-Aura artifacts and enchantments into 4/4 indestructible creatures. But it also does that with enchantment and artifact creatures. At least on your deck breakdown graphic you were only counting up the non-CREATURE artifacts and enchantments. But Bello’s ability actually buffs a solemn simulacrum or eidolon of blossoms and gives them indestructible during your turn. Too bad they didn’t include more of those types of cards in the precon, but it’s useful to consider when upgrading. Enduring and impending creatures are great additions too
The endless punishment precon functions surprisingly well, even without the commander in play. As you said, it is “death by a thousand cuts.” Valgavoth can end an opponent for the last bit of damage, and the Lord of Pain is just hilarious. Just give me some pings! That’s all it needs.
It's my favorite precon out of thr four besides death toll. But unfortunately valgavoth and the deck suffers from not able to protect your creatures or permanents. Once people start seeing you deal burn damage consistently your entire board gets wiped and targeted by everyone. It's the weakest of the 4 precons at least in a base out the box way, once you Buff the deck and add cards to help it, it gets better
Disa out of the box isn't great, but optimized it's really fun and unique
People tend to underlevel Disa, with a TINY BIT OF HELP, Pyrogoyf is a MONSTER, i kill people out of nowhere, turboing Disa T3~4 and then Entombing Pyrogoyf+Anger+Barrowgoyf, milling even more stuff, making 2~3 BIG tokens, and people notice HOW STRONG DISA IS.
Tricky Terrain is the precon of the year for me, what a deck. It's so fun out of the box, every time you play it you are looking at different lines to go based on the early land types you draw into. I've kept mine unmodified, I love it.
Agreed 100 percent. I too have mine unmodified and it is a house. Best Precon ever imho
Loved Endless Punishment. Easily upgraded it to throw in a few more pingers, damage doublers, protection, and card draw. It did awesome for my first time playing with it!
What cards did you add and which ones did you remove?
@ I don’t remember everything off the top of my head. Tibalts Trickery and Oblivions Hunger for protection. Curse of Shaken Faith was added to mount further pressure. Mayhem Dominus from Phyrexia for double damage. I took out the one guy who did damage with enchantment mana costs, and I took out the gremlin.
Your video is helpful to me by showing alternative measurements on why the decks are good. Happy New Year
Agree with most picks but I feel like some are just for engagement... Like putting deadly disguise and science up so high then putting graveyard od almost dead last.
Do appreciate creative energy being up so high, that deck is very powerful and flew under the radar
i fell in love with the mh3 energy precon im glad it got the respect it deserves
I would consider Valgavoth not being in top tier heresy, but you do make a good point about the limitations of the base deck, I have some bias due to playing with an upgraded version of the deck, overall agree with most of the list.
Yeah the base out the box deck has major issues. Mostly with protecting permanents, keeping your stuff on the board and being able to recover once a board wipe happens. Pride of glory and smoke are two enchantments that really help the deck. Limits your opponents on what they can do and keeps your board safe till you can get it set up right.
My friends and I played with all four decks and valgavoth lost every single time fresh out thr box. But once upgraded it was a crazy force to handle
I love how wide and diverse the options and themes were. They could’ve just done a bunch of kindred themed decks but instead we got themes of graveyard, enchantments, lands, spell slinging, 5 color plus colorless, new mechanics with rad counters and more investment into energy, etc there was so much that anybody could at least find one they liked if not more and build/upgrade off of them as much as they like
I've been wanting to make a squirrel commander deck for years. The fact that squirreled away came with most of the needed cards is insane, and only needed a few upgrades to go infinite and really combo off
After seeing this and starting commander this year. Wow they really came out with some cool decks
There are actually multiple different infinites in the Creative Energy precon as well. Granted they all take more setup and generally at least 4 cards on board, but they are there.
Re: Infinite Combos, there are actually quite a few now. There's also a 2 card infinite in the Zinnia Family Matters deck, it has Helm of the Host + Combat Celebrant, and the Bello precon has Gruul Turf + Kodama of the East Tree with Rampaging Baloths for infinite 4/4s.
Smashing the two energy decks together (Creative Energy and For Science) gives incredible results. Agree that Valgavoth's precon is overrated. Also while Blame Game doesn't have many draw cards, the games where you see Trouble in Pairs or sometimes Smuggler's Share are just wins.
With a few additions from the main set of Duskmourn(Threats around every corner and/or Paranormal analyst, neither expensive), Zimone feels almost impossible to stop. You just build up your board state so fast. Even after a board wipe, you'll easily just build a new board state. And the big creatures and some salty enchantments makes it hard for the opponents to decide what to remove.
Omo was my 1st pre-con coming back it did take me a minute to learn how it operates but when i did, it became one of my favorites decks to use playing at my LGS sometimes it does to much now haha
Nice list! You missed the infinite combo in the esper duskmourne deck in that you can create infinite 3/3s with a two card combo, the 3/3 that copies target enchantment and the room that turns all of your permanents into enchantments.
Blame Game was my favourite precon of the year. It's sad to see it so low.
Same, I have a Noble Heritage deck that Blame game upgraded tremendously
Deck is amazing
Blame Game does deserve it. It's very poorly designed. It's a deck based on Goad and Suspect, with only 2 ways to Suspect a creature and only around 10 ways to Goad. It's mostly a Rattlesnake deck that has to rely on your opponents taking the bait. Otherwise it basically does nothing.
The land base is also awful being almost half just janky colorless mana like Throne of the High King, Labyrinth of Skophos, or fucking Kher Keep. It doesn't even have Terramorphic Expanse or Evolving Wilds.
The Subcommander is also terrible. Feather does nothing for the deck, when Argus Kos, Spirit of Justice was right there.
Yeah it is technically playable. I've won games with the base precon, but only ever because I beat them to death myself with giant angels and never because I've politiced my way there. When you actually dissect the deck and look at what it's trying to do and the level of cards in the deck it's absolutely terrible.
Feels like a classic case of looking at the stats and not actually playing the deck given the rating it received. Certainly a much better deck than Deadly Disguise and Deep Clue Sea.
@@matthewdykeman8149if you upgrade the mana base and add more card draw/protection etc then this deck easily becomes super strong and is easily an A minimum. At base while decent the mana base is ass and it’s not consistent enough.
2:06:54 there's actually a bunch of infininite combos in precons this year. Just in Bloomburrow, Bello had rampaging balloths + kodama + warstorm surge. Zinnia had combat celebrant + helm of the host (and agate instigator if the token can't connect)
I think you've underrated Family Matters. You say it doesn't mesh - have you played it? It does work together far better than it would seem, there's all these little synergies and combos that Zinnia puts over the top by letting you have two copies of any given creature, and enough of them are good enough on their own to try to position yourself for a strong finish. There's certainly a lot more potential in Zinnia in an upgraded or more focused deck, of course.
I got Family Matters and played it as soon as I could. It rather quickly fell off in favour of other decks. To me the off-spring mechanic is too expensive.
amazing video, one of your best
I bought both energy decks and merged them and they're really good. I agree with Tomer that the MH3 one was stronger than Fallout. Most of the time I run Satya as the commander but Madison Li is fun too. A great interaction with Satya is copying activated manlands because they don't cost any energy to keep around, allowing you to ramp out token lands very easily. I took lightning runner out because that card comboed so easily.
Managed to get that Eldrazi precon for like $70 from Best Buy, I've yet to test it and have been debating on getting one of the ulamogs and kozilek, butcher of truth for it. Also got that mothman precon for $60, just waiting for that to come in, cant wait.
Graveyard Overdrive is undefeated among my playgroup. All my friends hate it cuz it just destroys everyone and has no mercy whatsoever. It's insane how OP that deck is.
The Jund deck is AMAZING. It pressures everyone, it is fast and it can deal massive damage even if it is the archnemesis.
The issue is: It needs a lot of training. Meaning that this was a deck made for Returning players instead of New & returning players.
I play with a friend who play Disa and he did not win but was a true menace in all games he did with it, cool deck, idk for the other C bit seems pretty great too from what I saw
Wanting 50 land/ramp seems wild to me. I run 34-40 in my decks and I still get flooded sometimes
Borca is so much fun! I guess the ratio makes it C tier, but it feels A tier to play!
I picked up Yuma on multiple recommendations.
Energy Fallout deck really A+?
I thought Stella had a stock infinite. And the outlaw deck seemed like a C tier letdown.
This was a year of fallout and for the last commander game with my friends this year, I am taking only Fallout precons :)
You’re 100% right about the morph deck. I WRECK with that deck. It’s so good.
I do feel like Disa plays a lot better than she reads but the precon is unfortunate. Right now she's one of the 5 decks I've picked to keep in rotation (reducing the amt of decks I keep on hand is a goal for 2025) but my goodness would she love just 2-5 more goyfs.
Great work on the video, as always.
The tricky terrain deck gets insane with some simple upgrades and dropping a mazes end into it.
But yes there’s a lot to manage and maintain and a lot of triggers.
It gets even crazier if you put some serious upgrades into it.
Recommend starting with lord of the unreal, feline sovereign, herald of hoof beats, a couple fetch lands, primeval titan, mossbloom hydra, cryptic gateway, descendants path and it can be a little more Freeform from there.
Helm of the host and kindred discovery along with titan of litjara are also great inclusions.
Copying an apex Devastator 10 times with aggressive biomancy is HILARIOUSLY busted.
Forgot to add a serious bomb in it being Banner of kinship.
I’ve dropped it with 64 fellowship counters naming insect and scute swarm on the field.
Oh man, I blocked out how "Change like 10 cards and you'll be *DESPISED* by everybody..." using quick draw was.
How'd you know I needed this
I appreciate that you evaluate decks based on a framework to compare them to. Lots of folks consider only the power of the commander or specific strong cards. This can lead to skewed ranking by individual card power, or experiential ranking based on magical xmass land games where everything comes together in exactly the right order. You value consistency over variance more than most. It is a refreshing perspective.
Gonti is fun and very powerful with a few upgrades. My opponents have had a blast teaming up to keep me from stealing their cards
Glad to see my girl Omo be in the top spot, she easily my favorite precon this year. And yeah Zinnia is great when build up right, but the precon dont really take advantage of the multiple ETB that they can generate.
There is an infinite combo in the miracle worker precon,Ondu spiritdancer and secret arcade will give you an infinite amount of attackers :3
Nah you're right with Satya/Creative Energy. It's very strong as a stock list - able to keep up with most decks you'll find at an LGS, or at the very least you can piss everyone off when you cast Farewell lol - and you can upgrade it or change it in a bunch of different ways and it'll always be fun. Satya is waaaay overtuned, but also juuuust specific enough to not lean into degeneracy or the same old same old good stuff cards (at least in Commander with 3 other players to deal with, I think he's in hell-queue in Brawl on Arena)
Very happy to see all the Fallout decks at the top.
When our friend group played the Bloomburrow precons against each other, the Family Matters precon felt insanely slow and clunky each time. We were never concerned that the Zinnia player might pop off but were always concerned that the Zinnia players wasn't able to help us slow down the Bello player - who was curb-stomping us no matter who played the deck. The Zinnia deck might be fine in isolation (I'd still give it a B at best) but it was a massive disappointment in the pool of Bloomburrow precons.
Yeah absolutely. The only thing popping up Family Matters imo is it has 6 good board wipes that synergize with the deck. Otherwise what it's "doing" is a lot of nothing
At last some Kaust love ! Preach, brother
I'm surprised Tomer has Science! that high. I, and most people I've talked to, think it's the worst precon of the year and one of the worst of all time.
thats crazy I remember when precons were special and we only got 4 per year..
Mixed feelings having bought 1 pre con from each tier in the thumbnail
once you put stronger enchantments in miracle worker, the deck becomes scary lol
The Fallout decks are probably some of the strongest and most fun set of UB deck since Warhammer 40K and I'm glad they got put at the top where they belong.
miracle worker and animated army also have infinite combos, both involving generating infinite tokens
Hi Tomer, great video. About the Science deck, many people are saying this was great out of the box, but my experience was very frustrating, after playing around 8 to 10 times, even with upgrades and trying a couple of different angles (more artifact matters, more energy, or more recursion), I never saw the deck popping off. Until I combined it with the Creative energy, and now is an ETB deck that runs great with Satya!!
I think Kaust sucks (despite the gorgeous art by Volkan Baga) for a completely different, not power level-related reason: It's design is super rigid in terms of when you have to flip your cards, which goes against the spirit (and main upside) of most morph (and its variants) cards: The surprise factor. If you have to flip bolt bender essentially during your combat step to draw a card with Kaust, you might get nothing out of his trigger, for example. This is not fun design, imho.
I agree! I immediately switched the commander to Yarus
@@torinviger Oh yeah, Yarus flew under the radar for me, but he would be high up on my totem pole of choices if I ever were to build a morph/disguise deck.
day 1 madison li adopter, just pump it full of 2 mana rocks and a couple big energy payoffs with mystic forge and the crystal skull and go to town
That Morph deck is THE worst pile of cardboard I have ever sleeved up for commander and I own a "Shoe Tribal" deck. I would create a separate G tier (G for Garbage) just to not insult any deck in F tier.
To be fair, some pretty powerful cards have shoes. You basically have access to every non-gruul spell...
You did Mirko and Aminatou wrong. Especially Mirko you switch 3-4 cards and you just blast through your deck. Flavor wise it’s probably my favorite of the year.
I think Blame Game is a bit harshly rated, I think its on par with the other MAKM precons, its a little hampered by the card draw, yes, but the stax/goad pieces and politics often mean people keep your commander around so you manage to get the card draw. Plus if you manage to get Trouble in Pairs out, you don't need any other card draw lmao
Im sure that the deck can play well in the right settings but tomer had good reasons to rank it low, as it was out of the box.
@@dariocampanella7992 my point was more that compared to the other MAKM decks it was ranked a step below, when I think it's about equal, tbh I think Tomer is slightly underrating Blame Game and slightly overrating the morph deck, but to each their own
Is there a 3x speed? ❤🎉 0:24
Bro, the Sience! deck was booty. So slow and needed so much up grading. Hence it's Uber cheap price rn. Been seeing it for like 35$ at the lgs
Tomer is a goat
Can we get an after budget upgrades ranking? Maybe next podcast with the crew? That would be super cool to see what decks you guys think would be the "best" after only spending like 100 to 300 bucks on upgrades. 🎉hope goldfish sees this. Cheers.
did you do this for 2023?
I think swaping to Liberty Prime is less of a game play and more of a flavor choice. Atleast it was for me.
Only one I really disagree with is Animated Army. This precon is straight busted even with the stock list. It's so hard to deal with. Most board wipes people play only hit creatures - as soon as one board wipe goes off, Bello just deletes people from the game. The burst damage this deck outputs is crazy.
I play exclusively unmodified precons on Spelltable, and I've purchased and played (and played against) every deck on this list numerous times. I respectfully disagree with a few of the A+ and As.
I felt this was reviewed by list only and not playing most of these as precons. No disrespect to Tomer, I just feel like his evaluations are not from multiple plays of each deck.
Ms. Bumbleflower is my newest favorite commander but the precon is all kinds of scattered. Mothman, Ulalek, and Stella DOMINATED their precon-block. For Fallout, it felt like the other 3 were always fighting for LAST place. Olivia is so poorly built, Zinnia is WILDLY inconsistent, Winter is no where NEAR as good as Valgavoth out of the box.
no secret lair decks?
Curious, where do the lord of the rings commander sets rank in this?
I would put Food and Humans at A+, Sauron at low A or or high B, and the Elves deck at C.
This dude should work for IGN with these high scores he's giving out.
If we're just going off the precon alone endless punishment should be B tier. I love valgavoth and that precon its alot of fun, but its almost impossible to keep permanents on the board because once the opponent sees the chip damage you're doing they all get popped.
Valgavoth has no real protection besides ward and alot of the creatures and spell either cost 4 or more mana or does damage to yourself as well as opponents and the creatures have no way of being protected or buffed. The deck needs enchantments like smoke to keep people from swinging at you with multiple creatures or need serious token/creature ramping which thr deck doesn't have.
Its sad that some of the cards in the precon and duskmourn set for red only really give you 3 tokens after unlocking a door. A base deck of each duskmourn precon, valgavoth is the weakest
I miss how you rate the deck when you play them out of the box separately
Bought most of precons this year. Deadly disguise is awful even upgraded. 2 mana ramp.... you want/need your commander on 2 to have an attack/flip on 4
3 mana ramp.... you want a creature on 3 to attack on 4 to get your plan going.
Decks nowdays make so many tokens, people won't trust your 2/2 face down... and will just block it.
If you don't have the commander the deck ain't doing squat. Green in it for ramping is nice, but the mana cost of ramps slows you down 1 turn instead of speeding your plan.
Yes you can get lucky and open the perfect hand, but so little scenarios make the deck work. (Yes, I admit, it might absolutely be a skill issue haha)
One of the only precon I dismantle instead of upgrading (other being Stella Lee cause I hate to play solitaire) and sold Eldrazi cause I just dislike the miserable experience they bring to a game.
BUT.... the clue and suspect decks are SO much fun. Probably my 2 favorite decks. So many ways to win in The clue deck.
The suspect deck I just want to create chaos and finish second, i changed a lot of cards for cards that care about players making decisions (more vote cards) and took out most goad/king maker cards.
Creative energy is amazing. Disa is a lot of fun, but also a lot of maths (not ideal for end night)
Tbh Id love a combined 2023/2024 list, seems like a whole cycle of product that is like a new era of commander
So you're ranking list needs some adjusting because you state it is based off of multiple categories yet alot of these decks who didn't make it par were out in A and A+. I would argue that half of those decks on A+ belong in B a couple in C. I would put endless punishment in C. Sure it's a great deck, but if it falls apart with out the commander then the deck sucks.
Why can't they make good black and green precon with gy revive interaction?
Is Science! really that good?
Mirical worker a b??? Hahaha hahaha bro, I can't take anything seriously at this point. My play group won't even let me play it because it's too strong. Slow? Yea, powerful? oh hell yes.
Not even the C tier are even close to the SL commander precon, it’s just legit the worst precon ever
Idk mam that cactus bloom deck, ive played against it twice but it ramps, Board wiped twice , ramped every single time. Idk got lucky maybe ?
Out of the box, Liberty Prime is a better commander for the Fallout Energy deck than Dr Madison Li. The deck is already so good at generating energy that you usually have more energy than you can spend regardless of who’s your commander. What the deck has almost none of is energy payoffs. Dr Madison Ali’s payoffs just aren’t impactful enough since you have to tap her to use them. The deck just durdles for a while then dies without Liberty Prime.
Playing Kaust for a long time. The deck sucks beyond belief. Kaust's first flip can happen on turn 4. You can not speed it up. Most of the time it is turn 5. If Kaust gets killed your deck is a dumpster fire. Even if everything goes right the other decks do more powerful things with less hoops to go through.
I STRONGLY recommend swapping out Kaust as the commander for Yarus and replacing the white cards in the precon with sac outlets, a few big gruul threats that benefit from haste, face down support cards from duskmourn (e.g., Threats around every corner) and some more protection for your commander. I've found the deck plays unbelievably better than Kaust while still running a lot of the same cards.
I don’t understand why wotc keeps trying to make morph work. It literally has been disliked and player-unfriendly since onslaught when it came out, and has never been a success in the several times they’ve tried again. It’s like every 10 years they try it and remember why they didn’t do it for the last 10 years 😂
@@Lazydino59 I mean manifest dread is an off-shoot off morph and is pretty good imo. The zimone deck is also very strong.
@ yeah zimone is strong but not because morph is strong, but because simic landfall is strong. Pretty much the only way they’ve “successfully” implemented morph was when the cost is cheated (zimone, kadena, Kaust), and cost cheating principally goes against the game and its resource system. There is no such thing as an “honest” morph deck where you hard cast and flip, especially in 2024. It’s a failed mechanic that they keep trying to blindfolded throw darts at to fix rather than let it die like banding or cumulative upkeep. Also I played against a kadena deck the other day and he had four piles of face downs each with their own flip conditions and keeping track of it was an utter mess
You could speed up flipping to turn 3 with T1 Bloodlust Inciter or Concordant Crossroads, or the like. Not impossible but unlikely and not a way to expect the deck to consistently run, obviously. EDIT: You probably mean the default precon though.
I strongly disagree with most of your top tier decks. Dog meat is terrible, bumbleflower is not that strong
Your take on Madison is a joke lmao. Just compare it to satya and the deck falls to trash instantly KEKL
You’re massively underrated grand larceny. Even if you don’t steal anything good it’s still extremely strong. Upgrade it with a bunch of steal payoffs and even if what you steal is meh, you get a lot of busted benefits for it.
Tasha the witch queen and tutors that let you steal ANYTHING from anyone’s deck like praetors grasp. Dauthi void walker, opposition agent etc all make the deck go off even harder. It’s easily an A NOT C.
Face up second place lmao
Gatinho
This is wrong on so many levels.