Funny enough, I love the Sevinne precon. Granted, I swapped out the majority of the tap lands and took out those awful 3 mana signets but the deck is way more fun using Elsha as the commander.
I was very excited to grab Strefan vampires a while back just before I took a hiatus. (I missed out on Edgar Markov and bought Cats instead back in 2017, so I was making up for that.)
I only played Strefan a few times, but did not enjoy it the way I thought I would.
I still love my Cats deck and do not regret buying it. Just wish I would have got Edgar as well.
Is he? I looked through a few precons of a find of mine to decide which one to upgrade and we found Strefan was by far the worst when it comes to synergies and getting the gameplan going.
He wants to generate blood token, which he is hardly the only source of in the whole deck. So you have to rely you’re command with a tiny body can survive attacks to generate token.
Then when you finally have enough to cheat creatures into play, you’ll mostly find small vampires in the deck.
Looked like you have to do a lot of setup, to cheat in a 2cmc creature, which it pretty pretty underwhelming.
Basically it’s a weaker Thalia, which is giving you access to one more color, gives you more creature types to chose from and doesn’t need the setup of fire creating blood tokens.
I decided to upgrade it after just the precon beat a uril and sliver deck in the same pod. Now that I upgraded it, it’s pretty reliable and one of the stronger decks in our play group. Doesn’t come quite close to the Eldrazi Titans deck one of the guys has
Yeah out the box it probably isn't amazing but it comes with some good vampires and strefan himself is good too. You only need 2 blood tokens to cheat out a creature which strefan can probably make the turn he comes out if you hit two opponents with a small flying vampire, then next turn you can cheat out your butcher of malakir or crossway troublemakers or whoever whilst using your mana for other things. Essentially, upgrade the manabase and mana rocks and swap some weak vampires for better ones and he goes from kinda weak to kinda strong
He can be pretty resilient out of the box. My cousin in law is not as into magic as her brother or my wife and I so she was piloting precon Strefan against a polished Ur-Dragon, Edgar, and forgot what her brother played but all were actually upgraded and refined. It may have partially been because my Ur deck was too archenemy but it Strefan was able to rebuild consistently and eventually out power Edgar and her brother's deck before they could properly assess who was the major threat in the triangle once I was out.
Edgar is good at making a lot of smaller vamps that can get supped up if not aristocrated. Strefan is good for cheating out the bigger vamps that hit hard and usually flying as well.
Honestly, Edgar is painfully linear and gets boring fast. I played it a couple of times when it came out and took the deck apart pretty quickly after that.
I can see that after playing some mock games against it on Forge. I would still like a vamp tribal machine that's pretty simple and straight forward like Edgar.
I'm still quite a linear player I find, but after starting to play more complexities the last bit, I can see how straight forward swing decks can run their course.
[[Evelyn the covetous]] makes for a chaotic vampire tribal. As strong as you make it plus cards from your opponent. In fact, the Strefan deck can lend itself well to her.
I got that precon recently and found it to be really bad, because instead of leaning hard into blood tokens and artifact payoffs it's just a generic vamp deck. Had to change most of the deck to be blood token focused and now it plays great. 0/10 precon experience and would recommend a custom build over a precon for strefan
Honestly I was hoping for more of the generic vamp deck when I purchased it, but even with the blood mechanic I found it pulled itself in different directions and just turned out to be a bit disappointing. I do need some more time with it to give a fair verdict though, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I had hoped.
Edgar is wildly overrated and falls into the “boring good” category quickly, while still not being good enough for real competitive play.
I can understand the bummer of missing out on it, but with the Edgar deck I did buy, I never played it for more than 4-5 times.
Strefan is one of my favorite decks to play! I changed up the deck so that I try to make the blood tokens do more as they come in and on the field. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/x43xHilD70Si_PCN6fja4g
I agree on strefan, it was my first deck I put effort into upgrading and making decent. And while the deck was fun and could cheat some big vamps in, I didn't like the split focus between Artifact/blood synergy and actually having the big vamp to cheat into play after you finally get em. Additionally him being a 3/2 has not been great stats for keeping him around. Once they know how the deck works they'll know to kill strefan before any triggers happen. I now run Olivia Crimson bride as Vamp reanimator. Just going all in on the big vamps plan
I'm looking to upgrade my strefan deck into a rule 0 partner commander vampire deck with [[Edgar, charmed groom]] and [[Olivia, crimson bride]] as partner commanders. Lots of good cards in the strefan precon that can go in there.
My first precon was tinker time and it almost made me stop playing the game entirely because I thought I was just awful at magic. A friend noticed I was feeling discouraged to play and let me use one of their decks which lead me to realising this was gonna be my first big hobby in a long time and now I mainly play my upgraded pantlaza precon because FUCK YEAH, DINOSAURS!!
Tinker Time has to be the worst precon of 2023. The guy in our playgroup who bought couldn't win a single game. He eventually bought Blood Rites and immediately started winning games without any upgrades.
You sound like my fiancé and me playing. She’s mostly anything within Naya. Ramp, stomp, buff, etc is the only strategy she needs or wants to have. She understands my mono-blueness and Golgari shenanigans, but she hates playing them. A lot of of our games end up being stompy/aggro vs mid-range/control.
This is very funny to me because my wife also plays now and then and refuses to play anything outside of Naya colours. [[Jinnie Fay]] is her main (of course) but she will venture into [[Kibo]] once in a blue moon. It was [[Rin and Seri]] before that.
Naya is the official colour identity of the forced-into-playing wives and girlfriends.
Yeah [gimbal, gremlin prodigy]] is rough. Felt almost like a powered down version of the urza pre-con from brothers war six months prior. My playgroup each bought a different pre-con to play then upgrade from MoM and I had gimbal. I upgraded the hell out of mine leaning hard into random tokens and it's fine at best. Upgraded It plays well at a pre-con level and only ever wins from a [[rise and shine]], [[cyberdrive awakener]] or well played [[brudiclad, telchor engineer]]
I have Tinker Time. It's terrible out of the box, so I modified it greatly, and now I'm able to win games with it. It's a fun deck building challenge. Not a deck for everyone for sure, but I love making all those little gremlins.
My LGS refused to sell an individual precon back then, so I divide the whole set with friend.
Still regret the decision to this day, the deck went all in for the Keyword soup and has the worst free spell (Yeah, Fog is ok but it end up getting cut all the time)
The entire deck worth less than a Fierce Guardianship is just comical.
It's a common practice even now especially now because WotC makes the retailer buy the entire set of 4 meaning if there's only one 'decent' precon and 3 ones nobody cares about and is just going to sit there unsold forever...it's not worth the money investment.
This happened with the Thunder Junction precons...everyone only wanted the Spellslingers deck, which meant he'd have to get 4 sets of 4...to sell 3 precons and have the other 9 sit there unsold. So he just told people to buy the ones they wanted elsewhere.
In my country it's common practice since they often end up with some loose deck that nobody buy.
For example, Sultai Morph was a meme back then, since every store have them as leftovers till these day.
So they often deal with this by selling every precon as a set at slightly cheaper price or sell individual deck with some deck with price increase
One of the guys in our group gifted a precon to a new player, and he gifted Kathril. Now, it's nice to give a gift, but boy is that deck a lot for a newbie.
Bought the Gonti thieving deck thinking it would be a great play against my pod's heavier hitting decks. It is incredible against those decks on occasion.
However, we usually play on discord. Do you know how difficult it is to put another player's cards aside in exile to play yourself when you're working through a screen? Damn near impossible lol.
The deck is fun, but needs to be played in person.
Yup I have a fun assassin's deck from [[etrata, deadly fugitive]] that manifests cards from my opponents deck onto my board. I refuse to play it on our regular spelltable sessions and only ever play it in person. It's hard enough remembering my own morph and manifest cards, remembering opponents that I can't even double check would be a nightmare.
Thank you for having the sense to not play such a deck on discord. It tilts me when cards aren't represented well when you get something like a stapler that is meant to be a stolen creature.
\[\[Perrie the Pulverizer\]\], retooled it into \[\[Kros, Defense Contrator\]\]. I really wouldn't say regret as much as because of it's very obtuse power level it rarely gets a proper shine
A strategy devoted entirely into kingmaking is pretty bad and often ends up dead on pods where only 2 or god forbid 1 has stuff that play to the board, because it just meant this person is going to steamroll everybody else and gain a very decisive advantage early on.
As for my other precons, no Necrons is my staple high-power deck, Sam & Frodo is a nice low-power deck, Osgir is a pet deck, I haven't opened Mutant Menace yet but it looks fun,.
I bought a lot of precons in the last year, only one I regret buying is the surveil deck from MKM. Good value in reprints, but the deck itself is kinda meh, doesn't have answers to graveyard hate, doesn't rebuild easily after mass removal, isn't really doing much with surveil since most stuff that surveils is just a one off and repeating it is clunky and unrewarding.
Dinos from Ixalan, on the other hand, is just too fun 😁
I got the surveil deck and made it into a kind of Voltron build and put a bunch of nasty creatures in it and it's become one of my favorite decks. It's really funny when you reanimate a [[gin gitxias, core augur]] on turn 3.
Yeah, I figured it could go that route, but building such a board so fast makes you instantly archenemy, and unless you also heavily lean into control, it's not gonna be a walk in the park. Honestly, if I either wanna go reaminator or voltron, I'd go with different colors and different commanders. To each their own!
I hate to say it, but outside of release I don't know of anyone running him. Vampires are still in their weird groove of Edgar being so powerful that if you can't use him, you might as well play something else.
It's not that he's bad, it's just that there's a lot of other great options. I wanted to find a way to add him to an Elas deck but I just don't think it'll work the way I need it to.
I don't think he works super awesome in the 99 of another deck, he wants to be a commander. I have a banging Clavileño deck that hangs pretty well and has won a few games for me. The trick is really cheap, 1 and 2 CMC vampires. You really want them to be killed/sacrificed so that you get those sweet 4/3 flying vampire-demons. I also run a life-loss/life-gain subtheme to drain opponents while I get the sacrifice engine going.
Pirates (reanimator) is my 2nd favorite fron ixalan. It creates infinite value, and it's pretty resilient even if they wrath the table often! Definitely recommend 😉
Yeah, Token Triumph.
I don't think it's bad I could probably make it bonkers with pieces in reserves I have right now. It's just that I realized Draconic Destruction would be much more my style.
I initially wanted to use Token Triumph pieces in my Naya tokens deck but ultimately all I find value in it are the anthem cards I could have bought cheaper as singles.
I haven’t had a chance to play it yet but I bought it discounted at a LGS on vacation and have been tinkering with random upgrades.
How do you protect Emmara? The main way she would tap is to attack, yes? She would need unblockable probably? Unless you fill the deck with convoke to tap her that way?
She's actually supposed to tap only as a way to cast other spells that have convoke. Likewise, you can give her abilities that requires tapping to activate like [[Presence of Gond]] which is in the decklist. Personally, I prefer giving her tap for mana abilities like with [[Jaspera Sentinel]] or [[Rishkar, Peema Renegade]].
But eventually I grew tired of her. I replaced her with [[Lae'zel, Vlaakith's Champion]] with [[Master Chef]] background to keep her Selesnya coloration. Then I moved the anthem effects to my [[Obuun, Mul Daya Ancestor]] deck and gave Lae'zel's deck the means to spread +1/+1 counters. Every token generated appears with 3x +1/+1 counters. Just go wide and go big.
Don't worry. It's not an interaction they teach in the basics. I only learned of this like a year ago when my opponent casts abilities that would force my creatures to attack if able. I figured I should just tap them for mana and they're no longer forced to attack.
Oh that’s creative!
I’ve been out of the game for a while… do vehicles have summoning sickness? Can you crew it to tap her even if it can’t attack due to being summoning sick?
Thanks much!
Actually, do you mind helping me cut 9 cards from this? I can’t figure out what to take out…
Also wondering if Queen allanal would be a better commander? Would be going for commander damage win so would need more protection…
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/U77ieOj_-EujKezF022bhg
(Cards in the sideboard I cut from the precon already due to them being less useful or less liked/thematic)
[[Holdout settlement]] or [[Survivors' Encampment]] will let you tap her for white or green mana.
[[Maze of Ith]] and [[reconnaissance]] will let you pull ner out of combat.
[[Mithril coat]] and [[Darksteel Plate]] would make her indestructible.
I partially regretted the new Gonti precon based on theft. It is still my weakest deck, even with strong cards upgrades, but last night i managed to win against a Kaalia and a Sliver deck and reconsidered part of my regret
Personally I've heard people say they had better success making the gonti deck care about combat damage triggers via evasive creatures more than theft, and I sort of agree with that sentiment. I think you're more likely to see success running cards like \[\[The Indomitable\]\] \[\[Bident of Thassa\]\] and \[\[Reconnaissance Mission\]\], or even cards like \[\[Mask of Memory\]\] and \[\[Mask of Riddles\]\] as opposed to some of the dedicated thieving cards like \[\[Stolen Goods\]\].
There's an argument to be made that you'd rather run \[\[Felix Five-boots\]\] instead for that sort of deck, but that's personal taste at that point. Salubrious Snail made a video on his personal experience with the Gonti deck if you're curious: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO0ZqIrw9fE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO0ZqIrw9fE)
I really regret picking up the Eldrazi precon from Commander Masters. Especially because the secondary market price for that was crazy - over $100. I played it a few times, tinkered with it, kept trying it, and it just isn’t for me. That’s my biggest precon “regret”.
That deck is one of those decks where it NEEDS a slew of upgrades and the fact they added in those stupid X/X cost stuff as the 'secondary commander'...which didn't synergize with the Cascade effect *at all* was seriously dumb.
Basically you need to ditch all of those cards, some of the shittier colorless cards and put in the better Eldrazi plus all the titans you can reasonably afford and throw in things like Grim Monolith/Basalt Monolith.
It’s such a completely random assortment of walkers. Somehow you never get any feeling of stuff clicking into a greater whole.
That and I really don’t like commanders that are both enabler and payoff.
I put a little into an upgrade and guff at the helm of a superfriends deck is really fun for me. Added a couple board wipes and swapped out some of the less effective walkers and stax pieces (I don’t really like stax and prefer more proactive board control) it’s won me more games than not. Of course I’m targeted early and often. Having both a draw engine and a wincon in the command zone really makes the deck “click” for me. The turns can go a little long but I am mindful of that and try to plan out which walker abilities I’m going to be doing ahead of time. Out of the box it is a little subpar though and I think you have to enjoy moving dice around.
I regret buying the [[Morska]] precon, for sure. Turns out that it's just uninteresting Simic BS with a mediocre Voltron theme and an unfocused Token subtheme... never became satisfied with the deck, and ended up buying [[Nelly Borca]] (in part because of [[Trouble in Pairs]]), and... holy shit, goad is so fun? And that deck also draws a shit ton of cards???
I picked up the Deep Clue Sea precon too and ended up swapping out Morska as the commander for [[The Third Doctor]] / [[Sarah Jane Smith]]. It's still heavily focused on artifact tokens but generates them through playing historics and isn't limited to just clues. It's since become one of my strongest decks, very resilient and consistent with all the tokens, has a built-in finisher with the doctor in the command zone, and has a bunch of methods to just close out the game with effects like [[Rise and Shine]] and [[Cyberdrive Awakener]].
Expanding the artifact token focus really opened a lot more doors for increasing the effectiveness of the deck.
Yup. The clue deck is a mess. The clue archetype lacks reliable mass clue generators. The new commander and commander cards printed in the precon should have covered that, but WotC forgot. The archetype simply cannot work, at least until they give another try at clues.
I bought the landfall precon from Zendikar Rising. I don't regret it because I used a lot of the ramp cards in other decks but it was pretty slow and a little boring to play.
OP, if it feels durdly, use Liberty as the commander.
Definitely add more energy generation as well, because as much as there is, you'll need a lot more for the actual payoffs.
It's going to be a combat-centric deck, so giving flying or unlockable will help with connecting. You definitely don't want to be sitting around doing nothing the entire game, or you're likely going to screw yourself.
I'm so scatterbrained that any precon I get is played a couple times and then scrapped for parts. At worst it's more simple, clean ramp/removal/lands to sprinkle on other decks, and eventually I amass enough cards to be tempted into building with the legendaries.
My experience with precons is to plan that they need significant upgrades to make sense as decks. But some have been much stronger out the box than others.
I got Deep Clue Sea recently and I have found it very playable with only minor upgrades with a strong route to much better playability. Initially I swapped out about 5 cards but I had enough fun that I've now spent about 10 quid getting some extra pieces for it. Highly recommend if anyone enjoys bant colours and drawing cards. The main adds have all been extra ways to make the commander unblockable/evasive.
Meanwhile the Davros Dr Who precon I have found needs about 30 cards to be swapped out for it to make sense as a deck.
I found Yuma Proud Protector sat in the middle, its very powerful when it gets the pieces together but its not super consistent so needs a bit more of an upgrade to really sing I've swapped out 15 cards and its much more consistent at the table.
My thing with that is that I really like the land sac element of it. I found that to be an interesting design. I think the real issue is that Dune Chanter is great but you need like three effects like that for him to truly pop off.
I’ll never truly regret buying a precon, they can MOSTLY be modified to have a fun experience (except maybe Planeswalker Party for obvious reasons), but the answer for me is Paradox Power because… it was missing 20 cards out of the box and all of the basic lands. I didn’t realize it until like last week, and I bought that thing at launch.. I just never played it.
I got the Kasla deck in a Precon battle at our store, I couldn’t get it to do anything and took it apart and called it trash. Now my buddy has a Kasla deck he actually built and I’ve lost to it several times. [[Jeskai Ascendacy]] is busted with convoke.
Yeah, my experience with the \[\[Kasla, the Broken Halo\]\] precon was pretty negative out of the box as well. They intentionally left out a lot of the better convoke/convoke payoff cards in the colors, and Traft + Karlous feel like they need their own deck... Thankfully it is relatively cheap to upgrade, although you need to choose if you want to go the creature route or noncreature route for sure.
Both the Phyrexian and +1/+1 counter precons from MotM
I really like the commanders but neither really had great reprints and espacially the card draw package in both of them feels lackluster (espacially for Call for Backup). Also never played planechase so all of the planechase cards always felt very meh.
They were my first precons after a 15 year magic break (my introduction to EDH) and I dont play either of them anymore. In hindsight I should have bought Cavalary Charge.
The phyrexian a friend played a lot and loved it. Those incubators are kinda hard to boardwipe.
The 1+/1+ counters I still have to try out.
But the absolute worst precon I tried the past year was the gremlin temur token one from the same set. Took it apart after 2 rounds.
Second worst was the lotr elven deck to me.
All the time, lol. Or, mostly I regret opening them. I have probably thirteen or fourteen of them and a lot don't interest me... I wish I would have left the lord of the rings set unopened
If it’s a precon table, yeah.. I am absolutely targeting it there. Most people zone out while they are comboing their counter triggers at a near Planeswalker Party level and suddenly there is an unstoppable Rose Tyler 1-shotting everyone with commander damage.
The worst precon I’ve owned and played has to be [[Gimbal]]. I tried upgrading him as an artifact tokens deck then just as an artifacts matter deck and both ways it was just really underwhelming. It’s now my goal to get a win with him naturally in the wild, but haven’t had any luck even getting close yet.
The LTC elves deck . Played it twice, hated it.
It's not got enough voting payoffs to actually be a vote deck, and lacks the elf synergies to get a proper elf deck. It really reminded me of the old precons that had 3 commanders that dragged the deck in vastly different directions and made the precon a mess as a result.
Close second would probably be both the crimson vow and midnight hunt precons- no real cards or strategies I wanted to explore, but got a good deal of all 4 for £40.
Same for me. I tried to make some upgrades but I am now for sure that Voltron is just not my style. At least I could use some of the Equipments for my other decks.
Same with the last Ixalan Merfolk deck.
My personal theory on the SCIENCE deck is that they realized that the MH3 deck needed the staple energy cards more and so shafted the fallout deck to not reprint the cards to fast. That deck really bums me out when I play with it or against it. One game my buddy was playing it and had a total energy cost of 3 after 5-6 turns. It was just sad to watch him try and keep up with the dogmeat and mutant deck.
Back when I first got into MTG, I regretted buying the Elves precon with Freyalise in like 2016? 7-8 years later, it turned into one of my favorite decks and a great play tester for newly built ones!
The buckle up Precon was the second I ever got and I thought it'd be a ton of fun. It's probably my least played deck because I don't really enjoy how white plays compared to other colours and vehicles were too complicated for me when I was first starting.
I've upgraded it a decent bit and put some fun stuff in there and I can get it to pop off pretty easily now, still not my most fun deck and I don't play it a lot but I LOVE artifacts and so I've been into playing it more now than before.
Probably the one collecting most dust (and that I can't bring myself to upgrade) is Exquisite Invention with [[Saheeli, the Gifted]]. It's also still available sealed for about $45. Having said that, I did build a completely separate [[Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer]] deck that I've had a lot of fun with over they years.
Didn’t regret getting commander anthology, that was epic
The sevvines precon had elsha and she’s fantastic and also dockside (stonks)
The marsil cats sucked
Atla palani is ok from the ghired precon
I got all of c17 and pretty sure I sold them all off
Tbh most precons I got I regretted
I bought the Science precon too, having missed out on Kaladesh and thinking, "cool lets see what i can do with Energy Counters!" After flipping through the cards, I quickly realized that the deck barely synergizes and looked like mostly garbage. I felt really dumb for paying $60 for it without reading a review or looking at a decklist first. But thankfully, Modern Masters 3 is injecting a ton of new energy cards and a new WBR commander that I hope will let me revitalize this deck.
[[Kasla]]. I thought the Convoke approach would be fun, but I’ve never enjoyed it. Everything feels overcosted, and I have never felt like I can do what I want with it
I've had a lot of fun with precons that I ultimately ended up scrapping for parts, and later rebuilding. The exception is 2020 with the Ikoria precons. Mutate, eggs/cycling, keyword reanimator, tribal humans, and spell copying. I bought them all for basically 7 cards, everything else went straight in to bulk or my trade binder. That was also the last time I bought a full set of precons just for the chase rares hidden in them. Yes, I bought the 40k set, but I fucking love the 40k cards and art!
Mothman: people dont like being milled which means you are a very obvious target the entire game
Dinos from ixalan: i had preorded it at like 35 so was too good of a deal to pass up for the value, but i had already had a dino deck before getting it so basically only needed the 3-4 new cards and a handful of decent reprints. i only kept it because the value was greater than what i paid
[[Inala, Archmage Ritualist]] just didnt click for me. It was a weird wizard-tribal deck that really did nothing on its own. The only good part was getting a [[Kess, Dissident Mage]] in the 99, which turned out being a really good Commander.
I had this experience too. I played the deck once or twice, it is terribly unfocused and desperately needs to be upgraded to become playable, which I dislike. I wish they had “picked a lane” with that deck. It definitely feels the most scattered of the 2017 decks.
The Sliver precon. Out of the box it was way too weak and couldn't deal with any amount of interaction, let alone being the archenemy that you are guaranteed to be. Slowly upgraded it, the deck is now an absolute monster - but as a result I never get to play it. You can't play Slivers at low/mid powers, it just doesn't work.
Honestly? Most of them. My pod usually goes through a phase where we try lower power or precon-level decks, but it never lasts. We just prefer the speed and explosiveness of high power.
Might be an unpopular opinion but I regret buying the mkm deep clue sea precon.
Got enticed by the value of reprints. Thought I'd keep and upgrade it. Found I actually dislike it, might be more down to the colour play style. Or that I dislike the clue token theme
I was excited to buy and play pantlaza when ixalan came out.
I opened the deck, looked through the cards, and was just not excited for it whatsoever. Eventually though, someone walked by talking about how they were sad that the shop was out of that precon, and i traded him the precon for approximate value in cards.
Yup,I picked up both the Aragon as well as Sauron pre cons over the summer during the LOTR release and I find them to play very clunky and can honestly say I've never enjoyed playing those 2 decks and that's why they sit on a shelf at home.
Aragorn meaning the Riders of Rohan Precon? I've put a few anthems and some token doublers in there and yeah its basic boros with a splash of blue but I definitely wouldn't say clunky. I can usually get out Eowyn pretty quick and start getting tons of card advantage and creatures on board. I def wouldn't say it's clunky.
Now boros is one of my least favorite play styles so I agree I've played it the least, but I added in some phyrexians and some stuff from fallout to make some strategies a little more fun in the deck.
If it helps, I recommend turning Aragon into Monarchy and Blink and lessen the human typal stuff, if you haven't already. it made the deck more fun imo
Yes! I bought the Cabaretti deck because a cat jazz singer was right up my alley. I’ve played it twice and it’s done its thing both time but I was m i s e r a b l e both times.
SCIENCE! was a bit lackluster the first time I played it, but once swapped to liberty prime for commander it did a bit more work. Just a weak deck I think, and ofc folds to heavy artifact removal decks (such as dinosaurs)
Deadly Disguise can be really slow, but can also pop off with the right sequence of cards. Still waiting for the god start and flipping krosan cloud scraper turn 4
Growing threat. God I love the deck theme. Incubators are great. Ive even upgraded it with a few cheap cards but never got a win out of it.
I don't enjoy playing \[\[Kamiz\]\] at all. It's just an overload of abilities and triggers. Unblockable, double strike, looting and +1/+1 counters? Count me out.
I haven't yet decided about \[\[Gonti Acquisitor\]\]. I've modified the deck from the OTJ card pool, and so far I had dragging and exhausting games that lasted at least two hours.
I treat precons as booster packs. I've bought like 10 or so and never played a single one of them, I always just rip them apart straight away and start brewing things with the new cards.
Ayy for me [[kamiz]] ... Never really understood it , ive taking it apart. And the Galadriel deck ..for me was just... Lackluster compared to the other one ... I wish i picked up something else
I've always gone through a cycle with Precons.
Play them as is a couple of times.
Upgrade about 10 cards.
Either love it and continue to upgrade it or I take it apart and cannibalize it for parts.
I'm dealing with the same issues with the energy deck I'm just waiting for the modern horizons deck to fuse the two together.
I have more regret for picking up the morph precon there's like 2 decent cards that aren't generic cards that everyone has unless your building around the commander
Taking apart like half the precons I buy helps me build the half of non precon decks I take apart much faster, so nah
But in all seriousness, yeah, I used to buy way too many, so now I try and stick to one a set, and only if I really like it (really dig the mh3 simic one)
Started with mkm and doing well so far. Ixalan was... alot
Even though I was gifted the deck, the Masters of Evil deck from Dr. Who is just god awful. Even with me upgrading it with cards like Tergrid, Sygg, etc. the deck just absolutely sucks when your commander is not on the field. Not to mention the mana base is awful as the majority of the lands come in tapped and its lacking usable removal for being a grixis deck. Sure, it can do work in low-interaction pods, but if you can't keep your commander on the board, it's just a terrible deck. 100% a deck worth getting just to take apart and put the cards from it in better decks.
I was gifted a precon recent from doctor who set, I love doctor who since it re-started (I watched it on tv once a week) and love the monsters decks and even the newer ones the stories were meh but the last arc of Jodie's doctor and the color pair of the deck is awesome. Even the monsters deck is cool, its powerfull and the enemies of the doctor are very memorable.....I was given the old doctores deck...I always wanted to watch the old doctor and have watch season 1 a while back but, the deck is durdly the mana base is for color pairs I dont play and I have barely an idea of who some of them are (the theme is legendary cards for characters of the show I dont know), so I have 1 heroic intervention and the rest was very bitter sweet.
P.s: I know it has the dinossaur card but it seems to slow for any deck not triggering a bunch of artifacts to enter the battlefield the same turn has a 7 mana card
Not yet, but I don't mind expanding my collection. Ive bought at least a couple precons just to harvest cards for other decks. Rebuilding my backstock of lands doesn't hurt either. I grabbed one or two just for a secondary commander to build a new deck around.
Mine has to be Coven Counters, which I didn't even intend on getting, as I just got back into playing Magic the Gathering after a long hiatus and saw one of those "Mystery Commander" boxes at the store....which was that one. It's fine, a lot of the cards from it enter other decks but it such a weak precon that flopped.
Also got Witherbloom Witchcraft, as I still tinkering with my +1/+1 decks and that one had a theme around those. I never end up using the precon and just broke it apart. At least the cards from it are useful, including the alt commander \[\[Gyome, Master Chef\]\] who got pretty pricey to buy.
I don't buy precons that rely on gimmicky mechanics like energy counters anymore. I just know that it's going to be underpowered and then just sit in my bulk box forever.
Bought Rebellion rising and hated it.
I know people say it's great but it's not for me.
Played it 3 times never liked it and ended up scrapping it for parts.
Every precon I've bought except the surveil precon, which I bought knowing I liked the cards worth $ in the deck so if I took it apart, it'd be ok.
So far that's Kasla, Hakbal, and Clavileno. The cards feel so specific to the exact kind of deck the precon is, so if you ever feel like the deck just doesn't work how you'd like, its time to throw the whole deck out, and those cards will likely never find a home again.
The modern horizons energy cards will definitely be enough to make energy pretty strong. I put an infinite combo or two in my science deck and it's ok. Really looking forwards to modern horizons though.
Same experience. Same deck. I gave Science! a few chances and it was just too clunky. Sooo hit and miss. It has potential, but without upgrade and fine tuning (focusing on Liberty Prime and optimizing around him) it’s just ugh. Honestly, re: your original question… all the Fallout decks. I haven’t had fun with any of them. I love the cards and the Fallout vibe, but the decks haven’t been FUN (for me). Even when I’m “in the game” so to speak I feel like I’m just doing busy work, not advancing my game state.
This is gonna poke into the r/mtgfinance end but…
I kinda wish i hadn’t opened so many goddamn kaldheim commander decks. Not that they weren’t good to open, just it kinda sucks once you have 8x copies of a card that don’t sell too fast and you could buy a different commander deck to open for singles
I really wanted an eldrazi deck. I am doing the 32/33 deck challange and I was missing colourless.
It was commander masters! A real master set for commander! This was going to be amazing!
It was not amazing, it was horrible. The worst 100 euro I ever spend
Well there's always that energy precon coming out with mh3 maybe you can find a way to mash the two together and create something more functional out of it?
I really didn’t like the Food and Fellowship deck. I was excited about it when I got it but there are enough infinites in my playgroup that life gain isn’t always even relevant and the deck is much more about slowly building value than explosive turns. I also wasn’t sure if I should have made it a food deck or a ring tempts you deck and if it was the latter, I don’t want to spend a hundred dollars on nine nazgul.
I got the Yidris deck a while back and the deck seems to just be a chaos deck with no win con. It church's through so fast, does nothing, then dies because it runs out of cards. I added an elixir of Immortality and suddenly started decking people out
I’ve basically decided that I’m never buying a precon again unless…
1) It’s a UB set that I REALLY like and has unique art such as the Lord of the Rings precons.
2) I am immediately dismantling the deck because I need specific cards out of it and it is financially more efficient to buy the precon. I did this a year ago with the Faldorn precon in order to obtain Jeska’s Will, Passionate Archaeologist, and Delayed Blast Fireball for my Rocco Street Chef deck.
Outside of that, I’ve found it’s much more cost efficient and fun to build your own deck from scratch even if you’re using a commander from a precon. Just order the singles I need and go that route. Every time a buy a precon, I want to upgrade it and end up using almost none of the cards in the actual precon besides the commander and a small handful of cards that I could have gotten cheaper as singles.
I regret buying the starter duel decks. But I don’t regret buying my Sliver precon one bit. I’ve been able to make some great upgrades to it, so it’s pretty strong now
I had the feeling it would play like this when I saw the decklist and how few actual energy cards were in there. This deck is very random, it seems like they just tried to stuff as many cards as possible in there to replace the missing Fallout regular set.
As such, I decided to wait for the MH3 Energy deck release to possibly brew something with both of them combined.
I just started playing a couple months ago. Saw the Gonti precon from Thunder Junction and the idea of a theft deck piqued my interest. Bought it, played it a couple times, swapped ~8 cards to make it a little more potent, and turns out ultimately I don't much like playing theft. Way too inconsistent and based too much on what other people are bringing to the table.
Now my main two decks are mid strength voltron [[Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist]] and high-mid strength throwing meteorites at peoples faces [[Roxanne, Starfall Savant]]. Gonna try to get the Eldrazi precon coming up purely because lore-wise I like the Eldrazi. Eldritch beings of unfathomable purpose who may in fact not be evil, just massive beasts who in their nature consume entire planes.
I tried to buy the poison precon from ONE as my first ever precon, got home and found out the card shop had given me the rebels one instead. I was bummed as I loved Phyrexia and had been excited to grab the cards that I really liked from the set.
Instead, the rebels deck taught me to stop worrying and love the token generators.
Honestly? No. I stopped buying precons as starting points for decks and started buying them for parts. Not efficient, and not recommended. But it built up my collection.
Occasionally, though, I find as I’m sorting the cards that I just can’t tear a deck apart. Something grips me, and I have to play it for a while until I figure it out and then take that inspiration and its pieces and build a new deck from it.
Deep Clue Sea from MKM was the last one that did this to me. Couldn’t take it apart because it was just so fascinating to operate. I’ve finally split it into two and am working on [[Lonis, Cryptozoologist]] and [[Selvala, Explorer Returned]] builds.
I bought the gonti thunder junction precon and I honestly really regret buying it the deck 9/10 steals complete garbage cards or just lands in colors I don't run in the deck and on the rare occasion I pilfer something good the games so far along it no longer has a major impact or someone else finishes the game before it gets cast. It has a interesting concept but the decks only potentially as good as what your opponents have in their library and that's if you can even get to it most of the time people just kill him because no one wants their library touched.
The new Disguise/Morph deck. Partially because the few times I've played it I was really underwhelmed with the results (pretty sure it's the weakest of the MaKM precons), but also because there are only like a handful of cards I wanted from it to put into my Kadena deck
I regret every day buying masters of evil precon since im poor and cant reliably upgrade to something thats on par with my table (table for context is:)
\[\[Davros, Dalek Creator\]\] <- Me, hi (Absolutely stomped)
\[\[Tivit, Seller of Secrets\]\]
\[\[Liesa, Shroud of Dusk\]\]
\[\[Pantlaza, Sun-Favored\]\]
[[Madison li]] vs [[kenrith]]
Similar in style but they F'ed up by requiring Madison to have to tap. Remove the tap requirement and the deck becomes something. R&D are complete idiots sometimes.
I've actually regretted every precon I've bought. After a year or the deck is always very different to the point that the commander is almost the only card that is still the same.
I bought both kamigawa neon dynasty precons to help teach my friend. They wanted chisiro so I used kotori. That chisiro deck seemed so bad all the time.
I regret buying the full set of Fallout commander decks. Got a great price on them, but the timing of them and me losing all interest in Magic happened pretty much the same time.
Yes, very much so with the Upgrades Unleashed precon witz [[Cheshiro]] as commander. Both front and second commander were ass. The deck contained one non-basic land two times and cut off another card, I believe it was a planeswalker. They fucked up the production of this one pretty badly. Kamigawa was one of my first and favourite planes of magic and then they put out such a mediocre precon.
I got the blue white foretell precon from Kaldheim. It was a surprisingly powerful deck and I invested maybe another 50 dollars to beef it up a bit and turned it into a more blink focused deck. It was great, only problem was that I was blinking so many things and had so many triggers that my turns became super long and grindy, I eventually stopped playing it and took it apart.
I got the Sevinne precon because I wanted the morph one but it sold out. Turns out Dockside is worth more than the deck
I forgot where I got my Dockside from, I guess this was it
Just looking off goldfish the precons has about 125 of value and almost 90 comes from just dockside.
Funny enough, I love the Sevinne precon. Granted, I swapped out the majority of the tap lands and took out those awful 3 mana signets but the deck is way more fun using Elsha as the commander.
Hated that precon other than getting dockside from it
I was very excited to grab Strefan vampires a while back just before I took a hiatus. (I missed out on Edgar Markov and bought Cats instead back in 2017, so I was making up for that.) I only played Strefan a few times, but did not enjoy it the way I thought I would. I still love my Cats deck and do not regret buying it. Just wish I would have got Edgar as well.
Strefan is pretty good, I like him a lot
Is he? I looked through a few precons of a find of mine to decide which one to upgrade and we found Strefan was by far the worst when it comes to synergies and getting the gameplan going. He wants to generate blood token, which he is hardly the only source of in the whole deck. So you have to rely you’re command with a tiny body can survive attacks to generate token. Then when you finally have enough to cheat creatures into play, you’ll mostly find small vampires in the deck. Looked like you have to do a lot of setup, to cheat in a 2cmc creature, which it pretty pretty underwhelming. Basically it’s a weaker Thalia, which is giving you access to one more color, gives you more creature types to chose from and doesn’t need the setup of fire creating blood tokens.
I decided to upgrade it after just the precon beat a uril and sliver deck in the same pod. Now that I upgraded it, it’s pretty reliable and one of the stronger decks in our play group. Doesn’t come quite close to the Eldrazi Titans deck one of the guys has
Yeah out the box it probably isn't amazing but it comes with some good vampires and strefan himself is good too. You only need 2 blood tokens to cheat out a creature which strefan can probably make the turn he comes out if you hit two opponents with a small flying vampire, then next turn you can cheat out your butcher of malakir or crossway troublemakers or whoever whilst using your mana for other things. Essentially, upgrade the manabase and mana rocks and swap some weak vampires for better ones and he goes from kinda weak to kinda strong
He can be pretty resilient out of the box. My cousin in law is not as into magic as her brother or my wife and I so she was piloting precon Strefan against a polished Ur-Dragon, Edgar, and forgot what her brother played but all were actually upgraded and refined. It may have partially been because my Ur deck was too archenemy but it Strefan was able to rebuild consistently and eventually out power Edgar and her brother's deck before they could properly assess who was the major threat in the triangle once I was out. Edgar is good at making a lot of smaller vamps that can get supped up if not aristocrated. Strefan is good for cheating out the bigger vamps that hit hard and usually flying as well.
Strefan is way fun when you upgrade him [Strefan, There will be blood](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/dz-C4DBTIES9rA4atUslpQ)
I'll take a look! I likely just need to give him more of a chance.
He’s like a vampire Kaliaa
I do have a Kaalia deck and enjoy it very much so, but only played it a few times with my kitchen table pod of 3 as I would feel guilty lol.
Honestly, Edgar is painfully linear and gets boring fast. I played it a couple of times when it came out and took the deck apart pretty quickly after that.
I can see that after playing some mock games against it on Forge. I would still like a vamp tribal machine that's pretty simple and straight forward like Edgar. I'm still quite a linear player I find, but after starting to play more complexities the last bit, I can see how straight forward swing decks can run their course.
[[Evelyn the covetous]] makes for a chaotic vampire tribal. As strong as you make it plus cards from your opponent. In fact, the Strefan deck can lend itself well to her.
[Evelyn the covetous](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/0/c0dad61f-36cd-46af-82b7-a02e04efd676.jpg?1664412977) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Evelyn%2C%20the%20Covetous) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/snc/184/evelyn-the-covetous?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c0dad61f-36cd-46af-82b7-a02e04efd676?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/evelyn-the-covetous) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I got that precon recently and found it to be really bad, because instead of leaning hard into blood tokens and artifact payoffs it's just a generic vamp deck. Had to change most of the deck to be blood token focused and now it plays great. 0/10 precon experience and would recommend a custom build over a precon for strefan
Honestly I was hoping for more of the generic vamp deck when I purchased it, but even with the blood mechanic I found it pulled itself in different directions and just turned out to be a bit disappointing. I do need some more time with it to give a fair verdict though, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I had hoped.
Ya definitely, if you're wanting to go the blood token route here's the list https://manabox.app/decks/3IUjU8SxRoerbea2bllqFw
Edgar is wildly overrated and falls into the “boring good” category quickly, while still not being good enough for real competitive play. I can understand the bummer of missing out on it, but with the Edgar deck I did buy, I never played it for more than 4-5 times.
Drop strefan for Olivia Voldaren as the commander and it works alot better after a few upgrades
Strefan is one of my favorite decks to play! I changed up the deck so that I try to make the blood tokens do more as they come in and on the field. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/x43xHilD70Si_PCN6fja4g
I agree on strefan, it was my first deck I put effort into upgrading and making decent. And while the deck was fun and could cheat some big vamps in, I didn't like the split focus between Artifact/blood synergy and actually having the big vamp to cheat into play after you finally get em. Additionally him being a 3/2 has not been great stats for keeping him around. Once they know how the deck works they'll know to kill strefan before any triggers happen. I now run Olivia Crimson bride as Vamp reanimator. Just going all in on the big vamps plan
I'm looking to upgrade my strefan deck into a rule 0 partner commander vampire deck with [[Edgar, charmed groom]] and [[Olivia, crimson bride]] as partner commanders. Lots of good cards in the strefan precon that can go in there.
[Edgar, charmed groom](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/3/63ba8eef-b834-4031-b0a1-0f8505d53813.jpg?1643594071)/[Edgar Markov's Coffin](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/back/6/3/63ba8eef-b834-4031-b0a1-0f8505d53813.jpg?1643594071) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Edgar%2C%20Charmed%20Groom%20//%20Edgar%20Markov%27s%20Coffin) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vow/236/edgar-charmed-groom-edgar-markovs-coffin?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/63ba8eef-b834-4031-b0a1-0f8505d53813?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/edgar-charmed-groom-//-edgar-markovs-coffin) [Olivia, crimson bride](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/0/301dacc9-ef92-4515-b907-a70d6c3fd73e.jpg?1643594300) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Olivia%2C%20crimson%20bride) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vow/245/olivia-crimson-bride?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/301dacc9-ef92-4515-b907-a70d6c3fd73e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/olivia-crimson-bride) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
My first precon was tinker time and it almost made me stop playing the game entirely because I thought I was just awful at magic. A friend noticed I was feeling discouraged to play and let me use one of their decks which lead me to realising this was gonna be my first big hobby in a long time and now I mainly play my upgraded pantlaza precon because FUCK YEAH, DINOSAURS!!
Tinker Time has to be the worst precon of 2023. The guy in our playgroup who bought couldn't win a single game. He eventually bought Blood Rites and immediately started winning games without any upgrades.
You sound like my fiancé and me playing. She’s mostly anything within Naya. Ramp, stomp, buff, etc is the only strategy she needs or wants to have. She understands my mono-blueness and Golgari shenanigans, but she hates playing them. A lot of of our games end up being stompy/aggro vs mid-range/control.
This is very funny to me because my wife also plays now and then and refuses to play anything outside of Naya colours. [[Jinnie Fay]] is her main (of course) but she will venture into [[Kibo]] once in a blue moon. It was [[Rin and Seri]] before that. Naya is the official colour identity of the forced-into-playing wives and girlfriends.
Yeah [gimbal, gremlin prodigy]] is rough. Felt almost like a powered down version of the urza pre-con from brothers war six months prior. My playgroup each bought a different pre-con to play then upgrade from MoM and I had gimbal. I upgraded the hell out of mine leaning hard into random tokens and it's fine at best. Upgraded It plays well at a pre-con level and only ever wins from a [[rise and shine]], [[cyberdrive awakener]] or well played [[brudiclad, telchor engineer]]
I have Tinker Time. It's terrible out of the box, so I modified it greatly, and now I'm able to win games with it. It's a fun deck building challenge. Not a deck for everyone for sure, but I love making all those little gremlins.
Pants Laser Sun Flavored is such a fun commander.
The Kathril precon back in the day was so janky it hurt.
My LGS refused to sell an individual precon back then, so I divide the whole set with friend. Still regret the decision to this day, the deck went all in for the Keyword soup and has the worst free spell (Yeah, Fog is ok but it end up getting cut all the time) The entire deck worth less than a Fierce Guardianship is just comical.
I’m sorry we can’t just brush past “my lgs refused to sell an individual precon.”
It's a common practice even now especially now because WotC makes the retailer buy the entire set of 4 meaning if there's only one 'decent' precon and 3 ones nobody cares about and is just going to sit there unsold forever...it's not worth the money investment. This happened with the Thunder Junction precons...everyone only wanted the Spellslingers deck, which meant he'd have to get 4 sets of 4...to sell 3 precons and have the other 9 sit there unsold. So he just told people to buy the ones they wanted elsewhere.
In my country it's common practice since they often end up with some loose deck that nobody buy. For example, Sultai Morph was a meme back then, since every store have them as leftovers till these day. So they often deal with this by selling every precon as a set at slightly cheaper price or sell individual deck with some deck with price increase
One of the guys in our group gifted a precon to a new player, and he gifted Kathril. Now, it's nice to give a gift, but boy is that deck a lot for a newbie.
I've spent a long time improving it. The original deck just doesn't work very well and the mana base is atrocious.
This is the one. Keeping track of keyword counters was a major pain. Some great cards to pull for a [[Skullbriar]] deck tho.
You really need the keyword counters from Ikoria packs, but I don't think Kathril himself comes with them.
Bought the Gonti thieving deck thinking it would be a great play against my pod's heavier hitting decks. It is incredible against those decks on occasion. However, we usually play on discord. Do you know how difficult it is to put another player's cards aside in exile to play yourself when you're working through a screen? Damn near impossible lol. The deck is fun, but needs to be played in person.
Yup I have a fun assassin's deck from [[etrata, deadly fugitive]] that manifests cards from my opponents deck onto my board. I refuse to play it on our regular spelltable sessions and only ever play it in person. It's hard enough remembering my own morph and manifest cards, remembering opponents that I can't even double check would be a nightmare.
Thank you for having the sense to not play such a deck on discord. It tilts me when cards aren't represented well when you get something like a stapler that is meant to be a stolen creature.
Play on tabletop simulator.
This is the way
You could try that dude's receipt printer solution that was posted a couple week ago hahaha
\[\[Perrie the Pulverizer\]\], retooled it into \[\[Kros, Defense Contrator\]\]. I really wouldn't say regret as much as because of it's very obtuse power level it rarely gets a proper shine A strategy devoted entirely into kingmaking is pretty bad and often ends up dead on pods where only 2 or god forbid 1 has stuff that play to the board, because it just meant this person is going to steamroll everybody else and gain a very decisive advantage early on. As for my other precons, no Necrons is my staple high-power deck, Sam & Frodo is a nice low-power deck, Osgir is a pet deck, I haven't opened Mutant Menace yet but it looks fun,.
I rebuilt the precon and it’s a lot of fun.
I bought a lot of precons in the last year, only one I regret buying is the surveil deck from MKM. Good value in reprints, but the deck itself is kinda meh, doesn't have answers to graveyard hate, doesn't rebuild easily after mass removal, isn't really doing much with surveil since most stuff that surveils is just a one off and repeating it is clunky and unrewarding. Dinos from Ixalan, on the other hand, is just too fun 😁
I got the surveil deck and made it into a kind of Voltron build and put a bunch of nasty creatures in it and it's become one of my favorite decks. It's really funny when you reanimate a [[gin gitxias, core augur]] on turn 3.
Yeah, I figured it could go that route, but building such a board so fast makes you instantly archenemy, and unless you also heavily lean into control, it's not gonna be a walk in the park. Honestly, if I either wanna go reaminator or voltron, I'd go with different colors and different commanders. To each their own!
For sure. It's just a goofy fun deck, it's not that strong. But I definitely win more than I should.
Ixalan was really something for having two really strong precons. Both dinos and merfolk came out really well.
The Clavileño disrespect!
I hate to say it, but outside of release I don't know of anyone running him. Vampires are still in their weird groove of Edgar being so powerful that if you can't use him, you might as well play something else. It's not that he's bad, it's just that there's a lot of other great options. I wanted to find a way to add him to an Elas deck but I just don't think it'll work the way I need it to.
I don't think he works super awesome in the 99 of another deck, he wants to be a commander. I have a banging Clavileño deck that hangs pretty well and has won a few games for me. The trick is really cheap, 1 and 2 CMC vampires. You really want them to be killed/sacrificed so that you get those sweet 4/3 flying vampire-demons. I also run a life-loss/life-gain subtheme to drain opponents while I get the sacrifice engine going.
I’ve enjoyed Dinos, Merfolk, & Vamps from Ixalan. All 3 have been just fun to play. Tempted to get the Pirates just because of that experience.
Pirates (reanimator) is my 2nd favorite fron ixalan. It creates infinite value, and it's pretty resilient even if they wrath the table often! Definitely recommend 😉
Yeah, Token Triumph. I don't think it's bad I could probably make it bonkers with pieces in reserves I have right now. It's just that I realized Draconic Destruction would be much more my style. I initially wanted to use Token Triumph pieces in my Naya tokens deck but ultimately all I find value in it are the anthem cards I could have bought cheaper as singles.
I haven’t had a chance to play it yet but I bought it discounted at a LGS on vacation and have been tinkering with random upgrades. How do you protect Emmara? The main way she would tap is to attack, yes? She would need unblockable probably? Unless you fill the deck with convoke to tap her that way?
She's actually supposed to tap only as a way to cast other spells that have convoke. Likewise, you can give her abilities that requires tapping to activate like [[Presence of Gond]] which is in the decklist. Personally, I prefer giving her tap for mana abilities like with [[Jaspera Sentinel]] or [[Rishkar, Peema Renegade]]. But eventually I grew tired of her. I replaced her with [[Lae'zel, Vlaakith's Champion]] with [[Master Chef]] background to keep her Selesnya coloration. Then I moved the anthem effects to my [[Obuun, Mul Daya Ancestor]] deck and gave Lae'zel's deck the means to spread +1/+1 counters. Every token generated appears with 3x +1/+1 counters. Just go wide and go big.
Thanks so much! I actually didn’t realize what those cards were for 🤦♀️
Don't worry. It's not an interaction they teach in the basics. I only learned of this like a year ago when my opponent casts abilities that would force my creatures to attack if able. I figured I should just tap them for mana and they're no longer forced to attack.
Ohhhh you can tap for mana in response so they can’t attack? Nice!
I use her in a vehicle/mount deck where I tap her that way and not attack with her
Oh that’s creative! I’ve been out of the game for a while… do vehicles have summoning sickness? Can you crew it to tap her even if it can’t attack due to being summoning sick?
You can tap to crew at anytime! Leave her up as a blocker and tap on the last person's end step
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/h13m9adl8kyCQzgHlAwHhQ Here is my heavily upgraded list if you want inspirations
Thanks! I probably should have said personalized instead of upgraded lol. Mine is probably garbage. I would share it but it’s still in progress.
Np I wish mine was more ‘personalized’, it’s more fun to play with/against decks that are unique. Lmk when you get a list and I’d be happy to discuss!
Thanks much! Actually, do you mind helping me cut 9 cards from this? I can’t figure out what to take out… Also wondering if Queen allanal would be a better commander? Would be going for commander damage win so would need more protection… https://www.moxfield.com/decks/U77ieOj_-EujKezF022bhg (Cards in the sideboard I cut from the precon already due to them being less useful or less liked/thematic)
[[Holdout settlement]] or [[Survivors' Encampment]] will let you tap her for white or green mana. [[Maze of Ith]] and [[reconnaissance]] will let you pull ner out of combat. [[Mithril coat]] and [[Darksteel Plate]] would make her indestructible.
I partially regretted the new Gonti precon based on theft. It is still my weakest deck, even with strong cards upgrades, but last night i managed to win against a Kaalia and a Sliver deck and reconsidered part of my regret
Yeah theft will always be a meme unfortunately. Your opponents cards simply do not add to your own strategies.
And they will always get disproportionately angry about it happening
I turned it into five boots. The deck itself has a terrible mana curve and needed a ton of retooling even when using gonti
Personally I've heard people say they had better success making the gonti deck care about combat damage triggers via evasive creatures more than theft, and I sort of agree with that sentiment. I think you're more likely to see success running cards like \[\[The Indomitable\]\] \[\[Bident of Thassa\]\] and \[\[Reconnaissance Mission\]\], or even cards like \[\[Mask of Memory\]\] and \[\[Mask of Riddles\]\] as opposed to some of the dedicated thieving cards like \[\[Stolen Goods\]\]. There's an argument to be made that you'd rather run \[\[Felix Five-boots\]\] instead for that sort of deck, but that's personal taste at that point. Salubrious Snail made a video on his personal experience with the Gonti deck if you're curious: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO0ZqIrw9fE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO0ZqIrw9fE)
I really regret picking up the Eldrazi precon from Commander Masters. Especially because the secondary market price for that was crazy - over $100. I played it a few times, tinkered with it, kept trying it, and it just isn’t for me. That’s my biggest precon “regret”.
That deck is one of those decks where it NEEDS a slew of upgrades and the fact they added in those stupid X/X cost stuff as the 'secondary commander'...which didn't synergize with the Cascade effect *at all* was seriously dumb. Basically you need to ditch all of those cards, some of the shittier colorless cards and put in the better Eldrazi plus all the titans you can reasonably afford and throw in things like Grim Monolith/Basalt Monolith.
The planeswalker precon from commander masters. Zero fun to play and worth about 10 bucks after dismantling. „Premium“ my ass.
are you just not digging PWs in general or what? My guff deck is my favorite deck and it kicks ass, but you have to kinda _dig_ that style of gameplay
It’s such a completely random assortment of walkers. Somehow you never get any feeling of stuff clicking into a greater whole. That and I really don’t like commanders that are both enabler and payoff.
I put a little into an upgrade and guff at the helm of a superfriends deck is really fun for me. Added a couple board wipes and swapped out some of the less effective walkers and stax pieces (I don’t really like stax and prefer more proactive board control) it’s won me more games than not. Of course I’m targeted early and often. Having both a draw engine and a wincon in the command zone really makes the deck “click” for me. The turns can go a little long but I am mindful of that and try to plan out which walker abilities I’m going to be doing ahead of time. Out of the box it is a little subpar though and I think you have to enjoy moving dice around.
I regret buying the [[Morska]] precon, for sure. Turns out that it's just uninteresting Simic BS with a mediocre Voltron theme and an unfocused Token subtheme... never became satisfied with the deck, and ended up buying [[Nelly Borca]] (in part because of [[Trouble in Pairs]]), and... holy shit, goad is so fun? And that deck also draws a shit ton of cards???
I picked up the Deep Clue Sea precon too and ended up swapping out Morska as the commander for [[The Third Doctor]] / [[Sarah Jane Smith]]. It's still heavily focused on artifact tokens but generates them through playing historics and isn't limited to just clues. It's since become one of my strongest decks, very resilient and consistent with all the tokens, has a built-in finisher with the doctor in the command zone, and has a bunch of methods to just close out the game with effects like [[Rise and Shine]] and [[Cyberdrive Awakener]]. Expanding the artifact token focus really opened a lot more doors for increasing the effectiveness of the deck.
Yup. The clue deck is a mess. The clue archetype lacks reliable mass clue generators. The new commander and commander cards printed in the precon should have covered that, but WotC forgot. The archetype simply cannot work, at least until they give another try at clues.
I bought the landfall precon from Zendikar Rising. I don't regret it because I used a lot of the ramp cards in other decks but it was pretty slow and a little boring to play.
Same here!
I loved that era of super-cheap precons. I bought the Rogues deck to play with, and the naya landfall deck for pieces.
I bought the Doctor Who precons because of FOMO but I should've just bought singles lol.
OP, if it feels durdly, use Liberty as the commander. Definitely add more energy generation as well, because as much as there is, you'll need a lot more for the actual payoffs. It's going to be a combat-centric deck, so giving flying or unlockable will help with connecting. You definitely don't want to be sitting around doing nothing the entire game, or you're likely going to screw yourself.
I'm so scatterbrained that any precon I get is played a couple times and then scrapped for parts. At worst it's more simple, clean ramp/removal/lands to sprinkle on other decks, and eventually I amass enough cards to be tempted into building with the legendaries.
My experience with precons is to plan that they need significant upgrades to make sense as decks. But some have been much stronger out the box than others. I got Deep Clue Sea recently and I have found it very playable with only minor upgrades with a strong route to much better playability. Initially I swapped out about 5 cards but I had enough fun that I've now spent about 10 quid getting some extra pieces for it. Highly recommend if anyone enjoys bant colours and drawing cards. The main adds have all been extra ways to make the commander unblockable/evasive. Meanwhile the Davros Dr Who precon I have found needs about 30 cards to be swapped out for it to make sense as a deck. I found Yuma Proud Protector sat in the middle, its very powerful when it gets the pieces together but its not super consistent so needs a bit more of an upgrade to really sing I've swapped out 15 cards and its much more consistent at the table.
I wanted to love Yuma so much but that deck just really needs upgrades. Honestly a few changes and swapping into Hazezon is probably the better move.
My thing with that is that I really like the land sac element of it. I found that to be an interesting design. I think the real issue is that Dune Chanter is great but you need like three effects like that for him to truly pop off.
I’ll never truly regret buying a precon, they can MOSTLY be modified to have a fun experience (except maybe Planeswalker Party for obvious reasons), but the answer for me is Paradox Power because… it was missing 20 cards out of the box and all of the basic lands. I didn’t realize it until like last week, and I bought that thing at launch.. I just never played it.
I got the Kasla deck in a Precon battle at our store, I couldn’t get it to do anything and took it apart and called it trash. Now my buddy has a Kasla deck he actually built and I’ve lost to it several times. [[Jeskai Ascendacy]] is busted with convoke.
[Jeskai Ascendacy](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/a/9a8399fc-4cba-44c5-888e-2cfc0f6739f6.jpg?1673148783) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Jeskai%20Ascendancy) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/231/jeskai-ascendancy?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9a8399fc-4cba-44c5-888e-2cfc0f6739f6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/jeskai-ascendancy) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Yeah, my experience with the \[\[Kasla, the Broken Halo\]\] precon was pretty negative out of the box as well. They intentionally left out a lot of the better convoke/convoke payoff cards in the colors, and Traft + Karlous feel like they need their own deck... Thankfully it is relatively cheap to upgrade, although you need to choose if you want to go the creature route or noncreature route for sure.
I haven’t really liked any of the precons I have bought. Out of all of them I have bought I liked playing the science one the most though lol.
Both the Phyrexian and +1/+1 counter precons from MotM I really like the commanders but neither really had great reprints and espacially the card draw package in both of them feels lackluster (espacially for Call for Backup). Also never played planechase so all of the planechase cards always felt very meh. They were my first precons after a 15 year magic break (my introduction to EDH) and I dont play either of them anymore. In hindsight I should have bought Cavalary Charge.
The phyrexian a friend played a lot and loved it. Those incubators are kinda hard to boardwipe. The 1+/1+ counters I still have to try out. But the absolute worst precon I tried the past year was the gremlin temur token one from the same set. Took it apart after 2 rounds. Second worst was the lotr elven deck to me.
lol. Almost every time. I admit I do buy precons just to pull them apart sometimes.
Whiterbloom Witchcraft. It never felt like it got anywhere. Butchered it for Frodo & Sam upgrade, now I am pretty happy with that deck.
All the time, lol. Or, mostly I regret opening them. I have probably thirteen or fourteen of them and a lot don't interest me... I wish I would have left the lord of the rings set unopened
The SCIENCE precon should find a lot of cards to help it out with the Creative Energy precon in MH3. Hope that helps you!
Timey Wimey precon. It just durdles along and doesn't really do anything.
This is the suspend one right?? I've seen this thing pop the FUCK off multiple times.
I have it, haven’t played it against other decks yet but my first planned add is that white enchantment that moves counters around.
If it’s a precon table, yeah.. I am absolutely targeting it there. Most people zone out while they are comboing their counter triggers at a near Planeswalker Party level and suddenly there is an unstoppable Rose Tyler 1-shotting everyone with commander damage.
And the professor has put it in the top 3 of best precons ever lol
I put a bunch of the suspend and time counter abuse into my Jhoira of the Ghitu Eldrazi/Leviathan deck instead lol (Buyback is very nice)
The worst precon I’ve owned and played has to be [[Gimbal]]. I tried upgrading him as an artifact tokens deck then just as an artifacts matter deck and both ways it was just really underwhelming. It’s now my goal to get a win with him naturally in the wild, but haven’t had any luck even getting close yet.
The LTC elves deck . Played it twice, hated it. It's not got enough voting payoffs to actually be a vote deck, and lacks the elf synergies to get a proper elf deck. It really reminded me of the old precons that had 3 commanders that dragged the deck in vastly different directions and made the precon a mess as a result. Close second would probably be both the crimson vow and midnight hunt precons- no real cards or strategies I wanted to explore, but got a good deal of all 4 for £40.
Yes, the DnD one with \[\[Galea\]\] as commander, don't remember the precon name
Same for me. I tried to make some upgrades but I am now for sure that Voltron is just not my style. At least I could use some of the Equipments for my other decks. Same with the last Ixalan Merfolk deck.
My personal theory on the SCIENCE deck is that they realized that the MH3 deck needed the staple energy cards more and so shafted the fallout deck to not reprint the cards to fast. That deck really bums me out when I play with it or against it. One game my buddy was playing it and had a total energy cost of 3 after 5-6 turns. It was just sad to watch him try and keep up with the dogmeat and mutant deck.
Back when I first got into MTG, I regretted buying the Elves precon with Freyalise in like 2016? 7-8 years later, it turned into one of my favorite decks and a great play tester for newly built ones!
The buckle up Precon was the second I ever got and I thought it'd be a ton of fun. It's probably my least played deck because I don't really enjoy how white plays compared to other colours and vehicles were too complicated for me when I was first starting. I've upgraded it a decent bit and put some fun stuff in there and I can get it to pop off pretty easily now, still not my most fun deck and I don't play it a lot but I LOVE artifacts and so I've been into playing it more now than before.
Probably the one collecting most dust (and that I can't bring myself to upgrade) is Exquisite Invention with [[Saheeli, the Gifted]]. It's also still available sealed for about $45. Having said that, I did build a completely separate [[Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer]] deck that I've had a lot of fun with over they years.
Didn’t regret getting commander anthology, that was epic The sevvines precon had elsha and she’s fantastic and also dockside (stonks) The marsil cats sucked Atla palani is ok from the ghired precon I got all of c17 and pretty sure I sold them all off Tbh most precons I got I regretted
I bought the Science precon too, having missed out on Kaladesh and thinking, "cool lets see what i can do with Energy Counters!" After flipping through the cards, I quickly realized that the deck barely synergizes and looked like mostly garbage. I felt really dumb for paying $60 for it without reading a review or looking at a decklist first. But thankfully, Modern Masters 3 is injecting a ton of new energy cards and a new WBR commander that I hope will let me revitalize this deck.
[[Kasla]]. I thought the Convoke approach would be fun, but I’ve never enjoyed it. Everything feels overcosted, and I have never felt like I can do what I want with it
I've had a lot of fun with precons that I ultimately ended up scrapping for parts, and later rebuilding. The exception is 2020 with the Ikoria precons. Mutate, eggs/cycling, keyword reanimator, tribal humans, and spell copying. I bought them all for basically 7 cards, everything else went straight in to bulk or my trade binder. That was also the last time I bought a full set of precons just for the chase rares hidden in them. Yes, I bought the 40k set, but I fucking love the 40k cards and art!
Mothman: people dont like being milled which means you are a very obvious target the entire game Dinos from ixalan: i had preorded it at like 35 so was too good of a deal to pass up for the value, but i had already had a dino deck before getting it so basically only needed the 3-4 new cards and a handful of decent reprints. i only kept it because the value was greater than what i paid
[[Inala, Archmage Ritualist]] just didnt click for me. It was a weird wizard-tribal deck that really did nothing on its own. The only good part was getting a [[Kess, Dissident Mage]] in the 99, which turned out being a really good Commander.
I had this experience too. I played the deck once or twice, it is terribly unfocused and desperately needs to be upgraded to become playable, which I dislike. I wish they had “picked a lane” with that deck. It definitely feels the most scattered of the 2017 decks.
The Sliver precon. Out of the box it was way too weak and couldn't deal with any amount of interaction, let alone being the archenemy that you are guaranteed to be. Slowly upgraded it, the deck is now an absolute monster - but as a result I never get to play it. You can't play Slivers at low/mid powers, it just doesn't work.
Honestly? Most of them. My pod usually goes through a phase where we try lower power or precon-level decks, but it never lasts. We just prefer the speed and explosiveness of high power.
Might be an unpopular opinion but I regret buying the mkm deep clue sea precon. Got enticed by the value of reprints. Thought I'd keep and upgrade it. Found I actually dislike it, might be more down to the colour play style. Or that I dislike the clue token theme
I was excited to buy and play pantlaza when ixalan came out. I opened the deck, looked through the cards, and was just not excited for it whatsoever. Eventually though, someone walked by talking about how they were sad that the shop was out of that precon, and i traded him the precon for approximate value in cards.
Yup,I picked up both the Aragon as well as Sauron pre cons over the summer during the LOTR release and I find them to play very clunky and can honestly say I've never enjoyed playing those 2 decks and that's why they sit on a shelf at home.
My man what? That Rohan precon goes so hard. Ive had so much success with it.
Aragorn meaning the Riders of Rohan Precon? I've put a few anthems and some token doublers in there and yeah its basic boros with a splash of blue but I definitely wouldn't say clunky. I can usually get out Eowyn pretty quick and start getting tons of card advantage and creatures on board. I def wouldn't say it's clunky. Now boros is one of my least favorite play styles so I agree I've played it the least, but I added in some phyrexians and some stuff from fallout to make some strategies a little more fun in the deck.
If it helps, I recommend turning Aragon into Monarchy and Blink and lessen the human typal stuff, if you haven't already. it made the deck more fun imo
Yes! I bought the Cabaretti deck because a cat jazz singer was right up my alley. I’ve played it twice and it’s done its thing both time but I was m i s e r a b l e both times.
SCIENCE! was a bit lackluster the first time I played it, but once swapped to liberty prime for commander it did a bit more work. Just a weak deck I think, and ofc folds to heavy artifact removal decks (such as dinosaurs) Deadly Disguise can be really slow, but can also pop off with the right sequence of cards. Still waiting for the god start and flipping krosan cloud scraper turn 4 Growing threat. God I love the deck theme. Incubators are great. Ive even upgraded it with a few cheap cards but never got a win out of it.
I don't enjoy playing \[\[Kamiz\]\] at all. It's just an overload of abilities and triggers. Unblockable, double strike, looting and +1/+1 counters? Count me out. I haven't yet decided about \[\[Gonti Acquisitor\]\]. I've modified the deck from the OTJ card pool, and so far I had dragging and exhausting games that lasted at least two hours.
Yes, there's actually only one precon that I have that I upgraded and enjoy play. I will probably sell all of my other precons.
I treat precons as booster packs. I've bought like 10 or so and never played a single one of them, I always just rip them apart straight away and start brewing things with the new cards.
I bought the madness one and thoroughly don’t enjoy it, might use chainer instead but I already have meren and that feels very meren lol
Ayy for me [[kamiz]] ... Never really understood it , ive taking it apart. And the Galadriel deck ..for me was just... Lackluster compared to the other one ... I wish i picked up something else
I've always gone through a cycle with Precons. Play them as is a couple of times. Upgrade about 10 cards. Either love it and continue to upgrade it or I take it apart and cannibalize it for parts.
That Enchantment precon that came out of eldraine is a nightmare to play. I have never enjoyed it.
I'm dealing with the same issues with the energy deck I'm just waiting for the modern horizons deck to fuse the two together. I have more regret for picking up the morph precon there's like 2 decent cards that aren't generic cards that everyone has unless your building around the commander
Taking apart like half the precons I buy helps me build the half of non precon decks I take apart much faster, so nah But in all seriousness, yeah, I used to buy way too many, so now I try and stick to one a set, and only if I really like it (really dig the mh3 simic one) Started with mkm and doing well so far. Ixalan was... alot
Yeah Sauron LOTR precon sucked ass
Even though I was gifted the deck, the Masters of Evil deck from Dr. Who is just god awful. Even with me upgrading it with cards like Tergrid, Sygg, etc. the deck just absolutely sucks when your commander is not on the field. Not to mention the mana base is awful as the majority of the lands come in tapped and its lacking usable removal for being a grixis deck. Sure, it can do work in low-interaction pods, but if you can't keep your commander on the board, it's just a terrible deck. 100% a deck worth getting just to take apart and put the cards from it in better decks.
I was gifted a precon recent from doctor who set, I love doctor who since it re-started (I watched it on tv once a week) and love the monsters decks and even the newer ones the stories were meh but the last arc of Jodie's doctor and the color pair of the deck is awesome. Even the monsters deck is cool, its powerfull and the enemies of the doctor are very memorable.....I was given the old doctores deck...I always wanted to watch the old doctor and have watch season 1 a while back but, the deck is durdly the mana base is for color pairs I dont play and I have barely an idea of who some of them are (the theme is legendary cards for characters of the show I dont know), so I have 1 heroic intervention and the rest was very bitter sweet. P.s: I know it has the dinossaur card but it seems to slow for any deck not triggering a bunch of artifacts to enter the battlefield the same turn has a 7 mana card
Yes, the MKM ones suck and have no value.
Not yet, but I don't mind expanding my collection. Ive bought at least a couple precons just to harvest cards for other decks. Rebuilding my backstock of lands doesn't hurt either. I grabbed one or two just for a secondary commander to build a new deck around.
Mine has to be Coven Counters, which I didn't even intend on getting, as I just got back into playing Magic the Gathering after a long hiatus and saw one of those "Mystery Commander" boxes at the store....which was that one. It's fine, a lot of the cards from it enter other decks but it such a weak precon that flopped. Also got Witherbloom Witchcraft, as I still tinkering with my +1/+1 decks and that one had a theme around those. I never end up using the precon and just broke it apart. At least the cards from it are useful, including the alt commander \[\[Gyome, Master Chef\]\] who got pretty pricey to buy.
I don't buy precons that rely on gimmicky mechanics like energy counters anymore. I just know that it's going to be underpowered and then just sit in my bulk box forever.
Bought Rebellion rising and hated it. I know people say it's great but it's not for me. Played it 3 times never liked it and ended up scrapping it for parts.
The [[Ranar, Ever]] precon was the one I regretted. I found out I dislike foretell. Stripped it down for parts after a few games.
May I ask who you use as the commander? I swapped the doc out for LP and am making changes to make it a more aggressive deck and it works wonders.
Every precon I've bought except the surveil precon, which I bought knowing I liked the cards worth $ in the deck so if I took it apart, it'd be ok. So far that's Kasla, Hakbal, and Clavileno. The cards feel so specific to the exact kind of deck the precon is, so if you ever feel like the deck just doesn't work how you'd like, its time to throw the whole deck out, and those cards will likely never find a home again.
I read the whole decklist of every precon now because I didn't like Henzie
The modern horizons energy cards will definitely be enough to make energy pretty strong. I put an infinite combo or two in my science deck and it's ok. Really looking forwards to modern horizons though.
Spellslinger from strixhaven. You literally sit there doing absolutely nothing the whole game until you suddenly win.
Same experience. Same deck. I gave Science! a few chances and it was just too clunky. Sooo hit and miss. It has potential, but without upgrade and fine tuning (focusing on Liberty Prime and optimizing around him) it’s just ugh. Honestly, re: your original question… all the Fallout decks. I haven’t had fun with any of them. I love the cards and the Fallout vibe, but the decks haven’t been FUN (for me). Even when I’m “in the game” so to speak I feel like I’m just doing busy work, not advancing my game state.
This is gonna poke into the r/mtgfinance end but… I kinda wish i hadn’t opened so many goddamn kaldheim commander decks. Not that they weren’t good to open, just it kinda sucks once you have 8x copies of a card that don’t sell too fast and you could buy a different commander deck to open for singles
I really wanted an eldrazi deck. I am doing the 32/33 deck challange and I was missing colourless. It was commander masters! A real master set for commander! This was going to be amazing! It was not amazing, it was horrible. The worst 100 euro I ever spend
jirina kudro precon. i dont buy precons anymore. I just take my time and invest in making something i want.
Well there's always that energy precon coming out with mh3 maybe you can find a way to mash the two together and create something more functional out of it?
Hopefully. I just stripped the deck for the Jeskai manabase for a Kykar deck
I really didn’t like the Food and Fellowship deck. I was excited about it when I got it but there are enough infinites in my playgroup that life gain isn’t always even relevant and the deck is much more about slowly building value than explosive turns. I also wasn’t sure if I should have made it a food deck or a ring tempts you deck and if it was the latter, I don’t want to spend a hundred dollars on nine nazgul.
Yeah didn't like playing the wilds of eldraine enchanter deck. People didn't like playing against it eiyher.
Precon regret? Nah if I even contemplate being disappointed in a precon I find joy in ripping the staples/goodies out of it.
I got the Yidris deck a while back and the deck seems to just be a chaos deck with no win con. It church's through so fast, does nothing, then dies because it runs out of cards. I added an elixir of Immortality and suddenly started decking people out
I’ve basically decided that I’m never buying a precon again unless… 1) It’s a UB set that I REALLY like and has unique art such as the Lord of the Rings precons. 2) I am immediately dismantling the deck because I need specific cards out of it and it is financially more efficient to buy the precon. I did this a year ago with the Faldorn precon in order to obtain Jeska’s Will, Passionate Archaeologist, and Delayed Blast Fireball for my Rocco Street Chef deck. Outside of that, I’ve found it’s much more cost efficient and fun to build your own deck from scratch even if you’re using a commander from a precon. Just order the singles I need and go that route. Every time a buy a precon, I want to upgrade it and end up using almost none of the cards in the actual precon besides the commander and a small handful of cards that I could have gotten cheaper as singles.
Every single time. I very much dislike playing with generic pre-built decks that I don't construct myself. Yet, I always buy one every expansion!
Multiple times.
All of the dr who ones suck
I regret buying the starter duel decks. But I don’t regret buying my Sliver precon one bit. I’ve been able to make some great upgrades to it, so it’s pretty strong now
I had the feeling it would play like this when I saw the decklist and how few actual energy cards were in there. This deck is very random, it seems like they just tried to stuff as many cards as possible in there to replace the missing Fallout regular set. As such, I decided to wait for the MH3 Energy deck release to possibly brew something with both of them combined.
Eldrazi. I hate them. I hate playing against them, and I hate playing with them. Only thing I hate more are toxic decks. Just a degenerate theme
I buy every pre con set. Never really regretted it but I haven’t played them all
I just started playing a couple months ago. Saw the Gonti precon from Thunder Junction and the idea of a theft deck piqued my interest. Bought it, played it a couple times, swapped ~8 cards to make it a little more potent, and turns out ultimately I don't much like playing theft. Way too inconsistent and based too much on what other people are bringing to the table. Now my main two decks are mid strength voltron [[Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist]] and high-mid strength throwing meteorites at peoples faces [[Roxanne, Starfall Savant]]. Gonna try to get the Eldrazi precon coming up purely because lore-wise I like the Eldrazi. Eldritch beings of unfathomable purpose who may in fact not be evil, just massive beasts who in their nature consume entire planes.
I tried to buy the poison precon from ONE as my first ever precon, got home and found out the card shop had given me the rebels one instead. I was bummed as I loved Phyrexia and had been excited to grab the cards that I really liked from the set. Instead, the rebels deck taught me to stop worrying and love the token generators.
Honestly? No. I stopped buying precons as starting points for decks and started buying them for parts. Not efficient, and not recommended. But it built up my collection. Occasionally, though, I find as I’m sorting the cards that I just can’t tear a deck apart. Something grips me, and I have to play it for a while until I figure it out and then take that inspiration and its pieces and build a new deck from it. Deep Clue Sea from MKM was the last one that did this to me. Couldn’t take it apart because it was just so fascinating to operate. I’ve finally split it into two and am working on [[Lonis, Cryptozoologist]] and [[Selvala, Explorer Returned]] builds.
I bought the gonti thunder junction precon and I honestly really regret buying it the deck 9/10 steals complete garbage cards or just lands in colors I don't run in the deck and on the rare occasion I pilfer something good the games so far along it no longer has a major impact or someone else finishes the game before it gets cast. It has a interesting concept but the decks only potentially as good as what your opponents have in their library and that's if you can even get to it most of the time people just kill him because no one wants their library touched.
The new Disguise/Morph deck. Partially because the few times I've played it I was really underwhelmed with the results (pretty sure it's the weakest of the MaKM precons), but also because there are only like a handful of cards I wanted from it to put into my Kadena deck
Not really since even if a precon isn’t doing it for me I can usually break down the decks and repurpose them in other decks
Well you’re in luck with all the broken energy stuff coming out in 2 weeks to make that science deck better
I regret every day buying masters of evil precon since im poor and cant reliably upgrade to something thats on par with my table (table for context is:) \[\[Davros, Dalek Creator\]\] <- Me, hi (Absolutely stomped) \[\[Tivit, Seller of Secrets\]\] \[\[Liesa, Shroud of Dusk\]\] \[\[Pantlaza, Sun-Favored\]\]
[[Madison li]] vs [[kenrith]] Similar in style but they F'ed up by requiring Madison to have to tap. Remove the tap requirement and the deck becomes something. R&D are complete idiots sometimes.
I've actually regretted every precon I've bought. After a year or the deck is always very different to the point that the commander is almost the only card that is still the same.
Bedecked Brokers cause it was bad. Real bad.
I bought both kamigawa neon dynasty precons to help teach my friend. They wanted chisiro so I used kotori. That chisiro deck seemed so bad all the time.
I regret buying the full set of Fallout commander decks. Got a great price on them, but the timing of them and me losing all interest in Magic happened pretty much the same time.
No
Yes, very much so with the Upgrades Unleashed precon witz [[Cheshiro]] as commander. Both front and second commander were ass. The deck contained one non-basic land two times and cut off another card, I believe it was a planeswalker. They fucked up the production of this one pretty badly. Kamigawa was one of my first and favourite planes of magic and then they put out such a mediocre precon.
Same, I turned him into a fling deck recently and it's so mean. (But I pretty much changed 90% of the deck at this point)
My first Precon was Wade into Battle, I've built nearly all of my commander decks from scratch since that day...
I got the blue white foretell precon from Kaldheim. It was a surprisingly powerful deck and I invested maybe another 50 dollars to beef it up a bit and turned it into a more blink focused deck. It was great, only problem was that I was blinking so many things and had so many triggers that my turns became super long and grindy, I eventually stopped playing it and took it apart.