This is the block that brought us the bad news that the $20 commander decks that reached that bargain price through cutting the amount of new designs is no more. Now we just give all sets the big proper decks with all the new designs. Well, with the exception of one set of “Starter Commander Decks” the year after this block, WotC have never looked back. Doesn’t that suck?
Well, thing is, Commander don’t actually literally rotate out, so picking up old decks for play as is or upgrading is still a perfectly fine decision. Especially the less popular archetypes and decklists, those will even fall down below their supposed prices. And they would still contain the large amount of new designs a “real precon” should have.
Sure, power creep is certainly a thing so really old decks tend to stand no chance as is, but you’d be surprised how much merit being patient goes with Magic. Unfortunately, that requires blocking out the noise in a game designed for social experiences, now that’s the hard part.
So, out of the five allied pairs that have kindreds here, only four got to be precons. And for once, Humans aren’t being omitted. It’s the Gruul Werewolves instead. Because you can’t put DFCs in precons or the price of the deck will skyrocket. Or you can use flip cards from Kamigawa, but how much text can those cards handle? Or you can just build normal Wolves, at which point why are you here? Ultimately, if we were to put day and night on these cards to be consistent with the draft set, would people even like this deck? I guess not having this deck was the right call all along.
How are the four pairs divided? Coven Humans has to be in MID because of the story, Vampires has to be in VOW because obviously. And the two decks slot in whichever set so that they won’t be overlapping in colors, so that gets you Zombies in MID and Spirits in VOW. So that’s quick, MID will lacks Red and VOW will lacks Green.
This is the one element that always stuck in my mind when it comes to this block.
Both decks has their main commander proudly shown on the box, being a single character and all, that much stays true. And then they also have another mythic commander and a rare one. This is where the difference lies:
Obviously, the VOW approach is cooler because it kinda address the unfinished cycle of partner pairs from Battlebond, 5 enemy pairs of commanders if you don’t know. But, completing a cycle is only cool when you actually commits to complete it, not leaving it halfway like this. The right timeline would have been to make all 5 allied pairs’ decks, then have each one have the partner pair. Not this half and half nonsense. Actually, is that a half or is that 0.4?
Due to the aforementioned commanders structure being different, the 10 something remaining rares’ structure is also different. Granted, with these being just bicolored decks, it’s still pretty simple to explain.
MIC has each color receives six rares after the third commander. So that third commander is what cause the color imbalance, but well we ain’t putting a 16 new design to balance that. One card of each color is an Aura Curse that sticks around to be an engine, what else do you expect. Also each color has a sorcery too, and each deck has one instant in one of the colors.
th
VOC has each color receives five rares after the partner pair. So the last new design each deck get is a gold card, so that both sets have parity on the number of gold cards, whether they all have the legend crown or not. These are magecrafts that move creatures between zones. Each color has an enchantment, except Black has an artifact that also has an engine instead. Lastly, each color has one sorcery plus a magecraft, whether it’s an instant in Spirits’ case or just black having a sorcery in Vampires’.
One fun thing to find is how many creatures derail from their decks’ kindred? For one, each set contributes three commanders, one mythic and one rare of each deck. Zombies has one in each color, Humans have two White ones, Spirits has one that at least summons Spirit tokens and lastly Vampire has one too.