Is it Worth It To Buy A Modern Horizons 3 Commander Deck? | A Magic: The Gathering Product Review

[Music] many Magic the Gathering players ask the question is it worth it to buy a modern Horizon's 3 commander deck certainly a relevant question when the premium versions of some of these decks are going for over $400 but more on that in a moment modern Horizons 3 is a set designed specifically with the modern set in mind with new powerful designs and reprints of classic cards that will skip standard and Pioneer and enter modern directly it's no wonder therefore that the precons for modern Horizons 3 are for Commander and not modern ha you know since modern Horizons 3 is considered a premium set these precons are intended to be comparable to the precons for other premium sets such as Commander Masters rather than those of a standard set but just how well do these precon back up to their Hefty price tag how do they compare to other kinds of precons and how welld designed and fun to play are each of these precon decks all these questions and more will be answered in this video and that is what's in store please note that this video is a review exclusively of the modern Horizon 3 Commander decks if you would like to know whether or not it is worth it to buy Modern Horizons 3 the actual set you will need to wait until launch of that product who wao I am actually giving away three booster boxes of modern Horizons 3 plus three mystery booster boxes not mystery booster boxes but surprise retro vintage not that far vintage but somewhat vintage booster boxes on my next whatnot stream to celebrate modern Horizons 3 this June 15th at 300 p.m. Pacific and I'm also giving you $15 to spend however you want in my whatnot store just go to www. what ./ invite tarian colge and you will get $115 to spend in my store I'll have lots of cool items and memorabilia there and also you might walk away with one of these three booster boxes of modern Horizons 3 or one of the other surprise booster boxes that I'll be giving away this June 15th at 300 p.m. Pacific I hope very much to see you there and now let's talk Commander decks a modern Horizon's commander deck contains the following [Music] one ready to play right out of the box 100 card deck which itself includes one traditional foil Commander one traditional foil alternate commander and 13 brand new Magic card designs there is also a foil etched thick display Commander 10 double-sided tokens one modern Horizon three collector booster sample pack one quote unquote deck box one cardboard life wheel and one strategy insert telling you how to Pilot the deck given that this is more or less the exact same contents as any other command or precon that sells for $40 one might assume that the price on these would also be $40 to $45 though sadly that is not exactly the case the price on these precons varies widely not just depending on where you purchase just them but from precon to precon as well I suppose that's what you get when there's no stated MSRP Creative Energy the J Sky energy precon is pre-selling for $47.70 or $135. 53 for the Collector's Edition version graveyard overdrive the jund go precon is pre-selling for $488 the collector's addition of that is selling for $171 14 in contrast to those two tricky terrain the simic land types precon is pre-selling for $741 or $183 186 for the collector's edition and eldrazi incursion the rainbow eldrazi preon is selling for $140 65 and that is not the collector's edition price that's for the nonpremium version if you want the premium collector's edition as of the filming of this video you'll have to Shell out $429 $430 for a foiled out preconstructed deck is an absolutely absurd price even the collector's edition versions of the Warhammer 40K decks considered exorbitantly expensive at the time are currently only going for between $130 and $190 the most expensive Warhammer 40K collector's edition precon is just $50 more expensive than the ordinary non-premium version of the eldrazi incursion precon what in the Flying Spaghetti Monster tax is this with the price of one particular precon being tall enough to reach the Blind eternities and the price of two other precons sitting below the comparatively modest $50 threshold it's not clear how much these decks were actually supposed to cost there's no way of knowing for sure but my suspicion is that these precons were intended for the $50 price tag but the land types and alrai precons are priced higher because the other two decks are somewhat underwhelming more on that in a moment comparing these precons to the precons for Commander Masters the price is fairly similar currently two of the commander Masters precons abzan enchantments and J Sky plains walkers go for $44 and $40 respectively the sliver swarm precon holds a price tag similar to tricky terrain at $79 while the colorless eldrazi precon beats out the modern Horizon's 3 eldrazi precon with a price of 100 $159 by comparison all four precons from both Outlaws of Thunder Junction and murders at Carlo Manor currently go for less than $40 a piece lost caverns of exelon's Commander Dex is the exception to this rule with the Nia dinosaurs and orza vampires precons coming in at $118 $79 respectively while the gx's Pirates precon would cost you $45 and oh my God are you kidding me Sim murol is just $29.99 that was the best deck of the four come on so were these supposed to be $50 decks like was the idea these are $50 decks and then the eldrazi one and the tricky terrain one are so popular and in so much demand that they're being charged these exorbitant prices of 70 and over $100 for a single precon is that what happened here or were these supposed to be 70 maybe even $80 decks but eh the other two they're not of much interest to players or as much interest to players so stores are selling them off at $50 there's no way to know without an MSRP this is just ridiculous at this point just think for a moment as a consumer what it means if these were all supposed to be $50 decks but Wizards of the Coast as the company selling you those decks doesn't want to take responsibility for their product wants to Omit MSRP and just let the secondary Market jack up the price from $50 to $170 if you are having discrepancies like this in the pricing and selling of your products then there are steps you can take it's not easy and it's not perfect but it is worth it as a company to protect your customers from this level of gouging it's it's absurd and I can't believe people are going to pay it regardless of what grade I give it or what cards it contains in this video nonetheless the price that these precons are going for is fairly similar to that of the commander Masters pre-con from just a few months ago and we all know how well-received those turned out to be still that is not to say that these decks are not well constructed or that there is not cards of value within them let's take a look at the financial value of these decks and also how well they play and how well they were built if you were to purchase the singles for these decks at the lowest possible price as of the filming of this video graveyard overdrive would cost you $100 9477 Creative Energy $171 184 eldrazi incursion $244 67 and tricky terrain $299 49 as always these prices are pre-order taken from the lowest market price one day prior to launch not only will these values go down the moment the decks hit shelves but there's a very good chance they are particularly High due to the fact that well two of these decks have a particularly high price on the secondary Market but what if we were to eliminate the bulk eliminate all cards not worth even $1 how much value would be left Creative Energy has only 37 cards out of a hundred worth a doll or more bringing its total non-bulk value to $157.92 the top of the list is gold span Dragon of $15 and change card and AC chroma will a nearly $14 card much of the rest of these reprints fuel more in line with a nonpremium commander precon though that's not to say I'm unhappy to see inclusions like farewell Aether Works Marvel or even cards like Mystic gate and atar car wastes in the Mana base though I do feel the Mana base could have used a lot more as I'll cover in just a moment the Creative Energy deck is a significant Improvement on an energy matters precon such as we previously saw with the Fallout Commander decks the face Commander is fantastic and highly synergistic with the deck's game plan there are lots of excellent energy enablers and a few high impact payoffs the interaction Suite is decent thanks to swords to plowshares and a trio of wraths including the notorious sunfall the curve is a bit topheavy but that's actually a good thing if you have an aetherworks Marvel in play while the deck is more synergistic than the Fallout energy deck there are still some strange inclusions that feel off theme the backup Commander doesn't directly interact with energy for example though prol ferate is certainly a good mechanic to pair with energy cards there's also a weird tokens theme lumped in with the rest of the deck that seems to be intended to support the backup Commander's proliferate ability if you combine this deck with the Fallout energy precon you would create one complete and focused energy precon the Mana base here is pretty rough though with a whopping 20 basic lands particularly egregious when you compare it to the two-color precon that only has seven basic lands the trio of pain lands is a nice addition to the Mana base but it would have been great to see one or two more cycles of non-basics to round out the Mana base graveyard overdrive would still have 39 out of 100 cards worth $1 or more providing a total non-bulk value of $179 128 the most valuable card inclusion being the Reaver Cleaver at $14.92 followed by final act at $12.32 and both salala heart of the wilds and archon of Cruelty at approximately $10 each given the value within this collection of cards it's actually pretty surprising that tago itself was not included in this the luro deck because tago has dropped down to being only a $10 card and Prime for reprinting in a commander precon such as this in terms of game game play graveyard overdrive is very disappointing the deck ostensibly is designed around luro but only contains six total luro cards and one sad little Shape Shifter to put into play off of its face Commander's ability there's not even a tago reprint in this deck why not I don't know maybe they were worried the entrenched players this deck was designed for would confuse tago with the tago tokens in the precon the rest of the deck is a split between a vague great graveyard Synergy deck and a generic value deck the result is that graveyard overdrive is unfocused and not really built to succeed in the context of a commander game this precon is going to need a lot of upgrades to be a playable commander deck I will talk which of these decks are my first second and third picks in a moment but spoiler alert this is without a doubt my fourth pick and is going to carry with it the waiver that I really don't recommend you pick it up at all it's ultimately a very bad underwhelming design [Music] the tricky terrain deck has 42 out of 100 cards worth a dollar or more with a total non-bulk value of $282 28 in no small part due to the fact that this deck has planner Nexus a card that's selling for $447 but there's other big ticket cards as well here such as Talon Gates of Madara Apex devast stator vua and even oo Titan of Nature's wrath the fact that this is a commander precon with cards such as dark depths and yavimaya cradle of growth included within it really does make a reasonable argument that these are premium quality commander precons in terms of construction tricky terrain is the most cohesive and interesting deck of the four a simic Lands Deck is not new ground but a simic deck that is particularly focused on non-basic land types is it's actually pretty cool to see a deck built around the many different non-basic land types magic has seen over the years from recent additions like caves and deserts to longtime favorites like locuses and the Ural lands the face Commander is cheap and has the Fantastic enter the battlefield and attacks Titan ability templating that makes for a high impact creaturing Commander the deck has good interaction for all kinds of cards with the best blue spot removal counter spell allpurpose removal and several strong board wipe adjacent cards it also o has strong card draw and ramp including all three sizes of growth spiral and a powerful top end to pay you off for all that ramping if I did have one critique of this deck it's that the game plan is not necessarily the most new player friendly since the distinction between non-basic land types and the relevance of those types is not the most intuitive to a player who hasn't been around for a while but in terms of actual gameplay this deck is my pick for both the strongest and most interesting even the guildgate which looks out of place at first glance fits into the theme of non-basic land types I would have loved to see amaz's end in the deck list but that is an easy upgrade if you want to add [Music] it elrazi incursion is 46 out of 100 cards worth a dollar or more bringing its total non-bulk value to $227 while the biggest ticket item here is indeed a new card design there's some Hefty reprints like eldrazi conscription and eldrazi Monument not to mention the boundless all is dust and one of the better five-color manabases we've seen it really is a shame that ey of ugan was not included here but I suppose they're saving that for the third eldrazi precon that's inevitably going to hit shelves it's hard not to compare the eldrazi incursion directly to eldrazi Unbound the only other eldrazi commander precon and one of the strongest precons of all time feel free to check out my top five precons video eldrazi incursion is not as powerful as Ali Unbound in part because its Commander is not as strong but this is still a very good precon the deck gets moving faster and has access to all five colors of Mana rather than no colors of Mana the Mana base is fantastic as far as five color precons go with very few tap lands and crucially all 10 pain lands wow the interaction is good despite mostly relying on eldrazi flavored removal with so many high power creatures this deck makes good use of the Green Card Draw spells included within this really is a very good precon though I would hesitate to say it is $140 good I consider it to maybe be half a step behind the simic precon and certainly a significant improvement over the other two [Music] ranking these decks based purely on Deck construction tricky terrain would be my first pick my second pick and again we are talking with price aside is indeed elrazi incursion with Creative Energy at number three I think the Creative Energy deck is really solid and luckily not being sold for too much more than a standard precon graveyard overdrive is as I mentioned earlier dead last and I would not recommend anyone purchase it unless they are a DieHard fan of constructed Jun decks and even then I highly recommend you only buy the deck with the purpose of retooling it into something more coherent so both tricky terrain and alrai incursion are the top two picks but unfortunately once we factor in their price tags especially regards to alrai incursion we end up with a lot of bad feels to say the least and as you'll see in a moment some pretty bad overall grades I will not be reviewing the premium Commander decks in this series I could not get a hold of them anyway they were not at any of my local game stores because none of my local game stores are premium stores we've talked before about how there's often only one premium store for a very large range of the map and some areas of the world have none well that's the only place to get the super expensive premium ones do they curl do the foils look good I'd love to have opened it up and shown it to you on camera but I can't find them and I'm not paying $400 for this button that who cares that and but in foil H I'm just not and I don't think you should either final conclusion with the exception of graveyard overdrive modern Horizon 3 Commander decks are well constructed and filled with powerful cards for players new and old to both commander and Magic the Gathering at $50 each the grade is an a with tricky terrain getting higher marks at A+ and Creative Energy a slight minus but I love all three of these decks and would enjoy being given any one of them or picking any one of them up for $50 I will say that I'm disappointed severely in graveyard overdrive and even at $50 it's barely acceptable at a c minus what grade do these decks get at a $50 each if you're paying $60 for them what grade are they $70 $90 $125 what do you want me to say here how about this any one of these decks selling for over $80 is a fail doesn't matter how wellb built it is that isn't a grade reflecting deck quality or construction but it is a grade reflecting the very pricing structure of Magic the Gathering in 2024 as well as the relationship that Wizards of the Coast has with its customers this is the Premium deck series an old product by Wizards of the Coast I actually did a retro review on it here these are 60c card decks not 100 but they were offered entirely in foil with in many cases some great cards this one was just monor red but they're graveborn they're slivers my sliver deck comes from me buying this and the price on these was not $400 or even $100 it was $40 back when they had an MSRP yeah it was a long time ago and inflation I suppose but I don't feel that the price on these products correlates with inflation nor have I ever I don't have an easy solution but it's maybe not my job to have that solution I think my job is to point out a problem and I feel that the pricing of premium and well there is no non- premium this is premium and ultr premium products of Wizards of the Coast I feel that there is a problem there I feel that the fact that there is not any non-premium version of these is a problem who's picking them up uh maybe maybe you I do hope this video has been of some help to you in making that decision about whether or not to pick them up and I do hope very much you will join me on my next whatnot stream what a great energy to go into the sponsor read hey I'm giving away three of these free is worth it I'm going to talk about if it's worth it financially when these launch next week but I would like to give three boxes of this away to people don't have to spend anything just come hang out in my whatnot stream and if you would like to buy something give you a $15 credit pick up some packs put it towards a commander deck whatever you like www.w nut.com invite tarian College this 15th at 3 p.m. Pacific I'll be giving away three booster boxes of modern Horizons 3 shipped anywhere in the world and three surprise booster boxes of some old sets that I love as well as well I hope very much to see you there

Channel: Tolarian Community College

Views: 199,639

Keywords: magic: the gathering, mtg commander, modern horizons, tolarian community college, card games, nerd, geek

Id: IvHucD9k558

Length: 22min 31sec (1351 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 07 2024