Bring Back Standard Precons In Magic
I first got into Magic in late 2003. I had bought my first deck at Walmart. It was a 7th edition mono white deck designed to be supplemented with the pulls you get from your booster packs. I would play cards with friends at college who had small collections and would borrow/trade cards to make a deck of something more fun. I later got some 8th edition packs and a starter kit to supplement my lack of land.
But that was the point of these starter kits. You purchased a little brick of common and uncommon deck fodder and it came with enough lands to get rolling. We all played standard. Trading for 4 copies of everything. You had friends who would give you bulk just to have something to play. You'd find some fun common or uncommon card you loved and would build your deck around that.
And here was the fun part. You could still win and have fun.
This is how Magic was designed to be played. Two players. 60 card decks. A level playing field.
Now, we knew people who had competitive decks worth hundreds of dollars. They didn't use those against you. They would grab something they were playtesting or built for fun. But then you move out of student housing. You graduate. Your friends graduate. You all start playing MMO's to keep in touch.
Cut to the mid 2010's and we buy a few fat packs of the latest thing. We don't play anymore but it's fun to open the packs and look at the cards. We keep them in the boxes and store them in binders. Someone has a game night at their house and invite everyone to bring a deck. We discover very quickly that none of our cards are legal anymore, and modern cards are violently stronger than the ones we have. Getting back in would cost too much. We go back to videogames.
Cut to a few years later and you find out they are doing a D&D magic set. A Lord of the Rings set. Now we're talking. But we still have no one to play the game with, so we buy collector boxes and store the shiny cardboard in our binders. They have precon decks but they were no longer Standard format, they were something called Commander. The Commander decks revolve around a main legendary creature that you theme the rest of the deck around. In fact, most of the concept revolves around hunting through your deck to pull out the handful of cards to need to create a "win condition".
Commander reminded me of the Dragonball Z CCG. Not the new bandai one, but the original Score version. You had a 60-100 card life deck and a main character that would level up as you played. The cards in your deck would revolve around buffing that main character not unlike a Voltron Commander.
I recently made a Commander deck, the theme? Landfall with all vintage borders. I got swamped 5-0 by my husbands fresh out of the box Sauron precon. The problem with this? Commander is designed to be played in a pod: 4v4 or 2v2, not 1v1.
So what if I want to play 1v1? Oh yeah, standard, modern, pauper, etc. Ok then, I'll just go down to my local shop and get... a Commander deck. The only precons that have been made in the last few years are themed Commanders. Ok then, what is my other option? I go on TCG Player or Card Kingdom and dump a few hundred on the latest Standard meta deck that will either obliterate the table or get curb stomped at the local shop.
I play Standard on Magic Arena for this reason. But I would love to be able to play in real life without forking over 100's of dollars.
Now, I run TCG Player and eBay accounts that sell single cards. I am the one you buy the singles from for your deck. I want you to be able to get exactly the cards you need to complete it.
BUT.
BUT. I would love it if there were standard precons available in the stores. Yes, you can buy 4 booster packs for $30 and draft with them, but drafting is HARD. I want to play a quick easy game with my friends, or join a standard tournament.
Starter decks in the 90's cost on average $12-15. Every CCG had a starter deck with the sole purpose of getting you table ready. You would get a brick of usable cards in a specific theme so you could play the variant/color/character you wanted. Want to play mono red? Grab the mono red starter deck. Want to play black/green? Grab one of each color and mix em up. They were affordable enough to do so.
Now, Commander precons start at $45 retail and go way up from there if the cards inside are worth anything on the market. Plus, Commander is a singleton format so there is only 1 copy of any card outside of land in the deck.
Taking a look at one of the top competitive standard decks, Izzet Prowess is pushing $400 worth of cards. Now, if you are competing for a spot at a big time Magic tournament, then by all means go buy those singles and win in 4 turns. Get your prize money.
But this is also what shows up to the local game night at your LGS. The meta is what people buy because its one of the only options. Commander has the same problem but has a very simple solution. You have constructed and sealed formats. You have one event for the folks with thousand dollar decks and an event for folks who can just walk in, buy a precon, and sit down and play.
That doesn't exist for Standard, they have to draft. You get to play with the pulls you are dealt. Which can be fun and absolutely evens the playing field. But someone is going to pull a better set of cards in each pack and have a massive advantage.
This weekend our local shop had a constructed standard event. I had gone in to pick up a Deadpool and the owner asked if I was playing that night. I said I didn't even own a physical standard deck. And guess what, neither did he.
Right now Magic is doing well because of the Commander format and the upcoming Universes Beyond sets. But this isn't the Magic we grew up with. Was that version of Magic so bad that everyone switched to a fan format? At the time, maybe. But so much emphasis is put on the current sets being standard legal and yet, here we are with a small sliver of the paper playerbase using it?
I do worry that Hasbro is going to push Wizards to focus away from printed cards to a purely digital format. With prices of things going so high so quickly these days, it's harder for regular players to jump into the game. You can't expect people who have to worry about the cost of eggs and milk to be able to casually burn $35 on cards they play for 1 game or $60 on a Commander deck that isn't strong enough to ever win at the table.
Meanwhile, I can go on Arena and play a few games with the free decks and get enough in game points to build the same $400 competitive paper decks the pros use at tournaments. The computer version handles all the rules for me, it adds the bits I forget to do in real time. There is no googling what to do when something odd happens in the stack.
But just imagine if you could go up to your local card shop and grab a starter deck or standard precon that was more than halfway decent, themed with the current set, Oops! All Tempest Hawks!, you know what I mean.
There needs to be an entry level product at an entry level price point for the Standard format.