this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2025
12 points (100.0% liked)
MTG
2292 readers
10 users here now
Magic: the Gathering discussion
General discussion, questions, and media related to Magic: the Gathering that doesn't fit within a more specific community. Our equivalent of /r/magicTCG!
Type [[Card name]] in your posts and comments and CardBot will reply with a link to the card! More info here.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Apologies because I don't have an answer for your question, but it was my understanding that all pre-cons were Bracket 2. I didn't think any pre-cons came in higher or lower than that.
It would be a great service to see what the bracket is for the pre-cons, it could be a lot of work - it looks like there are currently 145 of them.
The zombie deck from Aetherdrift sure plays a lot higher than 2. And it is not a deck I would bring out to play in a casual setting.
The Science! deck from Fallout has a 2 or 3 card infinite attack phase combo.
The other deck from Aetherdrift I would call a bracket 1 deck, as it barely works. There are other decks from sets like that as well.
That actually is very important context, not just for beginners but anyone looking to get into Commander with a pre-con. It would be a huge amount of work but honestly it could be something we even try to crowdsource here or Reddit. I would love to see a fan-created list of what the brackets actually are for the pre-cons.
@mike @nocturne I'd love to see the community also rate the decks based on fun. I'm sure there are plenty of decks that aren't powerful but are just fun to run.
The witherbloom deck from Strixhaven is a lot of fun to play. There is another deck I play a lot, I use the alt commander. Sadly I forget the deck name and set, my box simply is labeled tsuga! the original commander looks like Kevin Costner. The alt commander makes eggs, and they bring in a creature card from the top of your deck when the egg died.
For me those are the two most fun to play, I own almost every precon from 2013 to current (sadly I skipped 2017) and have played well over 75% of the decks I own.
@nocturne yeah we own most of the precons as well.
We liked the Dungeons, Party, Prosper, and dinosaurs decks so much we rebuilt them into personal decks.
The new Khans Temur is surprisingly good. Never seen a dragons deck work well out of the box like that. I also really liked that Mardu deck.
Other standouts have been the EoE zombies deck, the Wilhelt deck, the Sauron deck, the NEO modify deck, the Merry/Pippen deck, and the OTJ crime deck off the top of my head.
@nocturne I liked the Strixhaven decks, but I felt they were all pretty slow to get going, though lots of fun once they built up steam. I think they're at their best when played against each other
The main reason I want the list is at my shop I almost exclusively play unmodified precon decks at my casual commander events.
I see people hate on certain decks because they are seen as too powerful (enchantment deck from Bloomburrow, zombie deck from Aetherdrift, Slivers, eldrazi, Phyrexian, dragon deck from Starter decks).
Back in the early days of precon commander decks the derevii deck and the one that gives you life even when in the command zone were decried as too powerful. The 2013 series of decks being some of my favorite commander decks.
I am going to give this a start, today hopefully. If you have interest in helping, I am willing to get the ratings into a document that we can find a way to share as a website or just post here, open to ideas.
I am 14 decks in and already have multiple that are bracket 4 because of infinite combos. One of them has a 2 card combo, but it quite literally does nothing on its own, it sacs two creatures to create one token creature with the second card of the combo doubling all tokens. So 2 -> 1 -> 2 for a net gain of zero. There are a few cards in the deck that if in play will interact with this.
Of the 14 decks entered (starting with the oldest moving forward) the average bracket is 2.7.
I am going to explore options other than the site (brackcheck.com) I am using. It is having issues saving decks, and lacks navigational controls.
Wow, this is awesome work you're doing here. I never would have assumed that but I would say if I were going to buy a precon I would absolutely want to know this ahead of time.