Commander Clash S2 Episode 17: Commander 2016 Preconstructed Decks
Hello and welcome to Commander Clash, a video series where several MTGGoldfish contributors battle in a four player Commander game for fun and bragging rights. Richard has returned from vacation and joins us again for this week. Special thanks to Jake for filling in for the past two weeks! With all the great feedback we received from those games, I'm sure this won't be the last we'll see of him!
Commander 2016 has finally arrived on Magic Online! To celebrate the set's arrival, we're going to be duking it out with the preconstructed decks! Since not all the cards were available online, we had to make some minor alterations, like changing Seeds of Renewal to Restock, but pretty much the decks are the same ones you can purchase at the stores. This game will be particularly useful for folks looking to see the precons in action before purchasing them for yourselves. Here are the four decks we chose:
- Tom goes for big explosive turns and wheeling hands with Entropic Uprising
- Seth plays all the artifact synergies and assembles devastating value engines with Invent Superiority
- Richard goes aggressive with an unending swarm of creatures playing Open Hostility
- Tomer manipulates his opponents to do his bidding through bribery and taxes piloting Stalwart Unity
How well do the preconstructed decks perform against each other? Let's find! But first, quick reminder: if you like Commander Clash and other video content here on MTGGoldfish, make sure to subscribe to the MTGGoldfish Youtube Channel to keep up with the latest and greatest.
Tom's Deck (Entropic Uprising)
Seth's Deck (Invent Superiority)
Richard's Deck (Open Hostility)
Tomer's Deck (Stalwart Unity)
Post-Game Thoughts
Open Hostility had a bad showing this game but keep in mind this is a sample size of only 1. A lot of things were simply unlucky for Richard. It's also reasonable to assume that all the preconstructed decks were designed—and playtested—to be roughly the same power level when played together, so I think if we played some more games then Open Hostility may end up looking a lot better. That's not to say the deck doesn't have some design problems: it's true that Open Hostility suffers from a lack of focus and direction, unlike most of the other decks which have a very specific focus. It doesn't help that Saskia the Unyielding doesn't particularly help any specific strategy, but rather pushes extra damage through in an unexciting way that you can't really build around.
Obviously I'm biased, as Open Hostility is the only deck without Blue so I'm already predisposed not to like it. But for what it's worth, I do think it's the weakest deck of the bunch, though it shouldn't perform as poorly this game as it should on average.
Next Week: Partner Commanders!
We're continuing our merry romp through the Commander 2016 cards by checking out the brand new partner mechanic: cards like Vial Smasher the Fierce can be one of two commanders leading your deck (instead of the rule of only one) if both commanders have the partner mechanic. The idea is that the partners may not be as powerful individually as some of the singular commanders, but having the ability to run two of them in your command zone makes them far more powerful than the sum of their parts.
As always, we love to hear from you guys! Tell us what you like to see, what you don't like, any ideas that we can put forward for future videos, or anything else you'd like to tell us! You can reach us in the comments section below or tweet me @BudgetCommander.
