Hello o/
I’ve been an off and on magic player since highschool and after going to a draft felt the urge to try building a commander deck again. After having some fun brewing I saw that a new set called Bloomburrow is going to be released shortly. I looked through the set and was blown away by how powerful some of the cards are. A lot of them just seemlingly better versions of cards that I had slotted into the deck I was brewing. A spellslinger prowess deck built around Balmor, Battlemage Captain. Cards that surprised me were Stormcatcher mentor, Bria, Riptide Rogue, and Kitsa, Otterball Elite. To me they just seem so much better than any of the existing prowess cards.
To get to my actual question. How do you all deal with the power creep? Are people moving away from commander into other formats? Or do you just need to keep updating decks every few months with the new cards being printed?
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I get around this by working on a few projects. Right now I am working on getting a foiled out commander deck for each mono color and colorless. This is letting me focus on a commander deck for a while and circle back on the others every so often to see what I can revamp them with. Also this is a long term project I’ve been working on since the pandemic, so it is actually attainable with my current obligations. Also going for foils only limits my choices and slows me down by making me want to wait for rotation when cards cycle out of standard.
My current builds/intent are:
White: Reidane, God of the Worthy - Spirits/Stax. In progress
Blue: Saruman the White - Bird/Surveil. Recently updated with Bloomburrow
Black: Massacre Girl - Ninja/Attraction. Limited stuff worth considering since Murders at Karlov Manor. With theme options for upgrading are likely going to be slow and limited.
Red: TBD (potentially Goddric, Cloaked Reveler unless I see something better while working out my mono white deck)
Green: Grunn, the Lonely King - Warrior/Druid/Enchanted Lands. Last overhauled around 40k commander decks.
Colorless: Graaz, Unstoppable Juggernaut - Construct/Artifacts. Potentially up for revisions.
I’m allowing myself to play with making deck list as I feel inspired, but with how frequently cards get released and having other expenses to manage I might not get around to making everything I want to.
I will probably allow myself to work on Muerra, Trash Tactician by scrapping some of my old decks and using proxies. This is the deck list that I am considering, but working on this one is probably going to be more of a side project and dependent on how the next three months go. It is also an alpha build, so I might think of other directions I want to take the deck before acquiring cards.
Edit: updated formatting due to commenting from mobile.
Thanks for the answer. I think it’s a great point to have a few decks that you have and slowly upgrade. I was thinking about it when building it for the first time. However once you have a first version it can evolve over time as you want it too.
100%
No deck list I’ve made survives contact with other players and a deck that works well in one play groups meta does not work as well in another group’s.
Whenever I’m building a new deck I try to keep my budget below $100, not including any cards I already have in my collection. So I don’t bother worrying if my deck has the best thing of everything, I just focus on finding something that stays within the price range and looks fun to play.
Also focusing harder on a theme + sub-themes will keep you from including everything. Like making a Prowess deck but also sticking to Wizard typal means not every new card is going to be relevant and you might find alternatives to expensive staples that don’t fit your theme
Right on the money.
Prowess is an easy one to get lost in since all but two card types trigger it. You could play enchantress, affinity, storm, or some flavor of eggs and have your deck look different than someone running the same commander.
Great point! I’ll keep thinking and see what other themes / play patterns grab my attention. Then we will see where it goes :).