Outside of Commander, getting into Magic: The Gathering can be rather difficult. Not only is the game outrageously complex, but it’s also obscenely expensive. With competitive decks costing at least a few hundred dollars in Standard, Modern, and Pioneer, there’s a major barrier to entry.
Thankfully, Commander has mitigated many of these problems with its preconstructed decks and casual atmosphere. Sadly, preconstructed decks for Magic’s competitive formats have been sorely lacking. This may finally be about to change, however, judging by a new addition to Arena. At long last, it seems like preconstructed decks are coming to MTG Arena
A Curious Addition
Following the release of Bloomburrow, a new tab has popped up on the MTG Arena store page. Descriptively titled “Decks,” this new store page is sadly devoid of any content currently. This makes it rather hard to determine exactly what Wizards will be selling to players, outside of the obvious.
Despite the lack of concrete information, the mere addition of this tab has gotten players thinking. Obviously, Wizards will be selling preconstructed decks to players fairly soon, but there’s a wide variety of options in that space. Thankfully, regardless of which avenue Wizards decides to go down, this new store tab should be great news for players.
Depending on their price, preconstructed decks are a fantastic starting point for both new and established players. Whether you’re looking to break into a format or try out a new archetype, preconstructed decks are ideal. Well, that’s the theory at least, provided that Wizards precons actually provide enough value to players to be worthwhile.
Previously, preconstructed Standard and Pioneer decks have been seriously lacking, to say the least. Out of the box, products like the Challenger Decks 2022 were woefully inadequate compared to actual competitive decks. This was largely due to the requirement of being low-cost value-focused options with appropriate reprint equity.
Thankfully, MTG Arena shouldn’t have the same problems. Since the price of cards are all equal due to Wildcards, Wizards should be able to build and price preconstructed decks appropriately. That is the theory, at least. Whether or not Wizards will actually make genuinely competitive and viable preconstructed decks remains to be seen.
Sadly, at the moment, there’s no word on when preconstructed decks will be added to the new MTG Arena store tab. Given MTG Foundations is on the not-too-distant horizon, hopefully, we won’t be waiting for long.
An Exciting Opportunity
At the moment, Wizards selling preconstructed Standard, Explorer, Historic, Timeless, Brawl, and even Alchemy decks seems like a sensible bet. All of these can be made with minimal effort, and hopefully sold for a sensible price. While this should already be a welcome addition to MTG Arena, the future for this store page could be bright.
In 2025, MTG Arena is set to finally introduce true four-player multiplayer. This basically means Commander is coming to Arena, albeit with a significantly reduced card list. Once this happens, the new decks store page would be the perfect place to sell preconstructed Commander decks. Ideally, these decks could be one-to-one with their paper counterparts, however, that feels somewhat unlikely.
Sadly, MTG Arena is currently constrained by the resources the development team has available. With more sets launching on MTG Arena each year, these resources are continually strained more and more. Ultimately, this may mean that adding Commander decks full of new and old MTG cards is too intensive a task.
Hopefully, by the time multiplayer and Commander come to MTG Arena, this resource deficit will have been addressed. If we’re lucky, the new decks page will have helped with this through increasing revenue. Whether or not this will actually happen, however, is anyone’s guess, as 2025 is still a while away.
Regardless of whether we get proper one-to-one precons or not, the decks store page on MTG Arena is still hugely exciting. The success of it, however, is far from guaranteed as we’re yet to see what Wizards is actually offering. More importantly, we’re yet to see what kind of prices Wizards is thinking of charging players for ready-made decks.
The Pricing Problem
In an ideal world, preconstructed MTG decks should be an affordable way to break into any format. On Arena, this should be theoretically possible since reprint equity isn’t such a major concern. That said, Wildcards on MTG Arena still cost money and they’re worryingly expensive at the moment.
Currently, if you want to buy a bundle of four rare Wildcards, it’d set you back $9.99. As if that wasn’t bad enough, four mythic Wildcards cost a staggering $19.99. This means that buying into a format like Standard from nothing is obscenely expensive. Even a budget deck like Mono-Red Midrange uses 33 rare cards and two mythics, would cost $109.90 on Arena.
Sadly, no matter which meta-topping Standard deck you look at, they’re all loaded with rare and mythic cards. Considering power level typically increases with rarity, this reliance on rares will always be the case for any format. This puts Wizards of the Coast in a very difficult position with no right answer.
For players, the best solution is for Wizards to just print tier-one decks, but for a fraction of their equivalent Wildcard cost. Sadly, this isn’t a realistic option as doing this would mean Wizards loses out on money elsewhere. Alternatively, Wizards could price these decks according to the Wildcard cost, but then very few players would buy them.
Unfortunately, the middle-of-the-road option isn’t a perfect solution either. By reducing the number of rare and mythic cards in a deck, Wizards could reduce the expected price. Doing this, however, leaves players with a weak and unsatisfying deck. Admittedly, players could upgrade such a deck over time, but doing so seems pointless. After all, MTG Arena already offers weak upgradable Standard-legal precons for free.
The Waiting Begins
Ultimately, the new Decks section of the MTG Arena store is still devoid of preconstructed decks at the moment. Until the first product pops up there, or Wizards reveals more, we won’t know what they’re planning. As a result, we’re just going to have to wait and see what the future holds with bated breath.
Hopefully, this new store section will live up to expectations and be a welcome addition to the game. We can also only hope that we’re not left waiting for too long. So far, Wizards of the Coast has yet to adequately address the Decks store section officially. Sadly, this means there’s no telling how long we may be waiting for more information or for products to appear.
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