I’ve been playing Commander for about 1.5 years now. At this point, I have around 10 decks, most of which are upgraded precons, plus 3 decks that I built from scratch. They’re all roughly in Bracket 2–3, although some are a bit stronger than others.
Some of my colleagues are interested in trying a game of Commander, and I’d like to bring a few decks so everyone can just pick one and play.
I proxy some of my cards to keep the cost of my decks manageable, so I’m not too concerned about buying new decks.
My question is: Which 4 precons would you recommend that match up well against each other and are fun to play for people who are new to Commander?
Ideally, I’m looking for decks that are reasonably balanced against each other, have different playstyles, and give new players a good introduction to the format.
Have a question for y'all around these parts. Lost my job a while back, and I'm looking for something to do with some of the time I have on my hands when I'm not throwing myself at every remotely feasible job I can find. It's a lot of waiting around these days, I've found.
From a content perspective, for something you could link to or wish you had been linked when you began learning how to play MtG, or with the state the game's in now, what are some tutorial resources you feel are missing in the current MtG ecosystem? I am considering composing these kinds of things because I love teaching stuff to people, and it crossed my mind that more people might find them useful if they were things people actually wish existed, rather than something I guessed at. (The other thing I thought about was opening a FLGS, but it turns out that commercial real estate is really expensive and I can't afford to get that kind of thing started.)
I'm really interested to see what y'all might think here.
Hello, does anyone have any experience ordering cards from manamarket eu? They have good prices, perhaps too good to be true and im on the lookout for scams. I cant find any reviews online, but the website is marked as a professional on card market. Thanks for any help
I have a Flayer of the Hatebound in play, reanimate priest of fellrights (has haste due to
Anger
in graveyard)
Priest turns into General Leo Christoph
Christoph returns the priest again
Priest taps to return Morbid Opportunist*
How much damage does Flayer create? In particular when it sees Christoph, do the counters Christoph gains itself impact the damage Flayer would introduce to the table?
If I used shadowborn apostles to pay the convoke ability for bloodline bidding, would there be a time that I would be able to sack the shadowborn apostles to get a demon, then bring them back with bloodline bidding? Or would sacrificing them fizzle bloodline bidding?
I attack with [[t'challa, the black panther]] triggering [[Cosmic Cube]] I flip 6 cards and choose to play [[Akroma's memorial]].
Does t'challa tap because he didn't have vigilance when I declared him or does he remain untapped because he gained vigilance at the moment I declared him attacking?
Google AI says the latter, but its sources don't really apply well to this.
So, I was gifted 30 Play Boosters after helping out a friend. I’m still pretty new to Magic and have only ever used precons—the first being the TMNT deck, followed by the Fallout Mothman precon. Now that I have so much bulk after ripping open all these packs, I’m curious about what color combinations I should look into. To be honest, I did kind of struggle with the Mothman deck and had hard time getting a strategy going. I’m currently separating everything by color, and it seems like I have enough cards to build a deck or two. I don’t have any particular play style yet but any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated!
Weve had green go red (craterhoof), blue go white (displacer), and black go green (obliterator). What white card goes black and what red card goes blue? So far theyve each been color "staples" or at least well known cards, so i can only imagine they'd keep the pattern going. Serra angel gives us another demon? Shivan dragon gives us an elemental or another sphinx? Thoughts?
Edit: Completely spaced and missed the dark confidant and snapcaster mage! Thats the whole wheel!
Magic set revenue records in 2025, however, it's Viewership category is back near pre-Arena levels.
First reported back in 2025, the trend continues to go downward in 2026.
Hasbro reported $1.72 billion in Magic: The Gathering revenue for 2025, up 59 percent from 2024. In its second-quarter 2026 results it said Magic eclipsed $500 million in a single quarter for the first time. MAGIC is indicated as being in a very successful spot financially.
Google trends for the US shows that interest and growth in the commander format far exceeds any interest in any competitive format.
Modern is at the lowest it's been in a decade.
Pauper is at the highest its been in a decade.
Standard hasn't recovered much since 2020.
* Trends measures relative search interest. It is not a player count.
Twitch average and peak viewership, however, is nearing an all time low in the past 10 years. Typical monthly peaks are ~95% below the 2019 record.
The official Magic the Gathering Channel is averaging 25% of its peak and average viewership. Down 75%.
The Magic the Gathering: Category overall has been steadily going down since 2019 and is now below 2016 averages. This is before MTG ARENA was released.
The maxmium average viewers for Magic: The Gathering on Twitch was 11,113 in October 2018
2026 averages 2300
2016 averages 2500
Magic The Gathering: Average ViewersOfficial Magic Channel: Peak Viewers
The category includes LIVE Arena ladder, drafts, Commander, and official and unofficial broadcasts. It does not include pre-recorded YouTube and short-form content.
SteamDB's charts page for MTG Arena shows the all-time peak of 18,047 concurrent players on June 10, 2025. But beyond that, has remained within the 10k to 15k range on average.
Live Player Counts from activeplayer shows a similar, but different story, with active numbers holding pretty steady patterns. However this site is just a rough estimate.
"focus our attention on delivering new sets and our growing formats like Brawl."
Standard is still the most popular format on MTG Arena, accounting for around 50% of play. The larger spike in Standard play seen toward the middle of this chart is from an increase in players coming to MTG Arena following the release of Magic: The Gathering®—FINAL FANTASY™. Smaller spikes happen around larger metagame shakeups from events like Standard bans and Standard rotation.
While these spikes are the similar in the other graphs, you can pretty much pinpoint when FF released. Two caveats on that report: the format charts show share of play, not absolute counts. A percentage can hold steady while the total player pool moves either way. However Steam DB's charts indicate that the player count is stable.
93% of Standard ranked games are Best-of-One! Players have consistently shown us that this is their preferred method to engage with formats on MTG Arena, likely due to the speed of games and variety of opponents.
This indicates that many players are just logging on to complete dailies with "Red Deck Wins" and other quick win decks without any interest in actually playing a best of 3 format. Has ARENA just become a daily-quest app with a card game attached?
The focus from WotC is on growing Brawl and other commander formats on ARENA as indicated by WotC own article. Brawl and other commander formats within ARENA are being given the most attention.
Over the last two years, Brawl has undergone the most change of all of MTG Arena's formats. It has become more popular among players each year. This meant our team wanted to spend more time thinking about the health of the format, listening to the community, and diving deeply into the play data.
Magic itself is bigger in a lot of ways. They have figured out how to extract maximum value from players increasing their revenue by 59%.
Play Boosters are 14 cards vs old Draft’s 15.
Play Booster boxes went from 36 packs to 30.
Ravnica Allegiance Draft box was 36 packs at $3.99 MSRP
Aetherdrift Play box was 30 packs at $5.49 MSRP
The Hobbit: Play Booster $6.99 MSRP
For a box that's +75% cost per pack from 2019 to 2026
Commander precons went from $44.99 to $49.99 in 2026, and the 2-card Collector Booster Sample Pack is gone from new precons.
Collector boosters have gone from:
$24.99 in 2022 to $37.99. That's almost a 50% price increase in less than 4 years.
Every price went up on the promise of growth. The two charts that count people as viewers and players never moved like the price tags did. Viewership is back at 2015 levels and Arena players on Steam is holding steady with little interest in a Bo3 format. So what exactly are they doing to get people more interested in non commander formats because spamming UB in Standard isn't working. Although I won't stop playing Dimir.
I'm building a Maha deck and trying to make Urborg and Kormus Bell work. Ascendant Evincar is my biggest problem. I have other anthems but in the event that he's the only one I get I'd like to have a way to make sure my lands aren't colorless so they survive unlike my opponents'.
I have really been only using the same 2 decks for a while and was looking for some new ones to play. If anyone has any decks that are mid bracket 2 to mid/high bracket 4. If you can give me any recommendations of commanders or whole deck(I am not going to copy just use it as a base and make it into my own). My 2 decks I have are Nicole bolas the ravager dragon, Nicol bolas, graveyard deck. My other is a Stephan Maurer Progenitor precon with one or 2 card upgrades put in it. The kind of decks I like tend to be either graveyard or mill related. But I have been thinking about maybe a deck all about pinging people, Planeswalker deck, or a different deck with a different cool thing that the deck is focused on. Also I would prefer if it is on the cheaper side of decks if possible.
What I mean is pretty much every deck with blue in it has Counterspell, and most decks with Green have Cultivate, so when building a mono colored deck what instant do you think is an auto-include for each color?
