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?
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 :).