Gavin Verhey used today’s episode of Good Morning Magic to explain how the Commander Legends preconstructed decks came to be.
The idea to include two precons was to appeal to newer players with the release of the set, including three new cards each to grab the interest of experienced players as well. Precons are a great on-ramp for starting players, so they modeled the Zendikar Rising precons off the decks from Commander Legends, which were designed much earlier. These are a new experiment to test out and the usual Commander precons with tons of new cards aren’t going away.
The themes are based off common archetypes and strategies newer players can easily grasp, like red/white auras and Equipment, along with blue/green ramp and card draw. On top of the new legendary creatures, each deck has two new cards to play along with the legend and the themes for the deck.
Verhey also emphasized that they want to make sure not to invalidate previous commanders or have too much overlap on legendary creatures. While Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait is similar to Tatyova, Benthic Druid, Verhey mentioned how the life gain and cheaper mana cost are important for Tatyova while the additional land drop for Aesi enables different kinds of deck building and goals.
Verhey wrapped up the video and the end of the Commander Legends preview run by noting Good Morning Magic will be going back to three episodes per week, starting Monday.
Check out the full precon decklists.
