Is It Worth It To Buy A Thunder Junction Commander Deck? A Magic: The Gathering Product Review 

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cracking an exact copy of the commander in the collector sample is pretty funny

I actually liked the thicc commander cards. I keep them all sleeved up in a box and it's how we randomly select a precon to play.

Watching while waiting outside my card shop to open

I recently got some friends into magic with the precons. That’s how I learned that the included deck box is actually big enough to hold the deck fully sleeved in dragon shields, plus tokens. They’re actually much better than they used to be

I liked the thick commanders. I always use those rather than the thin ones because they stand out more and feel like a leader. I dunno. Kinda sad they're gone!

I'm still excited to pick up Desert Bloom and rebuild for a classic desert archetype, it's many times cheaper as a precon than to buy the important cards alone as singles in this case Plus I can't turn down that reprint Hazezon 😍

I was able to pre-order the Thunder Junction Pre-cons for $129.99 from our LGS which is $32.50 each plus tax. I appreciate you rating them for us. Thank you for the video Professor.

Timestamps for decks 7:40 Most wanted; earn treasure. buy outlaws 9:38 Desert bloom; discard lands. grow them back 11:19 Quick draw; sling multiple spells. unleash big turns 13:17 Grand larceny; steal cards. generate mana reccomend just watching the full video though

Another honest review. Knowing the professor is here makes magic so much better to play ❤

Wait, what? The thick foil etched frame cards were some of my favorite things

I’m getting the Olivia deck no matter what. I’m so in love with the vampires in the Wild West aesthetic. It’s very “American Vampire”. I’m just happy they made a deck that serves my oddly specific kink. I’ll probably keep improving the deck over time haha

Damn, I had some high hopes for Desert Bloom

I can agree but I WILL be getting Desert Bloom. All because I need the new Deserts and Desert themed cards to go in my already existing Hazezon, Shaper of Sand --- DUNE themed deck that runs on Deserts and Sandwurms.

, editing mistake. Fumbled take was kept in. It's very funny Edit: And again at .

i liked the thick carboard commanders i wish they had given us the backup commanders in the treatment while they lasted

When I saw the decklists I decided to finally get the Ixalan Merfolk precon. Happy I did, I have so much fun with it. Even Spirit Squadron from Crimson Vow looks super interesting

Honestly I really like the wanted poster cards. Having the different frames make the decks feel and look as unique and personal as they are gameplay-wise. Also I just think the old western font looks cool. And because I like cowboys. "Stetsons are cool" - The Doctor

Damn, I like the thick commanders. They still fit in sleeves so u could keep them safe but they stand out if u accidentally shuffle it intk ur deck.

I was probably going to get Quick Draw anyway since I'm already running an Izzet Ghyrson Starn spell-slinger deck. Might even swap out commanders and let the ol' three armed gunslinger take a break for a minute in the 99. He's such a kill on sight target that perhaps he'll draw less attention if he only appears periodically.

Thanks for the video! Admittedly a bit sad that Desert Bloom is as rough out the box as it is, since I was admittedly going to just pick it up after reading Yuma's side story and seeing some actual legendary transmasc rep. But there's potential there at the very least, tempted to look into upgrading it.

I'm so happy I only got the Quick Draw precon. I almost took it apart, but I'll keep it with small modifications and maybe even change the commander to the other face commander. Thanks Prof for all you do❤

I thought the idea behind thick commander was that you could use them in command zone when playing with the precon, while taking the actual playable commander card and putting it into 99 in some other deck

Thanks for always being truly honest. We appreciate you for that!

Was waiting for this review! Thanks prof!

Honestly with precons, I don't treat them as such. I treat them more as a base to get started. A cheaper way to get a deck to play, and have fun. Something you can upgrade over time. Use the old cards as bulk in other decks until you can start building your own as you grow your card base.

Thank you, I am very happy I watched this video and avoided a bad purchase

I feel like regular set precons need to be $30 again. No one is buying these when you can get LOTR, Fallout, or 40k themed decks.

Going to my first pre-release tomorrow excited to crack some packs and have a few commander matches

I was just looking for this video yesterday. :) Really appreciate your appraisal.

I think the most baffling design decisions with these decks is the color identity of the legends. There's a single one that's dual-color, while the others are three-color. Of the three color ones, two of them are playing in mechanical space that easily could have just been two colors and still make sense for the characters representing them. Subtract White from Olivia and subtract Green from Gonti, and neither deck would change all too much. The Outlaws deck archetype in OTJ limited is Red/Black, and of the outlaw types, White generally lacks the majority of them. The Theft-cast theme Gonti goes for is actually really funny, because if you search the scryfall tag "theft-cast" in these colors, you will find exactly 3 cards that involve green: Villainous Wealth, which doesn't synergize with this commander design at all, Flotsam//Jetsam which also does not synergize directly with Gonti, and then Gonti himself. Both of these decks as a result lack focus because the designers had to put in a bunch of filler cards to justify the inclusion of these colors. Both decks would be much more tightly designed if they had just stuck with the two colors that the themes they play in instead of tacking on a spandrel third color. The other two face commanders are perfectly fine in terms of color identity. Red/Blue is the "Second Spell Matters" draft theme in many sets, which includes OTJ, and Deserts-matters has been solidly Red/Green/White ever since Hazezon, Shaper of Sand was printed in late 2022.

i bought most wanted earlier today and, honestly, i had fun playing it! i absolutely get the critiques but i really enjoyed the playing of it. it may feel a bit slow on getting the creatures out but the loop of the deck is pretty fun (making treasure, buffing outlaws, repeat)

6:30 - This isn't a bad idea; have the 100 card deck, then the 3 foil cards for the 3 possible commanders (or, when partners are involved, all of the relevant new partners as well). This gets around the "maybe this is a marked card" problem quite effectively. I mean, they should do this with $30 commander decks, but whatever. To be clear, though, there should be 3 dedicated commanders; the Face Commander, a Backup Commander, and then a good Reprint Commander. I'd be okay with 3 new commanders as well, but the iconic Reprint Commander has some history to it, and it's a good way to offer options w/o eating up design space. I *DO* think they need to stop including new legendary creatures cards that can't be your commander in that precon these products... those belong in the main set, or in a future commander deck. If you got the job to commission a BU deck, but you really want to put in your mono blue custom commander.. and it can't have partner for power reasons... tough luck fella! Do your job, and do it right.

I couldn't agree with you more on the full 100 card deck in non-foil, Professor! My first modification to any of my precon decks is to "de-foil" as many cards as possible to prevent the curse of curling.

I had pre-ordered Desert Bloom, saw the Decklist and canceled immediately. Glad I have The Prof's backing on that one. Sounds like they'll be pretty cheap in a few months.

Been waiting so long for this! Thank you professor!

I don't even play commander. I just love the profs takes on products!

Love your videos and these precon reviews especially. The only thing that bothers me is that I feel like there is some inconsistency when you're assessing the "bulkless value" - sometimes cards below 2$ will be ignored, this time it was below 1$ and maybe I'm mistaken here, but I believe that at some point it was even below 1.50. Would be nice to see a bit more concistency here to be able to better compare prices of different precons sets!

I do miss the oversized commander cards, they were great for foil peels.

I'm picking up the Most Wanted Precon, since i wanted a Deck in that color. I'll rebuild it to include treasure/artifact payoff. But something like Merchant of Truth from Deep Clue Sea would have been nice.

Love the outfit today! Very sleek! And thank you for the precon analysis!

Returning player here, and TBH, I was looking for the mutant Fallout Commander, but the ran out in my 2 LGS I have the closest. Then I saw these on a biref discount, and grabbed the Gonti deck mainly because one of my favorite triple color combinations. Overall I am happy with my purchase and will buy some upgrades to it, and then look for a commnader that play more on the colors I want (Gonti is basically a Dimir Commaer with green taxed to him for some reason). I know you talked about buying cheaper commander decks, and I will at some point, but NGL, I really want the Fallout Mutant deck, not only because I like fallout, but also that;s the type of deck(s) I love to play.

A very honest assessment, very appreciative

Thanks for the review prof! I got the grand larceny deck, with the hopes i can mash some aspects of it with the pirates deck from lost caverns of ixilan

It should be noted that Bloodthirsty Adversary is going to rotate out of Standard soon, where she sees large play in RDW, and that will likely cause her price to fall.

Watching whilst sleeving Stella Lee Quickdraw

I bought Grand Larceny and Most Wanted. I have a kid named Olivia so I had to get Most Wanted. As for Grand Larceny, I basically have this deck built already but in Grixis with Twelfth Doctor and Clara so that I can steal your stuff and score some political points by giving it to another player. I'll move the theft cards there and build a Felix Five-Boots deck out of the other parts. :)

Actually excited for the desert bloom precon. Plan to upgrade it, been wanting a desert deck for a while

Right on again Professor. Great review.

It's 2am and my girlfriend and I just got home from the prerelease at our LGS. Had an amazing night 💙 this set is soooo good. Pulled the new lotus ring!!!

As someone who is thinking about getting back into Magic after 20 years with this new set, this video will be invaluable to me. Thank you, Prof!

lovely review as always prof! something that bothers me is that the bounties are not "in addition", they replaced 3 of the double sided tokens from each deck for these bounty cards 😅 i would rather have more tokens tbh, especially since the desert deck makes so many

I had hopes for the outlaw deck just because of Olivia's character and the theme looked cool. I'm kinda surprised with this year's spring commander decks. They usually release 5 with whatever standard set it's for.

love these videos prof, keep it up!

There is a noteworthy but minor improvement in the land base in those, some of the pricier reprints were the good filter lands, like Twilight Mire. And also the fast lands, although here there is a notable exception in the Izzet deck not receiving one, even though it feels like it could use it the most - WotC definitely said that Spirebluff Canal is too pricey of a card to just include it in the precon, which is a shame.

As someone who loves nonfoils > foils… I would love if they include the non foil of face and backup commander… I hate always having to purchase them separately

I picked up the desert deck mainly to upgrade my hazzazan. The precon wants land recursion but has to few land fall triggers and ways to cheet mutple lands in to play, especially since most desert come in tapped and have a cost to produce colored mana its very easy to mana screw yourself. Amluet of vigor, crusaible of worlds, and dryad are required. It should have been jund for more graveyard support

Would definitely like to see the addition of non-foil variant of the commander face cards. Even the foils quality issues aside, it's still my preference to play with non-foils, especially if I use them in the 99.

Hi there Didn’t pick any precon, none appealed to me. Will probably buy few singles for specific new and reprinted cards. Thank you Prof for your videos, always worth watching.

I absolutely agree with the idea of having the commander cards come with both foil and nonfoil versions. I don't like foil cards and it is always a pain to find a nonfoil because usually the nonfoils are special versions that cost more.

Been waiting for this 😁

The precon deck boxes highkey gr8 asf. I have the white cardboard boxes carstores use for bulk (the ones ur local game store will sell to you so please support them by doing so for storage needs) and they are super useful since the deck boxes fit inside them.

Even the Prof calls it Markov Manor lol

The Desert Bloom one is really fun to play. I just got it today and swapped a few cards. I was able to make a lot of landfall triggers with Scute Swarm (six lands already) and Reshape the Earth (ten lands onto the battlefield). 🎉🤠✨️

Picked up my Academic from my lgs last week and i love it!

I liked the thick commander proxies personally. liked using them as my commander and putting the actual commander in my binder

I really like what they did with the Desert Bloom mana base. It's leagues ahead of other precons in terms of synergy with the overall deck

Though I'm likely in the minority, I'm actually very disappointed they got rid of the thick commander proxies. I've been keeping a bundle box full of each precon deck's tokens in card sized ziplock bags with the thick proxy on top as a way to quickly pick out the token pack when using its correlating deck. I guess I'll have to start printing them out now.

I picked up Dessert bloom because i have been gathering pieces to play Hazezon and he's a blast to play, but when playing the deck out of the box before changing it up a lot i didn't have any fun at all. I cant wait to pick up Quick Draw because that deck looks like a blast and i have never played an Izzet deck before!

I grabbed the quick draw deck. Can’t wait to play it. Just got it in today. It’s my first spell slinger deck

I really liked the super big commander cards, my first ever commander deck was the Teferi precon from like 2014 or 2015 and I would use the big version of him as the command zone lol

Honestly astounding you can keep up with the products.

Grand Larceny is very fun with some changes. I've added some more ramp, unblockable creatures (like Grima, Saruman's footman) and added Gandalf West Voyager for fun. I'm playing cards all over the place. It's quite a gamble because you play cards that doesn't really fit "your" deck, since you play other players cards. But it's very very fun!

I actually bought deep clue sea after your recommendation, decent deck, after some upgrades it's become one of my favorites and it's quite good 😁

Can't shake off the feeling that WotC is now withholding the best designs for the "definitely not a premium product, just priced at a premium" precons. You know, like the upcoming Commander product Modern Horizons 3.

I will agree in terms of out of the box, the deck im more exctied for Most Wanted is lackluster to say the least. However with the upgrades i plan on putting into it, its gonna be on theme of outlaw in every sense of the word.

I might pick up the Yuma deck to upgrade, just because I started making a Dune deck after seeing the movies. Hazezon is the commander for it, and there are some pretty good desert cards in the precon like Sand Scout and Dune Chanter.

Glad I picked up the quick draw. Didn't know it's gonna be pretty good.

Editor goofed at 4:41

Good thing about some of the Precons being unpopular or disappointing is buying them for $30-35, where you get the value from the bulk to quickly fill in your collection vs buying packs or singles.

Not sure if this something you already do I would love to see a follow up video either 1 probably long video or separate for each deck where you suggest cards to cut/add to upgrade the pre cons

I loved the thick commander cards. I use my original Prosper card in my abaddon deck and the thick Prosper card as the commander of my Prosper deck

I'm not gonna lie, your play mat tripped me out when you started opening the Desert Bloom precon. I though the deck was floating for a second. 😂

Quick Draw is going to be my first spellslinging deck and I’m so stoked for it

Bought all 4 on Amazon yesterday!

Dessert bloom as a deck looks pretty fun with some modifications, but maybe I should just play Windgrace instead... stupid sexy panther...

I have a Veyran deck already, might pick up Quick Draw and mix it with it.

im new to following this stuff live but its only a day later and quick draw is only about $43 on amazon currently. considering my own Niv Mizzet Parun deck is fairly solid but could use some help with consistency, its a no brainer for me

Would love to hear your thoughts on the best pre con commander deck series out of the box. Or if you were to pick four pre cons to play strait out of the boxagainst each other what would they be. Looking to get some precons to play with my wife and boys! Thanks keepnup the good work!

Honestly might pick up the desert deck just to get a head start on translating my Hazezon deck from Cockatrice to paper.

I always thought getting 2 versions of your commander was nice. I often used the thick, hard one as the commander and could still play the other one in a deck

God proff !! I bought my preorder yesterday Dx

thank you as always

Happy Birthday Prof! hope one day you come to Brazil again! bye

This review feels a little harsh in retrospect. I watched this and felt pretty discouraged about the 4 outlaws pre-cons I already bought. I was left thinking “did I waste my money”? But I just played the Olivia precon out of the box during commander night and it felt pretty solid. It was thematic, and consistent all night. Maybe it’s because I’m newer to commander, but I enjoyed having a simple yet explosive theme, like treasures + outlaws, that did its thing every time. I even won 2 of my 3 commander games tonight with that deck. Maybe it won’t hold up at more competitive tables, but I struggle to understand if that’s how we should judge precons in a format that touts being welcoming to all kinds of players. Players, like me, who are coming to commander to escape the pressure of standard competitive tcgs, and just pick up a thematic deck, meet some new people, and get a few social games in every week 😄

I love how on point the sponsor is! Also, 10 points for anything that tries to make coding interesting. (From a coder)

The quick draw one was exactly what I was looking for after the new Otter Bria was spoiled and very cheap to upgrade so far.

I think they focused more on the other formats finally with OTJ and less attention and time on the precons. Definitely give and take with wizards. Thanks for the valuable input im buying because cowboys😂, but I think you're criticism is clear on this one and agree.

i’ve played the gonti deck quite a bit now and it’s honestly pretty great out of the box. it didn’t stray from what it wants to do: steal other people’s cards. the land base is more than acceptable for a precon and i never find myself lacking in card advantage or mana

After just doing a thunder junction draft, this set is fire, so definitely worth buying imo