Hey there! I’m new to paper MTG and play Commander with my playgroup. We’ve been having a debate about whether the total value of a deck really indicates how strong it is. One of my friends argues that value doesn’t equal strength, but I can’t help but wonder when I keep losing to a deck with a higher price tag than mine.

I’ve been playing 1v1 games with my friend for a few months now, so I know their deck almost as well as mine. It can be frustrating when I can predict their moves but still can’t win with my basic deck. I understand the point that a couple of expensive cards in a deck won’t guarantee a win, but when a deck is upgraded with so many pricey cards, it feels like a whole different ball game.

For reference, we both started with precons, and both upgraded. I spent $20, they spent $120+. Inputing my deck list in a deck value calculator returns $103, which is lower than their upgrade alone lol

I don’t mind losing when the match is good. I hate losing when I’m always on the backfoot and can’t do much besides hoping to survive another turn

What are your thoughts on this? I’d love to hear different perspectives on the relationship between deck value and strength in the game.

edit: I received more responses than I expected, so I’ll need some time to go through them all and respond. Thank you in advance!

  • bec@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
    11·
    4 months ago

    You’re totally right about foils and full-arts costing more without necessarily giving a deck an extra edge in combat compared to the regular versions.

    Both of our decks rely on dealing creature damage to win, and while I did get some lands (just under $2 for some duals that are better than the bounce lands I had before), they didn’t feel the need to invest in faster lands since their deck has plenty of other ways to fix and ramp mana. So, we both made focused upgrades to our decks, mainly adding creatures, along with some sorceries and instants that complement our commanders.

    I checked on Scryfall and calculated the cost of the cards I added to my deck (TCGplayer), and it came out to about $26 for 15 cards. Although one of the cards seems to have gone up in price (+$3) since I bought it, the rest are pretty close in value.

    I did the same price check for their upgrades (just the 15 cards I can remember, they might have added a couple more), and it’s sitting at $75. The price difference isn’t as drastic as I thought, so they probably spent more on fancy full-art cards and such.

    But hey, I do remember back when we were both playing with stock decks, I used to have a fighting chance and even won more often - maybe not quite half the time, but more than I do now after the upgrades. Today I’ve lost all four matches we’ve played, and only in one I got mana screwed lol Guess I need to step up my game! lol

    consider having your powerful pet decks and whatnot, but also setting up a budget deck

    I’ll try mentioning this idea, but I have a feeling it might not be well-received. My playgroup is just three of us, after all, and the person I’ve been discussing has two precons - the one we’ve been talking about, and another one that hasn’t been played much (maybe twice in the past six months) because they really loved the precon they upgraded, even stock.

    The third person in our group has more decks and they span a wider range of power levels, but we don’t want to leave the other person out…

    Myabe I could suggest we play one match using our fully upgraded decks, and then another using more stock ones? I won’t be able to use my favorite deck (the one in this thread), but it could give me a better experience if I’m not constantly getting stomped lol

    Thanks for the reply!