Four new Magic: The Gathering Commander precon decks have arrived in Marvel Super Heroes, and while I initially ranked all face Commanders from the Marvel set confidently, now that the deck lists are out, the dynamics have completely changed.

While I stand by the individual Commander rankings as they are based on what's possible to build using the card abilities and mechanics, as precon decks go, there are clear winners and losers from this set.

What was shaping up to be the most competitive deck has arguably become the worst of the four, despite a high reprint value, and the four decks in general are split by a rather large power gap. So, let me take you through each of the decks and where they rank now that we have the complete deck lists.

4 Doom Prevails

Strong Leaders, But A Disjointed Creature List

Despite arguably having the strongest face and backup Commander pairing, the Doom Prevails deck is easily the worst in Marvel Super Heroes, being completely let down by a puzzling creature list.

Doctor Doom relies heavily on the Connive mechanic, and while that is prevalent throughout the creature list, it otherwise feels incredibly disjointed, with each of the Villain cards having its own alternative agenda.

Doom Prevails has the highest reprint value of the four Marvel Super Heroes Commander precons.

That's not to say that the deck isn't powerful when it works, but cards like Loki's Double and Lady Loki's Manifestation focus on copying creatures or creature types, while Madame Hydra focuses on creating Villain tokens, and Superior Foes of Spider-Man deals with exiling cards from the top of your library.

This deck tries to fit too many strategies and mechanics into a 100-card deck, ultimately to the detriment of the precon as a whole.

The deck is highly salvageable through upgrades, but ideally, you want to start off with much more synergy in a Commander precon. That being said, I look forward to the challenge of getting this deck up to speed versus some of the more powerful decks we've seen this year, including all the Secrets of Strixhaven Commander precons.

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3 Fantastic Four

Pick A Lane

I had my doubts about The Fantastic Four deck long before the deck list was revealed, but that was largely because it adopted a similar approach as the TMNT precon of having a bunch of options to lead the deck, only it was missing the key ingredient that made the TMNT deck work: Partner.

Without Partner, The Fantastic Four deck is more about picking the right Commander for your play style and praying you pull the right cards at the right time to suit its level of aggression. The Thing and Human Torch are more aggressive Commanders, while Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman are more passive.

Partner allows you to select more than one Commander for a deck, as is the case in TMNT and with certain other combinations like Ellie and Joel from The Last of Us Secret Lair.

This leaves the deck also feeling split between defense and offense, which you could easily spin as a situational build, but in reality, it needs to pick a lane and commit, rather than trying to play both sides of the fence.

I like that it's heavy on sorceries, which feeds into the Commander ability triggers, but only six instants feels like a missed opportunity. Opponents will see where most of your strategy will be built, in your first main phase, so they can easily target you with counters and removal. An inability to prevent a lot of this by casting instants on the stack means you're telegraphing a lot of your moves, which isn't ideal in Commander at all.

There's also a ton of ramp in this deck, but I'm going to strike that down as a positive for now, especially given the mana costs for activating the abilities of the Fantastic Four cards, which could be awkward if you're not drawing the lands you need early in the game.

2 Wakanda Forever

Artifacts On Steroids

The Wakanda Forever deck is the only one that hasn't really changed positions on this ranking as the deck lists were revealed. Based solely on the face Commander, T'Challa, the Black Panther, it was clear what kind of deck this would be, and the deck list just confirmed it.

Heavy on artifacts (and artifact creatures), the Wakanda Forever deck is going to be an absolute steamroller if allowed to build up momentum.

This deck also creates Vibranium Tokens, an indestructible artifact that can be tapped to create one colorless mana.

It's virtually the complete opposite of the Doom Prevails deck in that it's super focused on its main mechanics, and it's hard to make a wrong move as virtually every card has positive interactions with each other.

There is definitely room for improvement, and I would argue you could go even lighter on the creatures, taking out some unnecessary ramp or even removing the Monarch mechanic entirely, and instead going with some additional enchantments or spells to really apply the pressure to your opponents.

This is a strong Commander precon right out of the box, but its potential after some tinkering is what excites me the most.

1 Avengers Assemble

From Zero To Hero

I was anything but a fan of the Avengers Assemble Commanders when they were first revealed. They seemed to indicate a rather basic tribal deck was going to be on the way, and the chances were it would be too aggressive to work, at least given the state that the format finds itself in.

However, once I got a look at the deck list, it's safe to say this is a very powerful Commander precon, and it doesn't need a single card changing to be capable of taking wins at your next Friday Night Magic event.

Most of the power in this deck comes from cost adjustment, making Hero creatures cheaper to cast, and synergizing this with the Captain America, Team Leader ability, which gives them Vigilance and Haste until the end of the turn, while then putting a +1/+1 counter on both the creature and Captain America.

This deck works around colorless cost reduction, meaning you'll still need to pay color-specific mana costs.

This deck has the ability to get out of control so fast that the game will be over before you even figure out how to stop it. That being said, it is weak to board wipes due to its creature-heavy approach, but there are plenty of ways to protect yourself from this, although none of the common methods, such as Teferi's Protection, are included in the deck and would need to be added as an upgrade.

Avengers Assemble went from being the most basic and uninteresting of the four Marvel Super Heroes precons to easily the best, and it will be interesting to see if the market value of the decks adjusts accordingly, or whether it stagnates because the reprint value is a little lower compared to the others.

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