bec

You are absolutely right, and I completely forgot to mention that neither of us invested in expensive lands. I agree that focusing solely on upgrading lands wouldn't have necessarily increased the combat power of our decks. The same goes for purchasing one large expensive card. Instead, our upgrades were aimed at improving our creatures, by swapping weaker ones for stronger ones. So, I don't think we wasted any money on unnecessary items.

Before the upgrades, our matches were evenly matched and quite enjoyable. However, after the upgrades, I have consistently been on the losing end, never having a moment where I am able to take control and set the pace of the game. I always find myself responding to their moves, that's why I thought about the correlation between upgrade cost and performance.

Thanks for the reply!

Some of my best commander decks are my cheapest. It’s almost all about synergy.

I have to admit, their deck is seriously impressive compared to mine, especially after all the recent upgrades. Their deck is so streamlined and efficient, leaving no room for confusion about its strategy and execution!

My deck, on the other hand, is a bit more versatile but that comes with its own challenges. It can be tough to decide which upgrades to go for and what to swap out. Plus, as someone else mentioned, my deck might not be the best fit for this particular 1v1 scenario anymore. We used to be evenly matched, but now I find myself struggling to keep up and take the lead, I think I won only once since the upgrades, and only because they got mana screwed lol

a precon deck with $120 in upgrades over $20 in upgrades will definitely give them a leg up

I took another look at my calculations and realized that the $120 probably included all the fancy full arts and foils. Even though I had to rely on my memory and might have missed a few cards, the upgrades seem to be only $25 mine compared to their $75 for around the same number of cards (minus the lands).

It's not as big of a difference as I thought before, but despite that, I still haven't been able to get ahead in any of our games since then lol

You're right, and my bad for not mentioning this earlier, but even though we're new to paper MTG, we've had some experience playing on Arena. So, we didn't end up wasting money on useless cards. We both decided to upgrade our decks with cards that align with the precon theme, making sure to replace weaker or unfitting cards that originally came in the deck!

Oh, I totally agree! My deck is definitely not as synergistic as theirs, especially after all the upgrades lol

I really appreciate your response!

Money alone is a bad measure because it misses what the money is spent on.

It seems like you all have the same concern regarding my "price = power" statement, and that's my fault since I haven't specified it. Yes, spending a lot on better lands, foils, and full-arts doesn't necessarily translate to more combat power in the game. In my case, I invested a bit in upgrading my lands to improve mana fixing, while my friend didn't feel the need to do the same since their deck already had multiple ways to fix and ramp mana!

We both have decks that are heavy on creatures, so both upgrades went in that direction with some sorceries and instants thrown in to enhance the precons. Neither of us spent to min-max mana.

I used that power level calculator tool, which rated both precons as a 5. Surprisingly, my upgraded deck scored higher at 6, while theirs dropped to a 4. It makes me wonder if there are some limitations to how the tool scores decks, especially since our matches used to be more balanced before the upgrades, and now I find myself constantly getting crushed consistently lol

Additionally, you should really consider whether or not a 1v1 is a fair test of your deck

I think you might be onto something there! Keeping up with their deck is definitely a tough challenge, and I mostly find myself reacting to their moves instead of making my own. It did seem to go smoother when there were three of us playing, so perhaps you're right!

I'm looking forward to checking out the other links you shared! It took me a bit longer than I thought to go through the deck lists and apply the upgrades manually, but thank you!

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!

I took a look at Isareth's entry on Gatherer, and it seems that there are indeed two different abilities at play here. This means that you are correct in pointing out that one can copy either the first part or the second part of the ability. It's quite an interesting interaction! I am excited to try it out and see how it plays out in a game!

Thank you, I appreciate the help! Happy Gathering

This definitely helps clarify things, thank you!

If I'm understanding correctly, then, when copying a "boast" ability, it allows me to receive the effect of the boast twice while only having to pay the cost once ("pay x, do y"). Correct?

Thank you for the clarification! I was actually going to ask for more information before your edit, haha.

I think this combination looks great and I would be interested in trying it out!

I did consider something like that, but in my playgroup we're all pretty new so I'd rather have something more specific so there are no mistakes or people asking every other turn what any of the colors mean! Just to make everything easier for everyone

Correct!