Here's every command deck from Marvel Super Heroes, from worst to best

Four new ones Magic: The Gathering The commander precon decks have arrived in Marvel Super Heroes, and while I was initially confident in rating all the face commanders from the Marvel set, now that the decklists are out, the dynamic has completely changed.

While I stand by individual commander rankings because they are based on what can be built with card abilities and mechanics, there are clear winners and losers from this set when it comes to precon decks.

What was shaping up to be the most competitive deck ended up being arguably the worst of the four, despite the high reprint value and generally the four decks being separated by quite a large energy gap. Let me walk you through each of the decks and their order now that we have the complete deck list.

4

Doom prevails

Strong leaders, but a disjointed list of creatures

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

Doctor Doom relies heavily on the Connive mechanic, and while it's prevalent throughout the creature list, it otherwise feels incredibly disjointed, with each of the villain cards having their own alternate agenda.

That's not to say 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 exile cards from the top of your library.

This deck tries to cram too many strategies and mechanics into a 100 card deck, which ends up to the detriment of the precon as a whole.

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

3

The Fantastic Four

Select a lane

I had my doubts about the Fantastic Four deck long before the deck list was revealed, but that was largely because it took a similar approach to precon TMNT, that it had a lot of options to run the deck, it was just missing the key ingredient that made the TMNT deck work: Partner.

Without a partner, a Fantastic Four deck is more about picking the right commander for your playstyle and praying you draw the right cards at the right time to suit his level of aggression. The Thing and Human Torch are more aggressive commanders, while Mister Fantastic and Invisible Woman are more passive.

It also makes the deck feel split between defense and offense, which you can easily flip as a situational build, but really need to pick a lane and commit rather than trying to play both sides of the fence.

I like that it's sorcery-heavy, which feeds into the commander's triggers, but only six moments feels like a wasted opportunity. Opponents will see where most of your strategy will be built in your first main phase, so they can easily target you with tokens and removal. Not being able to prevent this by throwing instants on the stack means you're telegraphing a lot of your moves, which isn't ideal at all in Commander.

There's also a lot of ramp in this deck, but I'll chalk that up as a positive for now, especially given the mana cost to activate Fantastic Four card abilities, which can be annoying 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 didn't actually change position in this ranking when the deck lists were revealed. Just based on the face of the commander, T'Challa, the Black Panther, it was clear what kind of deck it would be, and the deck list only confirmed that.

An artifact (and artifact creature) heavy Wakanda Forever deck will be an absolute steamroller if you let it build momentum.

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

There's definitely room for improvement and I'd say you could go even lighter on the creatures, remove some unnecessary ramp, or even remove the Monarch mechanic altogether and instead go with some extra spells or spells to really put pressure on your opponents.

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

1

Avengers Assemble

From zero to hero

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

However, once I looked at the package list, it's safe to say that it's a very a powerful command precon and doesn't need to trade a single card to win at the next Friday Night Magic event.

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

This deck has the ability to spin out of control so quickly that it's game over before you can even figure out how to stop it. That being said, it's weak to get into wipes due to the full creature approach, but there are plenty of ways to protect against it, although none of the common methods like Teferi's Protection are part of the deck and would need to be added as an upgrade.

Avengers Assemble went from 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 or if it stagnates as the reprint value is a bit lower compared to the others.