2018 Challenger Decks

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

As announced last month, and greatly anticipated by Magic: the Gathering players, Wizards of the Coast previewed the decklists for the standard legal Challenger decks.  Landing on a shelf at your local gaming store on April 6, 2018, Challenger Decks are the quick window into Standard and are intended for players who want to skip deckbuilding and jump into Standard at their local Friday Night Magic.  There are four decks built from some of the best strategies in Standard :

• Counter Surge - 2-color black and green 
• Hazoret Aggro - 1-colored red 
• Second Sun Control - 2-color white and blue 
• Vehicle Rush - 3-color red, white and black 

For an MSRP of $30, each Challenger Deck comes with a complete sixty-card main deck and a fifteen-card sideboard and is intended to be playable and competitive at a local level right out of the box. All cards will have been previously printed in Standard and are Standard-legal.  These decks are a great purchase for newer players looking to get into Standard but can also appeal to veteran players thanks to the powerful cards in each deck.

Each deck contains:
• 60-card main deck
• 15-card sideboard
• A box capable of holding 75 sleeved cards
• Spindown life counter
• Quick reference guide

Reviewing the decklists - 

We did anticipate that Wizards would be delivering a strong first showing with the Challenger Decks - in a two word summary - 'expectations exceeded'!  We are still looking for our socks which were knocked right off.  We assumed that the number and quality of rares (and there are a LOT), would be throttled back a bit in deference to the secondary / singles market environment, and we were completely wrong.  

There may be a few rumblings from some quarters regarding this, but the general consensus is that any dip in singles prices at this time would recover in time.  Having just said this, anticipating an ever-changing marketplace, there may not be a full recovery of (yesterday's) price before those cards do rotate out of standard.  


The big take-away here we think is that those players who may have been hesitant about playing standard due to entry price (for a competitive decklist), may now join in the fun, provided the retail prices remain stable and close to the suggest price.

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