I’ve been staring at the five Secrets of Strixhaven Commander decklists on my phone during work meetings for about two weeks now, which is probably a personality flaw but also the whole reason I’m writing this post. The set drops April 24, a Friday, and five different precons at $49.99 each is the kind of decision I refuse to make at the LGS counter while somebody behind me is buying a Bundle and asking about prerelease slots.
So I made a spreadsheet. I know. I already made one for the main Strixhaven product lineup, and I told myself I wouldn’t do it again, and then I opened Numbers anyway. Here’s what I found.
The quick answer, if that’s all you want
Silverquill Influence is the one to buy.
Not because it’s the most fun deck of the five. Not because Killian, Decisive Mentor is the flashiest commander. It’s because that deck has Land Tax in it, and Land Tax is sitting at around $24 across its recent printings, which means the deck’s single-card value already eats most of the sticker price before you count anything else. Throw in Shadrix Silverquill, Eriette of the Charmed Apple, Tomik Wielder of Law, Archon of Sun’s Grace, Gift of Immortality, Eldrazi Conscription, Anguished Unmaking, and the foil face commanders and you’re comfortably over MSRP in paper value with cards you’d want to own anyway.
That’s the whole finance case. The rest of this post is whether “value” is actually the right way to choose a precon, because after thinking about it more, I’m not sure it is.
How the five decks actually break down
A precon is a weird product category. You’re not really buying singles. You’re buying a game-night-ready experience, a commander plus ninety-nine friends who are supposed to play nicely with them. So the question of “value” has two meanings that keep sliding past each other. There’s the reprint value, which is just math. And there’s the question of whether the deck actually does its thing when you shuffle it up at the kitchen table.
Let me go through them the way I think about them, rather than the way Wizards orders them on the product page.
Silverquill Influence is the Orzhov aura-and-goad deck led by Killian. The strategy is: make your opponents fight each other, protect your stuff with enchantments, and grind. The reprint stack is phenomenal. Land Tax alone, as I mentioned. Plus Shadrix Silverquill, a former mythic that’s been slowly climbing since Strixhaven rotated out of Standard. Angelic Destiny, Gift of Immortality, Archon of Sun’s Grace, a stack of aura payoffs that any Enchantress player would look at and go “huh, I could use these.” The list is absurdly dense with things worth owning.
The downside: the goad plan is a little threadbare out of the box. Goad works best when there are already threats on other people’s boards, and at a casual four-player table, half your games are going to be turn-four-people-still-setting-up, which means Killian’s ability sits there doing nothing. You will want to upgrade. But you bought the deck for the reprints, so who cares.
Prismari Artistry is the Izzet “cast big expensive spells” deck with Rootha, Mastering the Moment at the helm. This is the deck I personally want to play the most. Magma Opus, Rite of Replication, Goldspan Dragon, Brudiclad, Manaform Hellkite, Mirrorwing Dragon, Veyran Voice of Duality, Chain Reaction, Dig Through Time. That’s a murderer’s row of Izzet bombs. Goldspan Dragon alone is holding around $9-13 in older printings, Rite of Replication is a Commander staple, and there’s a lot of stuff in there that shines in the right shell.
But (and this is the part that genuinely bums me out), Rootha is not a great Izzet commander. She rewards you for casting an expensive spell in your first main phase to get a big Elemental, but most Izzet games want you holding up counterspells or waiting for a Treasure Cruise trigger. The deck feels like it’s pulling in two directions, and the Elemental payoff is kind of a side quest relative to the cost-reduction Prismari mana theme. I suspect most people who buy this deck are going to immediately rebuild it around Veyran or Galazeth Prismari, both of which are in the 99.
Witherbloom Pestilence, the Golgari sac-and-drain deck with Dina, Essence Brewer, is the one I’d recommend to a player who hasn’t committed to a build style yet. Sacrifice is forgiving. You can upgrade this deck for $20 in singles and it hums. The reprints are quieter. Bloodghast, Ophiomancer, Priest of Forgotten Gods, Pawn of Ulamog, Jadar, Casualties of War, Beledros Witherbloom. None of them are the $24 bomb Land Tax is, but collectively they’re a respectable pile, and Dina herself is a legitimately fun, interactive commander that does what the deck wants from turn three on.
Witherbloom also has the benefit of teaching a new player actual Commander rhythms. You sacrifice fodder, you drain a little, you rebuild, you drain more. Every turn has something to do. If I were buying one of these decks for someone I was trying to pull into the format, it’d be this one.
Lorehold Spirit is the Boros graveyard-spirits deck with Quintorius, History Chaser. It’s the only precon with a planeswalker commander, which is cool, and the concept of “cards leaving your graveyard = free Spirit tokens” is thematically great. The deck has Angel of Indemnity, Guardian of Faith, Kami of Ancient Law, Staff of the Storyteller, Wave of Reckoning. None of those are exciting reprints. The whole package feels like it’s carried entirely by Quintorius himself.
And Quintorius is genuinely fun. But Boros graveyard is a hard sell. Red and white don’t naturally bin cards, so the whole engine depends on you finding graveyard enablers that, for the most part, are in the precon itself. It’s a precon that plays like it needs a sequel precon to really work. Pass unless you specifically love the commander.
Quandrix Unlimited, Simic +1/+1 counters and X-cost spells with Zimone, Infinite Analyst. The weakest reprint pile of the five. Kami of Whispered Hopes is solid, Curse of the Swine is a meme, Stroke of Genius is a kill spell, Tanazir Quandrix is in there. But nothing in this deck is pushing the value over the sticker price, and Zimone’s ability (cost-reduce your X spells by the number of +1/+1 counters on her) is one of those things that looks amazing on paper and reads as “win more” in practice. You’re already spending a lot of mana on X spells to begin with. The reduction matters most when you don’t need it.
The precon I’d actually buy, if I’m being honest
If I had $50 burning a hole and I wanted to just have a good time opening the box, I’d probably grab Prismari. I know, I know, I spent three paragraphs arguing it’s a mediocre value buy with a mediocre commander. But Goldspan Dragon is in there and my current Izzet Commander deck doesn’t have one, and sometimes a precon is an excuse to buy cards you’ve been meaning to own anyway.
This is the contradiction I can’t resolve cleanly. Reprint value is the cleanest, most objective way to rank these decks, and by reprint value Silverquill wins by a mile. But reprints only matter if they’re cards you were going to buy anyway. If I’m not building an Enchantress deck, Land Tax is a $24 card I’ll never cast. Whereas Goldspan Dragon is a card I will genuinely use next weekend.
So yeah. Silverquill if you want the most value extraction. Witherbloom if you want the most playable out-of-the-box deck. Prismari if you want specific reprints for your existing Izzet builds. Lorehold and Quandrix are skippable unless you love the commander on a personal level, in which case go with your heart, that’s allowed.
The bundle math
The five-deck bundle is $249.95 MSRP, which is roughly even with buying individually. Online retailers are already listing the set of five around $160-180. Many Realms had them at $169.99, Collector’s Store at $159.99, which is meaningful savings if you actually want all five.
I don’t want all five. Two tops. Probably one. Maybe zero, because I already told myself I wasn’t buying precons this year and I keep breaking that rule.
One thing to flag for Commander players who already have a collection: a lot of these reprints are going to slot straight into existing decks, and if you’re not tracking what you already own you’ll end up with three Sol Rings and two Arcane Signets from a single purchase. I scanned my collection last month and was genuinely surprised by how many Commander staples I already had in bulk, sleeved up in old precon boxes I hadn’t opened in years. That’s the kind of thing bulk box scanning is actually good for. Realizing your “value pickup” is a card you’ve owned since Commander 2018.
One tangent about Quintorius
Quintorius, History Chaser being the only planeswalker commander across the five decks is doing a lot of work lore-wise. He’s transitioning from a legendary creature (which he was in the first Strixhaven set) to a planeswalker, and that’s apparently a big story beat for the set. I don’t care about the lore. I care that a planeswalker commander is weirder to play than a creature commander because you can’t throw equipment on him and he dies to targeted removal in a way that feels bad. If you’ve never played a planeswalker commander before, Quintorius is not going to be the gentle introduction you’re hoping for.
The pre-order window
Prereleases started April 17. The set releases April 24. The decks are already available to preorder. If you want one of these (particularly Silverquill, since that’s the value play and the first one that’ll sell out at a normal LGS), put in your preorder before the weekend. This is the part where I pretend I don’t always forget to do this myself.
Anyway. Five decks, one clear value winner, one sleeper for new players, one that I’ll probably buy despite my own advice. If you want the broader set strategy, I wrote about what to do with Secrets of Strixhaven products in general and about how Mystical Archive’s return affects old Strixhaven singles last week. Go forth and make responsible choices with your cardboard budget.