About EL
Welcome to Ertai’s Lament!
The universe of Magic: the Gathering is a vast and varied one, and while the ever-evolving nature of Standard yields endless material for commentary, so many creative worlds suffer from a two-year shelf life.
Don’t get us wrong, we love Standard. But each time we’ve returned to the game we’ve had just as much delight in exploring the sets we’ve missed, and we’ve found the most enjoyable way to do that is through the preconstructed decks.
The preconstructed decks, between 3-5 per set, we liken to a fly trapped in amber… a snapshot frozen in time to what Wizards wanted to showcase from a particular set. Some click and are a joy to play. Others are terrible, either through a lackluster mechanic or poor construction.
This weblog will review and score them all. A look back through time, and an exploration of the present.
How we Work
Every precon deck review we write is divided into two columns. First we break the deck apart and analyse its card selection, looking to see what its trying to do and how well it looks to accomplish it. Then the second half of the review consists of us taking the deck to the table against another deck from the set, and giving it a playtest before issuing a final score.
We are committed to offering new content every 48 hours, and review decks in blocks. We also have a number of other occasional features:
Ertai’s Meddling: Our most popular occasional feature, Meddlings take a precon deck and try and rebuild it, cutting weak cards and adding better ones. Intended to respect both a player’s budget as well as card pool, we follow two rules. First, we can’t add any rares or mythics. Second, we can only add cards from sets already present in the deck.
Ertai’s Trickery: Ever found a few theme decks that seemed to be a good fit together? Ertai’s Trickery takes those decks, dumps their cards into a pile and looks to construct a single, 60-card deck from them with the best the decks had to offer.
Whispers of the Muse: We have a very active community here at Ertai’s Lament, and there is no shortage of expertise on offer. The Whispers series allows you, the reader, to submit a theme deck you’ve been trying to tinker with, and solicit ideas and suggestions from other readers. Trying to improve that theme deck, but not sure how? Let us know, and we’ll be happy to help!
Precon Championships: Another popular series, this one asks the question, “what if you took all the decks from a given block season and pitted them against each other, March Madness style? Which deck would emerge the champion?”
So have a look, and above all else enjoy yourself here. We’re always happy to get feedback and suggestions too!
In addition to Ertai’s Lament, our articles on Preconstructed Magic have also been featured on Quiet Speculation, Red Site Wins, and 60 Cards.
Is there anyway to contact you guys directly besides twitter? I have some some business opportunites I would like to discuss, but not through the comments section.
Hello there. I just found this sight and I must say… I LIKE IT!
I’ve been playing since ’94 and never really got into the precons until bout 2 years ago when I got “Kithkin Militia”, I’ve been collecting them ever since. Planeshift is my favorite of these theme sets and I was pretty excited to see that you reviewed them.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the comment, and glad to meet another member of the Preconstructed Community! What was it about Kithkin Militia that got you hooked on precons?
Don’t tell anyone, but a review of Morningtide’s precons isn’t far off…
My friends started getting into the game and I wanted a current deck to play against theirs. Lorwyn just came out so I decided to get the “Kithkin Militia” precon because
A. They had the elemental, elf, and goblin decks
B. I was interested in trying out this new tribe
Well, this particular deck far exceeded my expectations and pretty much opened my eyes to this whole new world precons that I had been ignoring all these years.
Soon after I went out and bought “Unraveling Mind” and “Sliver Evolution” and thus began my fascination with these decks.
Hello sir, I’ve been looking at your site, and I enjoy reading your articles about preconstructed and on the site quiet speculation, I was curious in your opinion which decks you would recommend to a player looking for a good solid preconstructed out of all the ones you have reviewed and played thus in this blog+. I know thats a big thing to ask but I am curious what you think is the best overall from all those that you have tested in your humble opinion. Keep up the good work.
Hi, its me again.
I recently acquired the Scars of Mirrodin intro decks. These are my first intro decks and I didn’t realize that they don’t come with their own boxes.
I know that you have many of these decks and I was just curious as to how you store them. Do you sleeve them and put them in those plastic boxes you can buy at the store? Do you rubber band them together? Do you put them back into the larger package that they come in? Or are you like me and make your own precon size boxes from frozen pizza boxes?
Hey Tony-
I’m a bit of an obsessive, I’ll be the first to admit, and may not be the best role model for storage. But as you asked, here’s what I do.
There’s a specific design of Ultra Pro sleeves that I use to sleeve all of my decks. Then I store them in a flat black Ultra Pro deck box. Finally, each Fat Pack has a card box that can hold three decks this way. So for a set, I’ll buy two Fat Packs and use the boxes to store my sleeved/boxed decks.
For specialty products like the Duel Decks, I’ll use the official Ultra Pro deck box for that set.
So long as your cards are safe from damage, there’s no wrong way to store them, but for me I like to give them the “archival” treatment as I regard them as something like museum pieces.