Every Universes Beyond: Marvel Super Heroes Commander Deck, Ranked

With spoiler season behind us for Marvel Super Heroes, it's time to get a good idea of what Commander deck we'll be spending our hard-earned money on.

Since Marvel is a big deal for Magic: The Gathering, we're being treated to four different preconstructed decks, each with a wide variety of strategies, commanders, and colors. It's a nice change of pace from some recent releases that only had two commander decks available, as was the case with Lorwyn Eclipsed.

The thing with Lorwyn Eclipsed, though, is that its two Commander decks, Dance of the Elements and Blight Curse, are very good out of the box. Is the same true for all of these Marvel decks? Wizards of the Coast has brought the heat when it comes to their Marvel Hero inclusions; let's see if they back it up with the decks themselves!

4 Doom Prevails

Kneel Before Doom

The first thing I noticed when playtesting the Doom Prevails precon was that it seemed to execute its strategy well, albeit slowly.

Its goal is to use your Commander to have one of your 30 (including clone effects) villain creatures connive at the start of combat, filter through cards, and either amass a large army of villains or slowly cause your opponents to lose their life out through those discard triggers. There's just one issue: it's trying to do a lot of things but doesn't do any of them well.

There's a severe lack of card draw here, which means the more you Connive, the more you're really just spinning your wheels rather than gaining card advantage. It's a shame, because the theme could work exceptionally well if the deck was built better. Focusing a little more on card advantage rather than simple card draw would have gone a long way here, and that's honestly the first place I'd look to upgrade the deck.

3 The Fantastic Four

Four-Color Good Stuff

It's only fitting that a deck featuring The Fantastic Four is in four colors. It's also a deck built around teamwork; Mister Fantastic can copy triggers, and you're heavily incentivized to cast noncreature spells. The issue, though, is that you can only do so much within the confines of a preconstructed Commander deck, and that's where The Fantastic Four suffers the most.

Out of the box, the best thing you can do is ignore the deck's theme and play Galactus, Devourer of Worlds. The problem, though, is that I'm not sure how often that's ever going to happen. When the best thing you can be doing in a precon deck is ignoring the themes of the precon, you have a problem.

As it stands, The Fantastic Four can do some powerful things, and there's a reason Mister Fantastic himself seems to be such a popular card in cEDH. However, in its Marvel Super Heroes precon, it suffers from a poor manabase and lacks proper support to perfectly execute its theme.

2 Wakanda Forever

The Heart-Shaped Artifact

Wakanda Forever suffers from the same issues that Doom Prevails does: it's not able to properly execute its theme out of the box. It gets the edge, though, because this one is a little easier to play through despite that flaw.

Your goal here is to play artifacts that can grow your Commander, or any creature, to be honest, somewhat Voltron-style, and have them become a big, unkillable behemoth of a threat that's attacking for a large amount of damage. Even out of the box, things can spiral quickly out of control unchecked, but more often than not, you might find yourself being stuck in a corner with nowhere to go.

The on-theme inclusions here all make sense and play into what the deck wants to do, but some of the other included cards are confusing. Why do we need Fleecemane Lion? Loyal Guardian feels like an incredible generic addition that does nothing other than generic Green/White things. At least this one should be easier to upgrade.

1 Avengers Assemble

I Understood That Reference

Finally, we've reached a Marvel Super Heroes Commander deck that doesn't have any glaring issues. That's not to say Avengers Assemble is perfect, but it's the most complete out of the box to be competitive at your table.

The Hero Typal theme is hard to get wrong, even if you try, but Wizards of the Coast did an excellent job of giving us some new and exciting Hero cards to play with. Black Widow, Agile Avenger is the obvious standout here, but all the other heroes do an excellent job of matching their Marvel flavor with the ability to aid your gameplan.

What's most impressive, though, is that the removal suite out of the box is actually up to par. Swords to Plowshares and Arcane Denial are staples in their respective colors, so it's nice to have those alongside the typical precon removal package. Will it compete with some of the decks your friends have fine-tuned? Honestly, it might; Avengers Assemble is, without a doubt, the best Marvel Super Heroes Commander precon in the bunch, and capable of some powerful plays.