Have you ever wanted to play Magic the Gathering, but had no idea where to start? Where to begin, or even how to put together a deck?

Fortunately for you, a new product is set to be released on April 12th. One that will, not only help you get you onto the Magic the Gathering battlefield, but be competitive as well.

We’re talking about none other than the 2019 Challenger Decks!

Four Decks, Four Choices

Just like the 2018 Challenger Decks, which were extremely well received by the Magic the Gathering community, the 2019 Challenger Decks are making a splash everywhere.

The reasoning for this is the fact that these decks are based on already proven, competitive decks within the current Magic the Gathering Standard format season.

The four decks that are set to be released are as follows;

• United Assault (Mono White)
• Lightning Aggro (Mono Red)
• Deadly Discovery (Green Black)
• Arcane Tempo (Red Blue)

Each one of these decks are designed so that a new player, or a seasoned pro, can simply buy one of these decks, attend a Friday Night Magic event and not only compete against their competition, but have a good chance of actually winning.

Take our word, this is actually a STRONG product to begin your Magic the Gathering experience.

The truly insane thing, is just how cheap these decks are to pick up in their completed form, compared to if you had to buy the single cards individually and piece them together.

We know you’re asking yourself “what are the cards in each decklist? What does each 2019 Challenger Deck contain within it?”. So let’s go through it!

The 2019 Challenger Decklists

United Assault

The first deck that we are going to explore is the United Assault deck. It’s a deck that is very similar to what took home the Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica championship title, via Andrew Elenbogen when he defeated one of the most popular players in MTG history, Luis Scott-Vargas.

Although this deck has slightly evolved in the current standard season format, it is still very much competitive and can easily steal any game, against any deck.

The strategy is simple, play a lot of cheap creature cards, pump them up with your Benalish Marshall’s and Pride of Conquerors and swoop in with an “alpha strike” crushing and overwhelming your opponents.

This is one of our personal favorite decks to play, as it is incredibly fast and incredibly fun.

Lightning Aggro

The next deck is pure gas and is incredibly popular amongst those crazy players who identify as “red” on the Magic the Gathering color pie chart.

If you like to turn your cards sideways and sling spells at your opponent’s face, defeating them before they even knew what hit them, then the Lightning Aggro deck is the deck for you.

Just like the United Assault deck, the mono red aggro deck uses a combination of cheap creatures to overwhelm its opponents.

However, unlike the white weenie deck, this deck has the ability to hail down fire from above, via a large amount of instant damage spells at your disposal, such as Shock, Lighting Strike and Wizard’s Lightning.

To finish off your opponent you have Experimental Frenzy, which is an enchantment that allows you to play any card off the top of your deck, as long as you have the mana to cast it.

This can lead to some absurd turns, in which the player uses his Runaway Steam-Kins to continuous add mana to the pool, resulting in a never ending stream of cards.

Deadly Discovery

Next up, we have the Deadly Discovery deck, which was a deck that was and still is considered possibly the best all around deck in the current standard format, despite its ability to pull off a win in the Guilds of Ravnica Pro Tour, or the recent Mythic Championship.

To Mono White players, this deck can be a curse, as its mid-range strategy of creatures that use the “explore” mechanic can quickly result in a board state that rapidly grows out of control.

The Wildgrowth Walkers are truly the all stars of this deck, as they not only grow stronger each time one of your various creatures explores, but they also add three life to your total as well.

Meanwhile, as a finisher you have the Eldest Reborn Saga card that punishes your opponent for three turns in a role.

First making them sacrifice a creature, then making them discard a card, then finally bringing any creature back from any graveyard onto the battlefield under your control.

Arcane Tempo

Arcane Tempo is a blue red deck, that is very comparable to a popular deck in the current standard format, Izzet Drakes.

This deck contains an incredibly valuable card that has found its way into many popular modern and vintage format decks as well, Arclight Phoenix.

The one Arclight Phoenix contained within the Arcane Tempo 2019 Challenger Deck sells for $33.00 CAD at the time of writing!

This one card alone almost pays for the entirety of the deck if you were to turn around and sell it on the singles market.

However, this deck is also incredibly fun to play, using a combination of Goblin Electromancer, which enables the casting of cheap spells and Niv-Mizzet Parun to draw more cards each time you cast a spell.

This results in a board state and card advantage that will leave your opponents quickly scratching their heads wondering what just happened to them.

In Conclusion

The 2019 Challenger Decks are an amazing purchase for both new players and old alike.

For anyone looking to dip their toes into Magic the Gathering, you couldn’t ask for a better, more competitive product, that offers insane value.

Each and every one of the 2019 Challenger Decks can be opened at the time of writing at a “profit”, meaning that if you were to buy the product, open it and individually sell the singles, you would be ahead!

Rarely can you say this about a product that you purchase, but the numbers don’t lie when it comes to the 2019 Challenger Decks.

We are excited to add a few of these pre built decks to our own personal collections, but how about you, which deck do you most align with, or which one are you most excited to take out for a spin?

Let us know, as always, we’d love to hear!