Gorion, Wise MentorGorion, Wise Mentor | Art by Jason Kang

"What’s the theme of your deck?" is a really common, interesting question. The number of possible themes out there are quite high– there are just a little under 200 Deck Themes on EDHREC with at least 500 decks to their name, including creature type themes like goblins. (Bless you to the 83 Goats players and 154 Arcane players).

So it’s no wonder that even after 150 Commander Preconstructed Decks have been released, there are still themes out there that have never gotten to be the theme of a precon. This last year, we got some incredible theme debuts, like Defenders and -1/-1 Counters, but not all the boxes have been checked…

What are the biggest themes without a precon? Let’s find out.

Methodology

I strive for a bit of serious with the silly, so I’m outlining what I mean to do in order to answer the question. There’s some ambiguity in themes, after all. I collected a list of all the Tags from EDHREC, for both Themes and Types. From there, it was a matter of poring over the list of Commander decks, identifying the most prominent theme (or two) and tagging them in a spreadsheet. I tallied up numbers and compared them to the main set of tags. 

As mentioned, I excluded themes below 500 for this as I had to cut things off at some point, and I also excluded themes that are too broad– namely playstyles like Control or cEDH or even Voltron, as well as those handful that are too niche— Rat Colony and the like. I could have consolidated some of the themes more, but there’s only so much time in the day.

I counted up to two themes per preconstructed deck, and both themes count towards totals and whether one has been featured or not, even if it’s technically a “back-up” theme. This is partially a matter of time– I’m not going to go crazy divvying up numbers of cards to decide if a theme is genuinely loud enough to count as full representation. There’s a bit of an art to it, for the sake of my mind.

I’m only counting Mass Market Commander Precons– no Brawl decks, no Secret Lair decks, no Magic Online exclusives. I’ll acknowledge them as nuance requires. Finally, this is divided into two categories: typal themes and non-typal themes. Let’s get into it!

Creature Types

This is the less interesting of the two categories of themes, in that the decision about whether or not a given creature type gets a theme largely comes down to whether the creature type has enough cards in a given set of colors, enough support to be worth playing, and whether or not they’ve got enough cards to reprint without just invalidating the process of trying to collect and build your own decks. (Some people have talked about how the Midnight Hunt Zombie deck was just better than most custom-brewed decks people had been slowly collecting over the course of a decade, which is something worth considering in all this!) 

There is something to be said for the collectability of creature types, which is likely why four of the most popular creature types have only gotten a precon by way of the Secret Lair Decks, despite being so absurdly popular. (Indeed, four of the five Secret Lair Decks were creature types, with the very first being the strange Coin Flip deck, also a narrow and collectible set of cards.) 

There are two points of weird nuance I want to mention here. Demons were technically one of the themes found in the Warhammer 40,000 Grixis deck (and one might insincerely argue about Kaalia), but I don’t know that Demon fans would count it, even ignoring the Universes Beyond nature of it. The Grixis deck was very divided, and the Demon theme could easily get lost in the noise. The other oddball is the Werewolf theme, which is unlikely to ever get a precon because the cards are almost entirely double-faced.

Nonetheless, there are nine creature types I could see getting a precon in the future, broken up across two quick categories.

Iconic, Lacking Cards

• Hydra
• Bird
• Sphinx
• Soldier
• Saproling

These are all top 100 creature types, but the interesting thing is that they don’t have a particularly high density of cards that care about them. Most of the support comes from the commander and a linked theme of some kind. Hydras have X Spells and Counters, Birds and Sphinxes have Flying, Soldiers and Saprolings have Tokens. They could easily be a subtheme in one of these precons but have yet to be so in a recognizable way. 

Most Popular

• Goblin
• Assassin
• Rat

These are pulled from the top 20 creature types listed on EDHREC, in the Typal section. My only guess is that any time these creatures have been the theme of a given set, there’s been something else to focus on. Angels in Streets of New Capenna had to give way to the 5 factions of the plane, Goblin typal is a fundamental “core” Magic thing that rarely gets a big swing, Assassins only got as much focus as they did due to the Assassins’ Creed mini-set, and Rats… well, that’s mostly Rat ColonyRat Colony and friends. Goblins got the Secret Lair Deck releases. Angels would have made the cut here, but it is actually getting its first ever Mass Market Precon this year in Foundations Commander. Throw Demon back in for a full ten!

Non-Typal Themes

There are, at time of writing, 34 themes with over 500 decklists that have not been officially printed as the theme of a precon. Not all of these are created equally. Here are some of the themes and my personal reasoning behind why it hasn’t happened yet.

Set-Specific: Themes built from a single set which didn’t have a precon for said theme attached to their set.

• Attractions
• Firebending
• Airbending
• Earthbending
• Lessons
• Rooms

Lessons is technically from three sets, but the Lessons matter package is exclusively in Avatar: the Last Airbender. The other reason Lessons haven’t gotten any kind of precon attention is because the Learn mechanic only half-functions in a way that makes Commander players sad. 

Un-Fun Play Patterns: Themes which are… challenging to make out to be fun. Some of these are actively detrimental, while others can just be repetitive.

• Extra Combats 
• Extra Turns 
• Land Destruction
• Wheels
• Bounce
• Cantrips
• Counterspells
• Cheerios
• Prison
• Fling

Extra Combats and Extra Turns are the most popular themes without a precon of any kind, at 20,000 and 10,000 respectively. Extra Combats is certainly more fun and requires the player to build up a board state before it can actually go off, but it still has a repetition issue that can make it challenging to be fun in a precon setting. 

The Theme is the Reward: These are themes which are hard to care about at volume because they are, already, a reward or engine of some kind. Creature keywords of all kinds would go here.

• Anthem
• Deathtouch
• Haste
• Exalted
• Myriad
• Scry

What do you even do to care about Myriad that makes it different from an ETB, Blink, or general use Aggro deck? 

Tricky for New Players: The base precon is intended to be something that a very new player could pick up and play with, with very little exception (Modern Horizons 3 and Commander Masters mostly). 

• Activated Abilities
• Aikido
• Land Animation
• Pingers

Too many activated abilities means too many decisions to make per round, which causes fatigue. Aikido is a variant of the politics theme focused on spending your resources wisely to ensure your opponents are scared to attack you– a little advanced for a first game experience. Land Animation is tricky because it is kind of already a reward but, outside of Earthbending, has the risk of ruining your mana if someone casts a board wipe. Pingers gum up the battlefield and make combat tricky, aside from the later variants like Thermo-AlchemistThermo-Alchemist. 

Too Narrow:

• Experience Counters
• Shrine
• Modular

At this time, there are 25 Modular cards, 22 Shrine cards, and 16 cards which use or care about Experience counters. At the time of its design, Roar of the Wild (the 2017 green-white Cats deck) had 104 cards to choose from, and even that had the problem of needing to justify itself. Three of the six cards which cared about Cats before 2018 came out in that deck (and two of the remaining three came out in sets that came out in 2017). There’s a linear nature to these as well, that I don’t foresee more cards changing.

Which brings us to my top four themes without a precon release! These are all themes I’d expect to see in a precon at some point, although some may wait longer than others...

Fourth place is Devotion. This is a mostly-monocolor mechanic that rewards you for having a board presence of a certain color (save for the ten two-color Theros gods, which cared about their respective color pairs). Before the Foundations Commander product was announced, we’d only had six monocolor decks. As for the keyword itself, there are 39 non-God cards with Devotion, and they don’t exactly mix well (save for the three colorless Devotion cards). Ultimately, they’re better as an occasional support mechanism for a mono-color deck rather than a prominent theme unto themselves, but I’d be surprised if we didn’t get a precon with it eventually! 

Current prediction: by 2036, most likely as part of a return to Theros.

Third place is Adventures. This flavorful mechanic gives players more card per card. Cards with an adventure on them let you cast the instant or sorcery, then go into exile. You can cast the main card while it’s “on an adventure”. The mechanic has shown up in a few sets now and has proven worthwhile. It definitely veers towards “is the reward”, as casting a card that draws you another card is really good. The other factor that’s somewhat against the subtype is that it’s been bundled into the Paradox/Cast from Exile themes. All the same, it’s a fun and flavorful subtype!

Current prediction: by 2034, when we skate past Eldraine for a third or fourth time. 

My second place: Snow! Originally debuting in Coldsnap, this supertype has been revisited in Modern Horizons and Kaldheim, as well as a pack in Jumpstart 2022. Cards either have the Snow supertype or can care about it in some way. A weird quirk of this archetype is the Snow Basic Lands, allowing one to run a full suite of exclusively lands of this type, if one forgoes staples like Command TowerCommand Tower, Shocklands, and the like.

At time of writing, there are 108 cards with the supertype and a few more that meaningfully care about it (think SkredSkred, not Cold SnapCold Snap). Jorn, God of WinterJorn, God of Winter and Isu the AbominableIsu the Abominable have been pretty solid hits for the theme, but a precon could bring some real nice goodies while giving new players an easy way to channel their inner Frosty. 

Current prediction: by 2032, most likely when we make it back to Kaldheim.

Attack Triggers: These are creatures which produce a benefit when they (or other creatures) attack. There are two commanders which directly copy attack triggers in Isshin, Two Heavens as OneIsshin, Two Heavens as One and Wulfgar of Icewind DaleWulfgar of Icewind Dale. A lot more attack triggers have been made in the last few years, with Mobilize and Firebending both being entire attack trigger mechanics.

Wulfgar was actually the back-up commander in the Draconic Rage precon, but seeing as only five cards in the deck had an attack trigger, I’d say it’s not been a whole theme. This category may fall into “already a reward”, but I suspect it’s the closest on the horizon all the same.

Current prediction: by 2030, as this is the least attached to a plane.

And that’s that! Every major theme without a precon, and some talk about why some themes don’t get precons. Let me know which predictions or assessments you agree with, as well as which theme you want to see get another precon (and if you want it in different colors). Ignoring my constant hope for a seventh, eighth, ninth dragon deck, my choice: an Adventure deck (Mardu please).