MTG - Is it worth it to buy Zendikar vs. Eldrazi? The new Duel Deck for Magic: The Gathering

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Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Produced twice per year, the Duel Decks have begun to be compared to Clash Packs, a similar product that has two decks which can be played against each other. Duel Decks have often fallen victim to their own over-saturation, in that they are meant to serve so many purposes that they often struggle to meet so many demands.

How does Zenikar vs. Eldrazi fair, when evaluated as a product for New Players? What about Experienced Players, is their any reason for them to purchase this product? Does it contain cards of interest to Collectors? How about strictly from a Financial Value perspective? What noteworthy Reprints are included here? And finally, how about just in terms of Fun?

As always, knowing your needs and wants as a player will determine whether or not this Duel Deck is of value to you. Let’s take a look.

Eldrazi vs. Zendikar contains the following:

Let’s start with financial value. As of the filming of this video, about one week after this product’s release, if you were to purchase the individual cards from this Duel Deck, the total cost to you for the singles would be 28.61.

MSRP is 19.99, but when we take a closer look at just what these individual cards are, we see the two most expensive cards in the collection aren’t even worth $5.00 each.

It That Betrays, formerly a 10+ card, has dropped to $4.10 due to its reprinting here. Oblivion Sower is currently a preorder item from Battle For Zendikar. The Duel Deck versions are currently going for about $4.63 on TCGPlayer, but after release this is likely to drop significantly.

Beyond that, the only other cards of value above $2.00 are Avenger of Zendikar at 3.68, and Primal Command, which due to its reprinting has dropped to $2.50.

This is a good segue to whether this Duel Deck contains cards that were in need of reprinting. Given that Duel Deck re printings do cause a significant drop in price, it’s a shame the command reprinted here wasn’t say, cryptic command, whose reprinting in Modern Masters had nearly no effect on it whatsoever.

Along those same lines, Stirring Wildwood, a manaland that sees very little play, could have been much more appealing if it had been a Celestial Colonnade or Creeping Tar Pit instead. Or one of each, quite frankly.

Unlike many previous Duel Decks, Eldrazi vs Zendikar has nothing particularly noteworthy in terms of cards that ended a reprint.

In fact, instead of a much needed rare or two, we were given instead Forked Bolt, an uncommon that had an oddly high price due to its success in Delver decks, now much more affordable due to its reprint, and Groundswell, a green pump staple that wasn’t too high to begin with due to its being a common, but now will be securely affordable.

All in all, the large printing of Duel Deck will ensure these prices continue to drop, and will very little of these cards even being playable outside of the Duel Decks in formats such as Modern, which this is a very underwhelming for financial value and for cards in need of reprints. This also means experienced players are going to see little if any need for this product.

[MrDamojak]

The next duel deck: "15 squirrels versus Emrakul".

[binarycortex]

I was very excited to get this product. my son and I had a blast playing with it. Our first game lasted for an hour. Zendikar won by a single turn, my next draw would have dug me out of the hole I was in. Having missed the original Zendikar block, these duel decks are a fun way for me to experience some of the magic.

[noahdaglio]

I say revamping the duel decks by making them in the way of the world championship decks
Two top decks from the most recent world championships printed in the gold proxy boarder for casual players.
Wizards could even do online voting for the players they want represented in the decks.

[themagicalnerd]

They could've put Inquisition of Kozilek in the Eldrazi deck. It's on theme, and would be a good value reprint.

[xBeauGaming]

Totally agreed professor, I couldn't make any of the cards in there work in constructed. Should make a 6 booster pack...that would be a cool product.

[ominousromanpillar]

This duel deck is selling for almost 50 bucks in 2020

[liberkhaos]

We've fallen far from Elves vs. Goblins

[Revenantx]

Very informative, I love your approach to going over these products, including new player perspective in addition to collectors and veterans. I am looking to begin getting back into paper magic in the near future and have been going through your videos to see what the best way to get back in would be. So from a new returning player thank you for the extensive work you have done and are still doing.

[mr.strider]

I would like to qualify this little mini-speech with an introductory statement: I bought this Duel Deck set for two purposes. First, my significant other and I enjoy the duel decks, as they are a more casual player, and like being able to pick up a deck with some interesting stuff in it and play it. I added some G/W token support stuff, as well as a couple more big bruisers, to give the Zendi deck a bit more punch, and they seemed to play well off each other. As a lore nerd, I got a big kick out of commanding a bunch of awesome Lovecraftian nightmares (I missed out on the first Zendi block), and they seemed to enjoy rallying the bolstered forces of Zendikar in defense.

Once we get our kicks out of this, I'll probably be breaking the deck down for Commander components. I've got an Animar build that's always happy to see more colorless beaters and rares like Avenger and Primal Command. I know it's techically cheaper to buy the individual singles, but I'll take the fun I'm having just tossing the decks at each other and seeing what happened. I'm not going to defend this as an amazing or must-buy product (and the fact that I had to modify one of the decks is likely an indication of some balancing problems), but for a good time stomping around with horrific abominations at only 10 bucks a player, I don't feel terribly ripped off.

Overall, I'd give it a C-to-C+, since I feel the interesting flavor and opportunity to play with as-of-yet unreleased cards made it more interesting than just buying packs or grabbing basic starter packs. It is, at least as far as my parameters were concerned, decidedly average. There's also price to consider, this duel deck is $20, that means if one is buying it to play with another person, it's essentially the cheapest option that exists outside of the basic starter packs (which I insist are only for *very* new players, or a teaching tool). For a couple of casual players (or at least one player hosting a casual one), with the clash packs standing at about $30-32 each, and a sealed pool costing about $24 a player (not exactly an easy sell to someone who may only play magic sporadically), just saying, "ten bucks, pick a deck, let's have some fun" is a bit easier. Though, I will agree with you 100% Professor that given the value of the more recent clash pack (which I believe will be an outlier, not the norm), this deck could have definitely done more in terms of providing value. But, in the end, I would still argue it is a decent enough product, if you have the situation to support it.

[linkal_]

I'm surprised how well this duel deck aged. It that betrays is now $15 because of commander, and Oblivion Sower and Eldrazi temple see a good amount of Modern Play. Avenger of zendikar is now more awesome than ever thanks to Zendikar Rising, and Cards like Dominator Drone and Scute Mob are nice Casual Cards. I do agree that these decks could have been better. An Inquisition to Kozilek in the Eldrazi would have been an amazing Include, and some general includes to the Zendikar deck to make the games more fair would have been appreciated. I bought these, and the Eldrazi deck is extremely powerful when compared to the Zendikar deck. And another problem i had with these decks is that they have somewhat loose themes. Zendikar is a White weenie deck with a ramp subtheme, and the Eldrazi deck is a Rakdos Goodstuff deck with an eldrazi subtheme. If the Zendikar deck was more focused, and the Eldrazi deck was less of a general goodstuffs deck, then the two could have more balanced gameplay. My overall current grading is B, it has excellent financial value, but bad gameplay and a lot of missed potential.

[justinlethbridge]

I just got this and I kind of love it. I've bought almost all of the duel decks and while these doesn't stand up to the best of them it is far from the worst. Financially if you look at it now the prices have increased to where this is definitely a steal, Oblivion Sower and It That Betrays are going for around $7 each which almost pays for the deck. So far the Eldrazi deck does seem to be overpowered but every time I've played it I've been able to play It That Betrays.

Personally I bought this deck because the Eldrazi deck looked really fun and it is exactly that.

[imjuststuckhere]

oh. my. god. love that bitterblossom portrait in the background

[joshewert]

I feel as mtg protects its long time players that have purchase their cards since the beginning, which makes sense. They should be rewarded for being a long time costumer. For us new players joining a few sets ago... It's almost ludicrous to purchase some of the staple decks or I individuals. I like that there are a wide variety of budget decks for many types of games, I'd love to play a top ranked deck without having to drop two months of rent.

[aappaapp]

I was worried you wouldn't put out another video on time like you did last week, but I really like this video. Good Job!

[devinkerr]

I bought this deck on launch day and found the same. The person who used the Eldrazi deck won about 90% of the time. There was so much unconditional removal in the late game as well as ways to immediately pump tiny creatures into 4/4 Hellions (while the Allies need to pump literal fountains of mana away each turn) for Eldrazi that it was very easy for them to stabilize late game against all but the most overwhelming Odds.

[brunocorreia]

I don't consider myself a experienced player since i've witnessed people at the shops i go that talk about old combos, new combos, different formats and so on, but since i started playing i've tried to get the duel deck when it's released, i only missed the heroes vs monsters at the time. but i see myself liking the small stuff. I use the duel decks to have more cards, cards before i started playing, even if they are not that great, and the fact that they also gave two d20 life dice, and more tokens than usual, it's a good thing for me. From what I've seen of my copy of this duel deck, I give it a C, (and not higher after all this talk because still haven't got the opportunity to test it). And PS: who doesn't love reading the little history part they give for the duel decks? It makes the magic of the imagination flow, and that rules.

[JonathanStYves]

Congratulations to the professor to make me think for a moment that I was yet again alt-tabbed in Kerbal Space Program... but on my phone.

[zachray]

Another excellent video. I have a friend, recently into Magic, who's been buying up Duel Decks lately like they are going out of style. I'll point him in the direction of this video and let him make up his own mind on whether ZvE is worth his money.

Thanks, Professor!

[Inferor]

Shoutout KSP build music. I thought I was playing it in the background while watching the video. Had to Alt+Tab to check. :)

[davidgrom]

At out local gamestore Board Knight my buddy and I run an even on Sunday called "Squire Leauge". It's an event for kids 15 and under to come an learn how to play. The new "learn to play" decks that are free have been super effective, especially for the really young kids, they love them. They are even fun to play casually if you really want to catch a really quick game to feed the fix, lol :)