Retrospective Reviews: Intro Decks

There's no time like the future to dig up the past. That's right: Retrospective Reviews are back! Wizards of the Coast still has a few old products I want to dig up and dissect for purely scientific purposes before pivoting the article structure a second time, so let's get into it!

Let Me Introduce Myself...

This entry in the series is all about this little product Wizards of the Coast used to make: a preconstructed deck themed around the current set. It's had three names and a dozen variations on the same idea: a deck that a person can buy and immediately begin playing casually.

I entered the game in 2011 and ended up buying an intro deck from the first two sets of Theros. Blazing Beasts of Myth from Theros and Insatiable Hunger from Born of the Gods introduced me to the age-old strategy of Gruul Stompy. I'll always have a soft spot for Ember Swallower and Nessian Wilds Ravager, even if I found out pretty quickly how... inefficient both were.

My wife owned a couple of the Shadowmoor theme decks when we first met. The Izzet Side Step and Orzhov Life Drain were both common mainstays of our early cardboard-slinging nights. There was nothing like landing a Voracious Hatchling, a four-mana 6/6!

First called Theme Decks, then Intro Decks, and finally Planeswalker Decks, these funky little on-ramps survived for over twenty years (from 1997 to 2021) before discontinuing. What were they? What did they do for the game?

Let's talk about it!

The Product and Origin

When I say Intro Deck, I'm referring to the product as it evolved over time: a simple deck made to be easy for new players to buy and play with their friends. The exact nature of this is somewhat nebulous. It changed over its time, but the premise remained the same: a deck released alongside a set designed to let a player experience some part of the set with relative ease. These decks were never designed to be genuinely competitive, though players could upgrade them and have fun at a Friday Night Magic event all the same.

When Magic: The Gathering first released in 1993, the only way to have a deck was to construct one yourself from either booster packs or starter decks (which were, as best as I can figure, big booster packs). This was in the wild west early days of the game, when there were no limits on how many copies of a card could be in a deck and the 60-card deck minimum hadn't been established. Magic itself didn't know how to build a deck. Time passed and things changed. Firm deck rules cropped up, and, eventually, the powers that be realized that brand-new players may not want to have to learn how to build a deck before they can really begin.

And so Theme Decks came about!

A History of Changes

How do you introduce someone to Magic: The Gathering? Not now, but back in the late 1990s/early 2000s? As a corporation?

Your challenge is to design a deck comprised only of cards from the main set that gives players an idea of what the set is like while also encouraging them to buy more cards from that set in order to upgrade it in a variety of different ways. If you got five Magic players in the room, you'd probably end up with six different, contradictory lists of "must-have" features for the deck. It's no wonder then that Wizards of the Coast iterated so much on the formula.

A brief summary of the changes:

• 1997: Tempest releases. Product established. Theme decks are 60-card decks with 3 rares containing only cards from the current block.
• 1998: Urza's Saga releases. The number of rares per deck is shifted down to 2.
• 2002: Onslaught releases. Packaging changes to show off the colors of the deck.
• 2008: Shards of Alara releases. The product officially becomes Intro Packs. They shift to being 41 card decks (strangely), including a foil rare. Cards can be pulled not only from the current expansion but also the most recent core set. A booster pack is added.
• 2010: Magic 2011 releases. Intro Packs are shifted up to 60-card decks.
• 2012: Magic 2013 releases. Intro Packs now contain two booster packs going forward.
• 2016: Kaladesh releases, the product is re-branded as Planeswalker Decks. The front rare is now a planeswalker, which is itself one of four original designs in the deck not actually in the main set (but nonetheless Standard-legal).
• 2020: Theros Beyond Death releases the final Planeswalker Decks. No equivalent replacement is released.

It's honestly hard to really consider and analyze a product like this. With four to five decks coming out with every single set released, it's hard to consider how individual card choices may have impacted things. For the most part, the make-up of these decks were simple, low-value cards. They weren't intended to be competitive, specifically because they were intended for a casual audience. I recall some instances where they missed the mark. Doomwake Giant was a bit stronger than they had meant to go for with an Intro Pack rare. Throughout history, cards would turn out to be sleeper hits, and a $10-15 product would have one card that paid for the entire box, if not more.

These were few and far between.

What Happened?

Let's examine the make-up of the product, focusing more so on the end result. These were 60-card decks assembled from the current block/set, intended to be very low-powered, and they were technically Standard-legal. It could give new players an on-ramp into Magic at large and older players (maybe those who had drifted) a chance to click specifically into the newest set.

There was one particular feature that I found in decks across the years: part of the description would suggest upgrades from the deck, usually consisting of chase cards from the main set. One of the Theros decks asked you to go out and snag an Elspeth, Sun's Champion, while another wanted the player to sleeve up a Stormbreath Dragon. Depending on when you got into the game, you might remember that these were not always worth a dollar. These decks provided players with an outlet from any cards they cracked from packs or scored at drafts; they practically begged for that.

Hey, upgrading decks is part of the experience! It's what we're here for, but I can't help but notice that there's a product out there that introduces new players to the game, can help click older players into the set, and has a function in encouraging players to buy the current set to upgrade it.

That's right.

Set-based Commander pre-constructed decks.

Why?

Intro decks were serving opposing purposes. Let me explain.

The Theme/Intro/Planeswalker Decks were trying to be Standard-legal, but genuinely new players were unlikely to actually try playing the format with those decks. Any who did were likely to have a bad, BAD time. There's no reason to bring any of these decks to an FNM. The lack of playsets and the mediocre cards in there means it could never be someone's entry point into Standard.

I'll note that 2020 saw the end of the product and the start of the set-based Commander decks, but Wizards of the Coast operates about two years in advance. What product arrived in 2018 that could have truly signaled the end of Intro Decks?

Challenger Decks!

Challenger Decks are $30 decks designed to actually play at Standard events. These products are for those players interested in getting into competitive events.

So if the product designed to introduce players to Magic no longer needs to be Standard-oriented, what's the best way to introduce them to the game in a casual setting?

Obviously, Commander won there. Commander could use a set's mechanics and also include cards from throughout Magic's history, which would get players interested in digging up that interesting, storied past. It's one of the most popular ways to play, and I don't see that changing in the near future. It has the benefit of being a more casual, forgiving experience.

There are, notably, little introductory products called Starter Kits! These serve the purpose of introducing players to the game in its 60-card form and allow for players to learn the rules of the game in a bare-bones fashion (and at more of a bare-bones price than even the intro decks). This is an entirely subtle product, but one which truly signaled the death knell of the Intro Deck as its purpose was completely overtaken by not one but two different products that better achieved its aims.

Conclusion

Intro Decks are an important lesson: just because something has worked for a long time does not mean it will work forever. These decks had their fun for a long time, but they ultimately didn't work at their intended function. Wizards of the Coast has been trying harder and harder every year to get more players into the game, but Magic is a complicated game at first blush. It's important that the game improve constantly, even when that means cutting a product that seemed to work out.

I wonder if this is relevant to anything else going on. Nah.