As you probably know, taking a planeswalker deck to FNM is a good way to lose games of Magic. The same was true for intro packs, theme decks, and every other introductory precon the game has seen.

Sometimes people complain about this. They shouldn’t, though. Planeswalker decks have good reason to be bad. In fact, it is necessary for them to be bad.

Here’s why:

1. So new players can improve them.

Each Planeswalker deck comes with two booster packs. The idea is that you use the stuff in those packs to improve your decks. This gets new players into deckbuilding, and teaches them the basics of the game outside the game.

But if your deck is any good, you’re not likely to make it better by opening packs. And if your deck is any good, you also have to be good in order to improve it.

If introductory precons weren’t terrible, then new players trying to improve them would just make them worse. Which would teach a horrible lesson. Netdecking is fine, but it shouldn’t be mandatory, and products for new players shouldn’t teach them that changing their decks is a recipe for disaster.

2. So new players can use them at their tables.

Not every new player buys a precon. Some of them make their own decks, out of whatever cards they can find.

Have you seen the decks new players make? They’re trash. If you’re reading this, you probably draft better decks.

Introductory precons have to play nicely against those trash decks. If they’re even vaguely competitive, they’ll create all kinds of miserable curbstomps. Moreover, they’ll teach players that creating your own brew is a terrible strategy.

3. So the price stays sane.

A competitive Standard deck is generally going to cost hundreds of dollars. Even a budget Standard deck generally costs $50-$100. Do you really want to tell new players just getting into Magic, many of them literal children, that the basic introductory product costs a hundred bucks?

4. So speculation is impossible.

If competitive players are buying all the intro packs to break them down for parts, that’s a problem. When it happened with Commander decks, it was pretty awful. And that’d be a very hard problem to avoid with competitive precons. Short of deliberately massively overcosting them, there’s little WotC could do to ensure that the decks won’t be positive-EV. After all, they don’t know card prices ahead of time.

@zomburai, I’m pretty sure I promised to tag you in this one.