How much are the MTG Challenger Decks 2022 worth?
The yearly release of the pre-constructed standard decks has been going on for a long time. However in the last couple of years things have changed. For the most part the yearly standard decks were released alongside the Core set for that year and in most cases the face card for the deck was a Planeswalker.
Magic the Gathering do not appear to be making new Core sets, these have been replaced with another Standard set on a specific plane. This means the usual Core set deck is no more.
We have however had the introduction of the Challenger decks over the last few years which are great, straight out of the box, fun decks to play. These decks a designed around the current meta but obviously do not have the same power level that the top decks have. Let's have a look at the Challenger Decks for 2022
These have already been fully revealed with the full deck lists available on Wizards of the Coast website so there isn't going to be much in the way of spoilers here. What we want to do is have a look at the value of each of these decks and see if they are actually worth buying. We will take into account all cards except basic land cards to determine the actual cost of buying this deck. This includes the 15 card sideboard. The chances are you are likely to already have the commons or uncommons but for consistency we thought it be best to do all cards.
Mono White Aggro
27 Rares - 1 Mythic
The total cost of this deck to buy would be £49.25 with the top cards in the deck being Intrepid Adversary being £5, Skyclave Apparition being £4 and Fateful Absence at £2.80.
Dimir Control
27 Rares - 2 Mythics
The total cost of this deck to buy would be £66.03 with the top cards in the deck being Hullbreaker Horror being £5.50, Shipwreck Marsh being £4.25 and Memory Deluge at £4.00.
Gruul Stompy
29 Rares - 1 Mythic
The total cost of this deck to buy would be £60.25 with the top cards in the deck being Goldspan Dragon at £16.00, Ranger Class for £3.50 and Rockfall Vale being £2.50.
Rakdos Vampires
28 Rares - 1 Mythic
The total cost of this deck to buy would be £39.09 with the top cards in the deck being Den of the Bugbear for £7.00, Blightstep Pathway at £4.50 and Henrika Domnathi for £3.00.
These prices are at a time when the deck lists are known and have been for some time but the decks have not be made available for sale yet. It is likely that some of these card prices will come down slightly once these are for sale. It just depends on how many people open these just to sell the singles.
The retail price for these decks is £24.99 so all the decks clear this price in terms of card value. Even the lowest value deck you are gaining nearly 64% in value. The Dimir Control deck value is over 2.5 times the retail price. All these decks show there is good value to be had.
There are 4 of the top 12 value cards being land cards so it goes to show there is always value in rare lands. The thing to bear in mind when it comes to the Gruul Stompy deck, if Goldspan Dragon drops in value this is going to have a big affect on the deck price. Goldspan Dragon contributes 26.6% of the deck's value.
Overall the best looking deck in terms of Value is Dimir Control. It has more cards around similar prices which means if one drops a bit there are enough other cards to keep the value of the deck. This is all speculation and things could change. Especially with cards from Streets of New Capenna this could affect the demand for cards and playability of others.