The new MTG Duel Deck, Venser vs Koth, came out last week.
Yesterday I played 4 games between the two decks to see how they matched up.
Venser’s deck is a blue/white control and denial deck, similar in some ways to my equally coloured Grand Arbiter Augustin IV commander deck I assembled and played in Australia. The difference is my deck was powerful, synergistic and fun to play! Venser’s… not so much. It seems like the designers dabbled with bits and pieces of a puzzle without assembling the whole thing, and therefore based the deck about Venser’s first ability while neglecting his (so so, or overcosted) others. In most games I ended up bouncing creatures like Jedit’s Dragoons every turn to build up my life to stave off Koth until I got some better things into play (such as Sunblast Angel).
Koth’s deck is a burn deck with a few big fatties that plays as dumb and unsubtle as it seems. I think, given Koth’s ability, the deck should have been stacked with more X cost or pumpable spells than it is, but I suppose they have to strike a balance between playability and the secondary market when they assemble these. I found this monored deck to be very boring, and it tended to play repetitively.
The results of my 4 games: Venser beat Koth 4-0! This seems to be in direct opposition to the results I read online (where many claim the Koth deck is hands-down the better of the two), but I found that Venser often was able to simply survive the onslaught to the point where the lifegain or control was overwhelming to Koth.
As you may have inferred, I found neither of these decks to be particularly fun or interesting to play. Furthermore, they didn’t even cause the cogs to go spinning in my brain (so to speak), being notably lacking in good cards that I didn’t previously own. Yes the alternate arts are nice (7 cards, including a very pretty Path To Exile). Plus since I did not own any Venser’s, it’s nice to finally have one. And there are a few cards that may end up in my commander decks (including Journeyer’s Kite in my as-yet-nonexistent landfall deck, Galepowder Mage and Vanish Into Memory). But overall, a slightly disappointing product.
Final Verdict: Worth the $20, but there have been better duel decks.