So... WOTC just released the new
challenger deck decklists today they're ok I guess, and they had a couple of surprise inclusions from a reprint perspective, but I was more surprised by what was left out.
The mono-white deck was missing
Venerated Loxodon and was too short on
legion's landing
The mono-red deck had only 1 copy of
Rekindling Phoenix and was missing
Risk Factor
The Golgari deck had no
Carnage Tyrants or
Vivien Reids, for some reason including
Vraska, Relic Seeker.
The Izzet deck was... surprisingly good, but it didn't have any
Enigma Drakes for some reason. To be fair, a lot of the PT lists this deck was based on didn't run
Enigma Drake, but drake really needs to be in the deck in the absence of 3 copies of
Arclight Phoenix. 1 Copy is better than I was expecting, but not enough to justify the absence of the second-best card for the budget version of the drakes deck.
Over all, the 2019 challenger decks are... fine. Just fine. I think a lot of people are going to be really excited about the inclusion of
Arclight Phoenix in the Izzet deck and
Overgrown Tomb in the Golgari deck and miss that these lists are not quite as complete as last year's offering of this product. The Golgari deck is literally just a bunch of explore uncommons with a Vraska thrown in.
So... It's a fine offering I suppose. I almost bought all four of these, and had they included the cards I mentioned, I probably would have. Right now, I think the White and Golgari decks are hard passes. I might pick up the Drakes deck and the Red deck.