Usually not, but there is the occasional deck I remember fondly and might return to one day, since after a few years said deck idea would have a lot of new toys to play with as noted above.
If I retire a deck, it's probably for a reason related to how little I play it - be it because it's underpowered, not fun to pilot, not fun for my opponents, plays too close to another deck of mine, plain boring/streamlined, or I just have a better commander idea for same color combo. I try to keep to one-per-color-combo. (Even then, I have two vastly different from each other Mardu and Esper decks because just too many tasty things.)
I have had the occasional case where I took apart a deck I had just built and thus "wasted" the money put into it, but given that the cards I actually have to buy for decks these days are pretty much old oddballs we don't have a copy of, it's not much of a monetary loss. (I admit that sometimes I buy a card just because I can't find a copy of random Mirrodin uncommon despite being pretty sure there's several floating around somewhere...)
More wedges... but probably also more shards. Tricolor decks are fun, and being tricolor there's a lot of things a potential legendary could do, ability-wise. So I have pretty high hopes that a new tricolor legendary has at least a decent chance of being interesting (regardless of color combination).
Shards have decent set of options, but could always use some more - in particular, Jund and Esper feel a bit shoehorned into similar archetypes regardless of commander (sacrifice-graveyard and artifact-control, respectively).
Wedges definitely need more love. So many different avenues one could take with three colors that it's hard to even predict what those might be. But, they largely create pretty interesting legendaries in general, so I'm hopeful.
As to when... well, barring a return to Tarkir (the Khans version), we're I guess hoping for more love for them in a Commander product.
If they do release more wedge commanders, obviously we're going to see more decks with them... but beyond that the impact on the format is probably not that much, unless one or more of them prove stupid-ubiquitous and -oppressive somehow.
Even worse than Boros being perceived 'weak', is probably how narrow, single-direction and plain BORING RW is as a color combo. Regardless of what you're doing as a deck direction, regardless of your commander, you find yourself using nearly the same pool of support cards and artifact mana to get anywhere. There's less variety in commander-usable cards, somewhat because a lot of the cards of the colors point towards early weenie aggro, which is not exactly in the department of 'battlecruiser'. For any other color combination, finding usable oddballs and hidden gems is easier.
...and that said deck direction for RW is almost universally the red zone, with maybe some slight variation on tall vs. wide.
If you see almost any other color combination or general across from you, there's some unpredictability on what might be coming for you. Just a touch less so for Boros. Even if some RW commanders are playable, there's yet to be a RW commander that can power multiple kinds of decks.
As usual when this topic comes up... there's a lot of good ideas of what the color combination can do, but for some reason almost all of the legendaries tend to be 'yeah, let's do some combat'.
Would not even necessarily need that much direct mana or card-advantage fixing... IF the commander itself felt like something to build around. They've certainly gotten better at it, at least. My current Boros is Firesong and Sunspeaker, and they have the right direction even if that 6CMC + very desirable removal target kind of shoots me down more often than not.
I feel like they are sort of trying to make more interesting Boros legendaries, but are afraid to create anything actually resource-denying in standard/limited environment. And if you cut down 'stopping others from doing their stuff', you cut down a fair amount of the color combination's strenghts.
(Tangentially related: My current thought process for the Boros slot, if I grow tired of FS&SS, is Basandra, Battle Seraph. Mostly because that gorgeous Terese Nielsen art and an ability you can at least sort of build around a bit.)
I don't think precons are really looked down on, but they certainly are of lower power level than the average deck you see - they tend to lack direction right out of the box, and have cards that have seemingly nothing to do with the commander. This can be a good thing in the sense that if you say you're playing the precon, you might get a surprising amount of people not targeting you during a game because you're not perceived as that big of a threat. And anyway, playing the precon (or any deck) is the best way to find out which direction you want to take the deck afterwards, changing a card here and there when you can.
As for which precon, pretty much all of them over the years have been decent for what they are, though obviously warrant some seriously look in what to change, in particular regarding the manabases of the 3+ color decks. (A lot more ETBT lands than you'd usually care for.)
Also ive found that i have different personalities when it comes to playing vs brewing. im a total johnny when brewing but like playing as more of a timmy. my favorite decks to brew are things like eggs and combo, but playing them is kinda meh. But my favorite deck to play is my ball lightning tribal deck that just comes out fast and hurls chunks of damage in the form of big creatures. its super cool and fun for me to have a 6/1 hasted double strike hit someone with a saskia on board, but the brewing wasnt as interesting.
...that's actually a pretty apt description of what I do. I spend a TON of time crafting intricate things, but in actual play I just like keeping it relatively simple, a snowball of incremental board state or just hitting hard when I can. My turns rarely take long because I do the first thing that I think is a decent thing. (Yes, I lose to onboard tricks a rather shameful amount.)
On topic: not really an archetype but a deck type in general: I have recently tried to stray away from any builds with just a singular win-condition. While I allow builds that get stupid with a particular card (Sunforger, Astral Slide, Fable of Wolf and Owl etc.) the deck has to be able to function without it. Same goes for commanders, hence voltron is a plan B at best. With one exception - Zedruu's main plan is actually voltroning, but it's still not the only plan of the deck.
33 decks, and yet I find the energy to go out to my LGS (which is really not that local to me) maybe once a month. Time spent Magic-wise is like 90% brewing and 10% playing. I enjoy brewing and theorycrafting more than I enjoy actually going out to play. Used to have a good circle of friends to regularly play with, but for various reasons we can't do regular 'kitchen table' anymore that often.
So, I craft decks, some of which have not seen play in several months. But I enjoy the process of "iterating towards perfection" quite a bit. I enjoy having unique mechanical approaches to each of my decks, making them as different as I can while remaining fun to play out for me. (I can't play control worth a damn.)
Monetarily, I am not concerned but I am in a rather unique situation in that my wife is a lvl 3 judge so I very rarely have to actually go out and buy cards, other than the occasional old junk rare we don't have around or extras of. My "Magic budget" is treating her to the occasional dinner around release times, if you will.
Though I generally tend to just mildly roll my eyes, and groan at an increasing volume if it starts to happen with any regularity (we all know this kind of player). I will start reminding people if it gets to be a constant thing (if you don't remember your Rhystic Study triggers, don't play it please).
I don't allow any take-backsies for myself for 'may' triggers or spells cast or attacks done - if I missed something on board, it's on me. If it's a trigger that has to happen every time something happens, then I will try my darnest to keep up with it. If I already tapped my lands, then that already was my decision to cast my spell. Even - and especially - if it's detrimental to me. (Granted, for muchly this reason I loathe when people are unclear with their tokens...)
My philosophy on this that the only way I will get better at remembering the seven-or-so 'death/etb' triggers in my Athreos deck (for example) is to not allow myself to 'oh, I forgot this' after the event.
While Sheldon and Anthony do waffle, they waffle on-topic, if that makes sense. They talk about all kinds of subjects at least usually related to Commander(though granted, one segment is definitely not about Commander but just general life things), and the podcast is not three hours long with maybe 45 min at best "on topic".
It feels like that they aim to keep the thing at a reasonable length instead of just talking until "oops, three hours" like a lot of podcasts.
1
If I retire a deck, it's probably for a reason related to how little I play it - be it because it's underpowered, not fun to pilot, not fun for my opponents, plays too close to another deck of mine, plain boring/streamlined, or I just have a better commander idea for same color combo. I try to keep to one-per-color-combo. (Even then, I have two vastly different from each other Mardu and Esper decks because just too many tasty things.)
I have had the occasional case where I took apart a deck I had just built and thus "wasted" the money put into it, but given that the cards I actually have to buy for decks these days are pretty much old oddballs we don't have a copy of, it's not much of a monetary loss. (I admit that sometimes I buy a card just because I can't find a copy of random Mirrodin uncommon despite being pretty sure there's several floating around somewhere...)
1
1
Shards have decent set of options, but could always use some more - in particular, Jund and Esper feel a bit shoehorned into similar archetypes regardless of commander (sacrifice-graveyard and artifact-control, respectively).
Wedges definitely need more love. So many different avenues one could take with three colors that it's hard to even predict what those might be. But, they largely create pretty interesting legendaries in general, so I'm hopeful.
As to when... well, barring a return to Tarkir (the Khans version), we're I guess hoping for more love for them in a Commander product.
If they do release more wedge commanders, obviously we're going to see more decks with them... but beyond that the impact on the format is probably not that much, unless one or more of them prove stupid-ubiquitous and -oppressive somehow.
1
Even worse than Boros being perceived 'weak', is probably how narrow, single-direction and plain BORING RW is as a color combo. Regardless of what you're doing as a deck direction, regardless of your commander, you find yourself using nearly the same pool of support cards and artifact mana to get anywhere. There's less variety in commander-usable cards, somewhat because a lot of the cards of the colors point towards early weenie aggro, which is not exactly in the department of 'battlecruiser'. For any other color combination, finding usable oddballs and hidden gems is easier.
...and that said deck direction for RW is almost universally the red zone, with maybe some slight variation on tall vs. wide.
If you see almost any other color combination or general across from you, there's some unpredictability on what might be coming for you. Just a touch less so for Boros. Even if some RW commanders are playable, there's yet to be a RW commander that can power multiple kinds of decks.
1
Would not even necessarily need that much direct mana or card-advantage fixing... IF the commander itself felt like something to build around. They've certainly gotten better at it, at least. My current Boros is Firesong and Sunspeaker, and they have the right direction even if that 6CMC + very desirable removal target kind of shoots me down more often than not.
I feel like they are sort of trying to make more interesting Boros legendaries, but are afraid to create anything actually resource-denying in standard/limited environment. And if you cut down 'stopping others from doing their stuff', you cut down a fair amount of the color combination's strenghts.
(Tangentially related: My current thought process for the Boros slot, if I grow tired of FS&SS, is Basandra, Battle Seraph. Mostly because that gorgeous Terese Nielsen art and an ability you can at least sort of build around a bit.)
1
As for which precon, pretty much all of them over the years have been decent for what they are, though obviously warrant some seriously look in what to change, in particular regarding the manabases of the 3+ color decks. (A lot more ETBT lands than you'd usually care for.)
3
...that's actually a pretty apt description of what I do. I spend a TON of time crafting intricate things, but in actual play I just like keeping it relatively simple, a snowball of incremental board state or just hitting hard when I can. My turns rarely take long because I do the first thing that I think is a decent thing. (Yes, I lose to onboard tricks a rather shameful amount.)
On topic: not really an archetype but a deck type in general: I have recently tried to stray away from any builds with just a singular win-condition. While I allow builds that get stupid with a particular card (Sunforger, Astral Slide, Fable of Wolf and Owl etc.) the deck has to be able to function without it. Same goes for commanders, hence voltron is a plan B at best. With one exception - Zedruu's main plan is actually voltroning, but it's still not the only plan of the deck.
2
33 decks, and yet I find the energy to go out to my LGS (which is really not that local to me) maybe once a month. Time spent Magic-wise is like 90% brewing and 10% playing. I enjoy brewing and theorycrafting more than I enjoy actually going out to play. Used to have a good circle of friends to regularly play with, but for various reasons we can't do regular 'kitchen table' anymore that often.
So, I craft decks, some of which have not seen play in several months. But I enjoy the process of "iterating towards perfection" quite a bit. I enjoy having unique mechanical approaches to each of my decks, making them as different as I can while remaining fun to play out for me. (I can't play control worth a damn.)
Monetarily, I am not concerned but I am in a rather unique situation in that my wife is a lvl 3 judge so I very rarely have to actually go out and buy cards, other than the occasional old junk rare we don't have around or extras of. My "Magic budget" is treating her to the occasional dinner around release times, if you will.
1
Though I generally tend to just mildly roll my eyes, and groan at an increasing volume if it starts to happen with any regularity (we all know this kind of player). I will start reminding people if it gets to be a constant thing (if you don't remember your Rhystic Study triggers, don't play it please).
I don't allow any take-backsies for myself for 'may' triggers or spells cast or attacks done - if I missed something on board, it's on me. If it's a trigger that has to happen every time something happens, then I will try my darnest to keep up with it. If I already tapped my lands, then that already was my decision to cast my spell. Even - and especially - if it's detrimental to me. (Granted, for muchly this reason I loathe when people are unclear with their tokens...)
My philosophy on this that the only way I will get better at remembering the seven-or-so 'death/etb' triggers in my Athreos deck (for example) is to not allow myself to 'oh, I forgot this' after the event.
1
While Sheldon and Anthony do waffle, they waffle on-topic, if that makes sense. They talk about all kinds of subjects at least usually related to Commander(though granted, one segment is definitely not about Commander but just general life things), and the podcast is not three hours long with maybe 45 min at best "on topic".
It feels like that they aim to keep the thing at a reasonable length instead of just talking until "oops, three hours" like a lot of podcasts.