Is there a tier list of all precon Commander decks?

Question

C19 is currently being spoiled and I am thinking about buying it. The idea is to buy a group of deck to play with friends. Here is the idea. Lets consider that we are 5 people sitting at a table. This is casual kitchen table magic. We all know how to play mtg and commander. Our global level is homogeneous and mostly amateur. I would like to buy 5 decks from different commander set, but I fear to buy one deck which will be seen has much more powerful than the others.

What would be a tier list of all precon Commander deck?

A tier list would help because I could choose a group of deck in the same category. Commander being a 100 cards singleton format, it offers a much higher entropy that classical construct. So a tier list may not be relevant.

Answer 1

As far as I'm aware there are no official rankings for Commander preconstructed decks. However, each deck in a given set it made with the others in mind to be balanced against. Thus, Mirror Mastery is more likely to be balanced against Counterpunch than it is against Open Hostility.

Here is a list of sets, which each contain the decks that were in that set (and thus what they're balanced around). However, as you said yourself, Commander is a more volatile format and balance is not going to be a consistent thing. This is especially true when you consider that Commander is less competitive than traditional magic and more political/social. Consider Political Puppets. It certainly has win conditions, but the commander is based around giving your permanents away in order to play diplomatically with your opponents.

If you definitely want decks from different sets, in lieu of a formal ranking and because they aren't necessarily balanced around each other, I would look at the price of each of those decks. While certainly not a perfect way of telling, very powerful decks with highly sought after cards tend to be more expensive.