I am thinking of playing casually Duel Commander with the Commander 2014 preconstructed decks.

Now, I noticed that in those decks at least Sol Ring is banned for Duel Commander.

I am considering buying Commander 2014, but I have no experience with Commander, so I would like to get some advice about how to best play Duel Commander with the preconstructed decks:

1) If I only remove cards from the preconstructed Commander 2014 decks, which ones do you recommend I remove (Sol Ring, Offerings…)?

2) If I were to replace some cards (by either buying them or agreeing that Sol Ring is, say, Sisay's Ring), which ones do you recommend?

The goal is to have nice, fun Duel Commander 2014 games, in particular without too much of the "first early crazy lucky combo wins" effect.

It really depends on which ban list you are going to use.

Are you planning on building all 5 as roughly equivalent decks or is there one or more that you are planning on modifying?

What kind of budget do you have?

It sounds like this is not for a tournament, so I am guessing just to play against friends?

Thanks.

I want to play casually with the preconstructed decks.

I was thinking of the official Duel Commander ban list (recommended for two-player Commander).

My budget is, say, about 0: what cards should be removed from the deck, for better two-player games? I don't mind deciding that some cards are a bit different, too (e.g. that Sol Ring costs 4, instead, for example, and is really Sisay's Ring).

The question is about how to have the best two-player experience possible with the preconstructed Commander 2014 decks, through small tweaks, with essentially no budget.

The Blue one seems to be the most powerful/synergistic, the green one can come out swinging really fast. A friend and I played them right out of the box as they were for best 3 out of 5 and it was a lot of fun. The white and black ones have a lot of really good cards to use as a skeleton for a fun deck in my opinion. The red one I have not had a lot of experience with, but one guy took it and with only about $5-10 updated it, unfortunately/fortunately, he got targeted before he could really start his shenanigans.

Are you implying that I should not really bother removing any card from the preconstructed Commander 2014 decks and just play 2-player games with the rest of the Duel Commander rules?

I would at first yes... then tweak it as you see fit. I wouldn't worry too much about ban lists especially if you are controlling the power level of all the decks. Yes Sol Ring is powerful etc. but the chances of getting it early are just as good as getting it late where it is still useful but not a backbreaking problem. Same thing with most other cards (except maybe Worldfire and Biorhythm etc. that just ignore all that has previously transpired in the game).

i think the reason why sol ring and other fast mana is banned in duel commander is because it is so swingy. in 1v1, if i start with a sol ring and you don't, you're playing catchup to me the whole game, and most likely will lose in the end, if our decks are built to a similar level; whereas in multiplayer, if i start with a sol ring, theres no way i'd be able to wipe out the whole table with my tempo, and the rest of the table is gonna instantly gun for me right off the bat (which is usually a bigger disadvantage than the tempo gained).

having said that, since you're planning to play it casually, i wouldn't put too much stock in it as such. if it DOES end up leading to unfair games, then feel free to take it out. i think the blue precon is surprisingly good considering how much hype all the other decks got (i'd possibly rank it 1st or 2nd in terms of playing right out the box of the 5 decks).