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For the cost of a set of Jaces, you can take a Caribbean cruise. Magic is expensive, especially constructed. One of the many reasons Wizards of the Coast invented Standard was to allow people to play constructed without having to spend hundreds of dollars on singles to be successful. The good news is we don't need to get Moxes and Ancestral Recalls to compete any more, the bad news is that even Standard is becoming more about multi-hundred dollar decks. Sure Wizards didn't want its players to be forced to pay for out-of-print rares, but they want us to buy in-print packs from them! Along came Mythic Rares like Jace ($90), Primeval Titan ($40), Koth ($30), Mox Opal ($20) and Vengevine ($35).
A typical Standard deck from the current environment will usually cost between $300 and $600. Standard used to feature lots of decks that had mostly or all basic land, which at least meant about a third of your deck was cheap. These days, it's typical for Standard decks to have eight or more rare lands. Further, if you really want to stay competitive, you need two copies of each of your decks: one cardboard and one virtual on Magic Online.
So the question becomes: how to stay competitive without breaking the bank? The most obvious ways are to play basic land, don't play with Mythic Rares and keep the number of rares to a minimum. For this purpose I will be trying to keep the number of rares under ten. A typical Standard deck these days runs 25-30 rares. It can also help to build a deck using cards that can be used to build multiple different decks. I recently built my base Black B/U control deck online. I'm able to use many of the cards in it to make MBC, R/B Vampires or U/B Control, although U/B Control would probably require four Jace, the Mind Sculptor, maybe better called Jace, the Wallet Shredder.
[cardlist]
[Spells]
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Brittle Effigy
3 Diabolic Tutor
4 Sign in Blood
1 Memoricide
1 Ratchet Bomb
1 Consuming Vapors
1 Chimeric Mass
2 Everflowing Chalice
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
3 Bloodghast
4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
4 Liliana's Specter
4 Trinket Mage
3 Abyssal Persecutor
1 Masticore
1 Bloodhusk Ritualist
[/Creatures]
[Lands]
1 Bojuka Bog
4 Creeping Tarpit
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Drowned Catacombs
2 Tectonic Edge
10 Swamp
[/Lands]
[/cardlist]
While it's nice that I can build multiple decks featuring cards from this deck, I'm still using more than 20 rares and without Jace, the fact that I can almost build U/B Control now is irrelevant. That's not even taking the sideboard into consideration. Also, once you start playing in tournaments, you inevitably realize that you need to make expensive changes to the deck, perhaps a fourth Bloodghast, another Masticore, another Memoricide, it keeps adding up.
Here are my steps for budget deck-building while giving yourself a realistic shot of winning games:
- Pick a color- You want to build your deck entirely from basic land. You can get them for pennies at your local shop. If you're going to play all basic land, you should be playing mono-color. This is the only way you can avoid uncommon and/or rare lands without making unacceptable power level sacrifices.
- Go aggressive- Let's face it, some of the most powerful cards in Magic are rares and Mythic rares. The longer the game drags on, the more of them your opponent will draw, play and over time probably gain too much of a power advantage for you to overcome. Besides, mono-color decks with all basic lands are generally best as aggro decks. An aggressive deck can't afford an awkward mana draw, because the late game is anathema to them. If you can afford not to do much the first few turns of the game, you can afford to play more than one color.
- Build the draft deck of your dreams- Limited decks by their very nature have few rares. Typically less than 10% of your card pool will be rare. Depending on your budget, making 15% of your Standard deck rare seems reasonable. In a mono-color draft deck, these are the key things you look for:
- A good mana curve. You would like to do something powerful every turn.
- Cheap, efficient creatures. You want to punish others for playing multi-color decks that might have slower mana draws.
- Good removal. Don't let them play something that will help them stabilize without you killing it.
- Card advantage. As I discussed last week, this is a key to success. You don't want to run out of gas before the end of the game and you want to use your mana more powerfully than your opponent.
- Play with cards that reward you for playing mono-color. In M11 draft for example, this includes cards like Armored Ascension, Corrupt, Earth Servant, Fiery Hellhound, Fire Servant and Nightwing Shade.
- Play with lots of synergy. In M11 draft, I liked to draft Fire Servants and Chandra's Spitfires with lots of Lava Axes and other burn spells like Chandra's Outrage.
So let's start. What color should we play? The main things to look at here are which colors are already being played at or close to mono in Standard, which colors don't really depend on Mythic Rares and which colors have constructed worthy cards that reward you for playing mono-color.
Well, the best mono-color decks in Standard right now are probably RDW, Eldrazi Green, Quest WW, Vampires, Elves, Koth Red, Elf-vine and MBC. We can probably eliminate the ones with names based on Mythic Rares on the spot, so no Koth Red or Elf-vine. RDW needs eight rare land and even if they choose not to run Koth, they rely heavily on Kargan Dragonlord. Eldrazi Green has less than half basic land and their entire strategy is based on ramping up to putting Mythic Rare creatures into play. Quest WW is actually worth considering: while they do use 8 rare land, they typically only run a single Mythic Rare, one copy of Sword of Body and Mind. They usually run at least 15 rares, but this could easily be curtailed just by replacing their fetch lands with more Plains. Vampires also usually runs eight fetch lands and a total of over 20 rares, but they don't use Mythics and they don't really need fetch lands. Elves typically use many Mythics: Eldrazi Monument, Vengevines and Nissa Revane. MBC frequently uses Grave Titan and one or more Mythic Rare planeswalkers.
Based on this information, WW and Vampires seem to warrant a second look. I like mono-black because it's more my style than mono-white and because if I acquire cards for mono-black, there is more than one deck I can build with them. Start by proxying up the deck you're considering. This way you can test your design for awhile before investing any money into it. If you're happy with your testing, go ahead and get the cards. Here is what I came up with:
[cardlist]
[Spells]
4 Sign in Blood
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
4 Mire's Toll
4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
4 Liliana's Specter
4 Bloodghast
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Bloodhusk Ritualist
4 Vampire Nighthawk
4 Skinrender
[/Creatures]
[Lands]
24 Swamp
[/Lands]
[/cardlist]
A typical Vampire deck or MBC deck will cost around $200. This deck usually goes for under $70 and more than half of that is for Bloodghasts. Unfortunately, for a deck like this to be competitive in the current environment, Bloodfghasts are pretty important, but Vampire Hexmage would be a cheap alternative that would cut the cost down to around $35.
Mire's Toll rewards you for playing all swamps. It gives you a turn one play. While not super powerful on turn one, it helps your specters and ritualists quickly reduce your opponent's hand size to zero. It has the flexibility of being a turn one play that gets more powerful in the midgame, while staying relevant in the late game, unlike Duress and Inquisition of Kozilek, which often whiff in the late game.
Sign in Blood gives you card advantage, helps you avoid mana flood/Mana Screw and can be used to inflict game ending life loss to your opponent.
Gatekeepers reward you for playing monoblack, give you good, powerful, flexible removal and card advantage.
Specters go with your theme of reducing their hand size to zero, give you card advantage and flying helps you kill planeswalkers.
Bloodghasts give you an aggressive two drop that can power through permission and most removal.
Nantuko Shades are a cheap rare (both dollar-wise and mana-wise) that reward you for playing mono-color. They both give you a two-drop and something powerful to do with late game mana.
Ritualists are usually the finishing touch in getting their hand size to zero and they supply you with powerful card advantage. And even if they already have zero cards, you can still add another creature to the board.
Nighthawks help you race aggressive decks with their flying and life-gaining. They are also good at killing planeswalkers. Jaces are expensive for a reason and you need to be prepared to eliminate them.
Skinrenders help you have enough maindeck removal. If you don't have targets, (which is rare) you can use them on your own Bloodghasts. They give you card advantage as well as being good removal.
If you play Hexmages, not only are they a two drop to replace the Bloodghasts, they are great against Planeswalkers, Expeditions, Quests and Ratchet Bombs. They should probably at least end up in your sideboard.
So eliminate Mythic Rares and non-basic land, cut back on the rares and suddenly instead of spending $200+ on a deck, you can build one for a small fraction of that. If $200 doesn't seem bad, keep in mind you'll be doing it all again when you build your deck online. The main issue with building your deck on the cheap is the potential to end up with a deck that can't run with the big dogs. This will take creative deck design and strong play. Remember to follow my rules of budget deck design and you should at least have a Fighting Chance and when we're talking $50 up against $600, this seems like a good return.
