Magic is a game about paying costs. Inside the game, it’s about paying mana, paying life, or even paying subtler costs such as a cost in cards, permanents, cards in graveyard, tempo, and so on. Getting into the game has a more mundane, everyday life cost: money. It costs money to acquire the cards to build decks. The amount of money depends on what cards you want to play with, your card acquisition savvy, and also the amount of time you’re willing to invest. The tried and true method for many players to start a collection of a new set is to play a lot of Limited . . . with an eye toward rare-drafting.

A serious Limited player will quickly have all of the commons and uncommons he needs, and then he can start trading unwanted or excess rares to acquire the rares he desire for Constructed. This method is very time consuming, requires expenditure of time and money on Limited, and means the player needs people to trade with. What if you only like to play Constructed, don’t have the money for endless Drafting, or don’t have the time, acumen, or partners for trading?

At various times in my Magic, career I’ve taken many different approaches to card acquisition. I’ve had many trade binders and done countless trades. I’ve surely spent over $1,000 on boxes and singles. I’ve spent many additional hundreds of dollars entering Drafts and Sealed tournaments. I’ve also won vast quantities of product and store credit in various tournaments.

Over time, my collection kept growing and began to take on a life of its own. I even paid someone to periodically organize my collection to ease the process of finding cards for trading, selling, and deck-building. Every time I moved from one apartment to another, I needed an entire van load just for my card collection. After years managing Your Move Games in Massachusetts, I was offered the chance to work for a game company in California. While they were happy to reimburse me for some moving expenses, it was time for me to cut the umbilical cord between me and my cards. I drove across the country with only the things I could fit into my Nissan Altima, and everything else I owned was either sold or given away in great haste. I tried to give my collection to my two best Magic-playing friends at the time, Rob Dougherty and Anthony Shaheen, as long as they were willing to pick it up with Rob’s van. Fortunately for me, they decided that my collection was worth thousands of dollars and too big of a gift, so they sold it, giving me a generous cut of the earnings.

This at least somewhat validated what I had been telling myself every time I paid a hundred dollars for a Mox: “It’s an investment!” The main problem was that now I didn’t have a collection of Magic cards to build decks with. At first, that wasn’t a problem because I was absorbed with my new job and playing less Magic. When I did, I just stuck to Limited. After six months, I was back working for a game company in Massachusetts. My employers and I both wanted me to start attending Pro Tours again, but what could I do for cards? My first attempt at working on Constructed economically was using proxies for all my testing. Once I determined what deck to play at an event, I just had to find, trade, buy, or borrow cards for that one deck. Fortunately for me, I knew many people with extensive collections who were willing to loan or even rent me cards for an event.

As I’ve prepared for recent events and various articles, I’ve begun to rely more heavily on Magic Online for my prep work. Until somewhat recently, I used Magic Online almost exclusively for Drafting. Once I was able to build a deck or two online, I discovered what an amazing Constructed testing tool it was. The problem I ran into here was a lack of proxies. So, I’ve recently found myself caring quite a bit about the cost of singles for building decks again. Instead of playing with proxies, I’ll sometimes build decks without rares just to see how sound a concept is before going out and buying rares to improve the deck. One of the things I’ve discovered is that rares aren’t absolutely needed to win a lot of matches.

This is something I also encountered much earlier in my career. When I first started playing, it was popular to play for ante. We’d each cut the other person’s deck and reveal a card. The revealed cards were set aside, and the winner got to keep both revealed cards. Given that people were playing with cards worth over $100 in those days, it could be a harrowing experience. Many people—including me—built special decks just for playing for ante. I had an aggressive R/G deck with Kird Apes, burn, pump, and other aggressive creatures. Sure, it wasn’t the most powerful deck I could build with my collection, but it had the chance to win any game, and I wasn’t risking much. Of course, nobody would play for ante unless I had at least some rares, but I just made sure to avoid using big-money ones. That deck featured Elvish Archers as the “exciting” rare.

Further proof of the ability to win without being Mr. Suitcase was provided in my early tournament experiences. While my opponents usually played decks filled with the Power 9, Library of Alexandria, Chaos Orb, and so on, my big-money cards were Birds of Paradise, dual lands, and Mind Twist. Despite this, I began to regularly finish in the Top 8 of big tournaments with over a hundred players. Big-money rares do make a difference of course. After several second-place finishes, I finally accumulated the power cards I needed to build a Vice/Rack/Atog/Balance deck properly, and I immediately won my next big event.

With my recent experiences building Standard decks online, I’ve been giving more thought to building decks on a budget. There are a couple principles that seem important:

• Make it fast and aggressive. This is important for two reasons. First, the shorter the game, the less time for the rares in your opponent’s deck to have an impact on the game, and it will matter less that you don’t have many or any at all. Second, most control decks seem filled with expensive rares, and many aggressive decks can easily be built with fewer than ten rares.
• Make it few colors, mono-colored when possible. Most good, multicolored lands are rare, and you just want your deck to be fast and consistent.

A typical Solar Flare deck will contain over thirty rares, including around six to twelve mythic rares. A typical RDW list will have fewer than fifteen rares and often won’t have any mythics. Of course, the first thing I did was build RDW without rares:

"Budget Red"

• Creatures (20)
• 4 Bloodcrazed Neonate
• 4 Goblin Arsonist
• 4 Goblin Fireslinger
• 4 Reckless Waif
• 4 Stormblood Berserker

• Spells (18)
• 4 Brimstone Volley
• 4 Incinerate
• 4 Volt Charge
• 2 Mortarpod
• 4 Shrine of Burning Rage

• Lands (22)
• 22 Mountain

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Manic Vandal
• 3 Traitorous Blood
• 2 Mortarpod
• 3 Galvanic Blast
• 3 Gut Shot

Buy This Deck

The big rares I had to forgo were Chandra's Phoenix, Grim Lavamancer, and Stromkirk Noble. The Arsonist and Fireslinger are a slight downgrade for 1-drops, but they are actually an upgrade in their synergy with Berserker. While I miss the late-game punch of the Phoenix, it has freed me up to play with more 3-mana burn spells, and the Mortarpods are additional mana-sinks. The Mortarpods are probably the card that seems the most out of place, but it works great with Arsonist, and it’s useful for triggering the bloodthirst of the Berserkers and the morbid of the Volleys. It can also be useful for attaching to a Neonate that you’re sad to be forced to attack with. After boarding, it can also sometimes be cool with Traitorous Blood.

Another reason I’ve lately been thinking about budget decks is that my girlfriend Rada recently just ventured into Constructed, and she’s been kicking butt with a mono-white Humans deck, in which the only rares are Champion of the Parish and Honor of the Pure. When I tried to build it without rares, I found myself moving toward more of a token- and artifact-based build:

"Budget White"

• Creatures (12)
• 4 Accorder Paladin
• 4 Doomed Traveler
• 4 Signal Pest

• Spells (25)
• 4 Master's Call
• 4 Midnight Haunting
• 4 Intangible Virtue
• 1 Mortarpod
• 4 Flayer Husk
• 4 Origin Spellbomb
• 4 Shrine of Loyal Legions

• Lands (23)
• 23 Plains

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Dispatch
• 4 Oblivion Ring
• 2 Mortarpod
• 4 Timely Reinforcements
• 2 Revoke Existence

Buy This Deck

Fortunately, Intangible Virtue makes a nice replacement for Honor of the Pure, and it’s only an uncommon. The deck’s great against permission decks—everything that costs more than 2 mana is an instant. This also gives you an excuse to leave 3 mana open in case you need to use a Shrine in response to an Oblivion Ring or something; if not, you can go ahead and play your instant at the end of your opponent’s turn.

Obviously, it’s nice to be Mr. Suitcase. Having the option of playing any deck is great. If your budget is tight, though, it doesn’t mean that you can’t play Constructed and still be competitive.