When Adam Styborski and I first conceived of this series, I think we both assumed it would be a finance series. With my background, how could it not? I play Commander and spend a lot of my time trading and interacting with people in the Commander community, but my experience the last few years and the thrust of my career in writing, podcasting, and general punditry has been all about Magic finance. Write what you know, right?

It occurred to me today that I was a little surprised that I wasn’t including more finance in this series, but am I really not? Last week, I tuned up an Oloro, Ageless Ascetic precon with the stipulation that nearly the cards should be under about $5, and I think I succeeded. When the poster followed up with me, I even recommended trying to trade the Toxic Deluge that came with the deck for some of the cards that he wanted to save even more money. All of this got me thinking.

Is 75% a Budget Philosophy?

As someone who routinely recommends that people run Bribery, a card that costs more than most commanders, I would say “no.” But are there certain aspects of the 75% philosophy that lend themselves toward affordability? I think there probably are. Although I don’t want to do a “budget Commander” series because other people are already doing that better and I don’t want to constrain myself, I think there are some things about this philosophy that can make a 75% deck affordable. Affordable means you can make the deck and not have to spend a ton of money, tear another deck apart, or reduce the overall number of decks you can build. I keep building new decks with no sign of slowing down, so this has been helpful to me, too.

Synergy over Raw Power

If you take the example of the Oloro precon from last week, we could have made an Esper monstrosity that was just three-colored good stuff and benefitted from the life-creep you gain from Oloro each turn and the card advantage you gain when you summon him. That deck would have been good. However, when we decided to go with the extort theme, we were locked into having approximately twelve slots in the deck locked up with cards under $1 each because we wanted all the cards with extort we could have. These cards aren’t super-powerful in a vacuum, but when working together as part of an overall strategy, they can make the deck quite good. It wasn’t a deliberate choice to include “cheap” cards—if Crypt Ghast cost $11, I still would have told /u/UnpositiveComment to jam it in the deck. Still, building around a theme has saved some money. Whispers of the Muse does a better job of making Drake tokens in that Talrand, Sky Summoner deck we tuned up than does Temporal Manipulation. Sometimes, the best card for the job is cheap.

Fun over Oppressiveness

I think winning is fun. Not only that, I think not winning is the opposite of fun. I conceded a game in which an Avacyn, Angel of Hope player played Armageddon, Wrath of God, and Akroma's Vengeance three turns, one after the other. I shuffled up, dug through my boxes for cards I was selling to someone, grabbed a drink, went to the bathroom, made a phone call, and played a few games of Star Realms on my phone while everyone else sat there miserable, drawing and discarding while Avacyn guy beat them to death 8 damage at a time and picked them off one by one. I didn’t concede out of anger, I was just eager to play another game, and I knew that one was over. The rest of the table, though, was miserable. They didn’t concede, but they spent each turn giving the cards they drew disinterested looks and passing the turn. This went on for ten minutes, and the fun was literally sucked out of the room.

It’s not difficult or particularly creative to pair Wrath effects with a card like Avacyn. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine strategy, and it’s not inherently unfair. But the look on everyone’s faces as they went through the motions in a game they couldn’t possibly win reinforced why I do this series. Don’t make the game no fun for someone unless the person deserves it. Don’t make the game no fun for your whole group. Luckily for everyone, Avacyn guy realized it wasn’t that kind of playgroup, and he spent the rest of the night battling with fun, durdly, pillow-fort decks. No one messed with each other’s mana the rest of the night, and we all let people do their thing and tried to deal with it rather than preventing them from doing anything at all. Going to a group like that without a 75% deck to lead with can wind up with a group of players feeling bad that they aren’t able to do anything. It’s no shock that a Swords to Plowshares or a Capsize to deal with a threat is cheaper than a Back to Basics to keep opponents from doing anything.

Quantity over Quality

My approach to Commander finds me enjoying making new decks a lot. I have tinkered with a few of my decks and made a few of them closer to optimal builds, but for the most part, the ideas I am having are for how to make new decks rather than optimizing old ones. A 75% deck, if built correctly, will be good enough to be playable in a game with good decks so you don’t need to tweak it to make it perfect if you don’t want to. This leaves you free to spend your resources (money, time, etc.) on a new idea. If I only had one Commander deck, it would be all German foils with Unglued lands and cost $10,000 by the time I was done fiddling with it; I have, ironically, saved myself a lot of money by building entirely new decks.

Conclusion?

I am on the fence. I am not deliberately building decks with a budget in mind, but occasionally, I accidentally make a deck inexpensively. As long as the deck can win 1 ÷ X games and not make anyone’s wife cry, I’m okay with that. If you feel I saved you too much money, either fix your mana base or send me some. I’ll put it to good use. (No I won’t.)

I’d like to write some more on this topic, but I don’t want to harp on it too much. Oh well. We all make sacrifices. Speaking of which . . . 

That Was a Clumsy and Artless Segue Attempt

Sue me. I still have a deck I want to take a swing at!

/u/GeneralNixon this week asked the community how he can tune up his Shattergang Brothers deck without spending a crazy amount of money. By that, he means he doesn’t want to spend $500 or more. If you were worried that this was going to turn into a budget deck series, watch what happens when I spend every penny of a projected $500 budget.

Kidding. I’m kidding. Still, if there is no restriction on individual cards, I can jam some of my favorite Shattergang cards, such as Grave Pact and Food Chain. This is going to be fun.

Shattergang Brothers ? Commander | GeneralNixon

• Commander (0)

• Sorceries (5)
• 1 Mass Mutiny
• 1 Restore
• 1 Spoils of Victory
• 1 Sudden Demise
• 1 Tempt with Vengeance

• Instants (1)
• 1 Signal the Clans

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Awakening Zone
• 1 Fecundity
• 1 Goblin Bombardment
• 1 Ooze Garden
• 1 Parallel Lives
• 1 Vile Requiem

• Creatures (35)
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Akroan Horse
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Blood Artist
• 1 Butcher of Malakir
• 1 Capricious Efreet
• 1 Conquering Manticore
• 1 Corpsejack Menace
• 1 Crypt Ghast
• 1 Deathbringer Thoctar
• 1 Elvish Mystic
• 1 Endless Cockroaches
• 1 Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder
• 1 Gobbling Ooze
• 1 Goblin Sharpshooter
• 1 Golgari Guildmage
• 1 Hua Tuo, Honored Physician
• 1 Hunted Troll
• 1 Inferno Titan
• 1 It That Betrays
• 1 Jade Mage
• 1 Krenko, Mob Boss
• 1 Mitotic Slime
• 1 Ophiomancer
• 1 Prossh, Skyraider of Kher
• 1 Rampaging Baloths
• 1 Reaper of the Wilds
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Scarland Thrinax
• 1 Sprouting Thrinax
• 1 Stalking Vengeance
• 1 Stronghold Assassin
• 1 Terastodon
• 1 Varolz, the Scar-Striped
• 1 Viscera Seer

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Garruk, Primal Hunter

• Lands (39)
• 1 Akoum Refuge
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Forest
• 1 Golgari Guildgate
• 1 Golgari Rot Farm
• 1 Great Furnace
• 1 Grim Backwoods
• 1 Gruul Guildgate
• 1 Jund Panorama
• 1 Kazandu Refuge
• 1 Khalni Garden
• 1 Kher Keep
• 1 Llanowar Reborn
• 1 Mountain
• 1 Opal Palace
• 1 Rakdos Guildgate
• 1 Rootbound Crag
• 1 Rupture Spire
• 1 Savage Lands
• 1 Swamp
• 1 Temple of Abandon
• 1 Temple of Malice
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Vault of Whispers
• 1 Vivid Grove
• 4 Forest
• 4 Mountain
• 4 Swamp

• Artifacts (10)
• 1 Armillary Sphere
• 1 Carnage Altar
• 1 Journeyer's Kite
• 1 Mimic Vat
• 1 Obelisk of Jund
• 1 Plague Boiler
• 1 Ratchet Bomb
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Torpor Orb
• 1 Trading Post

Buy This Deck

This bears a lot of similarities to the Power Hungry preconstructed deck, which is good for me because I did the same thing he did—only I built with Prossh, Skyraider of Kher. Still, the principle is the same.

I like a bit of double-duty. Not only is Solemn Simulacrum a card I put in every Commander deck, he is better here because you can choose whether you sacrifice him to Shattergang Brothers’s artifact or creature mode. He’ll trigger Grave Pact when he becomes sacrificed, which means you can pay and get rid of him to destroy opposing mana rocks and make opponents sac a dude on top of it. Seems saucy. As long as we’re doing double-duty, playing Spine of Ish Sah and then saccing it to blow up an artifact seems fun. Triple-duty? Hammer of Purphoros makes a token that is an artifact, a creature, and an enchantment, which will come in handy as a way to make sure land drops aren’t dead and you have something for each of Shattergang Brothers’s modes. Let’s see where this takes us.

Shattergang ? Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (0)

• Sorceries (3)
• 1 Insurrection
• 1 Mass Mutiny
• 1 Restore

• Enchantments (9)
• 1 Attrition
• 1 Awakening Zone
• 1 Food Chain
• 1 Goblin Bombardment
• 1 Grave Pact
• 1 Greater Good
• 1 Mind Slash
• 1 Parallel Lives
• 1 Primal Vigor

• Creatures (32)
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Blood Artist
• 1 Butcher of Malakir
• 1 Conquering Manticore
• 1 Crypt Ghast
• 1 Deathbringer Thoctar
• 1 Dragon Broodmother
• 1 Endless Cockroaches
• 1 Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder
• 1 Goblin Sharpshooter
• 1 It That Betrays
• 1 Molten Primordial
• 1 Mycoloth
• 1 Ophiomancer
• 1 Pilgrim's Eye
• 1 Prossh, Skyraider of Kher
• 1 Rampaging Baloths
• 1 Reaper of the Wilds
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Scarland Thrinax
• 1 Sheoldred, Whispering One
• 1 Skullmulcher
• 1 Sprouting Thrinax
• 1 Stalking Vengeance
• 1 Stronghold Assassin
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Ulasht, the Hate Seed
• 1 Varolz, the Scar-Striped
• 1 Viridian Emissary
• 1 Viscera Seer
• 1 Vorapede
• 1 Zealous Conscripts

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Garruk, Primal Hunter

• Lands (40)
• 1 Akoum Refuge
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Forest
• 1 Golgari Guildgate
• 1 Golgari Rot Farm
• 1 Great Furnace
• 1 Grim Backwoods
• 1 Gruul Guildgate
• 1 Jund Panorama
• 1 Kazandu Refuge
• 1 Khalni Garden
• 1 Kher Keep
• 1 Llanowar Reborn
• 1 Mountain
• 1 Opal Palace
• 1 Rakdos Guildgate
• 1 Rootbound Crag
• 1 Rupture Spire
• 1 Savage Lands
• 1 Swamp
• 1 Temple of Abandon
• 1 Temple of Malice
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Vault of Whispers
• 1 Vivid Grove
• 4 Swamp
• 4 Mountain
• 5 Forest

• Artifacts (14)
• 1 Carnage Altar
• 1 Chromatic Lantern
• 1 Golgari Signet
• 1 Gruul Signet
• 1 Hammer of Purphoros
• 1 Journeyer's Kite
• 1 Mimic Vat
• 1 Obelisk of Jund
• 1 Phyrexian Altar
• 1 Quietus Spike
• 1 Rakdos Signet
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Spine of Ish Sah
• 1 Trading Post

Buy This Deck

I added some more sacrifice outlets (Attrition and Mind Slash are both no-brainers here), and since I added so many, I doubled the number of ways to steal opposing permanents. I would rather sacrifice opponents’ creatures to make them sacrifice their also creatures. I added Signets, Chromatic Lantern, and Viridian Emissary for mana issues and took out some fixing that wasn’t working. I like Sakura-Tribe Elder in the deck, but I like Viridian Emissary way more.

Somewhat controversial is cutting Fecundity. I think it’s too symmetrical in this deck. I like it in Prossh and would never, ever cut it from there, but I think you’re going let opponents draw replacements for the stuff you blow up if you run it in here.

I reduced the number of instants and sorceries to give you more situations in which you can play a permanent that can interact with the commander. Insurrection is also a no-brainer, and I think it’s a very good 75% card, as it can end a game very quickly and let everyone shuffle up for the next one. You’re running Mass Mutiny already, so it’s not as though we have a moral aversion to the concept. Insurrection usually wraps things up.

As we discovered last week, a deck is never done. I think what I did here is focus it a bit more and add some cards that fit our 75% principles. I also think I might want to take a break from deck-garage stuff for a while, so next week, I will be identifying cards that I think fit the 75% philosophy well and will be helping you construct a “build box” of staples to have around the next time a deck idea strikes you. I’ll give you one hint: I think Trading Post goes in every Commander deck, leaving you with a mere ninety-eight other cards to fill in the gaps. Thanks for joining me, and we’ll see you back here next week.