Hello, fellow magicians and wizards; it has been a while since we last spoke. This time around, I would like to take a much different direction; I am planning to apply my financial background and my years playing the game to bring you all budget-friendly options for your local Friday Night Magic. Initially, I am going to be taking winning decks from tournaments and budgetizing them your tournament-playing pleasure.

For this first week, I am going to be exploring the new Return to Ravnica Standard from the recent StarCityGames Open in Cincinnati. History is a good indicator that prices for Return to Ravnica have not yet settled, so for this first installment, I am going to be focusing on decks that don’t rely too heavily on the new set. Keeping in line with that, I am going to be using a Selesnya aggro deck that breached the Top 8 piloted by Dan Kauffman.

The prices have been harvested from CoolStuffInc’s inventory at the time I wrote this article. For reference:

The grand total is $356.16.

That being said, this deck has a lot going for it. This is no surprise to anyone, but Rancor is one of the better cards aggressive decks have ever had access to. It allows any creature be a threat, and when you combine Rancor with Silverblade Paladin, you can pound through insane amounts of damage. This deck also takes advantage of the oversized creatures Loxodon Smiter and Wolfir Silverheart that can be powered out early with the eight 1-mana creatures this deck packs. I believe Selesnya Charm is a hidden gem in this deck, as it can act as a single-shot Rancor or provide an instant-speed Knight in a pinch.

I know that thirty-two mana sources may seem like a lot for an aggressive deck, and it may be, but with eight of them being mana elves that love wearing Rancors and pairing with Wolfir Silverhearts, I feel that they are serviceable once the mana they make is no longer needed.

So keeping with the theme of the deck, I have made the following revisions to make the deck more budget-friendly:

Revision:

"Budgetized Selesnya Aggro"

• Creatures (28)
• 4 Arbor Elf
• 4 Avacyn's Pilgrim
• 4 Loxodon Smiter
• 4 Silverblade Paladin
• 4 Strangleroot Geist
• 4 Wolfir Silverheart
• 3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
• 1 Champion of Lambholt

• Spells (8)
• 4 Rancor
• 4 Selesnya Charm

• Lands (24)
• 1 Gavony Township
• 4 Sunpetal Grove
• 4 Temple Garden
• 8 Forest
• 7 Plains

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Elite Inquisitor
• 2 Champion of Lambholt
• 2 Triumph of Ferocity
• 2 Sigarda, Host of Herons
• 3 Garruk, Primal Hunter
• 2 War Priest of Thune

Buy This Deck

Total: $230.02

Speaking of the sideboard, that is where we saved a good chunk of money. Cutting the Thragtusks for more Champions will probably make you weaker to the decks with burn, but it is a reasonable replacement for the green-based mirrors. I also switched Garruks to the Primal Hunter variant, not only due to the price tag, but because I think that Garruk, Primal Hunter may be better for this format. The large creatures and Rancor allow you to out-card-advantage people in the creature mirrors while also making a nice, hard-to-deal with threat against some control decks.

A small change that was made was swapping in War Priest of Thune for Revenge of the Hunted, as Detention Sphere and Oblivion Ring seem to be the best spot removal options control players have currently.

If the $230 price tag is too much for your budget, we can start attacking the lands to save a little money. I don’t recommend this, as the lands are what keep decks running. This brings us to a theme I will bring up throughout this series: There will be cards that will be costly and irreplaceable. Ideally, there would always be a way to take a deck and swap out cards to make it more affordable, albeit less powerful, but the unique cards cost more because they are exactly that, unique. Getting back to the mana base, Temple Garden definitely falls into that category. I would not want to cut these from the deck, but if saving another $60 is the difference between playing this deck and not, I think it is a good place to go. Keep in mind that this will make your deck less consistent and more prone to awkward draws and mulligans.

Another optional swap that won’t save you much money—but that may be a good call for your local metagame—would be to cut the Strangleroot Geist for Knight of Glory, which would be easier on the mana and give you some extra punch against the black-based aggro decks.

Well, that’s all for this week, and I hope this gives you all an idea of what this article will be about. If any of you out there have any decks you would like me to look over in the future, you should shoot me an email at JRRRsDecks at gmail dot com.

It’s nice to be back!

– JR Wade

@THEJRRR