As we continue our journey of looking at four-part cycles of things, I thought it'd be neat to look at some super-powerful, super-expensive Commanders. So, we're going to do a series on eight-mana Commanders.

Since our budget was fairly high by the end last time, let's also keep it more modest, starting with $75 for our first deck, then we'll do $150, $225, and $300. We won't run any crazy land bases or anything, but we should be able to do some stuff.

When considering an extremely Limited budget, there are a few options. The first is think about what you already have. The collection you currently own is the cheapest batch of cards you can get, so when budget-conscious, consider what you already have available. I don't know what you've got, and comparing to my collection doesn't do any good, so I have to ignore this one.

The other thing we can do is consider what cards are always cheap. Commons and stuff, sure, though not always; with the right batch of commons, you can spend a lot of money. But lands, basic lands, are always cheap. You probably have all the basic lands you need in a box somewhere. If you don't, it's very likely the local card shop will give you what you need, if not a friend who also plays. If we can build a deck that wants to run a lot of lands, we can likely keep our costs way down.

Of course, if we fill up a deck with nothing but cards that cost $0.25, we'll have a deck that costs $25. But that can get arduous and complicated, and frankly doesn't leave us any wiggle room for the occasional $1 or even $3 card that may work with our deck perfectly. So, let's take a look at the eight-mana Commanders we've got and see if there's anything that cares about lands. If so, we can fill up our deck with lands as a strategy and save ourselves some coin along the way.

There we go.

Our eight mana gets us a 7/6 with Trample who wants to attack, hit, and then... I'm not totally sure what the in-story explanation here is. Throw rocks and trees at our opponents? Either way, we get to look at three cards, grab any lands, then pitch them to do more damage every time he manages to connect. This seems like a good excuse to run a ton of lands!

There are a few things worth considering as we look at this deck. We want to play with lands, for sure. We're going to have a lot of them: we're going to draw them during our draw step and off Bobo (our nickname for our Commander), as well as any other time we draw cards, so we may as well have things to do with them. Ideally, we want to be able to play more of them than normal, have things happen when we play them, and be able to sacrifice and discard them for additional effects. It'd be nice to be able to get them back from the graveyard, as well.

Let's start with playing extra lands and returning them from the Graveyard. Cards like Azusa, Lost but Seeking and Oracle of Mul Daya are simply too expensive for our measly $75. They would be really nice to have, and if you've got them and feel like putting them in, go for it, but we're not going to be able to play more than one land per turn. Returning them is also tough; Life from the Loam is the classic here, but it's a third of our budget. We could run Eternal Witness-style effects, but it hardly seems worth it, especially since often we'll end up pitching them to Bobo before we can even use them. Loam is perfect because it comes back from the 'yard all by itself, so again, we want it, but we can't afford it.

The other stuff, though, we can do. Landfall has been around since Zendikar, and while Avenger of Zendikar would be awesome, there are lots of other great Landfall effects. Zendikar's Roil and Rampaging Baloths both make tokens. Baloth Woodcrasher just gets really big and Tramples. We can make mana with Lotus Cobra, get extra combat steps with Moraug, Fury of Akoum, and do a not-so-bad Avenger impression with Phylath, World Sculptor. Even the humble Retreat to Kazandu can matter a great deal, because when it's five counters or ten life it seems like a worthwhile effect. Nahiri's Lithoforming can be bonkers with a few Landfall effects on the battlefield.

We've also got Awaken and all the fun that comes with it. Earthen Arms may seem silly, but when you combine it with its Awaken ability, suddenly we have an additional creature we can mess with. Embodiment of Fury and Embodiment of Insight both give our land creatures abilities, and in addition to Awaken, we have things like Treetop Village and Raging Ravine to further make use of our lands. We can even cast Sylvan Awakening to turn all our creatures into lands for a massive attack.

Turns out if you're willing to sacrifice your lands, you can do that. Hammer of Purphoros makes tokens for excess lands and gives all our creatures Haste, which helps a lot when so much of our stuff comes down so late (I'm looking at you, Bobo). Goblin Razerunners can throw some serious damage around with the right set of circumstances.

And finally, Seismic Assault and friends help us to be Bobo when Bobo isn't around to play. Ayula's Influence makes Bears instead of does damage, but we can use Bears. Molten Vortex costs less to cast but costs more to use, but is still worth it. And Seismic Assault is a mini-Bobo that's harder to kill but less useful.

We do have a couple ways to get extra lands down; Mina and Denn, Wildborn let us play an extra and, nicely, returns them to our hand so we can discard them to Bobo. Summer Bloom and Explore can also give us a hand in this department.

We've got 60 lands. There is an argument for more, but with 60, we'll draw at least one off every Bobo hit most of the time, and often we'll draw two, which should be good.

Finally, we have just a couple Wheels. (In case you don't know, a "Wheel" is a Wheel of Fortune-style effect, where you, someone, or everyone discards their hand and draws some amount of cards. Traditionally it's seven, but sometimes it's different.) Assuming we don't just wind up dead to someone set on ending the game on turn five or whatever, we're going to find ourselves without cards in hand a lot, so casting a Wheel-type effect will draw us back up and help keep the flow of lands to pitch.

Throwing Lands | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Borborygmos Enraged

• Creatures (17)
• 1 Baloth Woodcrasher
• 1 Budoka Gardener
• 1 Dryad Arbor
• 1 Embodiment of Fury
• 1 Embodiment of Insight
• 1 Goblin Razerunners
• 1 Liege of the Tangle
• 1 Living Twister
• 1 Lotus Cobra
• 1 Mina and Denn, Wildborn
• 1 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
• 1 Omnath, Locus of Rage
• 1 Phylath, World Sculptor
• 1 Rampaging Baloths
• 1 Ruin Grinder
• 1 Scute Swarm
• 1 Seismic Assault

• Instants (2)
• 1 Harrow
• 1 Lightning Storm

• Sorceries (11)
• 1 Boiling Earth
• 1 Collective Defiance
• 1 Earthen Arms
• 1 Enter the Unknown
• 1 Explore
• 1 Magma Rift
• 1 Magmatic Insight
• 1 Nahiri's Lithoforming
• 1 Scale the Heights
• 1 Summer Bloom
• 1 Sylvan Awakening

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Ayula's Influence
• 1 Khalni Heart Expedition
• 1 Molten Vortex
• 1 Retreat to Kazandu
• 1 Retreat to Valakut
• 1 Zendikar's Roil

• Artifacts (3)
• 1 Arcane Spyglass
• 1 Hammer of Purphoros
• 1 Seer's Sundial

• Lands (60)
• 7 Forest
• 7 Mountain
• 1 Blighted Gorge
• 1 Blighted Woodland
• 1 Castle Embereth
• 1 Cinder Glade
• 1 Command Beacon
• 1 Cradle of the Accursed
• 1 Cragcrown Pathway
• 1 Desert of the Fervent
• 1 Desert of the Indomitable
• 1 Detection Tower
• 1 Dunes of the Dead
• 1 Emergence Zone
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Fertile Thicket
• 1 Fungal Reaches
• 1 Game Trail
• 1 Gruul Guildgate
• 1 Hashep Oasis
• 1 Haunted Fengraf
• 1 Hostile Desert
• 1 Jund Panorama
• 1 Kazandu Refuge
• 1 Kazandu Valley
• 1 Labyrinth of Skophos
• 1 Naya Panorama
• 1 Raging Ravine
• 1 Ramunap Ruins
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Rugged Highlands
• 1 Scavenger Grounds
• 1 Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass
• 1 Shivan Oasis
• 1 Skarrg, the Rage Pits
• 1 Smoldering Spires
• 1 Song-Mad Ruins
• 1 Spikefield Cave
• 1 Tangled Vale
• 1 Teetering Peaks
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Timber Gorge
• 1 Treetop Village
• 1 Turntimber Grove
• 1 Turntimber, Serpentine Wood
• 1 Valakut Stoneforge
• 1 Vastwood Thicket

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The deck should be relatively simple to play. We're not really ramping, because we don't have the space, so just play lands and spells up till you can cast Bobo, cast Bobo, and get to work. Hopefully you'll have enough lands you can play one each turn and still have a couple to discard, but there's not a lot of reason to go much past 12 unless Bobo gets killed and we have to recast him for the fourth time.

As I mentioned, cards like Dryad of the Ilysian Grove would be really nice to have. Constant Mists would be a nice trick to have up our sleeve. Life from the Loam would be awesome, as would Avenger of Zendikar. The other two cards I'd love to put in here are Eternity Vessel, which seems like it could keep us alive for a long time, and Dust Bowl, which would do a wonderful job of keeping people honest with their own land bases.

Some cheaper upgrades might also be fun. I didn't want to lower the land count, but it could be worth trying Snake Umbra, Creeping Renaissance, and Nylea's Intervention. More card draw is never bad, and ways to get more lands (or recover the ones pitched) could be great.

But for less than 75 bucks ($72.59, to be exact, at the time of this writing), this deck should be fun to play and keep players on their toes, making sure they're not counting on winning no matter what anyone else is doing. Seems like a pretty good deal.

How would you build a deck like this? What are your tricks for keeping costs down? Let us know in the comments!

Thanks for reading.