Hello again folks, and welcome to the last part in this short series. The less said about my extended PTQ performance the better, so instead we're going to take a look at a few more successful San Diego decks and see what deck makes the most financial sense for the frugal planeswalker. First up we have Craig Wescoe's White Weenie deck that made top 8, then Zvi Mowshowitz's ‘Mythic' deck, and finally the popular mono-black Vampires, specifically Jeffrey Chen's 9-1 PT list. There are plenty more archetypes that saw play at the Pro Tour but we only have so much space in each article – if none of the decks covered over the last three weeks has caught your fancy, check out the Top Decks page on the mothership for some inspiration! As always I am approximating CoolStuffInc's prices.

White Weenie

White Weenie is one of the most persistent archetypes in Magic for the simple reason that Wizards keep printing cheap, efficient white creatures. White Knight is the best example, first printed in Alpha and still playable today. White Weenie is rarely a tier-1 deck in standard as usually it has a lot of trouble with board sweepers, however the lack of sweepers played in standard at the moment and the particular strength of certain white Grizzly Bears against Jund has launched the deck into real contention.

Craig Wescoe's top-8 deck is tailored to beat Jund, which is a fair strategy in the current standard metagame. White Knight and Kor Firewalker are the key to this plan as they require different answers – White Knight can't be killed by Pulse, Terminate or Bituminous Blast while Firewalker can't be killed by Terminate, Blast or Lightning Bolt. In addition Jund's creature selection while high on raw power is very poor against Craig's prot-bears. It's hard to imagine a situation where Jund is happy attacking into either Knight or Firewalker, especially when white can use Stoneforge Mystics to tutor up Basilisk Collar. It is very possible for Bloodbraid Elf to cascade into a useless removal spell against whatever blocker the white deck is presenting.

Despite this focus against the largest metagame presence, Craig's deck still has a decent amount of power against the field. Steppe Lynx and Skyfisher can rapidly knock down the opponent's life total, especially when carrying some power-boosting equipment. Late game Elspeth gives you a great advantage in a topdeck war as she can single-handedly win the game. The major problem for the deck will be Malakir Bloodwitch, already heavily played in Vampires and occasionally in Jund. Craig chose a full four Dread Statuary maindeck to try and mitigate this problem as either they trade with your land (when you already have enough mana to play any spell in your deck) which lets you get in with your white creatures or they let you get through for 4. Statuaries also work well with the two maindeck Day of Judgments.

The deck is moderately expensive compared to the field, coming in well above Jund but much less than any of the GWx decks. Budgetizing the deck is not out of the question – Elspeth is the major expense, and she is not crucial to the deck's game plan. @parakkum on twitter suggested Marshal's Anthem as a budget alternative for filling the same role and I think it is definitely a reasonable swap. Late game, getting back one or two guys and antheming your team will be very hard to beat. The second big cost in the deck is the fetchlands and unfortunately they are important. Steppe Lynx is one of the strongest creatures available in the early game but despite being a common it comes with a lot of baggage. If you find a viable alternative for Steppe Lynx you could get the deck down to around $150, but I think the deck will be much weaker for it.

Mythic

GWx decks seem to be everywhere these days, between Naya, GWB (or 'Junk') and Bant they have every combination covered. They are all built around the same core or Noble Hierarch, Knight of the Reliquary, and Stirring Wildwood and somehow manage to be distinct decks. Zvi's choice for San Diego was in Bant colours though it was quite different from most builds.

The distinct features of this deck are the threat density and the surfeit of mana generating cards. With 18 big creatures and 7 manlands, Mythic can overwhelm the opponent's limited removal cards and sticking even one of Baneslayer Angel, Thornling, Rafiq or so on puts you way ahead against mediocre creatures like Kor Firewalker or Sprouting Thrinax. As well as this the Finest Hour and Rafiq turn the twelve mana dorks into actual threats, and if your opponent wastes their Terminate on your suddenly exalted double-striking Birds of Paradise they might just lose to the next turn's Rhox War Monk.

The mana-ramping ability of this deck is rivalled only by RG Valakut, with over half the deck dedicated mana. Getting 5 mana on turn 3 is easy and the deck has a load of ways to employ it – an early Baneslayer or Thornling is very difficult to race. Unfortunately the deck seems to have a lot of really terrible topdecks on an empty board, but that is the price you pay for accelerating your mana and you do have seven manlands to activate late in the game.

Another peculiar feature is the distinct lack of removal, or any way to disrupt the opponent's game plan. Without so much as a Path to Exile, Essence Scatter or Lightning Bolt in the maindeck Mythic is really relying on out-powering the opponent with better creatures. There are a number of removal spells in the sideboard but it is very odd to have none in the maindeck. Evidently the plan worked, propelling Gaudenis Vidugiris to 9-1.

What really brought this deck to my attention, though, is the exorbitant price tag. With a maindeck consisting of 14 mythic rares, 32 rares, 4 uncommons, 1 common and 9 basic lands it is hard to imagine a more expensive deck. The two Jace, the Mind Sculptors in the sideboard seem designed to jack up the price even further. Really, budgetizing this deck is a fool's errand and if you want to play a cheap deck then Bant is not your archetype.

Vampires

Zendikar block constructed prior to Worldwake was essentially a Rock-Rock-Rock metagame. Even moreso than Jund in standard, Vampires completely warped the format to the point that only the deck itself or the anti-vampires white decks could compete. The deck gains few cards in the larger card pool in standard, but one of them is a real doozy.

The deck is quite similar to Jund in many ways. It plays a selection of mediocre bodies with inbuilt card advantage – Gatekeeper of Malakir is like a Bloodbraid Elf that always cascades into Cruel Edict, for example, and trading with Bloodghast is just as fruitless as trading with Sprouting Thrinax. Vampires also has some powerful tools against aggro – Tendrils of Corruption – and control, in the crippling Mind Sludge. If you've ever had a Mind Sludge resolved against you while you still had some cards in hand, you will know how difficult it is to win from there.

What turns these grizzly bears and goblin pikers into standard-worthy creatures is the M10 lord, Vampire Nocturnus. With a black card on top of your library – not a terribly difficult feat, with 8 fetches to shuffle it for you – all your creatures get +2/+1 and flying, essentially giving you a Windborne Charge all the time. Malakir Bloodwitch is also an extremely strong creature in its own right, especially given the prevalent removal spells in standard. Getting value from its first ability is just the icing on the cake.

The deck is reasonably economical. Most of the cards are common or uncommon, and the only rare lands are fetches, used for reasons other than mana-fixing. They are in the deck just to turn on Nocturnus more reliably, but since turning on Nocturnus is so absurdly powerful they are worth the cost just for that. Nocturnus himself is pretty pricey – I've chosen the promo version above as it is ten dollars cheaper than the regular version, largely due to the less appealing art. Some people have contemplated dropping Nocturnus entirely, but I don't believe this is for the best as its effect is so swingy. If you were to cut Nocturnus and the fetches, upping each of the 3s to 4s and adding another 8 swamps, you'd have one of the cheapest decks in standard but it would be noticeably less effective.

That's all the decks we have time for in this series. For the budget conscious planeswalker, I have to recommend Jund, or if you have an aversion to that deck one of the mono-coloured decks like white weenie, red deck wins or vampires. For those with a taste for the rogue RG Valakut is a tier-2 contender with a very low price tag, and for anyone with the foresight to pick up Hierarchs, Knights and Elspeths when they were cheap you have any number of GW based midrange decks to choose from. UW players, you just keep doing your thing. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the above decks or on any that missed out, and I'll see you all again next week!