kelvinmai's picture
By: kelvinmai, Kelvin Mai
May 28 2013 2:02am
5
Login to post comments
3181 views


In the past couple articles on Brewing on a Budget, I feel that I was concentrating too much on the brew side and less on the budget side so today I will try to write here with more of a focus on the latter. The only exception to this is the lands, as someone who is trying to be as competitive as he can, I can not in good conscious suggest a deck without what it needs. Also on MTGO a playset of shock lands is less than the price of half the set in paper, so you guys shouldn't be complaining anyways. So first I'll talk about some answers that we can start putting into our decks that can help us beat some tier one decks. Then on to the fun part, I'll present a couple decks that are relatively cheap that you can pick up and play, and I hope that all are good enough to win some games in the current standard.

Budget Answers

Rise from The Grave Conjured Currency Soul Ransom

The best advantage of being on a budget is that you get to explore every possibility and a lot of answers to win conditions out there that are actually pretty light on your wallet. Why you may ask? Well it's quite simple, many people take the short cut and just copy down a deck list from some trusted source and don't actually put in the time to look at possibilities. In my eyes the top decks of standard are Junk Rites, American Control and aggro with base red. Junk Rites have a pretty consistent win condition in the grave. A card that many people forget that could take these decks by surprise is Rise from the Grave. It's pointless to side in graveyard hate as the deck can easily ramp and cast their fatties anyways, so instead of going against their strategy, we use it against them. The new Breaking & Entering card also does this with haste at the extra cost of one red, both rise and entering are bulk and less than 20 cents.

American control is a bit trickier as not every single list has the same win condition. If they are on the Nephalia Drownyard plan, you can easily shut them down with a single Pithing Needle. The needle also shuts down Esper as well as Aetherling. If American wants to Assemble the Legion we can steal it with Conjured Currency. Note though that currency is only good in a control shell, and my paper deck is Grixis Control so my board is usually empty and the enchantment is not a threat to me. Also the text says may so we only have to use its ability once and win with the army of soldiers. There are better enchantment removal in green and white, such as Sundering Growth for a token strategy or straight Naturalize but many of you already knew that.

Aggro is a bit harder to fight, obviously you'll want sweepers and life gain. A dedicated life gain deck such as Chalice of Life or Rhox Faithmender could easily be out of reach for them and beat them down with a Serra Avatar. If you are running some gates you should try out Saruli Gatekeeper as it will easily negate their first two or three turns and set them back. As far as sweepers, Supreme Verdict is the best, and Mutilate is better but only if you run swamps. In blue we have Cyclonic Rift and Aetherize, and as an aggro deck they'll be stuck on less than 4 lands so it'll take them time to rebuild their force at which time it should be too late for them. In red we have access to Magmaquake and Mizzium Mortars. Quake is more flexible and usually cheaper mana wise than an overloaded mortars, but mortars hits all creatures not just non-fliers. But a creative sideboard card against aggro would have to be Soul Ransom to steal one of their finishers. Why is this a great card in this match up? Well if it's like any other aggro deck, they're going to run out of cards really fast. They themselves can't answer their own Thundermaw Hellkite or Boros Reckoner, and if they spend cards to stall out, that's one extra turn you have with their creature.

Budget Brews

Splinterrush
 
Creatures
4 Splinterfright
4 Ambush Viper
4 Slaughterhorn
4 Wasteland Viper
4 Strangleroot Geist
2 Ghoultree
22 cards

Other Spells
3 Rancor
4 Mulch
3 Tracker's Instincts
3 Ranger's Guile
3 Pit Fight
16 cards
Lands
22 Forest
22 cards
 
Splinterfright

All the way back in my very first article I talked about what's a good way about brewing and one of the points that I brought up was attacking the meta, the idea that our deck is designed to take advantage of what is popular in the game world. In today's meta there is a drastically low amount of graveyard hate, long gone are the sideboards full of Ground Seal, Grafdigger's Cage and Rest in Peace so we can take advantage of this by creating a dredge deck. And we have a strong contender in the form of Splinterfright, but this deck has a very Gruul twist on it as it mainly gets creatures in the yard by way of bloodrush. Bloodrushing a Splinterfright not only gives it the bloodrush bonus but also another +1/+1 because of the creature discarded. I went mono green simply for budget reasons, if we were to splash red for other bloodrushers the only one that I would consider is Ghor-Clan Rampager. Slaughterhorn and Wasteland Viper are our bloodrush cards and they also are also good creatures when we don't have anything else. Ambush Viper is a great surprise blocker that also fills our yard. While Splinterfright is the namesake of the deck we have another finisher in the form of Ghoultree which is only a 2 of because more would usually mean it'll cost more to cast. Mulch and Tracker's Instincts both serve as dredge cards to pump our little splinterfright, splashing blue would be helpful for the flashback ability of Tracker's Instincts but as a onetime use spell it still gets the job done. Pit Fight is our removal and our creatures are usually bigger than theirs or at least have deathtouch so that it will never be a bad card and Ranger's Guile saves our creatures from removal. But of course we don't have to be all in on the graveyard plan, Strangleroot Geist and Rancor lets us win the aggro game. This deck goes for a little over 5 tickets on MTGO so it's a good contender to pick up and play.

The sideboard plan for this varies, Gnaw to the Bone is definitely good against aggro as it will give us a good amount of life gain. I was thinking about a fight club style sideboard with Young Wolf and Predator Ooze as these cards survive through wraths, where the hexproof from Ranger's Guile isn't helpful.

Unkillable Monsters
 
Creatures
4 Young Wolf
4 Strangleroot Geist
4 Deadbridge Goliath
4 Vorapede
4 Disciple of Bolas
4 Renegade Krasis
24 cards

Other Spells
4 Altar's Reap
4 Farseek
4 Rancor
12 cards
Lands
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Woodland Cemetery
13 Forest
3 Swamp
24 cards
 
Vorapede

Another way we can attack the meta is instead of asking "what isn't out there?" We ask "what is all over the place?". And this the answer to this question is that control obviously likes sweepers and spot removal with words like "Destroy" and "Sacrifice", so why don't we make a deck that is as close to immune as it can get. This deck is brought to you by a post on MTGSalvation by user Essence where the concept of the deck is your opponent doesn't actually want your creatures to die. Essence gives us the early undying creatures Young Wolf and Strangleroot Geist that begins our race. And we go into the 3 drop of Renegade Krasis which at first I didn't really like, but I didn't realize the interaction it had with Undying, when the creature re-enters the battlefield, it'll evolve the krasis which will evolve your team. As you can tell your force can get really big really fast. Deadbridge Goliath is just a good cheap beater and Vorapede is such an amazing creature and I hope it finds a good home here. Disciple of Bolas will also let you use a creature's death to your advantage, turning it into life and cards. Unfortunately the disciple isn't a win condition, and I kind of wish it had the same ability as Dying Wish, perhaps a consideration when tinkering with the deck. (Alter's Reap) is another sac outlet that turns into cards and it fits better in this list than something like Sign in Blood. The Overgrown Tomb and Woodland Cemetery isn't required, it wasn't in Essence's original list either, but those lands would be the first thing I'd add.

What are some possible considerations to make this deck better? Well for one I feel like Predator Ooze would fit right in as another creature "immune to removal" and the ooze already knows how to get as big as the Krasis. And with the theme of the deck I think that Golgari Charm fits in the deck with its theme of anti-wrath card, this card can make a big impact with its regenerate mode. Earlier I mentioned that I'd like Dying Wish in the list and stand by my claim. With all the graveyard interaction by way of Undying we would possibly like some anti-graveyard hate like Naturalize and Abrupt Decay to take care of Grafdigger's Cage and Rest in Peace.

The previous deck then inspired the this idea of an aggro deck. The idea here is to always get more than what you pay for. Many of you know what the vanilla test is, the idea that the amount of mana you pay for should correspond with the power of the creature you get. This surpasses the vanilla test in that it always gives you more power than mana paid, a 2/2 for one ,Dryad Militant, a 4/4 for three, Loxodon Smiter, a 5/5 for four ,Deadbridge Goliath, and essentially an 8/8 for five in the form of Wolfir Silverheart. Of course it's backed up by other good beaters that are more than what you paid for, the green undying creatures Young Wolf and Strangleroot Geist. And of course the shell isn't new this is fight club, but the creatures are so big that fighting is not a problem. The fight cards Ulvenwald Tracker, Prey Upon, and Pit Fight serve as great removal as our creatures are usually too big to deal with. Predator Ooze and Strangleroot Geist allows us to win the aggro game and this deck could easily beat any of the red aggro decks, as our undiers can be beat by burn and our higher end creatures are unstoppable to them, and because of our curve control can in fact run out of answers as we beat them down. 

As for sideboard I would take out the fight cards and replace them with something else that protects our big creatures. If we know our opponent likes to use targeted spells to get rid of our creatures we can board in Ranger's Guile. If you can't tell this spell is a bit of a pet card for me as it stops a lot of answers as well as pump our creatures for a lethal attack. Rootborn Defenses and Druid's Deliverance can blunt the assault of our enemy but will only serve one purpose as we don't have any token producers. If we do go the token route and staying on the theme of the deck Call of the Conclave and Advent of the Wurm are both cards that produce monsters bigger than their investment. Selesnya Charm could help if we want to take the token route but it is also a removal spell when our fight cards aren't good enough. Rancor is another consideration to help our advancement and aggression and it has great synergy with Selesnya Charm pushing the problem creature's power over 5. 

In my article previewing possibilities of decks from the new cards in Dragon's Maze I put up a very rough draft of an izzet aggro deck. This was one of the decks I was most excited to make and play but I haven't really gotten to it until now. Nivmagus Elemental is definitely the reason to play this deck as the cipher spells make him so good. The interaction is that you cast the copied spell and you have the choice of resolving it or pumping the elemental. Hidden Strings usually gets exiled while Hands of Binding doesn't because it serves such good utility. With the combined power of pumping and tempo this is the deck that can easily trump other aggro decks. At first glance you'd think Nivix Cyclops is a shoe in, but after some testing I find that he's just too slow even with all the spells we're packing. Artful Dodge was actually in the list because of the cyclops, but an unblockable 10/11 elemental just seems better.

Of course this deck is a glass cannon against control, if they remove your creature it may be many turns before you can draw another one, and by that time it is probably too late. To mitigate the difficulty of this match up we can side in some counterspells like Counterflux, Spell Rupture, Dissipate and Dispel and play it like the Delver Tempo deck that reigned supreme in the last standard season. Because there are very little creatures in the deck, you would almost always want to mulligan for at least one creature to ensure a turn one threat.

Anyways that's all I have for this week, hopefully I did good in providing you with some creative and unconventional decks as well as inspire you to use some budget cards that can help fight against the meta. Join me next week as I go outside my comfort zone and try out some different formats.