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By: Dreager_Ex, Joshua Smith
Oct 25 2016 12:00pm
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Commander is a format filled with powerful bombs and ridiculous spells, and with both of these things there tends to be a very inflated price tag when it comes to singles. I'm here to show players, who might feel skittish dropping hundreds on those chase rares, that Commander doesn't have to be expensive and if you make the right choices you can keep the format fun and fresh without those high dollar cards. The goal of this series will be to make a new budget commander deck each week and slowly build up a collection to improve our future ventures. That way, if you keep up with the articles and the decks each new deck will have access to a higher dollar amount despite our goal to stick to a strict spending limit. After last week we have 43.08 tix worth of cards to use for free this week with our budget friendly brew. 

Zurgo Helmsmasher - Watch Your Head!

 
Zurgo Helmsmasher

I don't know about you guys but last week I had a lot of fun with the Jor Kadeen deck, but the part I had the most fun with was the Voltron strategy of the deck. Again, for any new commander players out there, the voltron strategy involves playing a durable and/or high powered commander then protecting and buffing them so they can swing in and win with Commander damage. Zurgo, by far, is one of the BEST commanders for this strategy. He has a huge power, that gets buffed every time someone decides to chump block him, and he is indestructible on our turn so he already fills both niches for what makes a good voltron commander. Zurgo having haste also makes him a force to be reckoned with as you can power him out turn 4, sometimes turn 3 and more rarely turn 2. Before your opponents can even react he's already put a three turn clock on them. The strategy is pretty straightforward, but similar to last week this strategy also includes some game locking combos that provide us with some alternate games plans for when our Zurgo has trouble getting through to our opponent's life total. 

Our deck last week gave us a ton of cards that fit perfectly into this deck, and as a result I expect our costs to be super low this week. While we are adding another color into the mix, unfortunately the deck is mostly white so we aren't going to be delving into a lot of the black staples this week, but it will give us a chance to invest in some fixing for the colors. It may be a little early to think about next week, but I think the goal going forward will be to push deeper into new colors, until we've covered a lot of the staples in each color. 
With that said lets go ahead and take a look at what staples we will be investing in this week. We'll also see just how much of last week's deck will be tossed into this week's deck.

 

 
This Week's New Commander Staples:

Vampiric Tutor......................................................................................................$0.44
Diabolic Tutor......................................................................................................$0.01
Mortify......................................................................................................$0.04
Anguished Unmaking
...............................................................................................
$0.08
Rakdos Signet......................................................................................................$0.04
Orzhov Signet......................................................................................................$0.03
Loxodon Warhammer...............................................................................................$0.01
Wear/Tear......................................................................................................$0.06
Burnished Hart......................................................................................................$0.01
Mind Stone......................................................................................................$0.30
Coalition Relic......................................................................................................$1.71
Worn Powerstone.....................................................................................................$0.02
Akroma's Vengeance.............................................................................................$0.24

 

Drafts from Last Week:
Darksteel Plate...............................................................................................FREE
Worldslayer......................................................................................................FREE
Sunforger......................................................................................................FREE
Godo, Bandit Warlord................................................................................FREE
 Stoneforge Mystic..........................................................................................FREE
Stonehewer Giant..........................................................................................FREE
Relic Seeker................................................................................................FREE
Enlightened Tutor............................................................................................FREE
Sigarda's Aid.................................................................................................FREE
Swords to Plowshares.....................................................................................FREE
Open the Armory......................................................................................FREE
Boros Signet............................................................................................FREE
Lightning Greaves...........................................................................................FREE
Swiftfoot Boots..............................................................................................FREE
Darksteel Ingot.........................................................................................FREE
Day of Judgment.........................................................................................FREE
Wrath of God............................................................................................FREE
Return to Dust..............................................................................................FREE
Solemn Simulacrum..................................................................................FREE
Thran Dynamo..........................................................................................FREE
Gilded Lotus............................................................................................FREE
Phyrexian Rebirth...........................................................................................FREE
Aurelia, the Warleader...................................................................................FREE
Staff of Nin......................................................................................................FREE
Obliterate......................................................................................................FREE
Blasphemous Act.........................................................................................FREE
Sol Ring......................................................................................................FREE
Mana Crypt......................................................................................................FREE

 Diabolic Tutor

Darksteel Plate

Wrath of God

As you can plainly see we pulled A LOT from our last deck, which will no doubt do wonders for keeping our costs low. This gives us an opportunity to delve into some Black, Rakdos and Orzhov staples, but also being a three color deck I know that we will have to invest a bit into our mana base toward the end of deck construction. We'll worry about the lands later, for now you can pretty much see the bones of our deck. Some of our purchases this week includes Anguished Unmaking and Mortify which are very versatile spells to have at our disposal. Dipping into black also gives us access to some generic tutors in the form of Vampiric Tutor and Diabolic Tutor. It's just too bad that Demonic Tutor is priced at a whomping 6 tix or I would jump on that as well.

Our game plan of making Zurgo bash in our opponent's helms has a lot of tools already at our disposal. Not only did I pull all of the equipment elements from the Jor Kadeen deck , but I also pulled out the board wipes, such as Wrath of God, Day of Judgment and Obliterate. Part of the power behind Zurgo is his indestructibility, and one of his weaknesses is his inability to break through a line of blockers. So we'll use our board wipes and his indestructibility to create a lopsided board state in our favor. The amount of concessions I've gotten just by using this simple tactic is staggering. Most people just feel crushed and unless they have an answer for Zurgo you'll be able to wipe out one or two players before they can recover. It goes even further with Obliterate and Worldslayer as the game just completely goes in your favor once you're the only player with a permanent on the battlefield. We will also bring back all of our equipment tutors such as Enlightened Tutor, Stoneforge Mystic, and Stonehewer Giant. All of which are just too powerful to leave out of an equipment based deck. 

So there should be no doubt in your mind, we are a full-fledged aggro deck, or at least what is considered to be an aggro deck in a format such as commander. Our game play, much like the Mardu mantra, is going to revolve around Speed and ruthlessness. I made quite a few enemies in my games I'm sure, but those are the tactics you're going to have to take with a deck like this. One game in particular comes to mind where I was forced to quickly take out a Phelddagrif player who was trying to play hugs, as he was buffing all my opponents and helping them explode into their own strategies. This deck is built around ramping out our commander already, so a group hug player isn't going to help you all that much, and in fact is only going to provide outs for our opponents. No matter what you do, you're going to be a high priority target as soon as people see what your commander is, so don't feel like you're painting a target on your back because there already is one. The plan is to ramp out Zurgo by AT LEAST turn 4, and have someone dead by turn 6. Our equipment is key to this strategy so let's see what we can include to help make our plan more durable.

 Suit up and Roll out!:
Assault Suit.....................................................................................................$0.05
Inquisitor's Flail...............................................................................................$0.01
Fireshrieker......................................................................................................$0.01
Tenza, Godo's Maul........................................................................................$0.01
Argentum Armor.............................................................................................$0.01
Whispersilk Cloak............................................................................................$0.01
Arashin Foremost...........................................................................................$0.16 Silverblade Paladin.........................................................................................$0.01

Hit em' very hard!:
Temur Battle Rage.........................................................................................$ 0.07
Ride Down......................................................................................................$0.01
Savage Beating..............................................................................................$0.21
World at War................................................................................................$0.01
Chandra's Ignition...........................................................................................$0.02

We have a lot of real burst potential with our card suite here. Assault Suit has quickly become my favorite equipment as it acts as both a huge damage buff for Zurgo and a powerful political move for you as well. Most games are going to involve your opponents all teaming up against you once they realize the kind of threat you pose to them. With Assault Suit, however, your opponents will be forced to attack each other and despite the fact that you're the one forcing them to do it, it will often devolve into them bickering about who attacked who. We have a lot of access to double strike in the form of Temur Battle Rage, Fireshrieker, Arashin Foremost, and Silverblade Paladin but we also have Inquisitor's Flail which stacks very nicely with Double strike. There is also a couple ways to give our guy trample as well; which, assuming we don't wipe the board, will help us get through their chump blockers. Finally, we have the cards that are going to help us survive multiple opponents dogging on us and that is the multiple combat phase cards: Savage Beating and World at War.


Assault Suit

World at War

As stated before, our biggest hurdle is going to be simultaneously keeping our opponents in check and clearing the way to hit them with Zurgo. We already drafted our board wipes from last week: Wrath of God, Day of Judgment and Phyrexian Rebirth, but we will  be needing a lot more. With no downside to us wiping the board with Zurgo active there is really no reason to not have several available to you. Assuming our opponents can slow us down we face another challenge in our opponents disrupting us or pulling off their own shenanigans. We have to have ways to interact with their game plans and hopefully disrupt them, and we also have to have options for protecting Zurgo when the equipment can't cut it. 

 
Watch the World Burn:
Akroma's Vengeance......................................................................................$0.20
Fumigate......................................................................................................$0.93
Austere Command......................................................................................$0.16
Nevinyrral's Disk...........................................................................................$0.01

Protect the Emperor:
Gift of Immortality.......................................................................................$0.01
Reverberate......................................................................................................$0.01
Boros Charm............................................................................................$0.09
Crackling Doom................................................................................................$0.02

Crux of Fate

 Along with all of the cards we drafted from last week's deck we have a multitude of board wipes, and a huge toolbox of instants to disrupt our opponents, and they can all be tutored up with Sunforger. Worth mentioning, while not meriting an entire section of its own, we also have Key to the City which acts as both a method of getting Zurgo through the line of blockers, and also providing us with a bit of card cycling to get to our pieces. Finally, when you look at the deck you'll see a couple of things. First, we have a higher than usual (at least for me) land count, and that's because we NEED to make land drops with this deck. Missing land drops in the first few turns is crippling to our deck and our aggro strategy. Also, I cut back hard on the lands that come into play tapped, and that's also because we need to be able to use our lands the turn we get them. This is definitely an area where investing in Dual lands might be worth it if you're willing to drop the money, but as for this deck we'll make due with cheaper options.

Your Basic Non-Basics:
Caves of Koilos........................................................................................$0.13
Sulfurous Springs.......................................................................................$1.00
Temple of Malice.........................................................................................$0.06
Temple of Silence....................................................................................$0.02
Opal Palace.........................................................................................$0.19
Nomad Outpost..........................................................................................$0.01
Isolated Chapel............................................................................................$0.07
Dragonskull Summit...............................................................................$0.02
Foreboding Ruins....................................................................................$0.78
Clifftop Retreat.........................................................................................$0.14

Caves of Koilos

 


Zurgo
- 96 Cards Total
Creature
1 Godo, Bandit Warlord
1 Stonehewer Giant
1 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Silverblade Paladin
1 Aurelia, the Warleader
1 Burnished Hart
1 Arashin Foremost
1 Relic Seeker
9 cards

Instant
1 Savage Beating
1 Mortify
1 Wear/Tear
1 Return to Dust
1 Reverberate
1 Boros Charm
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Crackling Doom
1 Temur Battle Rage
1 Anguished Unmaking
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Ride Down
12 cards

Sorcery
1 Obliterate
1 Wrath of God
1 Austere Command
1 Day of Judgment
1 World at War
1 Phyrexian Rebirth
1 Akroma's Vengeance
1 Blasphemous Act
1 Crux of Fate
1 Chandra's Ignition
1 Fumigate
1 Diabolic Tutor
1 Open the Armory
12 cards

Artifact
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Fireshrieker
1 Loxodon Warhammer
1 Worldslayer
1 Whispersilk Cloak
1 Darksteel Ingot
1 Tenza, Godo's Maul
1 Boros Signet
1 Rakdos Signet
1 Coalition Relic
1 Mind Stone
1 Argentum Armor
1 Darksteel Plate
1 Swiftfoot Boots
1 Inquisitor's Flail
1 Staff of Nin
1 Gilded Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Assault Suit
1 Sunforger
1 Thran Dynamo
1 Key to the City
1 Sol Ring
1 Nevinyrral's Disk
1 Worn Powerstone
22 cards
Enchantment
1 Gift of Immortality
1 Sigarda's Aid
2 cards


 
Land
1 Darksteel Citadel
1 Hall of the Bandit Lord
1 Sulfurous Springs
1 Caves of Koilos
1 Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
1 Spinerock Knoll
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Buried Ruin
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Isolated Chapel
1 Clifftop Retreat
1 Slayers' Stronghold
1 Rogue's Passage
1 Temple of Silence
1 Temple of Triumph
1 Command Tower
1 Opal Palace
1 Temple of Malice
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Battlefield Forge
1 Nomad Outpost
3 Mountain
4 Swamp
7 Plains
1 Command Beacon
1 Foreboding Ruins
37 cards

Commander
1 Zurgo Helmsmasher
1 cards

This is normally the part in the article where I would include some more budget options to lower the cost EVEN MORE. However, I've found the idea to be a little bit redundant as I'm already trying to keep the costs low, and if I do have a card worth a bit of money in the deck it's usually for a good reason. This point was made even more clear this week as the deck's total cost rang in at 21.38 tix, and that's before I subtracted the cards from our card pool. So as for budget options I'm going to remove that and just focus on the money splurge side of this section.

To start off with adding money into the deck obviously we're going to add a set of Dual lands and a set of Shock lands. It's VERY important to both fix your colors and have lands that can tap the turn you play them. Zurgo needs the mana exactly when he needs it, a turn later might be too late for you to capitalize on an opponent's slow start. Demonic Tutor is an obvious include for any deck that wants a tutor so Diabolic Tutor easily takes a cut for that. In an aggressive deck like Zurgo's having our tutor at two mana instead of four is huge. Iroas, God of Victory is a  way to keep a permanent on the field after we wipe the board with Obliterate or Worldslayer. Even if our opponent manages to put a chump blocker on the board after we wipe, Iroas ensures Zurgo won't be stopped so easily. Damnation is an obvious upgrade to some of our other low-quality board wipes, and Phyrexian Arena can be subbed in place of Staff of Nin which is really only there if you desperately need more gas. 

As for the various Planeswalkers this could include: Nahiri, the Lithomancer, Elspeth, Sun's Champion, Elspeth, Knight-Errant, Nahiri, the Harbinger, Ajani Vengeant, and Sorin, Grim Nemesis. All of these accomplish the same thing in our deck which is to give it some extra legs should Zurgo just get completely shut down by our opponents. Obviously this is a very expensive version of the deck but it adds that needed versatility that I spoke about last week with Jor Kadeen. The best part about this plan is that you can still continue the board wipe plan, same as always, because none of your wipes kill Planeswalkers. 

I won the Lotto!

IN:                         
Plateau
Badlands
Scrubland
Blood Crypt
Sacred Foundry
Godless Shrine
Demonic Tutor
Iroas, God of Victory
Damnation
Phyrexian Arena
Various Planeswalkers

Out:                         
Basic Lands
Diabolic Tutor
Reverberate
Crackling Doom
Fumigate
Crux of Fate
Staff of Nin
Argentum Armor

 


Balancing the Books - A Financial Analysis
(Prices in Tix from MTGOTRADERS.com on: 10/20/2016)

This Week's Deck Cost:

Running Total:

This Week's Deck Value:     21.38 
Cost of Cards from our Card Pool:    -11.39 

Final Total Spent this Week:     09.99 
Total amount of Money Saved Throughout Series:
    24.23 
Running Total of Expenditures:     43.08 
This Week's Total Expenditure:   +09.99 

 The new total of Expenditures:     53.07 
Weekly Average:    (17.69)

As I expected, considering the amount of drafts we had from last week's deck and just the value of the cards we did buy we are way below my typical goal for one of these decks. At the same time I don't feel like we sacrificed too much power to make the deck cheaper either. Sure we passed up on Damnation and the other higher quality dual lands, but I don't think they make or break the deck by any means.  With this week's investment being so low we dropped the average by 6 tix which is a huge success and I hope going into next week we can be a bit more diverse from this week's deck. We're gonna be delving a bit more into black, but I'm undecided where I will want to go with the other color. Anyway, hope you all have fun smashing helms at the tables like I did!


Like what you read? Feel free to leave a comment with some feedback, advice or requests for future Commanders/Decks.
Just remember, the goal is to get the most use out of the cards we have in our pool now.
So keep that in mind when requesting Commanders.
Thanks!

5 Comments

Holy crap, Vampiric Tutor is by Leviathan at Tue, 10/25/2016 - 12:59
Leviathan's picture
5

Holy crap, Vampiric Tutor is only 44 cents! Apparently I really have been away from MTGO for a long time.

One thing I missed is how the deck actually does when play testing. Strengths and weaknesses. Board wipes suck for any voltron commander, so you need to up your card draw I'm guessing. However you did note that missing land drops with a deck like this sucks. I would consider bumping it up to 40 lands, and including stuff like Land Tax and Journeyer's Kite. Were you able to beat any control decks?

Interested to see what you do when you get away from voltron.

Yes it is! by Dreager_Ex at Tue, 10/25/2016 - 22:39
Dreager_Ex's picture

Yeah I was just as surprised that Vampiric tutor was so so so cheap. It was a must for any black deck at that price point.

As for the board wipes, I agree in general board wipes hurt if you're killing you're own commander, but Zurgo is kind of the exception because he's indestructible during your turn. So basically all the board wipes just leave him as the only creature on the board typically.

You're right about the testing, the strengths and weaknesses. Going forward I think I will set aside a portion of the article for that.

I didn't have too many issues missing land drops. The curve is really low and the mana rocks are plentiful. If I was willing to pump more money into the deck I would have probably included things like Land Tax (5+ tix) and Scroll Rack (1 tix). I probably also would have included Phyrexian Arena and similar effects. They all just seemed too pricey and the sacrifice of the budget was a little bit less consistency on that front. The land drops were important but after I had Zurgo on the board it becomes less so, as he is pretty hard to deal with if you pull or tutor for the right equipment.

How well I fared against control decks depended on a couple of things. If there were at least two players playing control that were targeting me with hate, it was a rough patch. If I could kill one of them I would often fall to the other if I didn't draw/tutor for my shroud/hexproof equipment. Their own board wipes were often mitigated due to Assault Suit making Zurgo indestructible on their turns.

It's REALLY strong against other Voltron decks as you said, Wrath effects are often critical against them. Combo decks were cake too if I made them a priority target.

It's weak to permission, but often you can get out in front of a permission deck because they spend their turns 1-5 developing mana or the board. If someone DOES find a way to eliminate Zurgo the first time, if the permission player decided you were a threat it was hard to get back on board from that point.

Somewhat ironically, the decks I often lost to were aggro decks going wide. Having no blockers on my board was often such a juicy target for them that they couldn't resist, and Zurgo scared them enough to make me public enemy #1. I basically HAD to draw a wrath or I'd die against them going wide. Then even if I did wrath I had to hope they couldn't recover too quickly. Having done some more testing I would definitely pursue a couple of Planeswalkers, more more draw, and probably a few more wrath effects.

I think I'll try to keep statistics in the future to go along with that section. I hope I answered some of your questions. I found Zurgo to be a difficult deck to pilot, as so much of the games depended on the politics, but it was definitely one of the more fun decks I've made.

Imho if you lost to politics by Paul Leicht at Tue, 10/25/2016 - 22:46
Paul Leicht's picture

Imho if you lost to politics usually then you succeeded. That's the balancer in multiplayer commander, great decks can die to pressure from politics. The bigger the threat, the more likely for it to happen with an experienced group.

Thanks! by Dreager_Ex at Wed, 10/26/2016 - 03:50
Dreager_Ex's picture

Yeah and I love that about the format. :)

I also wanted to say to by Dreager_Ex at Fri, 10/28/2016 - 02:53
Dreager_Ex's picture

I also wanted to say to anyone reading this: I take a lot of time trying to make the article look sleek and perfect. I'm not sure how the formatting got jacked between submitting it and it being published, but I'll try to make more readable in the future.