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By: BlastodermMan, Carl E Wilt
Nov 11 2015 12:00pm
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Somewhere along the line, things have gotten pretty expensive. Sure, gas is down (just over $2.00 here locally as of this afternoon), but otherwise, things continue to go up and up. A gallon of milk is almost $5.00. Back in my day, a quarter could get you a couple packs of gum, while now you are lucky to get away for less than a couple bucks for a single pack. Much of this is caused by inflation and rising costs to market. Some of my "Damn, this is expensive" realizations are just that I'm old, and while I had the benefit of cheap gum and candy bars (or even smokes) back in the day, no one under the age of 35 can really relate to those memories.

Day-to-day life isn't the only thing that has been costing us more. Standard has gotten crazy expensive to play since the rotation. A mere two months ago, while there were Standard decks that were highly priced, it was somewhat easy to find a competitive deck that was really cheap. In fact, many of the Burn decks and mono-Red Aggro decks where not only affordable, but also extremely competitive. Weird what a single rotation can do. 

Don't believe me? Check out the costs of these decks, which are all players in the current metagame: 

 

Granted the prices listed above are for physical cards, as opposed to MTGO product. But, relatively speaking, the cost is proportionally higher there as well. Finding that 30-ticket deck is harder and harder to achieve. Once we get back to Innistrad in the Spring, I look for there to be a pretty decent drop in Standard costs, simply because I suspect there will be a wider range of cards seeing play post rotation, once we lose many of the gold cards and all the fetch lands. I suspect this will drive players towards more two-color decks. Sure, there will always be those cards that are expensive and cost more than others, but when decks can't all play the relative "best" of everything due to color constraints, there will be more diversity, in theory.

So, let's all just hang it up and meet back here in...say...late April, early May, and talk about Standard then.

What? That's not cool? 

Fine. Fine. Let's not give up Magic for six months, and instead, let's see what we can cobble together.

A few days ago, I was chatting with one of my friends, Lexie, and she shared with me a BR Devoid deck that was really affordable. She called it her $13.00 deck. While not an exact copy of what she shared with me, here is another version that closely resembles her deck: 

Obviously, there are upgrades that can be made, if you happen to randomly have the cards. Hangarback Walker is a pretty clear inclusion if you have them, and updating the mana base to include the appropriate fetch lands and Smoldering Marsh is pretty much an automatic. But, as is, the deck is not horrible. Lexie has been streaming it for a few days, and it's always enjoyable to watch the deck come together and get a few wins. I don't pretend to imply that this deck would spike a Grand Prix or SCG event, but it is more than capable of winning some packs at FNM, or at least getting you tickets back from MTGO Leagues. 

Additionally, some quick scouring over the web also shows that there are various decks built along this line, with differing choices and options. There is nothing wrong with taking a little from Column A and a little from Column B and seeing what happens. And, worst case, even if it doesn't work out perfectly, you are not out much at all. 

Last week, not super happy with my GP: Indy deck, I decided to go the budget route myself. I poked around with what I had in my trade binder, and random commons/uncommons I had lying around, and I came up with this, which I played last Friday at FNM:

I understand that this costs a bit more than the deck from Lexie. When compared to the deck prices from the metagame decks shown above, though, this is a huge bargain. Again, there are upgraded that can be made to the deck to improve on it. Evolving Wilds can easily become Wooded Foothills, which my original version had. As I was trying to keep this as budget as possible, I made the switch to the significantly cheaper option. 

This deck tries to attack on a couple angles. The most obvious is the Landfall theme. Of course, wanting to distinguish myself from the more common Atarka Red or R/G Landfall decks, I did not include cards like Become Immense, Atarka's Command, or Temur Battle Rage. Nothing against those cards, I just wanted to try something a little different. Even my brief theory-crafting did not prepare me for how well a couple of the cards played out. Ire Shaman served as additional copies of Abbot of Keral Keep, and in conjunction with the Abbot, provided quite a bit of card advantage, which you usually don't see in this color combination. Likewise, Sword of the Animist was particularly useful in ensuring that I hit Landfall every turn, and ramped me up to cast huge Crater's Claws or allowed me to bring Omnath, Locus of Rage online. Once the opponent was able to answer my card advantage dudes and my Landfall guys, I usually had more than enough resources to cast my Haste Shaman of the Great Hunt or Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker, and put games away that way. 

Much like the previous deck, this is presented with the same caveat: You can win some packs or tickets with it, but you're not going to spike a competitive event. It is fortunate that that part of the year is winding down, what with both the GP season and SCG series drawing to a close in the coming weeks until after the first of the year. As such, you really have the options to try to play decks that are fun and work on budget decks, with only FNM honors at stake. 

These two options are only the tip of the iceberg, though. There are lots of cards out there that are cheap, under-utilized, and just begging for someone to find a use for them. There has to be a Descent of the Dragons / Dragon Tempest budget deck out there somewhere, right? Is Ashcloud Phoenix really unplayable? It would seem that the Phoenix beatdown plan could be something, coupling the Ashcloud alongside Flamewake Phoenix and Akoum Firebird.  None of these cards are expensive, and combined with the right commons/uncommons from Standard, each could spark an interesting budget build.

Don't let the metagame decks and their costs keep you out of the game. We have two months until the next set, and six months until rotation. Make the most of this time, and learn some lessons. Who knows...maybe all this hard work will put you ahead of the curve when Khans of Tarkir and Fate Reforged are nothing but a memory in Standard.

Peace,
Carl Wilt

1 Comments

I've run into the BR devoid by Paul Leicht at Fri, 11/13/2015 - 05:03
Paul Leicht's picture

I've run into the BR devoid variants a lot in Just for Fun recently. It is a pretty popular budget deck for sure. The range of ideas is pretty wide too.