MTG Budget-pinchers discussion and debate.

[Zeddicuus]

sagethewanderer

I just put together a Bant heroic deck that seems to be playing well. It's cost only $30 and it seems to be handling most of the problematic decks. I used guildgates and I'll admit that it slows it down a little but I'm not paying for Shock lands. I am usually able to compensate for the slower lands buy playing cheap heroic creatures and a few quick spells to beef them up. So far it's suprized quite a few players.

Now this sounds fairly promising. does it rely heavily on multicoloured cards or more mono coloured stuff? Is it fun to play?

[sagethemerc]

Zeddicuus

sagethewanderer

I just put together a Bant heroic deck that seems to be playing well. It's cost only $30 and it seems to be handling most of the problematic decks. I used guildgates and I'll admit that it slows it down a little but I'm not paying for Shock lands. I am usually able to compensate for the slower lands buy playing cheap heroic creatures and a few quick spells to beef them up. So far it's suprized quite a few players.

Now this sounds fairly promising. does it rely heavily on multicoloured cards or more mono coloured stuff? Is it fun to play?

The only multicolors I use are 4x Battlewise Hoplite, 3x Daxos of Meletis, 2x Unflinching Gourage, and 3x Selesnya Charm. The rest is mono colar stuff. Mainly white and green with a pinch of blue. I've thought about putting some Simic charms in here too but Not sure how it would play out. I might test them later.

[V i c e y]

Budget is $30 or less to me.
I tend to pick off the commons no one wants and making them work the best that I can. I made my whole spirit deck for under $20 because no one wanted them when they came out alongside the vampires/zombies/werewolves. I also have a werewolf deck I put together under $20 with some decent cards.

[Liquidor]

When I started, budget was like $20. These days its seems to inflate to like $100 due to people quoting Starcity and TCGplayer rather than eBay/MOTL.

Personally I find it kinda hard to play budget since I tend to think of my decks in terms of cash/value spent to acquire the cards rather than the current price.An example of this would be my modern Jund deck which would fall under $100 by my standards ($60 of that being a playset of Huntmasters when they were standard last year) rather than the $2000 that its priced out at by Starcity prices.

The last budget competitive Standard deck I remember is Poison from Scars of Mirrodin. Had some fun with that in a local homebrew format. Turn 4 kills were too powerful for most of that meta. Forced to redo my deck. Came back with a Quillspike combo deck that won Turn 3 because my opponents rarely had blockers. Again, forced to rebuild. Returned with an Elf deck and a Turn 2 win. The format in itself was fun and interesting to play. The main problem with it being that in order to improve your deck, you had to play games in the presence of the format creator which led to him having a huge advantage.

[Zeddicuus]

Never played in a homebrew format. That sounds like it could be suitable casual fun that is budget smart. How does it work exactly?

[VVhy Naut]

Booster draft is an excellent way to break into competitive magic. It's often $12-15 to play and you get to keep the cards you choose. It helps with card evaluation, deck building, and gets you comfortable with the format.

Plus, people who draft regularly are often a more fun, less competitive crowd. I've been known to give away commons, uncommons, and dollar rares I draft because I simply have too many cards at home.

This biggest thing you have to remember is that when you win packs, DO NOT open them. The chances of you getting less value out of the cards than the value of the unopened pack is high. Draft at a store that offers $3 store credit instead of packs -- most stores offer this. This way, you can build up your card collection with your draft packs and save up your winnings for singles you actually want instead of getting random garbage out of the packs.

Trade off money cards before they rotate to help your collection retain value.

Also, if your location supports it, Modern is the format you want -- not Standard.

[LiaThistle]

VVhy Naut

Booster draft is an excellent way to break into competitive magic. It's often $12-15 to play and you get to keep the cards you choose. It helps with card evaluation, deck building, and gets you comfortable with the format.

Plus, people who draft regularly are often a more fun, less competitive crowd. I've been known to give away commons, uncommons, and dollar rares I draft because I simply have too many cards at home.

This biggest thing you have to remember is that when you win packs, DO NOT open them. The chances of you getting less value out of the cards than the value of the unopened pack is high. Draft at a store that offers $3 store credit instead of packs -- most stores offer this. This way, you can build up your card collection with your draft packs and save up your winnings for singles you actually want instead of getting random garbage out of the packs.

Trade off money cards before they rotate to help your collection retain value.

Also, if your location supports it, Modern is the format you want -- not Standard.

This is golden advice if you're trying to build your base cheaply, but what about when you can't afford the $12-$15/week for drafts? What if you're limited to the $5 constructed events, or you're playing with friends? This doesn't really address these issues. Additionally, my experience with drafting is that it really rewards the people who have lots of experience with Magic, not newer people. Not that all budget people are newer, but many are.

Additionally, the draft groups I've been around have all largely been the same about cards - they'll keep just about everything they get. I've hung around after a few drafts, even some I participated in, trying to get uncommons and commons off of people, and they wouldn't trade or give them away. This was across 3 states and at least 6 draft groups. And I'm talking cards like Merrow Reejeray, not Remand or similar cards.

[Liquidor]

Zeddicuus

Never played in a homebrew format. That sounds like it could be suitable casual fun that is budget smart. How does it work exactly?

Basically it came about during Ravnica:City of Guilds. Locally referred to as Guilds.

You could choose or get a randomly assigned [+5 build points] "guild" (ie color combination of one or more colors). Then you build a 40 card deck. 1 rare, 4 uncommons, the rest commons.

The point of build points is that you use them to modify your deck. Adding cards costs points (based on rarity), removing cards is 1 pt, and getting special static effects (like an extra land at the start) costs points, and getting special additional game effects (like a one time effect (per game with a mana cost) that gave you defenders). You got build points for playing, winning, achievements and difficulty of opponents.

I've had limited success running it as a league on Gaia.

[Blair Phoenix]

LiaThistle

Additionally, my experience with drafting is that it really rewards the people who have lots of experience with Magic, not newer people. Not that all budget people are newer, but many are.

Not necessarily true. One of the more experienced people in my old playgroup was horrible at drafting, as he always played with competitive legacy in mind and drafted accordingly. Basically fast and efficient. Apparently could not grasp the idea of drafting bombs, and that 7 mana 7/7 flyers are some good in drafts.

[LiaThistle]

Eltiana

LiaThistle

Additionally, my experience with drafting is that it really rewards the people who have lots of experience with Magic, not newer people. Not that all budget people are newer, but many are.

Not necessarily true. One of the more experienced people in my old playgroup was horrible at drafting, as he always played with competitive legacy in mind and drafted accordingly. Basically fast and efficient. Apparently could not grasp the idea of drafting bombs, and that 7 mana 7/7 flyers are some good in drafts.

No, of course not. There is no such thing as an absolute in Magic.
Also, not all competitive Legacy is fast. Efficient, yes, but not necessarily fast.

[Zeddicuus]

Liquidor

Basically it came about during Ravnica:City of Guilds. Locally referred to as Guilds.

You could choose or get a randomly assigned [+5 build points] "guild" (ie color combination of one or more colors). Then you build a 40 card deck. 1 rare, 4 uncommons, the rest commons.

The point of build points is that you use them to modify your deck. Adding cards costs points (based on rarity), removing cards is 1 pt, and getting special static effects (like an extra land at the start) costs points, and getting special additional game effects (like a one time effect (per game with a mana cost) that gave you defenders). You got build points for playing, winning, achievements and difficulty of opponents.

I've had limited success running it as a league on Gaia.

This sounds really damn interesting. is there a site with more information on this setup? I've had people here looking for other formats other than Commander to tinker in and this could be the ticket.

[Zeddicuus]

Say, I've been tinkering with the Heroic ability in some casual games and it's a pretty nifty ability, particularly when it comes to multiplayer. has anyone else given it a try and come up with a decent budget deck? I have one made with cards I had available at the time:

Lands: 20

10x Forest
10x Plains

Creatures: 18

1x Fencing Ace
1x Fabled Hero
1x Fiendslayer Paladin
1x Precinct Captain
3x Fabled Hoplite
3x Cavalry Pegasus
2x Centaur Battlemaster
3x Phalanx Leader
3x Staunch-Hearted Warrior

Instants/Sorceries: 22

2x Blessings of Nature
3x Thrive
4x Travel Preparations
4x Seeds of Strength
3x Pollen Remedy
3x Warriors' Lesson
2x Dauntless Onslaught
1x Strengh of the Tajuru

Deck total: 60

To be honest, I only used the Fiendslayer and the Precinct Captain since they were not in use in anything else and I don't have another Phalanx Leader or Fabled Hero.

Deck should pretty pretty straight forward. Play lots of little weenies and use all kinds of spells to pump up a lot more than one. Stuff like Pollen Remedy can actually target every creature I have, I just can only prevent a total of 3 damage. All spells can target more than one creature so the Heroic ability can really take off. I've been finding it a lot of fun and it was pretty simple to make since most of the cards are fairly easy to get a hold of.

[Liquidor]

Zeddicuus

Liquidor

Basically it came about during Ravnica:City of Guilds. Locally referred to as Guilds.

You could choose or get a randomly assigned [+5 build points] "guild" (ie color combination of one or more colors). Then you build a 40 card deck. 1 rare, 4 uncommons, the rest commons.

The point of build points is that you use them to modify your deck. Adding cards costs points (based on rarity), removing cards is 1 pt, and getting special static effects (like an extra land at the start) costs points, and getting special additional game effects (like a one time effect (per game with a mana cost) that gave you defenders). You got build points for playing, winning, achievements and difficulty of opponents.

I've had limited success running it as a league on Gaia.

This sounds really damn interesting. is there a site with more information on this setup? I've had people here looking for other formats other than Commander to tinker in and this could be the ticket.

There isn't a site with information on this format. That said, my guild did have a bit of it available in an attempt to play the format.

[Zeddicuus]

Not sure if a bump was necessary given how slow table top tends to move.

I've had something I've been pondering: Given the variety of formats out there for people wanting to try to be more competitive, which do you see as more budget-smart that will also help teach a player build a knowledge base on deck construction?

Personally I see Sealed Deck being more useful for a newer player, though the price to play in that tournament is slightly higher. You get your six packs of lands and build a deck out of what is available. Pretty simple. They have everything in front of them to look over and evaluate at once. This will also help build a collection for Constructed play more readily.

Drafting I don't see as being quite as newbie friendly. A new player may pass up on good cards without realizing it, and a more experienced player would snag those cards. Trying to build a deck this way would not go easy for them given they can't see everything at once which would make planning difficult.

Of course, if you're already an experienced player this can tilt the opposite way as a draft costs less for entry and you have a chance of walking away with all kinds of good stuff, possibly better than you could get in three packs otherwise.


What are other people's thoughts on this?