Can a Budget Deck Keep Up?  

congrats on 10k B)

Next time someone complains they don’t get to use their 50$ card I’ll be sure to mention the removal cost .50c

I love playing budget decks for many reasons, but sneaky value is one of them. If people have never heard of a card you play, they might not target you until they realize its true power, which may be too late.

Some other commander tips: If a creature is not going to be blocking, (value engine, your opponent has no attacks) Swing with it if it is likely to survive, its free damage. I see so many people just keep back their big board of green things because they have not yet achieved the big funny and are only about 3/3-5/5, while my on average 1/2 - 2/2 board of aristocrats gets away with not being pressured at all. Don't snap off removal because someone killed your thing, in a recent game, Player B removed player A's commander, then Player A got to make the choice, hold their removal spell for Player C's commander that would probably come down, a voltron esque 7 mana haste thing, or remove player B's partner commander that was there to enable colors. In general, removing the big thing instead of getting revenge might be worth it. Finally, whatever you do, make sure to have some kind of backup plan for at least one boardwhipe, I am not saying to sandbag literally all of your cards, however drawing some cards while you still can to have a hand full of cards in case something happens, keeping back one carddraw creature, or if that is not your style, keeping up protection are all options that, while they do not instantly win games, at least prevent you from losing on the spot. Yes cards like clever cocealment (or ghostway on a budget) might not be a big beatstick, however they can keep your beatsticks safe through a boardwhipe.

I want to add two more things to this, already, incredible video: 1- Play combos if you want. At least a combo of your level. Four card combos are fine in a lot of places cause they need preparation and people see them coming. Even two card combos are fine if they are on the right deck/right power level. 2- What commander are you playing is very important while talking about this topic. There are a few of them who are great in almost every power level. Teysa Karlov for example. You can make a 50$ Teysa with commons, uncommons aristocrats, morbid oportunist and cards like the 4cmc black eldrazi. PD: To play a budget commander deck in a powerful table, you need to have a value engine/double trigger/strong as a card commander. I would recommend to try a good commander first in budget and then try other things when you know how to play with good but cheap cards.

instructions unclear; attempted board politics, ended up watching my commander be bent in half

Mass Land Destruction is casual commander. You'll see it more outside of cEDH than in it. Often the cost is too high for what won't win you the game outright and is likely to get countered so it has much less of a home there. The cards outclassing people you showed are all high power or staples. High power is still considered casual, namely because it's not cEDH. Mass Land Destruction is also budget friendly, and it works. Magic has had mass land destruction since day one, and the first commander precons had one with Ruination printed in it. It may not be friendly, but neither is watching your opponent draw a third of their deck with Tatyova and keep a grip of free counterspells and pass the turn, giving you the illusion that you'll actually be able to do anything. (much more cruel than the cut and dry state of not having any lands) or watching the guy with smothering tithe have as much mana as the rest of his opponents combined because he got to resolve a single spell on turn 3 when people are still building board states. He'll likely win off it, same as mass land destruction but until he does everyone else gets to play out some turns of fractional value until they lose to it. He who makes the most and spends the most mana should generally win in a game of magic afterall. It may not be fun, which is often the point of playing commander at all.. but if you do appropriate turn zero discussions and the primary goal is to win, I think MLD is totally fine. No worse than other peoples one card go bbbbrrrrrr solutions.

One thing that I think more channels should bring up is that foreign language cards are perfectly legal to use in any format as well, and often can be significantly cheaper. At least in my playgroup we fairly often have to look up rulings for cards anyways, and for cards like Anointed Procession or Cyclonic Rift we already know what the card does.

8:01 Yeah, I have a Selesnya +1/+1 counters deck that it slays in, especially when my Enduring Scalelord is in play. Great card!

I watched an edh game last night from mtg goldfish. $10k vs $1k vs $100 vs $10. It was pretty surprising

When you're talking about removal, it's interesting. If you're finding players have better winning power than you, increasing your stopping power your ability to stop them from winning and give you a chance can be a cheaper solution

Love this video. I will throw these decks together to see how they work. I’ve been playing MtG forever, but haven’t been as critical as I should be on my deckbuilding skills, so these videos help a ton. SUGGESTION: Add the cards that could be upgrades for these decks into the “Considering” section on Moxfield. That would be super helpful. Keep up the good work!

The first tip I give to new EDH player is... make Urself a decklist checklist... Mine is for example: 10-12 ramp, 9-11 interaction, 9-11 draw, the rest is engine/core... that makes U plan and see ahead what problems the deck might have in the future... Ps: Very interesting Yasova deck tech. I'm working on the same concept but using Hofri Ghostforge, since I'll get a copy token for myself off the creatures I sacrifice and will include the revielark and Karmic Guide combo

10:21 you can't target other people's creatures with twinflame. But that doesnt matter, since you dont need to target anything with twinflame to start the combo. "Any number" can be 0.

Great video love the lists!

That Blex deck looks really fun, great video

The best thing to look for on a budget, are commanders that enable a strategy or card advantage using budget or niche cards. Henzie is a great commander, he let's you slam budget fatties while keeping your hand full. Vadrik let's you play budget combat tricks and counterspells for cheap. Then you can storm off with relatively inexpensive cards. Hidetsugu and Kairi with top deck manipulation and clonss let's you play some giant spells off the top. Also, as much as people hate it, stax cards are normally pretty cheap. Although they're not very good in low / medium power, the scale in power the faster the group is. Kamahl + Akroma stax is pretty funny.

As a new player this has already helped so much! I much prefer forcing myself to get creative by putting myself on a budget, and besides having literally every card available is way too overwhelming. This is helping me alot with the decks i wanna build alr

Excellent video, love the info.

One of my favorite budget options as a commander is Raff, Weatherlight Stalwart. He’s cheap, a lot of token making instant and sorceries are cheap and you get both draw and a win con in the commandzone. He’s also in blue and white so removal isn’t hard either.

I love watching your videos instead of playing commander with real people. I love how much I learn about a format I don't play nor care about

We don't always agree, but I'm 100% with you on this one ! Having a playgroup where we only play 30€ decks for several years, all those advices are on point. I would add something : - people having some form of hate for counterspells or combos need to play a budget deck. A counterspell is probably the best answer but ask for more "skill" (which is a way people can improve, as you said) and playing combos will make you play cards that other people may not have encountered before and by doing so, make your play patterns less easy to read. - make sure to be able to win on different axis if you can. Playing the board and having a combo backup may give the wrong hints to your opponents and even experienced players may not be able to see if you're midrange or aggro. It's one of the biggest things to keep in mind : if people can't predict how you're wanting to win, they may not be able to stop you at the right moment. - play more synergies, you said it but in a way that may not be that clear for beginners ;) goodstuff cards may be less snowbally than a good piece of synergy, and most of those are not that costly. Try to play ramp that fits your themes, rather than just putting a sol ring in every deck, you'll see a big difference ^^

Funny how this video appeared in my feed as im brewing a budget deck 😊

Love your videos, thanks!

Swift reconfig is protection. it only really stops a big attack once or saves your creature from creature removal.

with budget builds, I try to think in terms of card advantage over card draw, card advantage being anything that lets me see more cards, or play cards that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to play. examples being self mill with a bunch of eternal witness type effects, or any future sight effect (especially with topdeck manipulation), both of which drastically increase the amount of options you have to play cards without explicitly drawing them to your hand, and cards like these are way cheaper than easy repeatable card draw effects tend to be. this is doubly useful as most players won’t feel as threatened by someone doing these things as they will by looking across the table to see someone with 15 cards in hand.

great video! i will try out this Blex deck for sure

10:20 sadly, Twinflame requires being able to target one of your creatures, so you have that prerequisite of needing some other creature on your field before Dualcaster mage gets cast in response to Twinflame. For those interested to play a competitive commander option on a budget (no blue, no need of the apocalypse), i recommend; Ich-Tekik, Salvage Splicer with Keskit, the Flesh Sculptor, Old Stickfingers, Anje Falkenrath, Slicer, Hired Muscle and/or Magda, Brazen Outlaw.

This is a great video. I've been getting into budget deck building for the challenge of it. I'd like to highlight Ruxa, Patient Professor as a commander that is also very patient with your wallet.

Honestly all my budget decks have demolished, i think it's more of a player rather than budget.

Love Blex, thanks for the list

Love the Losheel deck... amazing versatility as a pauper commander or edh.. or in the 99 of edh decks. Sick stuff

Recently wanted to make a few budget decks for some variety adjacent to my more expensive decks, and I found myself putting 'Otherwordly Gaze' in all of them. What an underrated card. In some ways it's like an amalgamation of Ponder, Mystical Tutor and Dream Twist.

A fun budget deck I made recently was mari, the killing quill and it throws a rench in so many people's plans

Awesome video!

The decks look very interesting Yeah building budget decks is more fun Good job!

Seeing losheel in the thumbnail got my attention

The politics thing won me a tournament at my LGS recently. The board got crippled early and all I had left was Mr. House and a Securitron. So I moved to making the big guys fight each other to the death (Very on brand for House. Lol) Till I moved in with Ruinous Ultimatum on the last guy and watched as he realized he had nothing left in the tank after I sat and watched him 2v1 the rest of the table. ^.^

shoutouts to End-Raze Forerunners. Craterhoof Behemoth at Home is still pretty good

Thanks for the tips. I’m going to make my own list of edh staples that are lower than $10.00. I’m curious what comes up.

The Comment Section on Trinket's New Long Form Video: Now with Less Salt! 🥳 Folks were SHOOK by that Arcane Denial video.

Thanks man!

People play pretty high power decks at my lgs so one budget option I've been trying lately is to play more hate cards. Phyrexian Revoker can shut off treasures, or Aven Mindsensor to slow down combo players.

What a nice random video to stumble upon

I run Luxior, Giadas gift and devoted Druid in my mowu loyal companion deck. Never upset to draw either alone and if they combo and make infinite mana even better.

9 fingers keene is an honorable mention! I have a decklist thats only like 90 bucks and its a lot of fun

bro i JUST finnished a blex landfall deck and i’m building a yasova BPod deck. it feels like as soon as i get an idea everyone does too

"If you don't know who to attack, just ask the table or attack the player with the most Green And Blue at the table." You are accurate and I love that idea!

I made a $45 Ovika deck that overwhelms the table if they let it go. It's a lot of fun to just be a problem.

Id love a video bout you talking bout off meta commanders and or decks you already have, personally im building a Kresh the BloodBraided deck and would love possible insight

The biggest piece of budget advice I think, is that almost every card has a budget version with different limitations. Can't afford Force of Will ? Run Foil. Can't afford Terror of the Peaks ? Warstorm Surge is still just as good as isn't a creature. The main exceptions are the obvious ones like the Ancient Dragons or Smothering Tithe but there are still ways around those, I think. And I totally agree with just removing those high value targets off the board. Your $90 Dockside ain't got shit on Essence Scatter

Honestly, I normally do pretty well against more pricey decks. Mostly because they don’t run nearly enough interaction and run out after they’ve dealt with the fastest deck.

People really worry too much about 'wincons' in what should probably just be mid-range decks. This is where interaction really shines. Sure you may win with an alpha strike, but a good chance you'll get blown out. I really like to just hang back, and survive. Survive while everyone knocks each other about and get into that late game where you don't need a craterhoof because the last one left has 5 life.

this cayde6 guy is super helpful i like

I just want to ask that when you mention a card and put up for us to view can you leave it up for a few more seconds so i can read it??? Thanks for all the content that you make. Your videos have helped my deck building a lot!

Fieldar Retreat is amazing Put it in my Cats and Dogs deck because of the tokens, but I have finished games with an Evolving Wilds giving 10 1/1 tokens +2/+2 and Vigilance

I think budget is a relative term. I know the poll suggested a card gets expensive over $10. I would argue that finding cards that are budget, the bench mark is much lower. $2 might be a reasonable max to keep your deck under $50. You might go up to $5 for a max if you're targeting $100. You might even go up to $10 if your deck is mono colored or even two colors so that you can get away with basics.

John Benton has been talked about a lot recently as a budget deck that does more than just keep up: its actually an absolute powerhouse (WHY does he have haste jfc). In general non-equipment voltron seems pretty cheap relative to it's power, auras rarely cost more than $5 and combat tricks are almost all under $1.

You know, I get that your avatar is a trinket mage. But it also looks like a skittari.

That Gaffer card is the kind of card that's going to skyrocket when they print a lifegain precon and don't include it because it's Universes Beyond. This is an auto include in Extort and lifegain angels and I'm slotting him into Omnath, Locus of Creation.

Also always remember to discuss power level prior to starting, and if you are an existing player, try to make some lower powered decks to play against these lower powered budget decks.

Budget is a factor, but what really matters is what you are actually trying to do. Zada is my favorite budget deck - you can achieve lethal on turn 4 for $30, and it's a great way to learn Storm.

BLEX MENTIONED my most recent deck is a blex deck, and due to the nature of blex being very much a supporting commander u can swap out for grist or even zask if im feeling spicy (he needs some ramp). very fun and my strongest deck so far, although its an unfortunate combo of kind of oppressive and kind of slow

Some pf our budget decks at 25 e can propably keep up with a lot of more powerfull decks. Not our most powerfull decks but most of them. I also bought the Anje *madness* deck and played it against my friends decks between 500-1000 dollar decks and could easily play with them. Its propably the most versatile precon

Thanks dunkey

Mirkwood bats being ban worthy has got to be satire 😅

Budget should always be able to keep up and competitive and usually is in some form. Problem is people refuse to accept that the budget option limits your choices. They want every option to have a budget option and remain competitive, it's not realistic and annoying.

Sheoldred that was mentioned in the video is good but it doesn't give you value as much as it used to as spot removal is more common place, especially when in the "powering up to face off other decks".

Video topic idea and if you’ve already done this, please let me know. A video discussing on how to tell if your commander is an enabler, a payoff, or something else. Along with that a discussion on how each of those different type of commander needs different deck buildings considerations. You’ve discussed this before in other videos, but I feel more dedicated video could be helpful. I’ve been playing for seven years now and sometimes I still fail to take that into consideration.

Eh part of it is playstyle. Some deck types are more popular and thus cost more to get the good cards in. IE: Artifact decks are expensive since they are litterally the most popular. Or enchantress can easily get expensive since it runs lots of strong old cards. Meanwhile voltron is often pretty cheap as even if it is moderately powerful, many of the peices have been printed repeatedly at low rarity.

With politics - one game someone told me "if you don't cast your commander this turn, I'll take out [biggest threat at the time] my next turn". I wasn't even planning to case my commander that turn, so easiest deal ever 😂

ASK questions, if you don't know who or what the threat is, your opponent will, especially if you ask each of them. Most players are happy to teach threat assessment.

My ballin on a budget pantlaza (bought at Walmart for 50 bucks) has stomped a lot of cEDH decks

Well, I am probably that guy, that dumps a couple hundred bucks into every deck (or at least a hundred), and it ends up just okay-good optimized for the most part. But recently I am leaning towards another budget approach - you probably mentioned it on your channel, or some other CMDR-guy on YT “Cards you posses, are essentialy free”. Since there are three separate fully-built Human decks at my disposal, I can move forward with the archetype just mixing and matching new color combinations, and end up spending less than $5 for cards to glue up the new build. This way the MTG version of “20 recipes of kimchi” aka “20 Human decks” can be done. Not to mention, that other decks can be temporarily scavenged for some high-end staples - the likes of Teferi’s Protec and so on. Manabase is also present - all 10 shockland playsets, and any other decent dual land, apart from OGs, fetches and some old filter lands.

What’s the Kodama + tireless provisioner combo?

Surprised you didn't mention how good looting is in budget decks. Faithless Looting and Careful Study are both triple SSS (yes S^9) tier in budget decks

I love RU-vidr precons, wish the lgs put decks together and sell them for me in any format, like card kingdom and their begginer 60 card decks for 12 dollars!

All mt decks are budget and they all keep up. I dnt even play with my 3 oldest decks. Gruul Elves, Golgari Counters, Boros Equip - because they win before turn 7 and are under 50euro (at least when I made them)

My pre con destroyed a cedh deck at magic con Vegas.

With enough synergy budget doesn't matter

What about a deck that not use any type of win/infinite combos and win just by combat damage, what if you do a video with good unusual commanders that do this?

How can I do that combo on turn 2 if Twinflame only copies creatures I control?

Fast mana rocks with low downsides are cedh more than thassa's Oracle

lol i remember when songs of the dryad was not affordable

my 80 dollar gitrog mount and my 40 usd abdel/candlekeep decks mop the floor constantly against good expensive decks, people need to learn about deckbuilding

Barrowblade is OP please buy them. Barrowblade is OP please play them.

Printer goes brrr. Laughs in proxies

Back in my OHWFYV days tourney cats used to want to test their decks against my junk rare Cauldron Dance or Roar of Reclamation jank or even my 4-piece Overgrown Estate infinite combo deck to see if their decks hold up to Rogue elements. Spending money to keep up with everyone else is silly. Learn how to BUILD decks and go rogue.

Combos take almost no skill to use, while knowing when one is coming and preparing to stop it does. This is why i dislike them. I cant reasonably remember every combo in existence.

I feel like it is too easy to just recommend combo wins. The famous thoracle combo uses two cards that are both over 10$. I feel like the video could be better if you suggested a few combo's on a budget.

In response I cast politics. So have you noticed...

Wilson Refined Grizzly + Noble Heritage auras is my budget deck and it's able to compete with most other decks fairly well. Aura centred decks in general are pretty cheap and there so much cheap support for auras it's a great place to go if you're looking to play on a budget.