Playing Constructed Magic On a Budget: Tournament Report
Ok, probably not broken, but...damaged maybe?
Can a Magic: the Gathering deck built for standard tournaments for just $30 be competitive? That’s the question we’re trying to answer with our “Constructed Magic On a Budget” experiment. After this week’s showing at Friday Night Magic, we have an answer: Maybe.
After playing a few test matches and trying out different builds, I finally settled on a final deck list. There was a bit of nail biting as I waited for some of the key uncommons to show up in the mail (they were not to be found anywhere local – I tried four different stores). They came on Friday, just in time.
For the final build, I took out everything that wasn’t pure aggression and went with a super smooth mana curve: eight creatures that cost 1 mana, eight that cost 2, 12 that cost 3 and four that cost 4. One of the three-drops, the Countryside Crusher, really counted as a 4 because I’d almost never play it with only three lands on the table. The rest was a bunch of burn spells.
Land
Forest x10
Mountain x10
Karplusan Forest x2
Creatures
Nettle Sentinel x4
Wild Nacatl x4
Bramblewood Paragon x4
Rip-Clan Crasher x4
Boggart Ram-Gang x4
Countryside Crusher x4
Goblin Razerunners x4
Spells
Giantbaiting x4
Incinerate x4
Puncture Blast x2
My goal was generally to get a Conspired Giantbaiting out as soon as possible, preferably with the Bramblewood Paragon in play. It happened twice. Attacking for 10 on turn three is pretty awesome. The Crusher and the Razerunners were of limited use, but that’s largely because opponents tended to destroy them shortly after they came out. In one instance, the Crusher found five lands in a row, becoming an 8/8 and ending the game. The Razerunners’ “deal damage at end of turn” ability barely came into play at all. If I didn’t win by turn five or six, the deck would generally run out of steam.
Overall, I went 2-2, beating an interesting multi-color deck with Liliana Vess that just took too much time to get set up and an aggressive red/black deck with lots of elemental creatures. My deck was just slightly faster than the elemental deck, mainly because I got some incredible draws. I lost to a complicated deck that used Garruk Wildspeaker to pump up dragon token creatures, and a White/Blue/Green deck that was fast and resisted by aggression with ridiculous amounts of life gaining abilities. At least three of the top players were using this same deck, which was boosted greatly by Rhox War Monk. I actually think Lifelink is a bit too powerful – it could be fixed by tying the life gained to actual damage dealt. As it is, a 3/3 that is blocked by a 1/1 still gets three life back.
So the budget deck was competitive – if I was a better player, it might have beat the Garruk deck, and the other matches were fun and interesting. But it’s probably not going to win any tournaments, and it certainly isn’t going to carry anyone to the Pro-Tour. That was never my goal, so I’m very happy with the deck. I’ll keep playing it, possibly with some tweaks from week to week. Most of the other players at FNM were very friendly, and some of them had good suggestions for modifying the deck. One interesting suggestion was the Crucible of Worlds, allowing me to play lands eaten by the Crusher or Razerunners from my graveyard. A few suggestions for replacing the Wild Nacatl were made as well.
Related posts:
February 16th, 2009 1:01 PM
you should consider replacing the Nacatl with Twinblade Slashers who are 1 drops and also warriors. Also, what about using Flamejab, it is recurring burn that pumps your Crushers in the process.
February 16th, 2009 1:14 PM
Nice call on the Twinblade. I’d considered Flamejab but decided against it before I realized how many 1/1s there are in Standard right now. It does work brilliantly with the Crushers, I think I’ll have to test it.
I wonder if I could work in some card drawing ability without altering the deck too much, to counter the mid-to-late game fade.
February 16th, 2009 2:34 PM
Soul’s Majesty from Conflux? Its a green 5 drop that lets you draw x cards equal to target creatures power, might work with CC and perhaps the Razerunners. You could probably drop some dudes to make room for a couple plus some more burn, perhaps the Rip Clan Clashers? Or the red and green wisps from Shadowmoor, red one gives haste, green one pumps, each is a one drop and draws a card to boot.
February 16th, 2009 3:34 PM
I like Soul’s Majesty – possibly I could remove a 1-drop, a 2-drop and a Razerunner to run three of them. They’re cheap rares too, so it fits with the budget theme.
The Wisps…I don’t want to get rid of creatures for something that won’t help me Conspire a Giantbaiting.
Some great ideas, thanks t-rex! Definitely going to hunt down some Twinblades and Majesties for testing.
July 22nd, 2009 10:55 PM
I’d take out the Karplusian Forest for the R/G dual from M10. Mogg Fanatic is out. I love Wild Nacatl. I just have this irrational love for the 1cc guy that gets better with land. I love Kird Ape, I love that little kitty, and I would love to see more guys that have that ability at any level that lets them be playable. In plain English, I don’t care if they slap land boosting on a 5+cc guy, but on a 3cc or less I just love it.