MTG Salvation

I'm just going to start adding links to example decklists (as guidelines) for some of these decks and hopefully post actual budget lists for the few that have them already.

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This is for those who are interested in building a Commander deck but are either new to magic, got out a while back but want back in, or just don't like spending a lot of money on magic.

Mono color Commander decks are by far the least expensive to build since you'll be running almost all basic lands. However, don't count the multicolor Commanders out because there are still some with cool abilities that can be built around for cheap. Most two-color decks are easy to build as well because your mana-base is still pretty easy to fix and it opens up your options to hybrid and multicolor spells.

Budget is a loose term here since the monetary limits are defined purely on a case by case basis. If a person wants to build within $100, $50, $20, or under $5 (ex. 99 mountains & Ashling the Pilgrim) it is up to that individual.

I think its fair to argue that 2 and 3 color generals can be budget friendly too. When you play a mono color deck, like therestless said, there comes a point where you just cant budgetized anymore, and some of the more expensive and powerful cards of that color are just needed. But if you play 2-3 colors, you can play more of the "good-but-cheap" cards of each color, and will have less need to spend money on high dollar cards, and have less slots devoted to junk. I'll try to explain better with an example.

You wanna play mono green. You build a good, 40 card skeleton of a deck using budgetized cards and some of the cheap but good cards you can get. You have two choices for the last 20-ish slots. Either shell out cash for them, or put junk in.

But if you build blue green instead, you can easily build the deck using 30-ish of the cheap but good cards and budget cards from each color, helping you keep less junk in your deck.

Jaya Ballard is sick mono-red on a budget too. I think she lost attention with the loss of painter's servant but IMO she never relied on it and her other 2 abilities should have had more of the deck's focus anyways. Also kiki-jiki, though he may not be budget... hadn't tried him out tbh.

My Maga deck is at least $250 minimum and it's only going to increase in price thanks to the Eldrazi and Nirkana Revenent so it's in no shape to be classified as a budget general.

Honestly there are tons of good legendary creatures out there (both mono and multi-colored) that work as generals. I think it really depends most on how competitively you want to play and the rest of your deck. Dropping a couple of extra bucks on your general shouldn't be a big deal if the rest of your deck is solid budget cards, and you wouldn't necessarily have to in order to have a fun and playable edh deck.

I disagree with your selections, but then again I assume they were very arbitrary choices to start with.

Black has many good generals to build with and they require far less set up than Maga. Chainer as has been said is a powerhouse on his own, Volrath will soon have uncommon Eldrazi to pitch, Kagemaro is a general who is a wrath in himself. They would perhaps be just as good options.

In green Azusa is good, but Omnath can be built around extremely cheaply and Multani is very low priced for what he can do.

I love Heartless Hidetsugu too personally, his combos are cheap, Jaya is kinda nice for a blue heavy area though.

Just some ideas, but maybe expand your list.

Okay I'm made some updates to the list, its hard to justify some of these generals as budget since I've never played with them, but based on their color and abilities I feel that all the ones I had on my original list have the potential to do well on a budget.

And thank you for the suggestions so far some of these generals slipped my mind due to lack of sleep.

This is by no means the final version of this thread, I just posted a list earlier today while I was half awake at work (3 hours of sleep today after working on a paper most of the night) and now I'm trying to hone this list of budget generals. So by all means offer suggestions and reasoning as to why you think a general would or wouldn't work based on a budget. Please state the approximate budget you think the deck could be built within as this makes a big difference to what kind of cards you can get.

I think Thada Adel is a good budget blue general. Steal everyone else's artifacts that you don't have to include in your own deck.

Budget stuff like:

• Draining Whelk
  
• Spin Into Myth
  
• Hinder
  
• Willbender
  
• Rite of Replication
  
• Neurok Stealthsuit
  
• Knowledge Exploitation

Mono Basic Land stuff like:

• Extraplanar Lense
  
• Gauntlet of Power
  

Basically play powerful blue creatures like Tidespout Tyrant with budget counterspells like Hinder and Overwhelming Intellect and rely on your General to steal all your opponents good stuff.

The best advice I can give though is buying a bunch of staples so whenever you want to make a new deck you don't have to spend tons of money on dedicated slots to stuff like Solemn Simulacrum etc.

Honestly, I feel that Any EDH deck can be built in budget if need be. That's how I started all my EDH decks, with cards I had lying around in my boxes. I simply researched lists in the EDH forum and traded with people at FNM for the $1 rares/valuable uncomons I wanted to fill it out.

Sure one can build a Budget Captain SIsay or Sliver Overlord EDH deck, but they probably won't be very good without the expensive legends or lands respectively to fill them out. Also, multi-color decks can be made on a budget by using artifacts to assist with mana-fixing (Signets, Obelisks, Myr's, Expetition Map, Armillary Sphere, Khalni Gem, Felwar Stone...etc) but they will be slightly inferior to those who use pain/shock/dual/filter-lands.

With the Exception of Sisay, I've made all my EDH decks on a ~$50 budget, trading a few T2 staples for oodles of EDH staples to silly net-deckers at my local FNM. I suggest you all do this due to the vapid and poor condtion of the Jund-dominated T2 format.

In Response to the OP, some good General's I've seen using primarily budget cards with few rares are:
Rakka Mar
Rhys, the Redeemed
Wrexial, The Wrisen Deep
Azuka lost but Seeking
Rosheen Meanderer (earthquake effects and mana doublers FTW!)

Anyway, now's the time to trade your Alara block staples while they still have high value before rotation in a few months. All I've gotta say is F--- T2, play EDH!

Iname, Death Aspect is cheap and lets you play cheap a synergetic spirit-arcane deck. and i've seen some list and they look fun and competitive.

Replace Maga with Drana, the new Vampire legend, for a good multiplayer mono black general. Her ability is a political one, as you can save somebody from a big creature or nuke lots of little ones. She also is less targeted than Maga, who is a huge threat at many tables.

Uril can be built very cheaply relative to its effectiveness. Obviously, you can sink a lot of money into it as well, but you don't have to to make it good.

Quote from Dark_Flame

Replace Maga with Drana, the new Vampire legend, for a good multiplayer mono black general. Her ability is a political one, as you can save somebody from a big creature or nuke lots of little ones. She also is less targeted than Maga, who is a huge threat at many tables.

Maga was never in the list for Multiplayer. I just had the following:
B
- Chainer, Dementia Master
- Suggestions?

So I added Drana under him. Maga is better for 1v1 in my opinion since his effect happens when he enters the battlefied. In 1v1 Drana would just get removed before she became useful. So someone could build essentially one deck and just use Maga for 1v1 and Drana for multiplayer although they'd probably need to swap in or out some spot removal for mass removal.

Quote from viperesque

Uril can be built very cheaply relative to its effectiveness. Obviously, you can sink a lot of money into it as well, but you don't have to to make it good.

Uril has been added to the 1v1 list. I agree that he is fairly inexpensive to build around. I left him out of the multiplayer list because from my experience playing him in multiplayer he just paints a target on your head that you can't deal with. Uril is usually 1 of the few creatures you have on the field if not your only one and once he turns sideways to get some damage in your left wide open (not to mention tokens overrun him) or people just wrath him.

It really depends how optimal you want your deck to be. Just about every single deck in the format should play at least four fetchlands, which is already 40-60$ depending on your color(s).

Regardless, all of the mono Blue control decks are pretty cheap, considering that 90% of the good counterspells are common/uncommon. However, you still have Mana Drain, Jace the Mind Sculptor, Library of Alexandria, etc if you want an optimal deck.

Surprisingly, I think Clique or Rofellos are among the cheapest decks to build. For Rofellos is depends on your strategy, but most of the weenie elves and fatty creatures are cheap. Also, no/few nonbasics, which makes him even cheaper.

d.g

Quote from OmniDreamer

Maga was never in the list for Multiplayer. I just had the following:
B
- Chainer, Dementia Master
- Suggestions?

So I added Drana under him. Maga is better for 1v1 in my opinion since his effect happens when he enters the battlefied. In 1v1 Drana would just get removed before she became useful. So someone could build essentially one deck and just use Maga for 1v1 and Drana for multiplayer although they'd probably need to swap in or out some spot removal for mass removal.



Uril has been added to the 1v1 list. I agree that he is fairly inexpensive to build around. I left him out of the multiplayer list because from my experience playing him in multiplayer he just paints a target on your head that you can't deal with. Uril is usually 1 of the few creatures you have on the field if not your only one and once he turns sideways to get some damage in your left wide open (not to mention tokens overrun him) or people just wrath him.

Sorry, I guess I worded that poorly. I meant you could take Maga out of a Mono black single player deck and replace it with Drana for a multiplayer deck, since they both use similar decklists. Maga paints too big of a target in Multiplayer IMO, because the ability to kill someone at will draws a big target. However, Drana can help with politics by saving somebody by killing an attacker ect.

mono-black could probably fit a spot for Marrow-Gnawer as a budget gen.

Nath, should be on this list. For both 1v1 and multiplayer, nothing in it is more than like 10$

Quote from helghast101

Nath, should be on this list. For both 1v1 and multiplayer, nothing in it is more than like 10$

Blue Warlock's DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
General: 1 Nath of the Gilt-Leaf Lands: 36 16 Swamp 10 Forest 1 Llanowar Wastes 1 Twilight Mire 1 Golgari Rot Farm 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth 1 Tranquil Thicket 1 Barren Moor 1 Tainted Woods 1 Shizo, Death's Storehouse 1 Khalni Garden 1 Oran-Rief, The Vastwood Creatures: 20 1 Birds of Paradise 1 Ant Queen 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder 1 Bloodghast 1 Imperious Perfect 1 Yavimaya Elder 1 Eternal Witness 1 Creakwood Liege 1 Braids, Cabal Minion 1 Magus of the Abyss 1 Solemn Simulacrum 1 Graveborn Muse 1 Spike Weaver 1 Sadistic Hypnotist 1 Deranged Hermit 1 Shriekmaw 1 Acidic Slime 1 Genesis 1 Kokusho, the Evening Star 1 Indrik Stomphowler	Planeswalkers: 3 1 Garruk Wildspeaker 1 Liliana Vess 1 Sorin Markov Artifacts: 10 1 Skullclamp 1 Golgari Signet 1 Coldsteel Heart 1 Null Rod 1 Everflowing Chalice 1 Darksteel Ingot 1 Coalition Relic 1 Smokestack 1 Geth's Grimoire 1 Sensei's Divining Top Enchantments: 8 1 Survival of the Fittest 1 Bitterblossom 1 Sylvan Library 1 Recurring Nightmare 1 Contamination 1 Phyrexian Arena 1 Oversold Cemetary 1 Grave Pact Sorceries: 18 1 Growth Spasm 1 Chainer's Edict 1 Thoughtseize 1 Duress 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Life from the Loam 1 Night's Whisper 1 Sign in Blood 1 Smallpox 1 Pox 1 Kodama's Reach 1 Hymn to Tourach 1 Primal Command 1 Rampant Growth 1 Mind Shatter 1 Profane Command 1 Death Cloud 1 Raven's Crime	Instants: 4 1 Vampiric Tutor 1 Shred Memory 1 Putrefy 1 Krosan Grip

*Looks at Bitterblossom, Survival and Recurring Nightmare* those were just like the first 5 cards I saw when looking at your list and they are nowhere near budget. Also, Recurring Nightmare is banned in EDH.