let us vote on which cards should be banned from budget formats (or the budget format) and also what the target price range should be for budget formats (standard, extended, block, etc.)
I foresee a forum under 'The Game' above Casual. It could be called Budget or Budget Competitive. The goal should be to create competitive decks on a budget. So, this is to help decide what that budget should look like. 1/2 of the average price of top decks? 250? lets see
I propose a ban on the following cards in the budget class:
1. Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2. Misty Rainforest
3. Arid Mesa
4. Scalding Tarn
5. Verdant Catacombs
6. Marsh Flats
7. Vengevine
8. Primeval Titan
9. Baneslayer Angel
10. Force of Will
and lets see what the price limit should be, if any, for decks:
I don't really think a price limit is as important as banning cards, but let the poll decide. $100 should be enough, but i guess prices go up.
Also, which format are you talking about going budget for? I don't think you can apply the same definition for "budget" to Standard that you could to Vintage.
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Apparently Gigas1 and I both went the "vote for everything" route. I think that's the play.
Determining what is budget and what is not is like determining what is social drinking and what is a problem. Only you and those closest to you are really going to be able to determine the line.
Basically, "budget" and "casual" aren't formats. There are a hundred schools of thought on each subject.
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I'll be sad if people don't start calling The Chain Veil "Fleetwood Mac."
I really don't think there can be any one 'budget' as it's based on how much a person can ultimately afford. Instance being one week I can afford a $50 budget on cards, the next I could spend in excess of $200 on cards.
I play generally expensive decks but I think a low budget format could be fun. I would never encourage people to bring budget decks to big tourneys, but maybe like try a tournament, type 2 of course, where everyone has to keep the prices of their decks under like $30 or something. It could be fun.
Then comes the issue of price standardization, i.e. how are card prices determined? If you managed to get a really good deal on eBay for example, is your deck then not a budget one because some other people buy their cards from SCG?
Well I guess everyone would just have to agree on to where to locate the prices of cards. Or maybe make the format just uncommons/commons or even just commons. I think it would all be pretty fun. Playing in a constructed tournament where you could only use commons sounds really fun actually. Maybe not as fun as say Type2, but, hey, type 2 can get really boring, especially nowadays with all the internet and pro followings, you know what to expect. But I guess after a while the "Common-only Type 2 Format" would end up being equally boring. I mean you can already begin to predict what the decks would be, just off the top of my head, RDW would be great and Mono-green Aggro would be good.
Well I guess everyone would just have to agree on to where to locate the prices of cards. Or maybe make the format just uncommons/commons or even just commons. I think it would all be pretty fun. Playing in a constructed tournament where you could only use commons sounds really fun actually.
That already exists; it's called Pauper, and there's even a forum for the MTGO Pauper format.
I think a "Budget" Format is anywhere between $100-150 range for up to extended and $200 for vintage... of course i know nothing of Vintage and im just going on the idea that spending that spending the net worth of a PS3 on a deck is no longer "budget"
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I think a "Budget" Format is anywhere between $100-150 range for up to extended and $200 for vintage... of course i know nothing of Vintage and im just going on the idea that spending that spending the net worth of a PS3 on a deck is no longer "budget"
I'm not big on Vintage either, but I bet you could add like $600 dollars to that amount and still call your deck budget.
You can argue any deck not running full P9 is budget in Vintage.
Its a moot point.
Spend all your money at once in vintage, or spend more of it over a longer amount of time in standard.
Choose your poison.
I personally think the problem is how the word budget is used. You can build my personal deck for under $50 by subbing the expensive cards for cheaper, not as powerful versions. Wizards does a great job printing less powerful cards that while not as good as expensive ones are just fine for someone just starting or cash strapped. Case in point my deck:
You can easily run the main deck by swapping arid mesa for terramorphic expanse & baneslayer for serra angel.
With those changes youve turned a well over $100 deck into an under $50 deck that anyone with a weeks lunch money can make & take to a local fnm.
Budget shouldnt be a format, it should be a way to make a fnm viable deck cheaply to broaden magics player base. Wizards does a terriffic job at making quality cards accessable. Yeah theres no replacement for jace 2.0 but there doesnt need to be. Not when there are many other cards readily available. Especially cards that can take place of most higher priced cards.
I don't think anything is going to happen here, for one reason: Budget varies person to person. One person's idea of a budget deck may be $150-200+, while another's is $30.
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I don't think anything is going to happen here, for one reason: Budget varies person to person. One person's idea of a budget deck may be $150-200+, while another's is $30.
If anything, it could be handled within the specific format. Standard has a budget forum. Legacy has one(Casual + some Developing threads). Vintage has some budget discussion. Don't know about Extended.
In this way the poster can lay out what exactly they mean by budget.
If anything, it could be handled within the specific format. Standard has a budget forum. Legacy has one(Casual + some Developing threads). Vintage has some budget discussion. Don't know about Extended.
In this way the poster can lay out what exactly they mean by budget.
Argentum Armor Weenie is really cheap in T2, and there are a lot of cheap legacy decks (Nightmare Effect, Burn, Elves)
Isn't the point of a budget deck (or format) to describe the difference between those with smaller and those with larger budgets?
Those with larger budgets aren't concerned with making budget decks, or at least don't care about describing what it means to be a budget deck (from the decks perspective, of course). If you get a card that is generally considered to be overpowered and overpriced and you want to include it in your budget deck, go for it, but it means your deck is less 'budget' that it was without the card. I don't like overpowered/overpriced cards in general, especially ones that everyone just HAS to have. If a card is in every deck it is broken. It should be banned, but magic (wizards) makes money on broken cards, so it will not be banned till the next set comes out, at the soonest.
So, let's reconsider the question like this:
1. What cards are simply NOT budget enough to be considered for a budget deck (or format).
2. Is there a reasonable spending limit for any deck to be considered budget? What are the limits for different formats, legacy, etc? You might spend 25% of your income on housing (the average, they say [on the news... duh]) or less. Should you spend an equal amount on cards? If you spend 10% on cards, and the average earner makes $35k/yr, then is $300 a budget deck?
I propose that $30 is a budget deck, but in order to be competitive you have to go higher. So, $30 to $300 is a budget deck, depending on how budget you want to go. In a budget format (as if there could ever be such a thing) there should be levels of play based on current prices for cards, which you calculate when you register your deck for play, whether casual or tourney. People who think $300 is a budget deck wouldn't want to play against $30 dollar decks and vice-versa.
Also, some players wouldn't want to play against a deck that includes overpriced/overpowered cards if they have decided to exclude them from their own decks as a rule. The principle of fairness should take precedence against the possibility of playing an overpowered card by providence.
my take remains the same, ban the 10 most popular cards, limit the spending, make spending ranges for competition as in boxing they have weight ranges. Then you can be proud your deck is a heavyweight or a featherweight
I also like the idea of making a spending limit on the price per card, but this will probably be unimportant if we simply ban individual cards.
The point of the poll is to get an average. You can vote for all if you believe in having ranges of budget formats.
There are lots of problems with determining what represents the baseline for "Budget" decks, and what could be allowed while still maintaining a healthy environment.
Pauper was making more inroads locally, but the issue with Pauper is that sometimes it's not budget, especially since there are still "commons" like Sinkhole running around. Also, the types of decks possible with such a card base are limited.
Then we were trying for an eternal format arrangement that set caps on values individual cards of different rarities could have (like $5 max for Mythics, $3 for rares, $1 uncommons, $0.50 commons) but that presented too much micromanagement, even if a common average could be found.
Frankly, a simple $50 deck cap seems appropriate, with no real need to set an individual price cap for cards. There is little real benefit to using 1-2 really expensive cards and having the rest of your deck made of substandard stuff, so I think it's ultimately self-limiting. The other idea was to limit the sets usable to what the supposed "Overextended" was meant to be - Mercadian Masques/7th and on, basically the point at which MTG started to get a better sense of itself, the color pie, set design principles, and so on, with some obvious exclusions for stupid ☺☺☺☺ like Skullclamp and maybe AEther Vial, which would just be banned straight off.
$50 is the average price one pays for a video game (actually I suppose nowadays that is even a modest figure), so if you can make a deck for $50 and it never rotates and will always have use in a given format, it seems like a decent enough investment without going over the top. And many, many deck types are still possible. If you have 3-4 decks of this type, you will be able to play almost anytime, and it's no more significant than owning 3-4 average video games. Seems a fair deal, IMO.
EDIT: Also, since I managed to ramble away from my line of thinking, my concept of Budget is a price at which average players and new, interested parties can come into the game without being intimidated by pricetags or decks sporting a brace of extremely powerful, expensive cards. Smaller hill to climb and all that. The video game example seemed a decent comparison since people are willing to drop that much at a time for something they will hopefully play again and again, or another example would be 3 or 4 movies, a few CDs, etc. It's a less intimidating total and hopefully more accessible to most. Also, I find it more challenging to operate within limits like that because I think it will show people the value of diversifying the budget of their deck, rather than centralizing it in 2-4 powerful cards alone.
Ezuri, Renegade Leader (Aggro/Combo - Favorite) Skullbriar, the Walking Grave (Sac and Grave hijinks) Azusa, Lost but Seeking (Landfall hijinks) Kaalia of the Vast (Heavily modded)
looks like the lower price ranges are winning... budget is basically what you want when you are trying to be creative in competition without wasting money on untried decks (of course you can do proxies, etc, online...) but you sometimes want to be for real and show up with something different that might even win... anyway, I think it is the principle of it, not bowing to the trends and such.
if woc wont ban cards then it is up to us to police ourselves, the honor of winning without playing the card that says, "You WIN!" (before your opponent can play the same damn card)
a 'format' that says no to certain overpriced cards (and overpowered of course) is what is required. It may not be able to compete for the cash, but perhaps is more fun, and worth the effort to build-up
I foresee a forum under 'The Game' above Casual. It could be called Budget or Budget Competitive. The goal should be to create competitive decks on a budget. So, this is to help decide what that budget should look like. 1/2 of the average price of top decks? 250? lets see
I propose a ban on the following cards in the budget class:
1. Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2. Misty Rainforest
3. Arid Mesa
4. Scalding Tarn
5. Verdant Catacombs
6. Marsh Flats
7. Vengevine
8. Primeval Titan
9. Baneslayer Angel
10. Force of Will
and lets see what the price limit should be, if any, for decks:
I don't really think a price limit is as important as banning cards, but let the poll decide. $100 should be enough, but i guess prices go up.
There's also the matter of people opening up 1-2 'expensive cards' in a pack and wanting to run those.
(Siggy adapted, DarkHunter1357 (deviantART))
Determining what is budget and what is not is like determining what is social drinking and what is a problem. Only you and those closest to you are really going to be able to determine the line.
Basically, "budget" and "casual" aren't formats. There are a hundred schools of thought on each subject.
Well I guess everyone would just have to agree on to where to locate the prices of cards. Or maybe make the format just uncommons/commons or even just commons. I think it would all be pretty fun. Playing in a constructed tournament where you could only use commons sounds really fun actually. Maybe not as fun as say Type2, but, hey, type 2 can get really boring, especially nowadays with all the internet and pro followings, you know what to expect. But I guess after a while the "Common-only Type 2 Format" would end up being equally boring. I mean you can already begin to predict what the decks would be, just off the top of my head, RDW would be great and Mono-green Aggro would be good.
Oh sweet, didn't know. But do these pauper events ever get played outside of MTGO?
I'm not big on Vintage either, but I bet you could add like $600 dollars to that amount and still call your deck budget.
Its a moot point.
Spend all your money at once in vintage, or spend more of it over a longer amount of time in standard.
Choose your poison.
Mimeoplasm Midrange, CHAINER CHAINER HIGH VOLTAGE
Rafiq of the Astral Slide, 67land.dec Child of Alara, Gisela <3 Sunforger
TRADE!?WUBRGMy Pauper Cube
Sek'Kuar, Deathkeeper, Phage the Uncastable, Azusa Lost but Stompy, Crosis Combo Breaker, All-In-Skullbriar, Rafiq/Jenara ETB army, Hazezon Swarm, Glissa Voltron!, Jarad Zombie Tribal, Zedruu Pillowfort, Reaper King Artifact Shenanagains
11 Plains
7 Mountain
3 Arid Mesa
Spells
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Burst Lightning
2 Comet Storm
4 Condemn
3 Journey to Nowhere
3 Contagion Clasp
Artifacts
3 Basilisk Collar
3 Everflowing Chalice
Creatures
4 Baneslayer Angel
4 Ajani's Pridemate
3 Cunning Sparkmage
2 Ajani Goldmane
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Tectonic Edge
3 Day of Judgment
4 Revoke Existence
You can easily run the main deck by swapping arid mesa for terramorphic expanse & baneslayer for serra angel.
With those changes youve turned a well over $100 deck into an under $50 deck that anyone with a weeks lunch money can make & take to a local fnm.
Budget shouldnt be a format, it should be a way to make a fnm viable deck cheaply to broaden magics player base. Wizards does a terriffic job at making quality cards accessable. Yeah theres no replacement for jace 2.0 but there doesnt need to be. Not when there are many other cards readily available. Especially cards that can take place of most higher priced cards.
Something like no card can be more than $1 (according to whatever source you agree on), this way you can still play uncommons and crappy rares.
If anything, it could be handled within the specific format. Standard has a budget forum. Legacy has one(Casual + some Developing threads). Vintage has some budget discussion. Don't know about Extended.
In this way the poster can lay out what exactly they mean by budget.
(Siggy adapted, DarkHunter1357 (deviantART))
Argentum Armor Weenie is really cheap in T2, and there are a lot of cheap legacy decks (Nightmare Effect, Burn, Elves)
I am petitioning to get players to stop complaining about mythic rarity. Sig this to join the cause.
Those with larger budgets aren't concerned with making budget decks, or at least don't care about describing what it means to be a budget deck (from the decks perspective, of course). If you get a card that is generally considered to be overpowered and overpriced and you want to include it in your budget deck, go for it, but it means your deck is less 'budget' that it was without the card. I don't like overpowered/overpriced cards in general, especially ones that everyone just HAS to have. If a card is in every deck it is broken. It should be banned, but magic (wizards) makes money on broken cards, so it will not be banned till the next set comes out, at the soonest.
So, let's reconsider the question like this:
1. What cards are simply NOT budget enough to be considered for a budget deck (or format).
2. Is there a reasonable spending limit for any deck to be considered budget? What are the limits for different formats, legacy, etc? You might spend 25% of your income on housing (the average, they say [on the news... duh]) or less. Should you spend an equal amount on cards? If you spend 10% on cards, and the average earner makes $35k/yr, then is $300 a budget deck?
I propose that $30 is a budget deck, but in order to be competitive you have to go higher. So, $30 to $300 is a budget deck, depending on how budget you want to go. In a budget format (as if there could ever be such a thing) there should be levels of play based on current prices for cards, which you calculate when you register your deck for play, whether casual or tourney. People who think $300 is a budget deck wouldn't want to play against $30 dollar decks and vice-versa.
Also, some players wouldn't want to play against a deck that includes overpriced/overpowered cards if they have decided to exclude them from their own decks as a rule. The principle of fairness should take precedence against the possibility of playing an overpowered card by providence.
my take remains the same, ban the 10 most popular cards, limit the spending, make spending ranges for competition as in boxing they have weight ranges. Then you can be proud your deck is a heavyweight or a featherweight
I also like the idea of making a spending limit on the price per card, but this will probably be unimportant if we simply ban individual cards.
The point of the poll is to get an average. You can vote for all if you believe in having ranges of budget formats.
Pauper was making more inroads locally, but the issue with Pauper is that sometimes it's not budget, especially since there are still "commons" like Sinkhole running around. Also, the types of decks possible with such a card base are limited.
Then we were trying for an eternal format arrangement that set caps on values individual cards of different rarities could have (like $5 max for Mythics, $3 for rares, $1 uncommons, $0.50 commons) but that presented too much micromanagement, even if a common average could be found.
Frankly, a simple $50 deck cap seems appropriate, with no real need to set an individual price cap for cards. There is little real benefit to using 1-2 really expensive cards and having the rest of your deck made of substandard stuff, so I think it's ultimately self-limiting. The other idea was to limit the sets usable to what the supposed "Overextended" was meant to be - Mercadian Masques/7th and on, basically the point at which MTG started to get a better sense of itself, the color pie, set design principles, and so on, with some obvious exclusions for stupid ☺☺☺☺ like Skullclamp and maybe AEther Vial, which would just be banned straight off.
$50 is the average price one pays for a video game (actually I suppose nowadays that is even a modest figure), so if you can make a deck for $50 and it never rotates and will always have use in a given format, it seems like a decent enough investment without going over the top. And many, many deck types are still possible. If you have 3-4 decks of this type, you will be able to play almost anytime, and it's no more significant than owning 3-4 average video games. Seems a fair deal, IMO.
EDIT: Also, since I managed to ramble away from my line of thinking, my concept of Budget is a price at which average players and new, interested parties can come into the game without being intimidated by pricetags or decks sporting a brace of extremely powerful, expensive cards. Smaller hill to climb and all that. The video game example seemed a decent comparison since people are willing to drop that much at a time for something they will hopefully play again and again, or another example would be 3 or 4 movies, a few CDs, etc. It's a less intimidating total and hopefully more accessible to most. Also, I find it more challenging to operate within limits like that because I think it will show people the value of diversifying the budget of their deck, rather than centralizing it in 2-4 powerful cards alone.
Commander
Ezuri, Renegade Leader (Aggro/Combo - Favorite)
Skullbriar, the Walking Grave (Sac and Grave hijinks)
Azusa, Lost but Seeking (Landfall hijinks)
Kaalia of the Vast (Heavily modded)
Standard
Waiting for Innistrad...
Extended
Hah!
Modern
Living End Cascade (RGB)
Legacy
Burn
Vintage
None
Casual
WB Aggro-Control
Green Stompy
Pink Floyd (UWr Wall Control)
Lunch Box (Fatty ramp)
D-Bag (White Control)
Level 13 Task Mage
[Clan Flamingo]
if woc wont ban cards then it is up to us to police ourselves, the honor of winning without playing the card that says, "You WIN!" (before your opponent can play the same damn card)
a 'format' that says no to certain overpriced cards (and overpowered of course) is what is required. It may not be able to compete for the cash, but perhaps is more fun, and worth the effort to build-up
Good luck trying to build one for less than $1000.
Budget really depends on the person and the format.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn