I do read JvLs BoaB and was surprised by his inclusion of 4x inkmoth nexus.
If you like actual budget decks he does those too.
Article: Jacob Van Lunen
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Look, I'm not trying to say he's never used a budget concept. I'm just saying that it's "Jacob Van Lunen's Weekly Deck" rather than "Building on a Budget". And that compared to the work that went on before him, there is a noticeable difference in time spent on the decks and articles.
I read BoaB every week, I must say I do miss the 30 tix restriction. This weeks "Budget" made me laugh. I understand that there are people out there where "budget" is around $200 or so, maybe this article was aimed at them. Either JVL needs to take his article back to the roots, or just stop.
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"Failing to Find" Since March 2010.
Current Capt. of Team "Ju"
I play this:
Standard:
Rotation is coming...
Modern: GGGSTOMPY
ZOO (Goyf-less)
Legacy:
Brewing
EDH:
Too many to name.
I used to read JMS and Ben's articles all the time, when I was reading Daily MTG on a regular basis (used to LOVE Gottlieb's column too; half my deck ideas for FNMs came from his column or JMS's). After JvL took over I read for a couple weeks, noticed that his idea of budget was "whatever I need to spend to make my lousy list competitive," also noticed his idea of playtesting was "play two games against random decks, then say it's good no matter the results," and gave up on the column. If you're going to write a column about budget deck building, you need to A, be able to actually build a decent deck without netdecking, B, actually set a budget and follow it, and C, prove that the deck works beyond anecdotal evidence. The intellectual death of that column led to my drastically reduced reading of Daily MTG (now once in a while for MaRo and/or LaPille's articles).
You all have to remember that times change. Budget back in the day was very very different from what it is today. You simply can't build a deck with any chance of winning for less than 100 bucks, unless there just happens to be a very good deck that is not expensive (Like Pyro).
It seems to me that one of the fundamental problems of BoaB was a confusion of intent that emerged between it, from the lab, and serious fun. Before JvL took over from Ben, there it seemed hard to distinguish between the three except for from the lab generally being janky combo decks with no consideration for price.
I can see how wizards may have wanted serious fun to take over for Ben's casual table and mtgo decks. JvL's articles have generally been more focused on teaching new players about cards and strategies available to magic customers buying into standard, which of course encourages players to keep buying new product. It's easy to tell when changes or the ban hammer is coming down on standard when all of the magic writers are so damn bored of it that they suddenly start expressing interest in eternal formats.
I'd honestly ask, who still reads from the lab? What is that other than janky, sub-legacy combo decks?
I think the articles are neat to read. But they should come out with some guidelines for what "budget" means. I think a total decklist price of $50 or under would be a good start. Or a few tiers, for $20 play this, for $50 swap out these cards, for $100, swap out these cards.
Budget doesn't have to mean "cheap". It means sticking to a number.
But I like a lot of the innovation he shoes in his decklists. Although his "playtesting" results seem to be really out of a fantasy land.
See, I like this idea, this makes sense to me.
The thing I enjoy about budget building most is it forces new exploration of cards you wouldn't normally use, this can be a really great thing, it makes you think in different ways and turns you into a better player as a whole. Thats exciting to me, spending less is just gravy.
"Due to unforeseen circumstances, we're unable to bring you a new Building on a Budget today. Here's last week's article again for those who missed it. Happy brewing!"
Perhaps his supervisors received feedback and made him take a week off to re-assess his definition of budget and come up with some ideas
Fixed. I'm sure the masses want to hear that they can't play anything with a shot in the dark unless they drop $100+ on a deck. Really, its not like everyone is trying to play Craw-blade.dec or something. We just want to have fun decks that can actually function in a semi-competitive environment.
I've only been reading the article for a few months. I'm off work on Wednesdays so I usually throw together the deck on Cockatrice and play for a bit. Most of the decks are pretty bad, but there's a few that are fun to play. I like playing with cards that nobody else is playing and that's what makes it fun for me.
I did notice however like everyone else, the prices on some of the decks have been getting higher.
I didn't like seeing how there wasn't a new deck this morning. I think you guys might be right. Luckily I found a budget deck over on TCGplayer yesterday.
I read the articles not just for the decklist. But more so for interesting card combinations or otherwise cards I didn't think of using.
I prefer that the main focus of the deck to be on commons and/or uncommons. These are, most of the time, dirt cheap and can be gotten everywhere.
It just saddens me when the deck prices sometimes reach way too high to be considered 'budget'. Like last weeks Infect deck.
I don't really care about the decks being T2 legal, but I guess the target audience is the T2 playing folk. There are sometimes some Extended and Modern decks, but not very often...
I do read the column every week, just wish I would go back to more budget friendly decks that don't necessarily need to be the next big thing in T2...
I will also start going through the archive of BoaB, as there is so much praise for the earlier articles.
I used to read every article, but with the current author, I skim the deck list and that's about it. I miss the indepth on developing the deck, and the multi-week runs on a single deck, improving and changing it with each installment.
I can get random deck of the week XXX plenty of places, and this series doesn't seem better than any of the others anymore.
I used to read every article, but with the current author, I skim the deck list and that's about it. I miss the indepth on developing the deck, and the multi-week runs on a single deck, improving and changing it with each installment.
I can get random deck of the week XXX plenty of places, and this series doesn't seem better than any of the others anymore.
Quote for truth. When I try to play with his decklists, they're always much, MUCH worse than the meta dictates, even if he gets a lucky 2-0 with the decks he playtests against in MTGO. I read his article, but more as an idea as to what might work in standard/modern, than a guide as to "this is a good deck to play".
[edit] as someone who doesn't play MTGO, his decks can give me ideas as far as playable combos (for instance I looked to his article when I was considering a Heartless Summoning deck), but he pretty much always crafts his combos in a suboptimal way, and anyone who knows the cardpool in standard can improve upon his findings.
Wow...this thread makes me feel old. I remember when Nate Heiss was doing Building on a Budget. His articles may not have been as in-depth as Ben's, but his decks were usually pretty solid rogue choices, or budgetized versions of competitive archetypes. Good stuff from both Ben and Nate though.
Four Inkmoth Nexus in a budget column, for a janky poison deck? Seriously? This column has really declined.
I feel that he would've been better off looking for an affinity/TS mash. Erayo is cute and all, but this deck crumples up in the fetal position against anything resembling zoo. Also, trying to combo off using only 1 Ethersworn Canonist isn't going to be good w/out tutors. Oh well, that's the drawback of being a "has not". I'll just wait for something more affordable to play.
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():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Failing to Find" Since March 2010.
Current Capt. of Team "Ju"
I play this:
Standard:
Rotation is coming...
Modern: GGGSTOMPY
ZOO (Goyf-less)
Legacy:
Brewing
EDH:
Too many to name.
To be fair, Ben had stuff like Lotus Bloom and Sensei's Divining Top in some of his decks, but he mostly went by ticket prices. I read his Azorious deck articles for nostalgia and I realized that even though he does have some expensive cards, he's still very insightful on how to build rogue decks.
I don't know where this current guy's budget is. After seeing Tempered Steel and Steel Overseer, I can't assume that it really counts as budget. I want Ben back already.
I don't get much out of any of writers they have on there anymore. I'll still (skim) MaRo's stuff sometimes and look for any new product announcements & maybe an Arcana or two.
I miss JMS as well. But moreso, I miss Anthony Alongi's articles..he was consistently fun to read and spent so much time behind the scenes preparing. Did you guys ever see that MASSIVE spreadsheet he created rating multiplayer cards in terms of their 'animal style' or whatever it's called. "Rattlesnake Cards, Cockroach Cards, etc etc" He spent some serious time putting that together.
This sure doesn't look very cheap nor built on a budget
Vatmothers are 0.11 tix on MTGO, Skith are like 7 tix atm (used to be lower and higher), crusaders are only 2.2 and Nexus is the only non-budget card thats currently 11 (used to be from 8-13).
That's pretty good for a budget deck, and I'd consider that Nexus is able to be used in any god damn deck a nice premium. It's not exclusive so you can play it anywhere as well.
As far as physical cards go, you can't expect to build a budget deck without dropping at least $100, why? Because cards stores like SGC set card prices for even the most crappiest rare/mythic at easily 2-6 dollars. $8 for your $1 sellable playset? Sounds nice. Buy the deck from scratch and you'll easily drop 50 on it on just commons and uncommons, yet you call out JVL's decent article. A playset of physical Phyrexian Crusaders will cost me $28 yet I only value it at about maybe $10-15 for a playset. Even then it's a whole 2-7 dollars difference if you convert tix to $1.
One of the biggest points of contention is that JvL writes BoaB without using any kind of budget metric. He has specifically said that he will not restrict himself to a budget because he wants to deliver the most competitive version of whatever deck he's featuring. Of course he does tend to highlight rogue tournament decks whose prices are deflated because they have not won major tournaments.
All that being said, this week's modern deck was pretty reasonable (considering its in the modern format where decks tend to be expensive).
I just often feel JvL's lists are derivative, watered-down versions of last week's tourney decks. I liked Ben's articles a lot more because instead of just doing plain swap-outs of good cards for cheaper cards that are functionally the same but much weaker, he actually took the deck in a different direction, causing it to become more of a rogue hybrid. That in turn leads to a more interesting deck because half of a rogue deck's strength is not that it's the best deck, but because it's harder for your opponent to play against. It also meant the column featured crazier decks, which appealed to both johnnies and also fnm players on a budget.
I feel like a lot of JvL's budget decks are just aimed towards the latter group of people. They sort-of attempted to split the readership of BoAB between those two groups, and From the Lab is now the Johnny column. Yet I read neither of those now, because From the Lab combos are often so incredibly convoluted and impossible because Noel DeCorva doesn't need to play test them in any shape or form, only throw a million combos at us each week. And BoAB is somewhat too focussed upon winning tourneys, I feel. The decks are often boring because they are just cheap swap-ins of top tier lists, which most people can do on their own. So we're left with two columns which don't quite add up to the one that it used to be.
A good example of this 'so rogue it works' factor which I liked in Ben's articles is Ninjaffinatog. It's a crazy deck that somehow works, but which Ben still manages to wrap up in an interesting story of how he uniquely created it, rather than a cut and pasted, budgeted list.
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Treasure maps, fallen trees, operator please
Patch me back to my mind
I don't get much out of any of writers they have on there anymore. I'll still (skim) MaRo's stuff sometimes and look for any new product announcements & maybe an Arcana or two.
I miss JMS as well. But moreso, I miss Anthony Alongi's articles..he was consistently fun to read and spent so much time behind the scenes preparing. Did you guys ever see that MASSIVE spreadsheet he created rating multiplayer cards in terms of their 'animal style' or whatever it's called. "Rattlesnake Cards, Cockroach Cards, etc etc" He spent some serious time putting that together.
I feel the same way. The writers today mostly sound like shills for the latest set/ upcoming event, and have little of substance to offer. I even enjoyed Maro's column at some point in the distant past, but he's gone off the deep end with his self centered crap (Reviewing his 100 best articles, talking about how great infect is, writing about his kids, etc)
The current building on a budget guy seems to think he's building top tier netdecks for SCG or something, and then he remembers that his column is Building on a Budget and so he takes out a few money cards and calls it a day, instead of offering a novel rogue strategy.
I guess the deal is that Ben always used 30 MTGO tix as his base.
I wouldn't mind if it was tiered.
For $30 you can get this.
For $20 more you can add lands.
For $50 more you can add Nexus (this will really help!!!)
Or something like that.
Exactly, "budget" is not subjective when the article has a clearly defined precedent for what the term means. He is a different writer with different sensibilities, but he should also take what BB did into granted as well.
And not just the budget-ness, the lack of testing - just shenanigans all around.
I agree completely. Building on a budget has become a list of Tier 2 decks. I liked it better when they were completely different, odd rogue builds that you could also build for next to nothing.
EDIT: Has anyone else seen the recent Modern Tempered Steel list he made. Just the Seachrome Coasts is $50, and he advises putting in 3 Mox Opals.
Article: Jacob Van Lunen
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Look, I'm not trying to say he's never used a budget concept. I'm just saying that it's "Jacob Van Lunen's Weekly Deck" rather than "Building on a Budget". And that compared to the work that went on before him, there is a noticeable difference in time spent on the decks and articles.
Current Capt. of Team "Ju"
I play this:
Rotation is coming...
Modern: GGGSTOMPY
ZOO (Goyf-less)
Legacy:
Brewing
EDH:
Too many to name.
UBDragonlord Silumgar WGKarametra, God of Harvests
BRUNekusar, the Mindrazer BGMazirek, Kraul Death Priest
URMelek, Izzet Paragon UGPrime Speaker Zegana
WUHanna, Ship's Navigator BWUSydri, Galvanic Genius
WUBRGSliver Queen RBBladewing the Risen
WBKarlov of the Ghost Council RGXenagos, God of Revels
GFreyalise, Llanowar's Fury RWAurelia, the Warleader
RIb Halfheart, Goblin Tactician BDrana, Liberator of Malakir
UAzami, Lady of Scrolls WNahiri, the Lithomancer
WBGDoran, the Siege Tower CEmrakul, the Promised End
Fixed.
I can see how wizards may have wanted serious fun to take over for Ben's casual table and mtgo decks. JvL's articles have generally been more focused on teaching new players about cards and strategies available to magic customers buying into standard, which of course encourages players to keep buying new product. It's easy to tell when changes or the ban hammer is coming down on standard when all of the magic writers are so damn bored of it that they suddenly start expressing interest in eternal formats.
I'd honestly ask, who still reads from the lab? What is that other than janky, sub-legacy combo decks?
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
See, I like this idea, this makes sense to me.
The thing I enjoy about budget building most is it forces new exploration of cards you wouldn't normally use, this can be a really great thing, it makes you think in different ways and turns you into a better player as a whole. Thats exciting to me, spending less is just gravy.
"Due to unforeseen circumstances, we're unable to bring you a new Building on a Budget today. Here's last week's article again for those who missed it. Happy brewing!"
Wonder what happened?
Fixed. I'm sure the masses want to hear that they can't play anything with a shot in the dark unless they drop $100+ on a deck. Really, its not like everyone is trying to play Craw-blade.dec or something. We just want to have fun decks that can actually function in a semi-competitive environment.
Current Capt. of Team "Ju"
I play this:
Rotation is coming...
Modern: GGGSTOMPY
ZOO (Goyf-less)
Legacy:
Brewing
EDH:
Too many to name.
I did notice however like everyone else, the prices on some of the decks have been getting higher.
I didn't like seeing how there wasn't a new deck this morning. I think you guys might be right. Luckily I found a budget deck over on TCGplayer yesterday.
''Building on a budget of gold bars''
> 4 Inkmoth Nexus
> 2 Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
> 4 Phyrexian Crusader
> 4 Phyrexian Vatmother
This sure doesn't look very cheap nor built on a budget
I prefer that the main focus of the deck to be on commons and/or uncommons. These are, most of the time, dirt cheap and can be gotten everywhere.
It just saddens me when the deck prices sometimes reach way too high to be considered 'budget'. Like last weeks Infect deck.
I don't really care about the decks being T2 legal, but I guess the target audience is the T2 playing folk. There are sometimes some Extended and Modern decks, but not very often...
I do read the column every week, just wish I would go back to more budget friendly decks that don't necessarily need to be the next big thing in T2...
I will also start going through the archive of BoaB, as there is so much praise for the earlier articles.
I can get random deck of the week XXX plenty of places, and this series doesn't seem better than any of the others anymore.
Quote for truth. When I try to play with his decklists, they're always much, MUCH worse than the meta dictates, even if he gets a lucky 2-0 with the decks he playtests against in MTGO. I read his article, but more as an idea as to what might work in standard/modern, than a guide as to "this is a good deck to play".
[edit] as someone who doesn't play MTGO, his decks can give me ideas as far as playable combos (for instance I looked to his article when I was considering a Heartless Summoning deck), but he pretty much always crafts his combos in a suboptimal way, and anyone who knows the cardpool in standard can improve upon his findings.
Four Inkmoth Nexus in a budget column, for a janky poison deck? Seriously? This column has really declined.
However there are a bunch of $3 cards as 4-ofs in the list. Not sure when it's all added up how budget it is.
There's still 4 Seachrome Coasts in his list though. To be fair, these were $3 cards until recently.
Current Capt. of Team "Ju"
I play this:
Rotation is coming...
Modern: GGGSTOMPY
ZOO (Goyf-less)
Legacy:
Brewing
EDH:
Too many to name.
I don't know where this current guy's budget is. After seeing Tempered Steel and Steel Overseer, I can't assume that it really counts as budget. I want Ben back already.
RGGruul Aggro
WSoul Sisters
WBTokens
BUGRRestore Balance
BMono-Black Infect
EDH:
RGWMayael, the Anima
GWURoon of the Hidden Realm
BDrana, Kalastria Bloodchief
I miss JMS as well. But moreso, I miss Anthony Alongi's articles..he was consistently fun to read and spent so much time behind the scenes preparing. Did you guys ever see that MASSIVE spreadsheet he created rating multiplayer cards in terms of their 'animal style' or whatever it's called. "Rattlesnake Cards, Cockroach Cards, etc etc" He spent some serious time putting that together.
Fully-powered 600-Card "Dream Cube" https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/dreamcube
450-Card "Artificer's Cube" https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/artificer
Cubing in Indianapolis...send me a PM!!
Infect is quite budget compared to other options.
Vatmothers are 0.11 tix on MTGO, Skith are like 7 tix atm (used to be lower and higher), crusaders are only 2.2 and Nexus is the only non-budget card thats currently 11 (used to be from 8-13).
That's pretty good for a budget deck, and I'd consider that Nexus is able to be used in any god damn deck a nice premium. It's not exclusive so you can play it anywhere as well.
As far as physical cards go, you can't expect to build a budget deck without dropping at least $100, why? Because cards stores like SGC set card prices for even the most crappiest rare/mythic at easily 2-6 dollars. $8 for your $1 sellable playset? Sounds nice. Buy the deck from scratch and you'll easily drop 50 on it on just commons and uncommons, yet you call out JVL's decent article. A playset of physical Phyrexian Crusaders will cost me $28 yet I only value it at about maybe $10-15 for a playset. Even then it's a whole 2-7 dollars difference if you convert tix to $1.
BOAB = MTGO
One of the biggest points of contention is that JvL writes BoaB without using any kind of budget metric. He has specifically said that he will not restrict himself to a budget because he wants to deliver the most competitive version of whatever deck he's featuring. Of course he does tend to highlight rogue tournament decks whose prices are deflated because they have not won major tournaments.
All that being said, this week's modern deck was pretty reasonable (considering its in the modern format where decks tend to be expensive).
I feel like a lot of JvL's budget decks are just aimed towards the latter group of people. They sort-of attempted to split the readership of BoAB between those two groups, and From the Lab is now the Johnny column. Yet I read neither of those now, because From the Lab combos are often so incredibly convoluted and impossible because Noel DeCorva doesn't need to play test them in any shape or form, only throw a million combos at us each week. And BoAB is somewhat too focussed upon winning tourneys, I feel. The decks are often boring because they are just cheap swap-ins of top tier lists, which most people can do on their own. So we're left with two columns which don't quite add up to the one that it used to be.
A good example of this 'so rogue it works' factor which I liked in Ben's articles is Ninjaffinatog. It's a crazy deck that somehow works, but which Ben still manages to wrap up in an interesting story of how he uniquely created it, rather than a cut and pasted, budgeted list.
Patch me back to my mind
I feel the same way. The writers today mostly sound like shills for the latest set/ upcoming event, and have little of substance to offer. I even enjoyed Maro's column at some point in the distant past, but he's gone off the deep end with his self centered crap (Reviewing his 100 best articles, talking about how great infect is, writing about his kids, etc)
The current building on a budget guy seems to think he's building top tier netdecks for SCG or something, and then he remembers that his column is Building on a Budget and so he takes out a few money cards and calls it a day, instead of offering a novel rogue strategy.
Exactly, "budget" is not subjective when the article has a clearly defined precedent for what the term means. He is a different writer with different sensibilities, but he should also take what BB did into granted as well.
And not just the budget-ness, the lack of testing - just shenanigans all around.
EDIT: Has anyone else seen the recent Modern Tempered Steel list he made. Just the Seachrome Coasts is $50, and he advises putting in 3 Mox Opals.