MTG Salvation

I have a few EDH decks but I hate spending money on new cards and my current decks always lose in my current play group. Who are some fun, cheap, and useful commanders in your opinion? I usually play green white and red and my most recent deck was Sek'Kuar, Deathkeeper. He was pretty good except I lacked cards like Grave Pact and Damnation. I don't want to play any commander set legendary's and I want to keep my budget to about $10 or less (I would use my current collection to fill the rest up)

That's hugely, hugely dependent on what your collection looks like. A $10 limit is very low, so I'm not sure you're going to get a whole lot of good responses without providing a little more information.

Unless you can spend more than that I don't think you'll be able to beat others

You could talk to your playgroup about going into Pauper/Peasant EDH. Pauper is all commons except for your commander. Peasant allows for a certain amount of uncommons and, again except for the commander, the rest is commons. For the most part you can pick up staple cards for the variant format for $0.10 from commons boxes.

I would love to play Pauper but my playgroup loves to play with their $100 cards. I think I have enough cards to build any color deck but I need a general and maybe five cards that work well with him that can win games.

I would suggest Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. Even though I retired mine, it will always be one of my favorite and most fun to play decks, and even on budget, you should be able to make him work.
I mean, with Kiki-Jiki, you can go infinite multiple ways for about 50 cents, if you're into that sort of thing.

Well played, sir...
Ok...
Step one: Aquire Kiki-Jiki.
Step two: Buy a bunch of typically poop CIP creatures.
Step three: ???
Step four: Profit?

Or just play Norin the Wary.
Nobody ever expects Norin the Wary.
He's pretty much the Spanish Inquisition.

Ezuri, Renegade Leader can be cheap and surprisingly powerful and effective. Lots of cheap or reasonably costed green elves out there ($ wise I mean). Elvish Archdruid, Elvish Champion, Wellwisher, Priest of Titania, Joraga Warcaller... Hopefully you have some of these in your collection already. He could consume your entire budget, but if possible a Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary will help speed up the deck a great deal, but if budget is a limitation he's not necessary, just something to consider.

Green offers affordable mana ramp/acceleration and Ezuri's ability, Overrun, or Overwhelming Stampede are the win cons. Craterhoof Behemoth is another win con as is Kamahl, Fist of Krosa's overrun ability, if those doesn't destroy your $10 budget.

Other things to pump your elves and other creatures up include the very affordable Coat of Arms and Beastmaster Ascension, just consider not playing them until you're swinging for the win (CoA) or can fully trigger them (Beastmaster Ascension) so they don't get blown up. Avenger of Zendikar, Ant Queen, and Wolfbriar Elemental can create the tokens you need to trigger your Beastmaster Ascension, and give you more creatures to pump with the above mentioned Overrun, Overwhelming Stampede, Craterhoof or Kamahl.

The deck can also have a very cheap manabase too, Pendelhaven, Oran-Rief, the Vastwood, buncha Forests. Wirewood Lodge if you can afford it. And green can have some defensive type answers with Acidic Slime, Terastodon, Naturalize, Beast Within. You should be generating enough mana to afford the new Sylvan Primordial. If you're worried about fliers, utilize Gravity Well or Spidersilk Armor.

Garruk Wildspeaker may be a $4 card but he's been reprinted so often you should have easy access to one. Extra mana, tokens, and yet ANOTHER way to overrun.

Since you mentioned Green as one of the 3 primary colors you play, you should probably already have lots of the cards to make the foundation of the deck.

Bob's Tibor and Lumia deck (outdated) in the MP section of the forums seems rather budget. Looking at mine, I think Academy ruins is the most expensive card and is by no means necessary. Play lots of spells and storm!

LINK

Someone else mentioned Norin the Wary. If your friends insist on playing with their $100 cards, than why don't YOU play with their $100 cards? Build a thievery deck. My Zedruu the Greathearted deck basically plays that way, get Norin and Confusion in the Ranks out and at the end of most turns you're stealing a creature. Just fill the rest of the deck with cheap artifact mana, some counters, and pacifism effects. A few creatures with Defender help in the early game.

*Insert AshlingthePilgrim60mountainsandsomeburn.dec*

I started playing at $40 a deck, and I was still getting smoked. It's taken some time, but I've 'invested' and now my decks are worth $75-$100 and can at least be 'competitive' enough for my casual meta.

Probably could have saved myself some money too if I just accepted the fact that I needed to sink in $100 from the beginning instead of buying medeocre cards that hoped to do the trick of the better card. They just don't.

I still rarely own a card worth more than $5. The few that do came from drafts or theme packs. The highest I've ever spent on a card is $3.50.

Obtaining decent decks can happen...it just takes time if you're on a budget.

I was wondering if there was a way to build a cheap sac deck using my old general Sek'Kuar, Deathkeeper. He is really fun to play with and I already have some infinite combos built in (Nim Deathmantle + Ashnod's Altar + token producing creatures). My playgroup hates when my $10 decks beat theirs (Our games are very political so I usually just refrain from attacking until I can sneak in a kill or know I'm next to die and sometimes it snags me a win). My decks main problem is that it is often targeted as soon as I decide to go aggro. Everyone else has Ghostly Prison and other defensive spells that make attacking them next to impossible. And if I do destroy their defensive spells, I typically get walloped next turn by Ulamog or some other huge creature or burn spell. Does black or green have multi-turn defensive spells?

Quote from jubjub55

Does black or green have multi-turn defensive spells?

Elephant Grass
No mercy
Dread

In my group everyone has varying power levels in their decks. Most of us have 4 or more for variety. Maybe you could borrow someone else's deck. It's fun to play against your own, win or lose.

You could also ask your friends if they would be willing to donate some commons/uncommons. Often other players will not be able to find a common card such as Rampant Growth, which you might help them with. It's not really trading and you don't have to track it, just remember the Golden Rule. Obviously some commons/uncommons are worth $'s, but generally you will know which those are.

When your opponent drops a bomb, maybe ask them what a good answer to it is in your colors. They would assume it's not in your hand and probably help you out.

Quote from Zombie Shakespeare

You might want to check out d0su's Child of Alara list. Really solid & would certainly play into the politics of your games.

And defeating other players when you're wielding a $10 deck is what makes this game so fun.

Just read this, I think I might just try it out

a personal advice, commander is a format where you play what you feel comfortable with (at least for me), so try to find a general you like and start getting the cards when you can or ask a friend if he can lend you some cards.

I started playing with really random decks and it isnt funny as you think.

I have made a few decks within budgets. $50.00 is the average. Since and bases can be varied i never include them in my price as you can use basic lands in place of some of the more expensive ones. (Plus i have a lot of the expensive ones anyway.)

I will say this, tribal is a good idea. Goblins, Faeries, Merfolk, elves, soldiers, Slivers. You have a god list to work with. Second thing is mono color. dual color if you want but try focusing on 1 color. I have build again (3 decks) On a small budget. 2 dual colored and 1 mono colored.

final thing, don't get discouraged with the decks you have, play them, find out the weaknesses and try to fix that issue. My arcum deck was originally a 50 dollar deck. I would get ganged up on, so My weakness was I could not handle 3 opponents. Its now a $350.00 deck and can handle 3 even 4 people ganging up on me.

Quote from kunz

a personal advice, commander is a format where you play what you feel comfortable with (at least for me), so try to find a general you like

This.

If you like playing weenie rush decks, try making a sliver deck around Sliver Overlord (I'd suggest Sliver Queen, but she's still fairly pricey whereas Sliver Legion just doesn't do enough by himself), goblins with Wort, the Raidmother, Wort, Boggart Auntie, or Krenko, Mob Boss, or elves with Ezuri, Renegade Leader or Nath of the Gilt-Leaf.

If a Voltron-style deck is more your flavor, try Rafiq of the Many, Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon, Godo, Bandit Warlord, or Sigarda, Host of Herons.

Other ideas/generals you might want to consider include:

• Ramp/fatties with Mayael the Anima
• Combo with Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind or Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
• Control with Gaddock Teeg or Olivia Voldaren

In the end though, pick your general and/or theme before moving on from there to figure out your deck and tweak it as you go.

You can't beat a theft / copy deck for making up for a low budget. As said before why spend $25 on a card when you can clone it. Really helps you deal with high powered generals which go to the legendary rule :0)

You can build a budget Edric, Spymaster of Trest deck for really cheap. Most of the little 1/1 evasive guys you use in it are super cheap, as is Beastmaster Ascension. You can still use Walk the Aeons and Notorious Throng as well, which are both cheap, and between the creatures, time spells, and Beastmaster that's really all you need to win. A lot of the money dropped into my Edric deck was just from color fixing, and fancy lands and artifact ramp like Mox.

Krenko Goblins is very cheap, it only needs a few key cards that are a bit pricey, namely Goblin Lackey and Goblin Piledriver. The rest can be filled with very inexpensive cards, usually, and Krenko is one of the decks to beat at our local playgroup despite other decks having a higher budget.