Thanks for such a wonderfully helpful post! I built your Tarkir Block Goblin deck for my son to play at FNM, and he's loving it. I was tinkering with building another budget Tarkir Block Goblin deck and was hoping you could give me some pointers regarding it as well as tell me if it's even a good build.
RBW, aggro, budget - generally you don't want to choose all three when building a deck. Three colors means you need lots of fixing. Budget means you can't use fetches or Mana Confluence. Aggro means you usually want as many lands that enter untapped as possible.
Pain lands are pretty much mandatory for multicolored aggro.
You probably want to cut back on the colors and stick to one or two colors. You might want to look at these R/X block decks:
Here's What I've come up with from your U/B Control deck, haven't played in a very long time, however play-tested this on forge a bit and found it to be fairly sound. Took it to my first FNM last night and got spanked. Ran into issues with pulling land quickly enough to keep the control/removal active, also saw issues with getting thopters on the board reliably. Any suggestions? Thanks!
You might look at Bile Blight and Pharika's Cure as your removal. Pharika's Cure is particularly nice to have in the sideboard against aggressive red decks (with burn).
Evolving Wilds also doesn't seem to do much for you, and may actually hurt you - both in loss of tempo and affecting your future land draws, which you want to get reliably. Radiant Fountain will also help you survive longer. You might consider them over the Foundries.
This may also be one of those times where you have to just bite the bullet and make a tough choice: you can either be mediocre against everything, or be great against some thing and bad against some other things (and hopefully have a sideboard to shore up those matchups). I don't know what you faced each round and what your struggles were (in the future, keeping a notepad with each matchup can help you analyze your own games after the fact), but you may find that since Duress is really best against control, if you're facing a lot of aggro, maybe you have those in the sideboard instead. Thoughtseize is so expensive because it's so versatile, nabbing scary creatures, planeswalkers, AND counterspells. There's no real replacement, just playing with Duress versus control and removal versus aggro. So, that means that game one, if you aren't running Thoughtseize, you either have a card that's bad against control or aggro.
Unfortunately, this is the downside of trying to play control on a budget. It's much easier to play aggro and burn kills creatures and it kills opponents. Rarely is it truly dead. You face fewer situations where your threats aren't very good, but when you play control, you can totally get a bad read and have the wrong answers to threats and in a truly diverse meta, it's possible that without expensive multi-tools that are good in multiple situations, you may have to compromise and know that you can't beat everything all at once.
Hero's Downfall may also be a good addition to your deck, over things like Reave Soul or Foul-Tongue Invocation, something that's more powerful and useful against a wider range of threats.
A friend of mine and I are looking at getting into some FNM Standard play, he has mostly been a multi-player EDH player and I am a relatively new player. Being students, budget is a big concern for us. Now, Im not super familiar with how Standard's rotation works, but I know that both a new set and a new method of rotation are happening soon. Assuming that we both pick up one of these decks, will they be invalidated with the new set/rotation?
A friend of mine and I are looking at getting into some FNM Standard play, he has mostly been a multi-player EDH player and I am a relatively new player. Being students, budget is a big concern for us. Now, Im not super familiar with how Standard's rotation works, but I know that both a new set and a new method of rotation are happening soon. Assuming that we both pick up one of these decks, will they be invalidated with the new set/rotation?
A website that I use to help me with understanding rotation is http://whatsinstandard.com. From there, you can see that on October 2nd, Theros, Gods, Nyx and 2015 will all rotate out. So, any deck containing those sets will either need to be revamped or scrapped. On October 2nd, the only sets legal in Standard will be Khans, Fate, Dragons, Origins and BFZ. If you like the budget decks in this thread, then you would need to stick with the decks yakusoku posted in the main post under "6. Decks With Only Tarkir Block and Magic Origins". I'm sure, after the rotation, and when yakusoku has played BFZ a bit, that he'll update the original post with some budget ideas including BFZ.
I'm sure, after the rotation, and when yakusoku has played BFZ a bit, that he'll update the original post with some budget ideas including BFZ.
That's the plan. I saw the spoiler come out today, so I'm already looking over the new set and after the first few weeks of Standard, I usually make updates with the new rotation.
Thanks! I played my first Standard FNM post-rotation and in the next few weeks there will be some SCG events and a pro tour that should all help settle the meta and figure out what's good. Hopefully I can adapt some decks to play on a budget.
Looking at multiple decks which are essentially tier 1 lists minus the mana base in the "Under $100" section really is an eye-opener about how much of Standard is tied into the lands, financially speaking.
This was already pretty clear, but the exact extent was crazy for me to see.
With Khans of Tarkir and Fate Reforge rotating out and Shadows over Innistrad legal for FNM this week, I will be editing decks, deleting old decks, and adding decks.
As always, feedback is welcome, particularly since I am prone to making silly small mistakes like making 56 or 64 card decklists or writing the wrong name of a card.
Thanks for the list. However, can you fix your RW Tempo deck? You've listed Spectral Shepherd twice, so the deck is missing 3 cards in the deck. Thanks!
Looking for a playable deck that doesn't cost $1500 over here *cough* Bant *cough* that can actually do...SOMETHING at tournamants..which (of the ones listed I this thread) would you consider?
Does anybody have or can make a budget grixis control list? How would grixis control work with an initial $100 budget, and how much of it will survive rotation? I think that's what I want to play when I start playing again. Without the jaces is it playable and does it fall into my budget?
Thanks for such a wonderfully helpful post! I built your Tarkir Block Goblin deck for my son to play at FNM, and he's loving it. I was tinkering with building another budget Tarkir Block Goblin deck and was hoping you could give me some pointers regarding it as well as tell me if it's even a good build.
4 Goblin Glory Chaser
4 Shambling Goblin
4 Goblin Piledriver
3 Mardu Scout
3 Goblin Heelcutter
2 Ankle Shanker
2 Ponyback Brigade
4 Crackling Doom
4 Dragon Fodder
4 Exquisite Firecraft
4 Hordeling Outburst
Land (22)
4 Bloodfell Caves
4 Nomad Outpost
4 Scoured Barrens
4 Wind-Scarred Crag
6 Mountain
Thanks for your help in advance!
Pain lands are pretty much mandatory for multicolored aggro.
You probably want to cut back on the colors and stick to one or two colors. You might want to look at these R/X block decks:
R/W
R/B
Here's What I've come up with from your U/B Control deck, haven't played in a very long time, however play-tested this on forge a bit and found it to be fairly sound. Took it to my first FNM last night and got spanked. Ran into issues with pulling land quickly enough to keep the control/removal active, also saw issues with getting thopters on the board reliably. Any suggestions? Thanks!
4x Artificer's Epiphany
4x Cancel
2x Clash of Wills
2x Foul-Tongue Invocation
2x Murderous Cut
4x Negate
4x Ultimate Price
3x Thopter Spy Network
3x Languish
2x Reave Soul
4x Darksteel Citadel
4x Dismal Backwater
4x Evolving Wilds
4x Foundry of the Consuls
5x Island
5x Swamp
3x Calculated Dismissal
2x Clash of Wills
2x Foul-Tongue Invocation
1x Murderous Cut
2x Reave Soul
3x Self-Inflicted Wound
2x Silumgar's Command
Link to deck @ TappedOut.net
Evolving Wilds also doesn't seem to do much for you, and may actually hurt you - both in loss of tempo and affecting your future land draws, which you want to get reliably. Radiant Fountain will also help you survive longer. You might consider them over the Foundries.
This may also be one of those times where you have to just bite the bullet and make a tough choice: you can either be mediocre against everything, or be great against some thing and bad against some other things (and hopefully have a sideboard to shore up those matchups). I don't know what you faced each round and what your struggles were (in the future, keeping a notepad with each matchup can help you analyze your own games after the fact), but you may find that since Duress is really best against control, if you're facing a lot of aggro, maybe you have those in the sideboard instead. Thoughtseize is so expensive because it's so versatile, nabbing scary creatures, planeswalkers, AND counterspells. There's no real replacement, just playing with Duress versus control and removal versus aggro. So, that means that game one, if you aren't running Thoughtseize, you either have a card that's bad against control or aggro.
Unfortunately, this is the downside of trying to play control on a budget. It's much easier to play aggro and burn kills creatures and it kills opponents. Rarely is it truly dead. You face fewer situations where your threats aren't very good, but when you play control, you can totally get a bad read and have the wrong answers to threats and in a truly diverse meta, it's possible that without expensive multi-tools that are good in multiple situations, you may have to compromise and know that you can't beat everything all at once.
Hero's Downfall may also be a good addition to your deck, over things like Reave Soul or Foul-Tongue Invocation, something that's more powerful and useful against a wider range of threats.
A website that I use to help me with understanding rotation is http://whatsinstandard.com. From there, you can see that on October 2nd, Theros, Gods, Nyx and 2015 will all rotate out. So, any deck containing those sets will either need to be revamped or scrapped. On October 2nd, the only sets legal in Standard will be Khans, Fate, Dragons, Origins and BFZ. If you like the budget decks in this thread, then you would need to stick with the decks yakusoku posted in the main post under "6. Decks With Only Tarkir Block and Magic Origins". I'm sure, after the rotation, and when yakusoku has played BFZ a bit, that he'll update the original post with some budget ideas including BFZ.
Hope this helps!
That's the plan. I saw the spoiler come out today, so I'm already looking over the new set and after the first few weeks of Standard, I usually make updates with the new rotation.
More decks will be added in the next few weeks.
This was already pretty clear, but the exact extent was crazy for me to see.
GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern:
RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy:
BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB
As always, feedback is welcome, particularly since I am prone to making silly small mistakes like making 56 or 64 card decklists or writing the wrong name of a card.
I noticed that in both RDW lists you have War-Name Aspirant listed from Khans of Tarkir, which is obviously rotating out.
I've also fixed the UW Tempo deck.
Thanks for the help, guys.
4 Cliffhaven Vampire
4 Drana's Emissary
4 Kalastria Healer
4 Ondu War Cleric
4 Vampire Envoy
2 Munda's Vanguard
2 Lantern Scout
4 Ultimate Price
8 Plains
8 Swamp
4 Ally Encampment
4 Caves of Koilos
I've been looking for a solid WB Allies Deck, and I created my own version of this deck before I read your article. http://deckstats.net/decks/64135/479471-orzhov-lifegain-vampiric-allie/en
If it were up to you, what would you recommend as upgrades for this deck that wouldn't push past $50?
Standard: Larkblue's Competitive Mono Red Aggro
Hmm.. the white Humans works out to be $170 US here...still looks solid though.