Pretty much any "known" deck is going to cost a LOT more than 35-40 dollars. The only thing I can think of that would be cheap in standard is mono red aggro and that weird blue artifact deck thing from Japan.
To be honest, I doubt you can get much help from this thread, there are no popular decks in the price range you describe, if you want to make one you will be better off working on your own.
The top 8 looms kinda boring, but all the jeskai decks are quite different from each other, as well as the abzan decks having variety, so it isn't like the meta is solved. It also looks like a lot of fun and very skills testing, so I'm pretty happy with the way this format is shaping up
The burn/aggro/tempo whatever the **** you want to call it matchup is pretty terrible, I'd say... played against it a couple of times online, can't manage to win it. Of course, that's a small sample.
I don't actually think the combo matchup is all that bad, if you have 4 Thoughtseize/4 Negate/4 Dissolve you can generally disrupt the deck reasonably well. I'd call it 70/30 for them game 1, 60/40 for us in game 2 and 3.
It's funny, since the UB deck keeps losing on camera everyone seems down on it, but it must be at least reasonably good to be getting into those matchups.
Just gonna type out some thoughts about a bunch of the cards
Various Delve Cards - Empty the Pits, Dig Through Time, Murderous Cut, Treasure Cruise: UB has a lot of good Delve cards, and it's hard to tell which ones we want and how many we can run. I'm running six, and haven't had that many problems casting them at reasonable times. I think any more would be stretching it, though. As for which ones I run, Murderous Cut actually seems the best one to me, it feels the best to cast without significant delving and is definitely an effect we need, where there are other options for win-cons, so I would prioritize getting as many Murderous Cut in the deck as you want before working on others. Dig is better than Treasure Cruise because I'd really just rather have more selection than one more card, and I run Empty the Pits as my win-con of choice.
Draw Spells - I absolutely HATE Divination. Tapping out on turn 3 to do nothing is a fantastic way to get yourself killed, even Ashiok feels bad sometimes. Casting Divination is way too often the same as letting a Siege Rhino or a Rabblemaster or Mantis Rider or whatever it is go to town on you, and two cards doesn't do much to solve that a lot of the time. Font of Fortunes is, IMO, a lot better. We don't have much to do on turn 2, and it works very well with our counters. Jace's Ingenuity is the card in this list I'm most uncertain of, sometimes it feels great and other times it can be a bit clunky and sit in my hand forever. Dig Through Time is obviously insane.
Discard - 4 Thoughtseize is obvious, I'm also running two Despise, which a lot of the time feels even better than Thoughtseize. Planeswalkers are annoying, some creatures are annoying, why not just get rid of the them? Discard is definitely a strenght, if anything I might want more Despise. Discard is extremely important because this deck sometimes lacks ways to deal with resolved non-creature threats, and we can't rely solely on counterspells.
Removal - 4 Hero's Downfall is obvious. Murderous Cut is powerful, but not ideal to draw in multiples so I wouldn't necessarily run all 4, 3 is fine though. I'm running Bile Blight but haven't been overly impressed by it. It feels like it would be pretty necessary against aggro, but I haven't been playing aggro all that much so maybe that is why I'm not so happy with it.
Counters - Disdainful Strike is pretty awesome, feels good in every non-aggro matchup. I'm only running 2 Dissolve, might want to up the number on that at some point, as it is usually fairly useful. I feel like this is the thing UB is lacking to be really good, there just aren't grade A counters out there right now, but the environment feels weak to counters so I would want to run 8 main if I could.
Win-Cons - Prognostic Sphinx has not impressed me, it seems to be barely any faster at killing people than Ashiok and it requires a lot of maintenance to keep it alive, the scry is "meh". It's hard to envision a world where you go late against a controlly deck and lose with Pearl Lake Ancient, but it is abysmally useless against a lot of decks, which is why I won't main it.
Empty the Pits is nice because it's good on defense as well as offense, though it isn't super powerful against control decks game 1, it actually isn't completely useless against aggro either. Ashiok is really how I win most of my games, about equally often by beating them down with their own creature or by milling.
Returned Phalanx - this card is so awesome out of the board against control or aggro. You certainly don't want it against midrange, but you WILL get wins by bringing in 4 Returned Phalanx against other matchups. Against aggro they control the ground, and they've often boarded out some burn so they tend to stay alive. Against control they're even better, they will probably have brought out all their removal except for Hero's Downfall or whatever they use to kill planeswalkers, and they'll want to be playing tapped lands and draw spells and stuff early, you can kill people really quickly if you get a draw with a Phalanx or two and just rush them down. Even when they're dealt with, you'll often find yourself in much better shape than your opponent by that time.
Anyways, I quite like this deck, I think it's matchup vs Green.midrange is pretty good, post board you have a lot of game vs aggro, control mirrors are pretty easy. The hardest decks I've had to face are black-based BGx midrange types, stuff like Thoughtseize backed up by resilient threats can be extremely difficult to beat.
Nothing very interesting, unfortunately.
To be honest, I doubt you can get much help from this thread, there are no popular decks in the price range you describe, if you want to make one you will be better off working on your own.
I don't actually think the combo matchup is all that bad, if you have 4 Thoughtseize/4 Negate/4 Dissolve you can generally disrupt the deck reasonably well. I'd call it 70/30 for them game 1, 60/40 for us in game 2 and 3.
It's funny, since the UB deck keeps losing on camera everyone seems down on it, but it must be at least reasonably good to be getting into those matchups.
2 Dig Through Time
4 Disdainful Stroke
2 Dissolve
1 Empty the Pits
4 Hero's Downfall
3 Jace's Ingenuity
3 Murderous Cut
4 Ashiok
2 Despise
4 Thoughtseize
3 Font of Fortunes
4 Dismal Backwater
4 Temple of Deceit
4 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained MIre
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Flooded Strand
5 Swamp
4 Island
4 Returned Phalanx
1 Bile Blight
3 Negate
2 Silence the Believers
4 Drown in Sorrow
Just gonna type out some thoughts about a bunch of the cards
Various Delve Cards - Empty the Pits, Dig Through Time, Murderous Cut, Treasure Cruise: UB has a lot of good Delve cards, and it's hard to tell which ones we want and how many we can run. I'm running six, and haven't had that many problems casting them at reasonable times. I think any more would be stretching it, though. As for which ones I run, Murderous Cut actually seems the best one to me, it feels the best to cast without significant delving and is definitely an effect we need, where there are other options for win-cons, so I would prioritize getting as many Murderous Cut in the deck as you want before working on others. Dig is better than Treasure Cruise because I'd really just rather have more selection than one more card, and I run Empty the Pits as my win-con of choice.
Draw Spells - I absolutely HATE Divination. Tapping out on turn 3 to do nothing is a fantastic way to get yourself killed, even Ashiok feels bad sometimes. Casting Divination is way too often the same as letting a Siege Rhino or a Rabblemaster or Mantis Rider or whatever it is go to town on you, and two cards doesn't do much to solve that a lot of the time. Font of Fortunes is, IMO, a lot better. We don't have much to do on turn 2, and it works very well with our counters. Jace's Ingenuity is the card in this list I'm most uncertain of, sometimes it feels great and other times it can be a bit clunky and sit in my hand forever. Dig Through Time is obviously insane.
Discard - 4 Thoughtseize is obvious, I'm also running two Despise, which a lot of the time feels even better than Thoughtseize. Planeswalkers are annoying, some creatures are annoying, why not just get rid of the them? Discard is definitely a strenght, if anything I might want more Despise. Discard is extremely important because this deck sometimes lacks ways to deal with resolved non-creature threats, and we can't rely solely on counterspells.
Removal - 4 Hero's Downfall is obvious. Murderous Cut is powerful, but not ideal to draw in multiples so I wouldn't necessarily run all 4, 3 is fine though. I'm running Bile Blight but haven't been overly impressed by it. It feels like it would be pretty necessary against aggro, but I haven't been playing aggro all that much so maybe that is why I'm not so happy with it.
Counters - Disdainful Strike is pretty awesome, feels good in every non-aggro matchup. I'm only running 2 Dissolve, might want to up the number on that at some point, as it is usually fairly useful. I feel like this is the thing UB is lacking to be really good, there just aren't grade A counters out there right now, but the environment feels weak to counters so I would want to run 8 main if I could.
Win-Cons - Prognostic Sphinx has not impressed me, it seems to be barely any faster at killing people than Ashiok and it requires a lot of maintenance to keep it alive, the scry is "meh". It's hard to envision a world where you go late against a controlly deck and lose with Pearl Lake Ancient, but it is abysmally useless against a lot of decks, which is why I won't main it.
Empty the Pits is nice because it's good on defense as well as offense, though it isn't super powerful against control decks game 1, it actually isn't completely useless against aggro either. Ashiok is really how I win most of my games, about equally often by beating them down with their own creature or by milling.
Returned Phalanx - this card is so awesome out of the board against control or aggro. You certainly don't want it against midrange, but you WILL get wins by bringing in 4 Returned Phalanx against other matchups. Against aggro they control the ground, and they've often boarded out some burn so they tend to stay alive. Against control they're even better, they will probably have brought out all their removal except for Hero's Downfall or whatever they use to kill planeswalkers, and they'll want to be playing tapped lands and draw spells and stuff early, you can kill people really quickly if you get a draw with a Phalanx or two and just rush them down. Even when they're dealt with, you'll often find yourself in much better shape than your opponent by that time.
Anyways, I quite like this deck, I think it's matchup vs Green.midrange is pretty good, post board you have a lot of game vs aggro, control mirrors are pretty easy. The hardest decks I've had to face are black-based BGx midrange types, stuff like Thoughtseize backed up by resilient threats can be extremely difficult to beat.
Is there a chance that a UG deck comes up? Maybe, but not particularly likely, in my opinion. The colors don't have much synergy.
Thragtusk and Huntmaster were the best lifegain cards around, and they're gone.
Centaur Healer and Tablet of the Guilds suck