So obviously the notable add here is Altar. A singleton is fine, based on the way this is built you only need one and by the time you're ready to cast it, it should be uncounterable by anything but a free counter. Altar has the advantage of killing right past a Leyline of Sanctity or other player-gains-hexproof effect, and killing past infinite life as well. The *actual* kill is ideally achieved with Coliseum, of course. Why let your opponent untap, after all? But against a hexproof opponent we have to let them untap and die during draw step. The Ghost Quarters are there to nuke all their lands so they won't be able to cast anything to save themselves.
City of Traitors and Horizon Canopy are both missing from this list as I consider neither of them to be "budget". The Lotus Petals are the most expensive cards in the deck. Both are excellent cards to be honest, but the deck can definitely function without them.
Most of how the deck operates should be obvious to eggs players, not much fancy here. I don't run Aether or Pyrite SB's, I consider the Reshape tutor package inferior to the Crop Rotation tutor package (give me a G instant over a UU sorcery any day!). Barbarian Ring is my Pyrite SB and either it or Coliseum could theoretically kill by themselves, albeit not without the risk of the oppo doing something crazy with all the draws / discards, and Ring can be stopped by infinite life shenanigans (and you'll go grey finishing the game if the oppo forces you to act out all 10 Ring activations; Altar can millout in two Sunrises). The advantage of Altar is that you can wait to run it out until you have the opponent on complete lockdown (no lands surviving thanks to GQ, no mana in pool bc you halt your combo, pass to second main, and restart to clear their pool). With no lands or mana they have no way to cast any of the cards you give them with Coliseum. Four Coliseums may seem like overkill and I may be talked into swapping one out for a third GQ, but I'm dubious on it. I don't like to weaken the list with ways to get lands from hand into play like Wayfarer, so my only way of "rescuing" a hand-stuck CC is to use another CC on board to pitch it, then Noxious it under, then Rotate it into play. This means if I draw every CC in my deck without a land drop remaining, I can never get one on board. No thanks. And I've had games where I drew three of them before I could find a Rotation to fetch the fourth. The sheer amount of digging CC gives you can't be overestimated so I want it every single game, and the only way I've found to guarantee that is the 4 CR + 4 CC package.
Sideboard isn't fully worked out yet but 3-4 Seal of Primordium is standard against Tormod's Crypt / Relic of Progenitus / Rest in Peace, cards which could otherwise give us fits. Seal can force the Crypt once you're holding Sunrise, then you get everything back and they Crypt an empty yard. Then you can topdeck their Crypt with a Noxious. At that point, whether they mill or discard it is irrelevant, it will no longer "count" for Sunrise.
The mill plan is also not beatable by any number of Emrakuls or by less than three auto-retuck-replacement creatures (Progenitus, Serra Avatar, etc). Some decks run those in the board as mill protection and may make the mistake of thinking that will suffice.
As with all legacy eggs deck, the real problem is always counters against our engine spells, and tax effects that make it impossible for us to function (looking at Thalia here). A lot of the cards that mess us up the worst are hatebears and that's really who the Barbarian Ring is in to fight against.
Anyway, it's a very sketchy list I'm aware, but it's a lot of fun and against non-counter decks it can snag a few wins here and there. Most blue decks just laugh at it, since it throws its entire board away and then puts the whole game on resolving a 3 or 4 CMC spell that the opponent sees coming for 3-4 turns. IMO not much can be done about this since there's no way to add sufficient blue cards to the deck to fuel a FoW package without utterly diluting its core mechanic (besides, this is a budget thread). Against slower blue based controlly decks we can wait a couple turns, pile up more mana on board, and try to force two engine spells. Or we can go with the Silence plan, which I don't hold out a ton of hope for (hard enough to get enough mana + sunrise + enough eggs to draw into another sunrise with; to get all that plus a Silence to enable it all is rough). It can be done but it will likely add a turn or two to when we go off. Against blue aggro-control / Anything-Delver we die, period. We just don't have enough time.
Late reply, but why not.
The City of Traitors and fast mana made it a turn 2-3 deck. Not a turn 3-4 deck. A turn 2-3 deck. The deck was difficult to mulligan, and you just had to trust the percentages sometimes, but turn 2 was the decks main combo turn.
The answer to hexproof was in the sb. That's why the different kinds of bounce. 1 that synergizes with your gameplan, and one that hits multiple copies of things.
I don't think Ghost Quarters do enough if they aren't also ramping out lands in the early game by fetching basics. The deck never really had room, tbh. In fact, the deck really lost all its fight against permission and discard a long time ago, when mystical tutor was banned. That was the original toolbox and why abeyance is in the deck to begin with. Lines then were like - put everything on the board, sac egg for draw trigger, respond with mystical tutor, respond to that with LED activation. Miss that. Legit turn 1-2 combo deck instead of a turn 2-3. And then mystical tutor was also good at fetching out things that could stop or prevent FOW...
...Well, that was a tangent.
If you absolutely need a wc that doesn't target, it too is in the SB. Laboratory Maniac.
This is no longer a budget deck at the level of power it was built for. Sad days.
Late reply, but why not.
The City of Traitors and fast mana made it a turn 2-3 deck. Not a turn 3-4 deck. A turn 2-3 deck. The deck was difficult to mulligan, and you just had to trust the percentages sometimes, but turn 2 was the decks main combo turn.
The answer to hexproof was in the sb. That's why the different kinds of bounce. 1 that synergizes with your gameplan, and one that hits multiple copies of things.
I don't think Ghost Quarters do enough if they aren't also ramping out lands in the early game by fetching basics. The deck never really had room, tbh. In fact, the deck really lost all its fight against permission and discard a long time ago, when mystical tutor was banned. That was the original toolbox and why abeyance is in the deck to begin with. Lines then were like - put everything on the board, sac egg for draw trigger, respond with mystical tutor, respond to that with LED activation. Miss that. Legit turn 1-2 combo deck instead of a turn 2-3. And then mystical tutor was also good at fetching out things that could stop or prevent FOW...
...Well, that was a tangent.
If you absolutely need a wc that doesn't target, it too is in the SB. Laboratory Maniac.
This is no longer a budget deck at the level of power it was built for. Sad days.
Fascinating how old this thread is now, btw.