1. How to Sideboard
Over the course of a tournament, you will usually play more games WITH a sideboard than without one. Since a match is determined by the first person to win two games, when both players aren't playing exceptionally long games, every game must go to at least two games, and often a third game. Your second games and third games are played with a sideboard.
Your sideboard isn't simply 15 extra cards that you have in your collection, or cards that you wanted to play in your maindeck 60, but couldn't find room. It's there so that after you play your first game, you can alter your deck slightly to improve your matchup for game two. This usually means that you will include cards that are very narrow - good against some decks, poor against others (if they were good against everything, they probably should be in your main deck).
After you actually pick cards, you need to decide ahead of time (not during a match when you only have a few moments to make changes to your deck) what will go in and what will go out. Usually, you only want to bring in a few cards and take out a few cards; doing more than that dilutes your deck and you may find too many hands filled with answers without a way to win as intended.
2. How to Build a Deck on a Budget
There are generally two methods to creating a deck on a budget: you can take a top-down or bottom-up design process. In the former, you are taking a pre-existing deck that has done well, but includes many expensive cards, and try to find budget substitutes. In the latter, you take budget cards and combine them together to form a cohesive deck.
Top-down deck design:
In a top-down design, we take a pre-existing (non-budget deck) and try to make it fit our needs by removing and replacing more expensive cards with cheaper versions. The most important thing to keep in mind is that there may not always be a good substitute, so often you aren't looking to find the next closest copy to a card, but rather the next best card for the deck that goes well with the rest of the cards. If you can't afford a planeswalker that produces tokens, playing a sorcery that puts two 1/1's into play probably isn't a good replacement; you're better off playing a midrange creature that will keep pressure on your opponent and deal more damage than a few token creatures.
Bottom-up deck design:
In a bottom-up design, we try to form a cohesive deck by gathering a bunch of affordable cards that work well together, until we have a good list of sixty cards. You make sure you have a good number of creatures and spells (particularly removal), and then add in some land to fill out the deck, paying special attention to the costs of all the cards so that your land will do their best to ensure you can play everything.
3. Decks Under $20
4. Decks Under $50
5. Decks Under $100
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Yeah, all SCG does is provide a large national circuit of events for Standard and Legacy players to play in. I mean, who even looks forward to playing in one of these events? I mean, if they canceled them, I'm sure no one would mind, right?
I'm sorry if this comes off as too ranty, but seriously, can we cut down on the misinformation? The day SCG goes out of business would probably mean the game of Magic is dead/nearly dead. If you are fine with no more new cards, a drastic cut in game stores (who basically stay open on the back of Magic), less people to play with/no new players, then yeah, good riddance.
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To keep it on topic, I like to use cards that I find aesthetically pleasing, or cards that I have tied to memories/associations. For example, I like the look of Alpha/Beta dual lands best; then Unlimited; then FBB; then Revised. Therefore, I sold my Revised dual lands (I had around 80, many of which I wasn't using) to get Betas for the decks that I actually play + extra cash. This was back before Beta duals cost so much, so it was mostly an aesthetic decision.
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So...something like this?
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Agreed, which is why I qualified it so much.
When I think of Grim Monolith, I also think of Mana Vault, which I consider more powerful. Comparing these two makes me think of the Vintage site TheManaDrain.com (in its older incarnation) and how it once had a Legacy counterpart called The Mana Leak. Again, you have two different card names attempting to represent two different formats. It may not be the best naming convention, but with the ridiculous names people have assigned to decks these days, I'd say Magic players aren't the best at coming up with descriptive names.
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Not sure how you got that from what fooligan said. I didn't see anything disparaging; on the contrary, it seemed like the opposite.
Plus he/she gave reasonable suggestions on how to describe the OP's cube ("Grim Monolith," "fairly conservative or traditional,") so how can you characterize the post as being meaningless or a tangent? It was reasonably on-topic.
Personally, I found the "Grim Monolith" moniker to be somewhat descriptive, but that may only be true for those who have established associations/connotations with the card.
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That is a gorgeous looking card. I like how well the artwork and the exposed foil parts of the card complement and balance each other out.
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Juju, you have become quite skilled with your extensions. It is cool to see those cube cards all together.
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My main collection is Lotus Petal. I have around 600, with at least 4 of each language, several signed/altered/tournament-stamped, and 18 FTV foils.