MTG Salvation

Deck Introduction (Under 50 USD)

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The budget deck creation forums on MtG Salvation are the absolute best places to find creative people constructing even more creative decks outside the restrictive nature of expensive and other popular cards. This BW deck is just a roundup of cards that I think might be a little bit of fun when put together. This is a deck where Enchantments matter and we will try to me full use of all of the cool Enchantment cards available in standard now. So please enjoy and don't forget to leave critiques and comments below to help me out.

Some Cards and My Thoughts

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There are a lot of cards that are out of the price range of this budget deck that would be helpful to us. Thankfully, Caves of Koilos is under $3.00 and makes the cut for this deck. Temple of Silence is currently at $4.50 and might be too much for our budget so, for now, we will be passing it up for Scoured Barrens.

Banishing Light is pretty much straight forward. Its versatility of removing any nonland permanent is highly valuable for our budget deck. In this deck we might be looking at some Constellation so the fact that it is an Enchantment is a nice bonus. Banishing Light is a popular card in non-budget decks so that makes me feel a little better about including it.

Constellation is a big part of our game plan and Underworld Coinsmith is a key player in our creature lineup. We will be losing and gaining life throughout the entire game and the longer the game goes on the more activations we will get with this guy..gal...thing.

Goblin Rabblemaster, Savage Knuckleblade, Siege Rhino, and more are big threats for any deck. We have a plan though and his name is Nyx-Fleece Ram. Just look at this card. The art is amazing, his butt is huge, he is gaining life, and he is an Enchantment. I am not really sure how much better a card can get for us and look so harmless.

To keep going with our Enchantment theme going, Brain Maggot is up to bat. Knowing what's in your opponent's hand is a big advantage. Knowing what is in their hand and getting rid of the biggest threat is even better. This card isn't too tough but drawing a removal spell out on it is not a bad thing.

Grim Guardian. What a cool card. Enchantment? Check. Constellation? Check. Decent toughness and good effect? You know it. Nothing bad to say about our guardian. I think this budget deck is shaping up to be pretty cool.

Decklist

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Ruggley's Orzhov Enchantments: $48.00 TCG MidMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
Creatures (25) 4 Brain Maggot 4 Nyx-Fleece Ram 4 Underworld Coinsmith 4 Grim Guardian 4 Herald of Torment 2 Fate Unraveler 2 Doomwake Giant 1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel	Spells (12) 1 Feast on the Fallen 4 Sign in Blood 1 Return to the Ranks 4 Banishing Light 1 Whip of Erebos 1 Extinguish All Hope	Lands (23) 4 Caves of Koilos 4 Scoured Barrens 7 Plains 8 Swamp

The numbers in the decklist are placeholders until I get useful input from the Magic Community on what does or does not work for this deck.

I like Sign in Blood because we don't really care about the loss of life but I feel like there might be something a little more efficient that I am missing. I also like being able to Sign in Blood an opponent when I have Fate Unraveler in play, to seal the deal, if it ever became necessary.

Doomwake Giant is another card that has potential here as a finisher or to clean up the state of the board. I have Herald of Torment in the deck as my finisher currently.

Conclusion

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I feel like this deck has a good shot at being at least decent at FNM's. Opening up the throttle on the budget would be extremely helpful to this deck but as it stands I think it is a cool little brew.

Please comment on anything that comes to mind on how to improve what I have going on here.

Thanks

Edits and Additional Thoughts

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There are a few cards that are on my mind:

• Bile Blight
  
• Oppressive Rays
  
• Stab Wound

These 3 cards are considerations for the Sideboard.

• Bile Blight is effective against tokens or spot removal in some situations.
• Oppressive Rays is the most exciting card I am looking at right now. The fact that it is an Enchantment puts it over the top for me.
• Stab Wound is the weakest of these 3 considerations but I think the loss of life is a neat ability and could really do big damage if left unchecked.

• As suggested by Nev, Whip of Erebos is an easy inclusion into this list. The abilities are nice, it's an Enchantment, and it's less than $2.00. Sounds good to me. Thanks Nev
• Brave the Sands is a card I am thinking about for the Sideboard against RabbleRed decks. It allows Nyx-Fleece Ram to block more tokens. Grim Guardian too for that matter.

Quote from Gulrog »

I didn't think it would, I was just curious to see if you were able to discern any way of sneaking some red in there on the cheap. It's meant to be budget friendly and fairly competitive, and it seems to succeed at both. I plan on starting from the basic framework you laid out in your first post (this will be my first deck, btw ), and perhaps expand into red after testing, getting more familiar with the decks played at my LGS, and a willingness to drop more cash on it.

Also, which site are you using to price? I've been checking out Star City Games, but I've heard they're pretty overpriced.

I, and many other players that trade often, use TCG Mid prices. I am not sure if I am allowed to link to it but you can just Google TCG Player and go from there.

I do hope you stay up with MtG. It is so much fun especially when you build on a limited budget. It forces you to come up with new and creative ways to beat your opponents. That being said, there is a reason the "good" decks cost so much.

I feel like adding R into these colors is a healthy choice and you should definitely go for it when expenses permit.

You're getting into Magic at an exciting time and I wish you the best. I am a Commander player mainly but I enjoy doing budget standard decks every now and then so I hope to see you around more.

Magic 2015 is seriously legit. Awesome

Seeing as G is my favorite color in Magic, Plant is my favorite creature type, and Elemental is my second favorite creature type, this might see play, by me

This Titan is good but really only in the right deck and against the deck, but I guess that is the lazy opinion because that can be true for a lot of cards. Getting him out early, and at multiple copies, could really be hazardous for the health of any opponent. I think I'm going to say that this probably does not belong in Mono G, to be effective.

Welcome to the forums Mickgagger. There is a Introduce Yourself thread available but it seems like this is an introduction and a General concern. I am not sure what to say about your interesting situation but I am positive that you don't have to pay money to play Magic with anyone. That being said, watch out for some of these posters, they fly off the handle pretty quick and some are as sketchy as it can get.

The Banlists are jokes anyway. People should just understand that it is a casual format. It is meant to be "fun" for all parties involved. It doesn't mean every has to run Group Hug and any other similar lists but it should mean that people aren't sweating at the table afraid to speak or make eye contact because of the plays they are making. I can't even find a single person at my LGS who plays for fun. People just ride the banlists so hard it's funny. Any player can break out their collection and find combos that autowin. Play Commander for fun or don't play it at all.

All of that being said, whatever is fun for you personally I guess

(If there is money on the line, it might be a different story)

I don't hate any Commanders. Players should just build and play with what they want. It is suppose to be a casual format. Those who are sweating to win probably aren't allowed at the table. You can have any Commander across the table and still have fun. I use Edric, Spymaster of Trest but don't run any small guys to abuse him. I just like those colors but don't want to use the others because sometimes I will have a few creatures attacking and just pop him in there for some draw.
It's just the mindset that people have to win to have fun, and it's really not supposed to be like that. People will always rip on whatever deck they aren't running and claim how their deck has all of this interactivity and how your deck is just autopilot. Those are the lame kids who can't have fun without winning lol

This is well-made. Will sticky if it winds up being popular.

Quote from Ruggley »

Is it possible to use the cardimg tag for tokens?
If so, can you choose they set?
Can you choose which version? If there are 3 Treasure arts from same set can I choose a specific one?
Where is the cardimg tag getting the images from?

Thanks

The cardimg tag pulls images from our card database. We generally do not store tokens in our card database as they are not actual magic cards. You can choose sets with the cardimg tag as well. Just get the name and edition right and it should be fine.

[cardimg]Doran, the Siege Tower|Lorwyn[/cardimg] =

1) I would say "Whenever an instant or sorcery card is put into a graveyard from anywhere...". Other than that, it seems fine.

2) You can't really do that. It needs to be a trigger in order to have a target, but it can't be a trigger to prevent the damage.
Maybe something like "If damage would be dealt to ~, instead remove a counter from it" and then a separate trigger that says "whenever a counter is removed from ~...".

3) A token's owner is always the player who controlled it as it entered. Yes, you are having one person create it under another player's control, but that is confusing with regards to the actual rules and your wording doesn't actually change anything. Why not something like "create a token and then target player gains control of it" (obviously worded a little better). This works within the rules and does what you want.

Quote from Ruggley »

Kambal, Consul of Allocation. Don't laugh at me. There's just something about this guy that I find so fun.

Actually, I get it. Myself, I would play Karlov, but still a fun tax on Kambal.

Quote from Ruggley »

The Nutty Confessor

I genuinely laughed out-loud!

Soratami Shadow 2UB
Creature - Moonfolk Shade
(U/B) : Soratami Shadow gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
2, Return a land you control to its owner's hand; Soratami Shadow gains your choice of flying or fear until end of turn.
2/3

Next:
Phelddagrif Assassin
Rebel God
Cyborg Goat

The first wording and third wording are fine. The only difference is whether or not you want an effect that checks whether a creature actually has trample returns true or false.

The second wording doesn't work, because the second line tries to be a spell ability that generates a continuous effect, but the resolution of enchantment spells have nothing to do with spell abilities, so that spell ability doesn't do anything.

Gahhhh! It was a pyramid scheme all along!



(Yes, I've been waiting since Amonkhet was released to make this joke)

Hi Everyone I've written yet another primer for custom card creation on a topic that I believe to be super important. Playtesting!

If I had to name one thing which I believe is undervalued and underused in the mtg custom card community it would be playtesting.
I've seen dozens of talented designers create and iterate on great designs for mechanics, duel deck and whole sets. But when asked what playtesting has been done all to often the answer is "very little." I understand why this is, playtesting is hard, time consuming and it isn't exciting like creating the next cool card. This is then exacerbated by the difficulties of getting lots of players together and a lack of step by step resources on how organize these playtests.

In this guide I'm going to run step by step on how to coordinate your own both physical or online playtest sessions so you can improve your custom card designs.


Physical Playtesting
Doing physical playtests involving proxy cards, creating boosters and then playing draft or sealed events is by far the most rewarding and productive method. However it can be difficult to setup, expensive and time consuming and thus I usually only rely on this method as my custom set is getting closer to completion.
The general setup of my paper playtests is to do draft or small sealed events of 6-10 players with high quality color proxies that are sleeved in front of a regular magic card to give it weight and rigidness. I then sort these by rarity and arrange these into booster packs to create events as similar to a regular MtG event as possible.

NOTE: The MSE2 templates are designed to have a resemblance to normal magic cards but deliberate are have differences to real MtG cards to prevent the program being used to create fake cards. This is also why high res templates are not available to the public. Don't worry the normal templates work great for playtesting, just don't expect them to ever hold up to close scrutiny.

Note that there are actually many different ways to do this kind of playtest such as stickers, unsleeved cards or manually creating lower quality proxies. However I'll be going step by step on how I personally do it so you have a guideline to follow.


24 booster packs and sleeved lands for my Dreamscape playtest

What you need:

• Your cards on Magic Set Editor
• PDF printing software (such as CutePDF)
• Lots of card sleeves
• Old magic cards to use as sleeve backing
• Rubber Bands
• Basic Lands
• Several hours spare time
• Friends or LGS players to play with

Printing

The first thing I need to do is make PDF documents of the card sheets for easy printing. To do this use the print option of MSE2 with CutePDF writer, this takes a bit of time to render but I end up with clean sheets like THIS ready to be printed professionally. If your doing a lower quality playtest or you have access to a high quality printer you can use the MSE2 print option directly and cut out the need to create PDF documents.

For a full print run to create 24-30 boosters I usually print two or three copies of each common (202-303 cards) + 50-150 random commons, 120 uncommons and 30 - 40 rares/mythics. This gives me enough cards for all the packs plus a little extra for variance. Also be sure to print extra copies of cards that you want to test specifically if they have undergone major changes recently or are on your watch list as potentially unbalanced or unfun cards. Another reason I print extra cards is that the random generator inbuilt into MSE2 isn't the best and creates clumps of the same card while giving you no copies of others.

Once I have PDF's of all the cards I want printed I take them to a printing shop like Officeworks and have them do color printouts and guillotining. For my cards I use 200gsm bond paper which is slightly thicker than normal paper to make them easier to sleeve and harder to damage.
Now be sure to get a test sheet printed if possible as I always have to have the printer lightness settings increased by 10% otherwise the cards turn out too dark, however this will change depending on the printer. Finally Officeworks also guillotines them for me, saving me a huge amount of time cutting out cards for only a few extra dollars.

In total printing of this quality and quantity as well as the guillotining will set me back about $40-$60 but will save me huge amounts of time. Printing and cutting a set for a full draft by yourself will not only give you a lower quality product but also can take days of work.


A scattering of card printed, guillotined and ready to be sleeved

Creating Boosters

The next step is to sleeve all our custom cards. I just buy the cheapest sleeves I can, put a junk common normal magic card in them and then slip the custom card in front of the real magic card. This can be somewhat time consuming but can be done while watching TV or other activities. Be sure to do this about a week before hand so that If you see any mistakes or haven't printed enough then you have time to print a new small batch.While sleeving your custom cards sort them into piles based on rarity, this will make creating your booster packs easier.

Once all the cards you need are sleeved and sorted simply shuffle the rarity piles and then lay out the top 10 commons, then the top 3 uncommon, and then a rare or mythic. This will give you a very rough booster pack which you then want to check against a couple of simple rules that will help simulate how WOTC creates print runs and prevent color imbalances.

• A pack must never have more than 4 commons of the same color
• A pack must have at least 1 common card of each color
• A pack must have at least 1 common creature
• A pack must never have more than 2 uncommons of the same color
• A pack must never have repeated cards

Once the packs are completed tie them up with rubber bands, put them in a bag or box with any spare cards, plenty of spare sleeves and sleeved basic lands. Now you ready for the fun part of organizing an event and then getting to play your cards.

Online Playtesting

Online playtests use the Cockatrice card client and take far less time and money to setup compared to a paper draft. However it can take more technical knowledge to setup, but once done once you can easily playtest with nearly anyone.
The power of online playtests is how quickly you can iterate on your designs, quickly testing mechanics you are unsure of. For example I nearly always start my projects with online playtests as doing several weeks worth of work only to find your cards are absolutely unfun at the first playtest is a disaster. Quick online sealed playtests allow you to avoid this, are easy to setup (as you often only need two people), and you can ever prebuild the sealed decks to make this process even faster.

Recently playtesting custom cards online has become far easier due to the creation of the custom Webdrafter site by CommanderZ. What was once a tedious and technical process to setup sealed decks has now become easier and it even allows you to draft your sets online which was nearly impossible previously.

What you need

• Your cards on Magic Set Editor
• The latest version of Cockatrice
• The MSE -> Cockatrice exporter
• The MSE -> Webdrafter exporter
• A Google Drive account
• Internet Access

Packaging your set

The first thing we need to do is create a zip file package of our set that we can share with others to easily play our cards on Cockatrice. This package will contain a .XML card file, a folder of card renders, and a read me to give directions on how to use the package.

The first thing to do is make sure we have both the MSE exporters correctly added to MSE. Make sure you have downloaded the exporters and extracted them to the MSE's data folder found at: C:\Program Files (x86)\Magic Set Editor 2\data

After restarting MSE, go to File -> Export -> HTML and export your set with the Cockatrice Exporter, being sure to enter your set code and leave the "images location" field blank.


Exporting Dreamscape with the exporter

The exporter will save a your .XML file for Cockatrice to read but you still need to export your card images, in MSE File -> Export -> All Card Images... is the option you want.

Export all the card images to an empty folder with the same name as your set code, using cad.name.full.jpg in the card format field. This will ensure that your images correctly import into cockatrice at the best quality.

Finally zip both the image folder and the .XML file together an add a readme for others to follow, as well as any credits or notes.
You can find an example readme here which you can use as a template.

To install your set onto cockatrice put the folder full of card images into the cockatrice pic directory
This is usually in the app data location:
C:\Users\USER\AppData\Local\Cockatrice\Cockatrice\pics\downloadedPics
or in your main cockatrice folder
....\Cockatrice\pics\downloadedPics
Then put the .xml file in the customsets folder usually found at:
C:\Users\USER\AppData\Local\Cockatrice\Cockatrice\customsets

When you restart cockatrice it should mention detecting a new cardset, accept the prompt and your cards should now be available in cockatrice.

Uploading to Webdrafter

While we now have a custom set package we can share with others it is still very difficult to use this for playtesting any limited environment. So we need to now upload the set to Webdrafter which means players can play draft and sealed with our custom cards

Read this detailed tutorial on how to upload your set to Webdrafter

If you need help you can often find the developer or myself on the /custommagic IRC Channel where we can help you if you have any issues. Otherwise comment on the article if anything is unclear.

Once your set is uploaded you can go to "Browse sets" to double checked it worked and then login and Host a Game. Their you can choose different limited formats to host and then export your decks to cockatrice and play online using the package you made earlier.

Remember that no amount of theory crafting will beat frequent and varied playtesting. You will discover mistakes, imbalances and unfun mechanics, but in the end this iteration will improve your designs dramatically.


Further Reading

Adventares: Creating custom booster packs
https://adventares.wordpress.com/2014/07/23/creating-custom-booster-packs/

Webdrafter set import tutorial
http://webdrafter.geogen.cz/tutorial

Play cards like Akroan Horse, Hunted Troll and Hunted Phantasm. Then you will see your Primal Vigor pay off.