With the concept of what makes budget decks “budget” and replacements for the format’s priciest cards out of the way, let’s move on to good commanders that won’t break the bank. Grave danger is part of the “Starter Commander Decks” set to release on December 2nd. All of the decks are great budget pickups but after some games online, this is by far my favorite of the set. Before I get into the games I played and why it’s my favorite, let’s look at how it works.

Sideboard Options

But you won’t find any other Modern decks that overlap with this, so there isn’t a clear upgrade path like with the others. If you play a bit of Standard or Draft, though, you may already have the Pack Leaders, and the rest of the deck is extremely cheap from there. You could even just build it without the white to get you started and then slowly build up to getting the Boros () dual lands necessary to make the deck work. You could even use different duals that you already own, like Needleverge Pathway or Battlefield Forge, until you get the better ones.

While there are certainly exceptions to this, I find that switching 10 to 20 cards (10 to 20% of a commander deck) for budget alternatives will drastically decrease the price of the deck. Unfortunately, this still puts many decks quite expensive, but you should keep the concept in mind when looking to build on a budget. Azorius Soldiers is one of the best decks in Standard, so much so that even a budget version is still very viable.

Keep in mind that EDH decks are almost always built around their commander and its abilities. Much like Zada, Ghalta being a mono-colored commander means most or all of your budget can go to spells instead of lands. Coven Counters has a hell of a lot of bang for your buck right out of the box too. Coven Counters has a few different strategies or things it cares about. They are +1/+1 counters, making tokens and the “human” creature type. The deck wants to use these three things in conjunction to build a formidable board of counter-laden threats.

Happens more than I’d like that I spend a lot of time carefully and thoughtfully building, only to play and realize…. So I’m going to focus even more on fun and building and let older decks fall by the wayside. Theme is the restriction I use exclusively, which makes it a LOT more fun for me. The troubles I’ve been having is that the new cards have been more and more specific to the storylines, and therefore less general in nature.

Gruul Aggro has a very low curve, with no card in the entire deck costing more than two mana. The deck is very aggressive, capable of closing out games in just the first few turns. It has plenty of creatures with haste or ones that give themselves special abilities or stat boosts. Monstrous Rage opens the deck up, giving a creature three extra power for a turn along with trample and one of that power sticking around. When mixed in with creatures with prowess or double strike, this can be game-ending if it resolves. Storm decks are very difficult to get the hang of and have been the bane of my Magic career for years.

Yes, it’s another Burn Bright deck, but before we get to that, let’s look at Baird, Argivian Recruiter. Baird triggers at each end step if a creature has a higher power than its base power. Both Iron Apprentice and Kumano Faces Kakkazan let Baird start triggering as early as turn two, and in Artisan, making a 1/1 creature every turn is surprisingly powerful. But just to make sure those creatures are lethal threats, this deck is also running Ritual of Hope, a powerful card with mana value two that lets you triple their power. Going wide and pumping the team is a powerful way to build an Artisan deck, especially since most of your opponents won’t be running sweepers. If you like Burn Bright effects, then this deck should be quite fun to play.

MTG Best Budget Pioneer Deck

You can get away with a cheaper mana base when starting out with a 2-color deck, but when your $30 land is one of your deck’s primary win conditions, you have a little problem cutting it. But these decks are definitely something you can look into and probably very doable for about $200 to $250 if your budget is a little bigger than my $100 limit. A lot of the big money cards in a Bogles deck, like Daybreak Coronet, have recently dropped in price and the deck has become affordable. But it’s also branched out into blue to use Curious Obsession and Staggering Insight among others.

Aggro-Adjacent

Because that seems like such a great idea when I’m brewing, but having a more versatile 99 can be mtg decks way more fun to play. I started focusing more on strategies that compromised the Mardu chunk of the pie, as it felt like a challenge to build without Blue and Green, as someone that mostly played Bant for the first few years. What initially felt like a color pie restriction helped me discover the colors I enjoy playing with most. I think at this point, it’s fairly obvious which deck is my favorite, but I digress lol.

In my experience, with Tergid on the battlefield, this will usually net you two (you also lose one) lands, one to three creatures, plus whatever your opponent’s discard. The list of cheap, low CMC spells with type of effect is nearly endless. First, the commander Prosper, Tome-Bound is self-sufficient and enables himself very well. By this I mean he gives you a way to exile and cast cards and a reward for doing so.

That said, it does it very well and can crank out bodies without a problem. Lastly, he offers some nice versatility as you can cast the cards until the end of your next turn. This means you can play lands exiled with Prosper as your land drop on your next turn. Additionally, instants exiled on your end step can be held up as threats throughout the other players’ turns. I also was very pleasantly surprised with the amount of interaction within the deck.

Affinity is a popular and efficient artifact deck that is difficult for players to go against. So some players got creative and created a budget-friendly version that doesn’t play nearly as many lands or the bank-breaking cards like Urza’s Saga, but the strategy is the same. The deck’s sideboard benefits greatly from the inclusion of blue, offering tools that Boros strategies typically lack. While Boros decks often struggle against board wipes, access to blue cards like Disdainful Stroke or Protect the Negotiators helps protect your board and counter key threats. Midrange decks with a focus on synergy (like Tokens and Convoke) can also be effective by leveraging value-oriented cards.