Greetings to everyone out there reading this, and welcome to another exciting episode of Studies into Standard. During the entirety of this article, it is my mission to give a few standard decklists that don’t break the bank. Now, (and I know this is obvious) I want to mention that these decks are not the best decks in standard, nor can they beat the popular decks in standard, and in fact might not even include the best cards that do the things you are trying to accomplish. My goal is to give you, the reader, a few decklists that you can take to your local FNM, participate, have fun, and maybe, maybe win with.

Now that we’ve gotten past that, lets turn to the meat of the article, the decks themselves. I started thinking of writing about this subject soon after my last post. I was thinking about how many of the people who would read the article about U/W Control might think “This deck seems sweet, but I’m just a casual player who can’t go around spending $80 on a Jace, the Mind Sculptor.” So I came up with the idea of making a few viable standard decks that most people can find the parts for while not emptying their wallet.

So I started thinking about what decks you could make that would be cheap and effective. Here is the original list of decks that I thought would be possible to make decent for cheap:

• Vampires
• Goblins
• B/R “Fling”
• Mono-Blue Control
• Mono-Black Control
• Soldiers
• Turbo-Fog
• Green Stompy
• G/R Landfall or G/W Landfall
• EsperStrix

As you can see, it’s quite the list. In fact, I had many more ideas, but none of the other ones were any good at all. Well that’s not true, I was thinking about either Naya or Bant “Zoo” with lots of cheap (both in mana and money) creatures, such as Bant Sureblade and his Naya counterpart, but it just auto loses to burn, G/R Valakut ramp, Day of Judgement, All is Dust… well you get the picture. Anyways, this was the list of 10 that I came down to. Here are my thoughts about each one.

• Vampires – Could work, not a real threat without Malakir Witch.

• Goblins – There would only be 3 good goblins, Goblin Chieftain, Ember Hauler, and Goblin Bushwacker. Not enough good goblins.

• B/R “Fling” – Gimmicky, would do pretty well against other nco decks, but the control matchup could get very ugly very fast.

• Mono-Blue Control – The best thing about the possibility of this deck is that all good counters are commons and uncommon. Bad part is that it could only perform well with the inclusion of a certain $80 planeswalker.

• Mono-Black Control – Just not enough great cards. Plenty of good cards, though, in the form of Corrupt, Gatekeeper of Malakar, Doomblade, Duress, and Sign in Blood.

• G/R with Bloodbraid Elves – Can actually be a good deck, just a cheaper version of Jund. Still loses against burn and Jund, not to mention U/R Pyromancer’s Ascension.

• Turbo-Fog – This deck I feel has the best chance to compete against the big boys. You’d have to shell out a few bucks for stuff like Howling Mine, but it definitely is a cheaper deck.

• Green Stompy – Just play a bunch of ramp in the form of Cultivates, Explore, Sylvan Rangers, etc. then lay down a hand full of fatties. This deck is just too random; your hands have to be just right… But when they are, watch out.

• G/R Landfall or G/W Landfall – Not enough threats late game, the deck just fizzles too fast. Sure its nice attacking for like 12 on turn 3 with 2 Steppe Linx and double Harrow, but the chances of that happening are pretty slim, and sometimes that’s not even enough.

• EsperStrix  – This one is a lot of fun, and could be a force to be reckoned with among casual decks. Take Parasitic Strix, Esperzoa, Sedraxis Alchemist, throw in some bounce spells, and the deck is quite fun to play with, not to mention pretty consistent.

So, of the ten decks listed above, I will take three of them and make a budget deck out of them. The three I have chosen are: B/R Fling, Turbo-Fog, and Strix. Here is the basic strategy of each deck.

B/R Fling – Basically, you run 4 copies of Jinxed Idol, 4 copies of Reassembling Skeleton, some cards that take control of creatures, like Act of Treason and Mark of Mutiny, and run some other methods of sacrificing the stolen creatures, like Fling and Vampire Aristocrat. Gain control of their creatures, attack, sac them, then let them die to Jinxed Idol. The Reassembling Skeletons are run as a backup for Jinxed Idol, just in case you go against a deck that runs few to no creatures, like U/R Ascension.

Turbo-Fog – The strategy of this deck is to mill the opponent by drawing multiple cards a turn, like with Howling Mine and Font of Mythos, and mill cards, like Hedron Crab and Jace’s Erasure. Then you use fog effects to stay alive, such as Fog, Angelsong, and Safe Passage. I feel that this deck has the best chance to perform well against the current metagame, as this is a rogue deck, meaning people won’t be carrying answers in the sideboard.

EsperStrix – I gave a short explanation of this deck above, so I won’t go into great detail. Play a Parasitic Strix when you have a black permanent on the field and an Esperzoa, use Esperzoa’s upkeep to return Parasitic Strix, repeat while using counters and bounce spells to stay alive long enough to win.

So as you can see, each deck has a direct strategy to winning, and each is vastly different from the other. Now let’s get into the 60 cards that we will be sleeving up for each deck. I’m not going to include sideboards, as I feel that each FNM is different enough from each other that you would be a better judge of what to sideboard. First up, B/R Fling.

B/R Fling

As you can see, this decks win condition is Jinxed Idol. Vampire Aristocrat and Fling are a good second win condition, as you can sacrifice the creatures you took from them and Reassembling Skeleton to make the Vampire very fat very fast. Then you can Fling him after attacking for more damage, or to kill a creature that is giving you trouble. This deck also runs some other forms of removal in case you aren’t drawing any Act of Treason or Mark of Mutiny.

The next deck we’ll take a look at is the Turbo-Fog deck.

Turbo-Fog

This deck’s whole purpose is to make them draw cards until there are no more cards left to draw. And to make matters worse for them, you draw just as many cards, and get to keep them all in your hand, thanks to Reliquary Tower. In addition to that, every card that you draw equals one they have to mill with Jace’s Erasure. Then all you have to do is sit back and play defensive with your Hedron Crabs and Khalni Garden tokens blocking, along with all your Fog effects. This deck seems to perform well against most decks, although it has trouble with burn and just downright loses to the Runeflare Trap decks going around.

For our last budget deck, here’s EsperStrix.

EsperStrix

This deck is what I’d call a “soft combo”. When it “goes off” it doesn’t win automatically. It’s just something that a few cards can do together to make something interesting and board changing happen. You can even play your Esperzoa before you get a Parasitic Strix, and just use it to bounce a Prophetic Prism to draw into one or an Ethersworn Shieldmage as a pseudo-fog every turn. I added in Glassdust Hulk so that way you can have at least a 4/5 unblockable every turn, as long as you have an Esperzoa. That can quickly spell the end for the other player. Overall, this deck seems really consistent and is actually quite fun to play.

Well, there you have it, three decks that don’t break the bank for you to try in standard. Oh, and as a side note, I made an email for this blog, so if you have any questions that you want to ask me; either about the articles I’ve written, magic in general, or even just to say hi, email me at jb.geekspodcast@gmail.com. Maybe somewhere down the road I’ll have a “viewer special”, where I answer questions that have been sent in to me about magic. I’ll post again Saturday after the FNM tournament and tell you how I did piloting the U/W Control deck that I made in the last article. Until next time!

Related posts:

1. Studies into Standard: U/W Control
2. How I Organize My Magic The Gathering Cards
3. A Victory For Garruk
4. 3 Defeats for my Mill-ish Blue/Black Deck
5. What to Bring to a Magic the Gathering Tournament