Spew counters, steal creatures, win!
(Hi everyone!! I'm trying to get back into deck building again with a brand new entry to my old Ultra-Budget series! If you'd like to help me get this new build off the ground, head over to Ultra-Budget: Dunwich Horror (And Friends!), check it out, and shoot me a comment with your suggestions!)
If you like this deck and want to check out the rest of the ever-expanding Ultra-Budget series, you can view them all in this folder here!
If you like them, please give them a +1!
This deck is a new installment in that old Ultra-Budget series (which included some super popular gems like Ultra-budget: Midnight Onslaught which is less than $10, and Ultra-budget: Wrath of the Witch-King which is still the 8th or 9th most upvoted deck on the site, and many others you can see in my profile). The goal of the Ultra-Budget series was to create simple, inexpensive (always less than $25 without lands - this deck actually clocks in right around $16 WITH lands), and most importantly, fun decks that beginners and veterans alike could build to play with their friends around the kitchen table. A secondary goal has always been to try to keep them Modern legal so that beginners can use them as a base to build from or an entry point to head down to their local gaming store to see how they like playing Magic in that environment. They are rarely super competitive decks, but they are effective and, again, fun to play with. So without further ado, let's see what this deck is all about!
(Pictured: Simic Manipulator manipulating... presumably.)
The point of this deck is fairly straightforward. It's designed to generate lots of +1/+1 counters, then move them around as necessary with Graft and Bioshift, all the while utilizing a hopefully massive Simic Manipulator in conjunction with Ovinize to steal even your opponent's largest and most threatening creatures. Let's take a look at the cards and see how it all comes together!
Deck Breakdown
Creatures
Bond Beetle: This is your one drop. A fairly straightforward creature. He's kind of mediocre on his own, but in conjunction with Hardened Scales, he's pretty handy for a one drop. Plus later in the game, he's essentially just a free blocker plus a counter for your Manipulator! Some playtesting is required, but this slot could be swapped out for Simic Initiate. Simic Initiate is much better early game, especially if Hardened Scales comes down early, but the Beetle is better late game, when putting him down means putting his counters on someone else and not having to worry about Graft like the Initiate. I think both are good choices. Which you run will depend on your playstyle.
Nimbus Swimmer: This is guy is relevant at any point during the game. Cast him cheap early game for some evasion damage or drop him as a bomb late game to push through some huge damage. He also serves as an excellent mana dump to get more counters onto the board to move around with Bioshift!
Plaxcaster Frogling: This creature is, at its core, a 3/3 for 3 mana. That's pretty nice on its own. But this little guy comes with two tricks that really help this deck along. The first is Graft, allowing you to distribute counters to other creatures as they come in, potentially giving your Manipulator an early boost so he can start stealing your opponent's creatures. The second is his activated ability which allows you to protect any of your creatures that have +1/+1 counters on them. This will most likely be all of your creatures. But most importantly, it means you can save two mana to make sure no one can kill off your Manipulator with removal.
Elusive Krasis: This guy is a great Evolve trigger and an excellent candidate for Forced Adaptation + Hardened Scales. It doesn't take a lot to make this guy an unblockable force to be reckoned with!
Simic Manipulator: Here's this deck's Timmy card. This guy was so cool that the moment I saw him I decided that I needed to make this deck. His Evolve ability means he has the potential to get strong on his own. But you don't care about that. You're going to use all your +1/+1 counter adding, buffing, and moving tools to stack this guy high so he can steal anything on the board on a whim while protecting him from burn and removal with huge toughness and the Frogling. There's also some other dirty tricks I added to this deck to ensure some table-flipping shenanigans via Ovinize and Diminish which I will discuss in the spell section. Needless to say, this guy is super cool, super fun, and super flavorful. Enjoy him!
Spells
Dissolve: Pretty simple. You run blue, you run counter magic! Hard to beat Dissolve for the price and Scry is always welcome to help with consistency!
card:Forced Adaption: Pretty simple. Adding extra counters to a counter deck for 1 mana is great, especially when one or more Hardened Scales are down and you're dropping more than 1 for the cost each turn. Put this on your Manipulator to make sure he can steal real big creatures from your opponent and utilize the Frog's activated ability to make sure you don't get two-for-one'd!
Bioshift: This card is here to provide you with the ability to move all those beautiful counters you'll be stacking up to wherever they're needed most. You can use them to stack onto your Manipulator to allow him to steal something massive. Or you can use it to move counters to an unblocked attacker. Or even to save your counters from one of your creatures that just got killed. It has its uses. Use it wisely!
Ovinize: This is where the shenaniganry begins! Aside from the simple benefits of being able to completely shut down your opponent's strongest creatures at instant speed, allowing you to crush a massive attacker with your weakest blocker, where this card really shines is when its combined with your Manipulator. In order for the Manipulator to steal a creature, it has to remove a number of counters from itself equal to the creature's power. Well, when the creature's power is 0, guess how many counters you need to remove from him? Yup, free creature theft of ANYTHING you can hit with this!
And that's it! If you like this deck, please don't forget to give it a +1 upvote. And If you can think of anything at all that might improve this deck, please feel free to comment. I love having discussions over suggestions and allowing the community to help tighten these decks up!
I will say, I'm out of my wheelhouse building something with Blue in it, so please ... PLEASE ... hit me with any and all suggestions you might have. I am admittedly unfamiliar with Blue's arsenal. Enjoy!
