Budget Goal: Nath for <$20.
How to play the deck: Many Nath of the Gilt-Leaf decks are built around discard and tokens. While this deck has both of those elements, I decided to go in a slightly different direction with this deck. Since we're working on a $20 budget, we don't have access to some of the cards that bank on discard/tokens alone, such as Doubling Season and Waste Not. There is also an Elf Tribal theme to the deck, but again, the budget cuts out such cards as Ezuri, Renegade Leader and Elvish Archdruid.
If you look at the breakdown in the categories I have listed, I've broken the deck down to seven groups of nine cards as well as 36 (4x9) lands that don't fit into any of the categores. We can't necessarily get playsets of cards in EDH, but I believe that beginning a deck build this way helps in getting some of that reliability that you would get when building a deck for Standard/Modern/Legacy/Pauper/Vintage/etc. The more you play the deck and the more you feel out your playgroup, the more you can tweak the deck away from seven groups of nine (with the remaining cards being strictly land. If you need more land in the deck, it should probably start in one of the categories that you've determined you want in the deck. For example, if you want more than 36 lands in this deck, you could put Blighted Woodland in the "Ramp" section. As you expand your budget, you could replace that Blighted Woodland with Myriad Landscape or even Gaea's Cradle. Then again, if you have money for a Gaea's Cradle, why are you looking at budget deck techs? So for now, let's look at the deck and get into the nitty-gritty of how it works.
The first section I will review is Ramp. This is essential in virtually every deck you will ever build. For this deck, I have placed in a ton of mana dorks (creatures that give you mana). Mostly I'll go with things that give me a good solid land on the battlefield in place of a mana dork, since land destruction (and basic land destruction at that) is much less common than creature removal. If you want to switch some of that out, go for it. This isn't a mandatory deck list, but rather an idea for a budget deck. I put a lot of mana dorks in here because it better fits the Elf theme. You can protect them from spot removal with Archetype of Endurance, which helps a lot.
The next section is Discard. Discard is Black's version of Counterspells. Since Nath gives you elves whenever an opponent discards, whether or not it's because of him, you need to have opponents discard more often than your upkeep. Be wary, though. If one of your opponents is playing black, they likely love their cards in the graveyard. When playing discard where you choose, like Duress and Distress, choose cards that are less likely to be recurred from the graveyard. Cards without flashback, and non-Zombies are your best bet. Plus, the more creatures you allow them to put in their graveyard, the less you'll want to play Twilight's Call later on.
Now we have the Tokens section. These are a bunch of cards that give you more tokens.
Druid's Deliverance
is a way to prevent that Xenagos, God of Revels player from killing you in one swing, and it gives you another token if you already have at least one out.
Prowess of the Fair
is a good card to have out when somebody throws out a Wrath of God or something similar.
On to "Elfball." These are cards that play well with Elves. There are two cards here that might seem out of place: Golgari Guildmage and Twilight's Call. The Guildmage lets you sac out one of your 1/1 Elf tokens in order to return that well-needed card back from your graveyard. Maybe you need that Archetype of Endurance back, or maybe that
Drove of Elves
as a beater. The Twilight's Call is great after you've had somebody boardwipe you when you had out a ton of non-token Elves. Imagine this scenario: It's mid-to-late game. You have 27 Elf creatures in this deck not counting Nath, and a good number of them give you mana. Let's say you have 9 of them out on the board as well as
Prowess of the Fair
. One of your opponents throws down a Wrath of God. In response, tap all of those mana dorks you can before they die. You now get 9 1/1 green Elf tokens, and you use the mana from the mana dorks as well as some of your land to cast Twilight's Call as an instant. You now rule the board.
The remaining three categories are pretty straight-forward. Draw is because you need to have cards in your hand in order to play things. Removal gets rid of things that disallow you from playing your deck, attacking, or causing discard. Then there's Combat, which is a set of cards that help you in combat. You will likely need to win using combat, and these are the cards to do that for you. Overwhelming Stampede and Overrun help with that final swing. If you have enough creatures and mana, you can play them both in the same turn, but always play them to allow Overrun to resolve first. Also, if you're doing this, you had better make sure nobody has some sort of Fog even if their hand is empty, such as Knight-Captain of Eos or Spore Frog.
Have fun!
