What do you consider Budget?
Modern forum
Posted on June 8, 2017, 7:22 p.m. by chaoswalker
I've been working on some casual modern decks for use with friends or non competitive local play. The goal was to make sure each deck was fair, interactive, just strong enough to play a serious game with most players, and of course within a reasonable budget.
I started making these deck lists and some of them are actually really fun. I thought "maybe I should polish them up and share them? Heck, i'll make more."
Now of course while building them there was a small struggle: how do I make a deck strong enough without making the cost unappealing? Then I thought: "What IS an appealing price?"
And so there's my question: What would you pay for a casual fun deck? I've been limiting myself to about $30 but some decks are hard to make work in that range.
chaoswalker,
For me the "budget" line is $100 in paper or $50 online.
The power-level I'd hope for at that level is something that's not actually competitive, but that someone could actually play at an FNM without embarrassment, and if they were lucky and played tight, could even win a few matches.
There's a place for super-budget decks (to me, less than ~$50 in paper or ~$25 online) of course, but at that price-point I'd expect fun kitchen-table Jank but an absolutely miserable time at an FNM.
I think SaffronOlive does a good job of striking the balance over at MTGgoldfish. He offers budget brews of course, but also explains potential upgrades, and ultra-budget "downgrades".
June 8, 2017 7:40 p.m. Edited.
I say $50 for Standard and $150 for both Modern and EDH.
Would I play a casual fun deck? Not at an event or anything, but sure. Te last time someone just handed me a deck and pushed me into an event was during KTK block when you could make $20 RDW. A friend of mine twisted my arm to enter that night with a friend's RDW. I'm a control player. I did not enjoy casting goblins that night. But if you just caught me at the shop, you could toss a... I dunno... white lifegain list at me and I'd play a few games with you.
June 8, 2017 7:57 p.m.
well i think for casual playing budget would be defined as $50-100. (these are usually half decent)
$25-50 id usually consider hyper budget, a whole new category itself.
$150-250 id say is budget for modern, and not too shabby for playing well.
June 8, 2017 8:07 p.m.
IcyLightning says... #6
chaoswalker I've been doing something similar making casual decks using the modern format that are meant to be played against each other. My decks average the same as yours $30. Some decks can be much more powerful for a cheaper price (Red Deck wins) while some decks will need an extra cash to compete against it fairly, such as Control. If your goal is to only play the decks against each other, I'd try to stick with the $30 and deviate from there as you need to balance the decks.
Here's a list of the decks I've been working on should you want to check it out:
June 8, 2017 9:14 p.m.
SoggyGecko says... #7
I'd usually go around the $150 range for a budget casual build, but I'm not quite casual, so my casual decks are usually almost competitive.
If I go for just modern, under $300 would be budget, and if it's Standard, under $50 (not constant value, so never worth it).
June 8, 2017 10:45 p.m.
For Modern? Considering that a full-fledged competitive deck will rarely be under $450, I'd say about $250 is a reasonable budget restriction. Staples are expensive, especially if they're lands.
June 8, 2017 11:44 p.m.
I second just about everything clayperce said. My thoughts exactly. Budget is a reasonable goal to aim for for any MTG player. But you should never truthfully expect yourself to hold your own in a meta setting. As long as you are creating the deck for sake of creating it and being competitive within its own realm of influence, then that's all good by me.
You walk into a shop and tell me your $50 is going to win my meta stacked local FNM though and I'll smile, tell you that sounds great and good luck (cause it does, and you'll need it), and try not to feel too bad for you when you're 0-4.
June 9, 2017 12:48 a.m.
Winterblast says... #10
Budget is subjective, because it mostly depends on what you have already lying around at home...it's always about "how much do I still have to buy", not about the actual value of the whole deck.
It's also important to consider the source of the prices when checking the value of a deck. For example on this page the card prices given when hovering over a card link are highly exaggerated and thus the deck price is ridiculous as well. My reference would be magiccardmarket or ebay because that's where you get reasonable offers.
So, for a "budget" standard deck I would say I'd spend no more than 50 euro because the Money will be gone after the cards rotate out of the format, for modern I would say anything below 200 euro is cheap (at least there's fetchlands and shocklands to consider) for legacy and commander everything below 500 or even 1000 euro is "Budget"
June 9, 2017 7:22 a.m.
Budget itself is subjective and even a 400$ competitive Jund can be considered budget, costing just a quarter of the classic T1 Jund.
If you ask me, in a vacuum, 100$ can be a good cap. I'm clearly strongly influenced by Saffron Olive and his articles, but i think that he really has a point: everyone can easily save 100$, given enough time, and build a deck which is not just a bad version of something else.
June 9, 2017 7:49 a.m.
It is arbitrary, but as a rule of thumb I normally use cards that cost 1 to 1.50 $ max, not counting basic lands. When applied to a deck this means one can either put cards in it that cost that much (or less)..but one could also give some leniency: meaning that if one uses cheaper cards (say of 20 cents) this allows one to put a more expensive card in the deck
2austin5 says... #2
For modern, I would try to call below 250 budget. Its cheaper than most decks and it adds a bit of consistency to the fun decks. Playing with access to blue can give you some cheap consistency with things like Telling Time or red with Faithless Looting. These types of draw spells are almost needed for the advantage/consistency part in my opinion at least
June 8, 2017 7:26 p.m.