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Life Finds A Way [Mayael Hyperbudget EDH]

Commander / EDH* Aggro Budget RGW (Naya) Tribal

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Creature (44)

Enchantment (9)

Artifact (3)

Instant (2)

Sorcery (2)

Commander (1)

Commander: Mayael the Anima

Land (39)

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Creature (4)

Instant (3)

Sorcery (2)

Maybeboard

Creature (24)

Enchantment (18)

Artifact (2)

Planeswalker (1)

Instant (14)

Sorcery (8)

To replace: Mighty Emergence ==> Condemn, Avatar of Slaughter ==> Stalking Vengeance , Tyrranax ==> Etali Primal Storm, Forest ==> Abolish, Sixth Sense ==> Destructive Revelry, Mouth to Feed ==> Decimate, Alpha Tyrranax ==> Rampaging Brontodon, Bonded Horncrest ==> Thunderfoot Baloth, Durkwood Baloth ==> Hull Breach



Our Hyperbudget League begins with a Round of 25$ and goes up every week by 10$. This is a 25$ version of Mayael which focuses on ramping hard enough to get Mayael on the field and start triggering her ability to pull out dinosaurs.

Round 1 of the Hyperbudget League begins at $25! This is not including basic lands or shipping costs.

Link to proof: https://imgur.com/gallery/k1g5wt5
Images:
Playing this deck is pretty strictly divided into two phases: before there's enough mana for Mayael's ability, and after. Before deals primarily with ramping as quickly as possible, putting out cards to protect yourself until Mayael kicks in, and preparing the field for when Mayael kicks in.

In the interest of keeping this deck below 25 USD, the mana base here includes only basic lands and few to none of the stronger mana acceleration pieces. This means that your first job on beginning the game is to ramp your mana as hard as you possibly can, while also mana-fixing as necessary to ensure that you have at least 1 of every color to fuel Mayael with.

Luckily, most of the ramping pieces in here are also useful for color-fixing, and vice versa. Only Elvish Mystic and Drumhunter ramp without providing color-fixing as well; on the flipside, only Abundant Growth color-fixes without also ramping. Elfhame Sanctuary technically both ramps and fixes, but it fixes a lot more than it ramps -- it ensures that you can tutor for basic lands of your choice, which at least means you won't go mana-screwed if you get a bad deal, but it doesn't let you put down any extra lands. It is extremely good, however, for color-fixing quickly in the early game, while still allowing you to draw freely later. (It functions here like a kind of budget-version Abundance .)

The rest of the mana-involved cards simultaneously fix and ramp mana. Many of these cards, however, do color-fix in limited ways, such as providing only a limited set of colors. The cards on this list are the three Naya-relevant signets -- Boros Signet , Gruul Signet , and Selesnya Signet -- which can fix from any color into a specific set of two colors each, and Avacyn's Pilgrim which fixes solely from green to white. Everything else either directly produces mana of any color -- Atzocan Seer , Drover of the Mighty , Fertile Ground , and Quirion Explorer -- or allows you to tutor for basic lands onto the battle field -- Harrow , One with Nature , Rampant Growth , Ranging Raptors .

While you're ramping, there's a few cards that you'll be able to get out that'll help protect you until you can really get Mayael's engine in gear. Mayael the Anima herself, of course, is only a three-mana drop; in a truly desperate circumstance, she can act as a blocker. That's generally a bad plan, though, which is why cards like Relentless Raptor and Rampaging Ferocidon are much better for protecting yourself. The former card lets you start hitting your enemies early, before they're likely to have blockers out, while still holding up a blocker yourself; the latter card while act as a creature-targeted stax piece that basically nukes token or aggro decks which could beat you at your own stompy game. Equipping Sixth Sense or Snake Umbra to either of them can help you draw into your ramping cards faster. (Saving either of these for Phase II is also an extremely valid choice.)

There's also a few cards that aren't really necessary to move from Phase I to Phase II, but boy oh boy will they make that transition a lot smoother. Colossal Majesty and Elemental Bond will let your Phase II bombshells amp up your card draw, while Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma and Mighty Emergence will put some extra pow into your punches. Forerunner of the Empire and Temple Altisaur will specifically help your dinosaur cards; the former will help you tutor for your early blockers or some choice combo pieces, and both of them interact in wonderful ways with the Enrage mechanic.

Once you hit enough mana to start activating Mayael's ability, though... this is where the party starts.

We've got fun and games.

At this point, you've got Mayael out, 6 mana open, and you're raring and ready to start hitting your opponents in the face at warp speed. Excellent! The beginning of this next phase should look something like: get one big stomper out, distract your opponents with trying to deal with that stomper, use their distraction to get out another stomper next turn, repeat until your armies are toothy enough to murder everyone. (For the rest of this guide, read "stomper" as code for "a creature of power five or greater i.e. a creature that Mayael can fetch onto the battlefield for you.") Of course, this strategy does depend a little bit on the quality of the very first stomper that Mayael fetches you. Let's take a look at our options.

There are 32 creatures with power 5 or greater in this deck. In a library of 99, that's about a 33% chance that any given card will be a stomper. If you want to get fancy with it, this means that for any group of five cards looked at with Mayael, there are:

nCr = # of combinations
67C5 = 9,657,648 combinations that include no stompers
67C4 * 32C1 = 766,480 * 32 = 24,527,360 combinations that include 1 stomper
67C3 * 32C2 = 47,905 * 496 = 23,760,880 combinations that include 2 stompers
67C2 * 32C3 = 2,211 * 4,960 = 10,966,560 combinations that include 3 stompers
67C1 * 32C4 = 67 * 35,960 = 2,409,320 combinations that include 4 stompers
32C5 = 201,376 combinations that include 5 stompers

If you sum those up, and divide the number of combinations where there's at least 1 Mayael-able stomper, you get a tidy percentage of 61865496 / 71523144 = 0.86497170762, which rounds up to a tidy 86.5% chance that Mayael will get you at least one creature that she can put onto the battle field for you (assuming that you're drawing out of a 99 card library, which you won't be, because you'll have at least 6 mana worth of cards on the field and a hopefully non-empty hand as well). Of course, the more creatures you get in those five cards, the more options you have, the more likely you are to get a stomper that goes above and beyond the rest.

Like Wayward Swordtooth ! Good lord I love that thing. If you can get him out onto the battlefield, you generally should, though do be mindful of his Ascend-based limitation. Honestly, his mana-cost is low enough that if you draw him while you're in phase one, absolutely play him ASAP. While his ability is generally usefully bonkers, he's not actually all that great as your very first stomper on the field -- there are creatures that will be a lot more usefully distracting for your enemies. (As a caveat: if you think Mayael is in danger of getting taken off the field via removal, he might still be a good idea. If you ramp up hard enough, you can start casting your stompers directly from your hand, which will give your enemies something to stay busy with while you cast Mayael again and get back to work using her to pull out stompers.)

Of all the creatures that are good to have as your first stomper on the field, the best are generally Cyclops of Eternal Fury and Gishath, Sun's Avatar , though Soul of the Harvest and Trapjaw Tyrant are also extremely excellent options depending on board state. Your Cyclops give all your things haste and speeds up your opponents' stompy death by a turn, your Trapjaw will create a blocker that can exile opponents' creatures when it blocks (important if someone else has an aggro deck that's moving faster than you are), and Soul of the Harvest will help you get your card draw off the ground if you don't have it up already. However, the real allstar here is and always will be Gishath: trample and haste mean that you can swing immediately and do some damage, and Gishath's unique ability means that this can actually help you put out another stomper (or several) right away. The only downside is that Gishath's ability look specifically for dinosaurs, not for all stompers, and it might end up filtering some of your non-dino stompers to the bottom of your deck, which sucks. However, the majority of stompers here are dinos, and there are some non-stomper dinos that are still really useful if you don't already have them out, so this shouldn't hamper you too much.

Other stompers are still good for stomper-support but not so much as your first stomper on the field. Paleoloth and Vagrant Plowbeasts provide support specifically for your other stompers, while Thundering Spineback will support your dinos. Cards like Aggressive Mammoth , Avatar of Slaughter , and Verdant Sun's Avatar will support all creatures, stomper or not. This is sometimes a moot point, because there aren't a whole lot of creatures in this deck that aren't either big stompers or mana dorks, but there are enough. As a side note, be very careful with Avatar of Slaughter ! He's a very good creature for your late-to-end game, but a terrible one for your early-mid game: he renders your mana dorks basically unusable, and can sometimes get them extravagantly slaughtered.

Either way, this is where the avalanche starts. If you survive all your opponents' attempts at removal, you now have a menacingly chompy army available to devour your enemies with. Have fun!
enrage + forerunner (specifically polyraptor),
Cards like Crackdown , Marble Titan , or Meekstone ? Wow, are you fucked. No help for it, unfortunately -- a budget like this doesn't bring a lot of good removal with it. Either trigger Trapjaw Tyrant with Forerunner of the Empire to exile the stax card, or just try and keep pumping out new stompers with Mayael to defend yourself with until someone else deals with the situation. Or, I don't know, have fun trying to beat them to death with commander damage? That should be fun to watch, at least.

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Date added 5 years
Last updated 5 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

4 - 0 Mythic Rares

14 - 5 Rares

25 - 3 Uncommons

18 - 1 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 4.38
Tokens City's Blessing, Copy Clone, Dinosaur 3/3 G w/ Trample, Hippo 3/3 G
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