Budget mono green zoo, using ramp to cast big creatures of different creature types to dig through the deck.
This deck is meant to be played by beginner players to teach them the basics of EDH and MTG. I want a cheap deck with a simple game plan that has a green mana vibe written all over it. Radagast was chosen for his nice creature synergy, easy card advantage in the command zone and for the added challenge of building a deck with as many creature types as possible.
The majority of this deck is creatures, so they can be used to dig for more dudes. I've identified 5 major creature groups: Ramp, Card Advantage, Finishers, Big Mana guys and Toolbox creatures. The idea is simple: ramp hard, cast Radagast and some of his big and buff friends, who will recruit smaller guys that slow down the opponents until we can find a finisher that will give our creatures evasion or trample and some additional damage buff.
RAMP:
Turn one ramp: Classic 1 mana elves, but some of them can get a little expensive, so to have enough to get one consistently in my opening hand, I've added enchantments that add mana and cards that can put lands from my hand onto the battlefield. These have the added advantage of providing ramp even the board gets wrathed, however we need to be playing enough lands (preferably ones that enter untapped) to use these boys consistently.
Unfortunately most of the one mana dorks are elves and we won't be able to get more of them with Radagast's ability, but don't cry, we need them only in the early game, we won't need these weaklings later on.
Turn 2 we should have 3 mana - enough for EDH classics like Cultivate, but no, we need more living beings to gawk at in our growing zoo. We will opt for slightly worse, but much more alive options such as Yavimaya Dryad, or 2 mana dorks, like Ilysian Caryatid. For the 2 mana dorks theres a lot of options, I've decided on these, pick whichever ones you like. Just try to find a bunch of different creature subtypes. A lot of these creatures put lands into play, so we have some boardwipe resilient ramp.
CARD ADVANTAGE
Turn 3: now we get to play Radagast or other card advantage. All of these are budget friendly, creature focused card draw engines that can trigger Radagast to get even more cards into our hand!
TOOLBOX
Turn 4 and onward: now we start slinging all types of exotic and fabulous monsters at our enemies. And with Radagast out we get to do the toolboxy part of our plan: casting creatures with high CMCs (usually also high attack), to dig deep into our deck to find utility creatures to slow down other players. Creatures like Ghalta, Primal Hunger or Tangle Golem have high CMC to synergize well with Radagast, but can be cast for a much lower cost. Again, there's a lot of options for upgrades, but keeping with the budget we have some of the most important utility cards. For graveyard hate we have Scavenging Ooze and its friend Ambush Wolf. For artifact and enchantment hate we have clasics like Acidic Slime and others. For creature removal we struggle a bit in green, Duplicant, Trickster's Elk and Thorn Mammoth are our only creature based creature removal options.
WIN
Now that we've set up our board, slowed down opponents and did some damage it's time to finish the game. We give trample or evasion to our creatures, buff them up and swing for the win. Easy as that.
NOTES
Now for some random notes
A big enemy of creature heavy decks are boardwipes, we have a couple of cards to combat them. when our creatures get destroyed. Genesis Wave can quickly rebuild lost boardstate. Kamahl, Fist of Krosa if somebody threatens a boardwipe, remind them, that it could quickly turn to mass land destruction by targeting their lands with Kamahl's ability.
Multiples of a creature type: we have a bunch of elves, but theres really nothing we can do about this, but we also have 12! druids. Again a lot of these are just mana elves, which are hard to replace, but whenever you can, replace the druids for a different creature type. The rest is maybe two to three of the same creature type which i think is fine. You can sort by type and subtype to better see how many of each type we have.
At the time of making this deck all the cards were under 1 Euro.
THE END
So I'd love to know what you think about this deck, any recommendations, cool creatures, wacky creature types and so on, so please leave a comment, subscribe and hit that bell. I'll see you guys in the next decktech:
deck:Put it all on red voltron (27$ is all I have tho)
Affordable Azami's Acolytes
Abdel blink control
Syr Konrad
Brofist
