Budget Commander
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on Aug. 28, 2013, 6:08 a.m. by DaShPrime
Hi guys, I'm quite new to Commander so I was wondering what Commanders are relatively cheap to have a deck for. I like creatures in general, whether many small creatures or some large monster.
I was considering using Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts or Rhys the Redeemed , but it's gonna cost me around $200. I also considered Anowon, the Ruin Sage with a vampire theme but I already use a lot of mono-color decks so I wanted some variety.
Any ideas? Is Bruna, Light of Alabaster good?
The biggest portion of EDH budget goes in the manabase, I'd recommend you use several mana rock to stabilize yours. Stuff like the signet, cluestone and keyrune, there is several others that are cheap option to help you. If you can, I'd stay away from CIPT (Come Into Play Tapped) land, they slow you down too much and the more you'll play the more you'll start to notice it.
Rhys the Redeemed can be an idea if you already have him (he's still 15$) but he's the type of commander that want stuff like Doubling Season among other thing.
Any commander can be played on a budget for sure, you just have to stay away from cards that cost a lot and building a cheap manabase.
August 28, 2013 8:47 a.m.
I'd suggest Olivia Voldaren . You'd get two colors, and vampires often make a nice combo. Of course throw in four Vampiric Fury cards and maybe a bit of intimidate and death touch. Vampires are nice because no single vampire is that overpowered, they make an altogether great combo.
August 28, 2013 9:01 a.m.
SharuumNyan says... #5
@salriella - I don't suggest putting four Vampiric Fury in an EDH deck...
August 28, 2013 9:20 a.m.
What would be the right enchantments to put on Bruna, Light of Alabaster ? Would making a Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts voltron deck work? She's more or less unblockable and discourages people from attacking with many small creatures, while her vigilance allows her to block single big attackers. Protecting her from removal seems to be a problem though, because unlike Uril, the Miststalker or Sigarda, Host of Herons she doesn't have hexproof. But voltron decks tend to be quite reasonably priced I hear.
August 28, 2013 9:47 a.m.
I used to primarily print proxies but once you have 30 or so fake decks, you want a few real ones. All decks are made with multiplayer in mind.
All these prices are based on the TCG calculator.
$108 - Atari Demon Riot Generalisimo Rakdos runs rampant with his demon compadres.
$123 - MIMEOFECT Mimeoplasm with Infect.
$133 - Shadowborn Scion Lil' Teysa shenanigans support a slew of Shadowborn Apostle
s and the Demons they pray for. Scrubland
+ Marsh Flats
brings the total up to $228.
$144 - Ultimate Warrior Kresh with wayyyy more removal than most. Many Kresh builds use big creatures and sac outlets + Grave Pact
, but I'd rather eat my opponents creatures. Also Duel Commander legal.
I haven't built it yet, but for $67.74 you can have a very straight forward, potentially nasty, mono-green infect deck. KAPOW!
If you really want budget, try Pauper EDH. Or PDH if you're froggy. An Uncommon general and 99 commons.
$15.13 PDH: Garruk's Packleader If it gets going it's a tank, but you need to protect the general.
$16.25 PDH: Rakdos Vampires This deck's a fucking champ. First Strike is brutal in the world of Pauper.
$16.85 PDH: Boros Blaze Fun to play.
$18.54 PDH: Jund Slaughtermaster BABY KRESH!
$19.25 PDH: Nightscape Battlemage Grixis lovers rejoice! This deck controls the tempo of the late game.
Pucatrade and Card Shark are your friends.
August 28, 2013 10:07 a.m.
I'd say that if you like creatures then either flicker or reanimator (both can steal other creatures too - either from opponents graveyard, as an ETB effect, or as an interaction between Rubinia Soulsinger and something like Conjurer's Closet ). Both of these can be made as creature heavy decks with lots of ETB effects (and sacrifice or flicker abilities) and can stand up against some of your opponents more expensive strategies by stealing the expensive strategies that involve creatures. Many ETB, sacrifice, and flicker creatures are inexpensive as well (with some exceptions like Angel of Serenity - but in a budget EDH deck, having a few expensive cards that are one-ofs instead of four-ofs doesn't break the budget).
Otherwise alot of the cheaper EDH decks that I know of are not as creature heavy - often relying on tokens which can be easily disrupted.
A few other creature-centric cheap EDH options are goblins and infect (although you will get hate for infect).
August 28, 2013 10:07 a.m.
pookypuppy6 says... #9
Do you already own Rhys the Redeemed ? He can be quite expensive himself (for good reason) and there are cheaper commanders that do token generation. Trostani, Selesnya's Voice springs to mind, she is much cheaper in terms of quids than Rhys. Token-based EDH decks are faily easy to build. Alternatively for that same strategy, there is Ghave, Guru of Spores .
August 28, 2013 10:22 a.m.
Bobgalarneau says... #10
All commander can be built cheap. The reason why most commander deck cost 200-300 or competitive 1000+ are because of the abusive use of stapples.
If you don't include those your deck can be cheap, but it will be less effective.
Try pauper commander if you are on a budget. We did that in my playgroup and the most expensive deck was around 40$.... Mainly because the guy used a foiled 25$ commander...
Here is mine prime speaker pauper EDH (help apreciated)
August 28, 2013 11:13 a.m.
I think a lot of commander decks can be made cheaply by dropping expensive lands for slower versions (since early game in multiplayer often is more defensive than aggro). But some decks rely on the staples more than others.
Typically, a combo deck that relies on staple tutors that fetch expensive old and hard to get cards or extremely sought-after cards or mythic rare legendaries (creatures and lands and artifacts) will be hurt a lot more by dropping staples than a deck where maybe only one card (often the general itself) is more than a buck to get.
An expensive commander or one that you need to re-cast often is going to be more sensitive to ramping staples like Sol Ring . Tribal goblins, flicker, reanimator or any decks that rely on a specific tailored set of cards that really only are good in those kinds of decks are often less affected by dropping staples as well since the cards they rely on are not in as much demand being only really very good in that one specific niche strategy (with a few exceptions like Deadeye Navigator that can be sprung for if there are just a handful of them and they aren't super old cards that haven't been printed in a decade or more).
I found a number of decks that I could make cheaply without hurting the deck too much - but a few like Oona, Queen of the Fae artifact mill EDH just had too many important artifacts that just added up.
Dropping a deck from 100-300 down to under 100 isn't too hard but trying to drop a 500+ deck to under 100 is just asking too much without hurting the deck's ability to do what it is supposed to do.
August 28, 2013 11:31 a.m.
I'm looking more for commander/deck ideas that are inherently less expensive. For example, decks with Kaalia of the Vast as commander tend to be more expensive than decks with Odric, Master Tactician as commander, even if the manabase is excluded.
Hmmm, I don't have a Rhys the Redeemed myself. I might be able to wrangle it from a friend of mine though. I didn't realize it was actually quite expensive. Trostani, Selesnya's Voice is cheaper than Rhys, but populate favours quality rather than quantity in terms of tokens, which leads me in the direction of things like Voice of Resurgence , which is crazy expensive haha.
August 28, 2013 12:05 p.m.
SharuumNyan says... #13
Like killroy726 said - your best bet would be to build a deck that has room to grow. Pick a thing you like, build it cheap, and then add more expensive cards as you go. For example, I started out with a Trinket Mage and a Treasure Mage , but later switched them out when I got good deals on a Transmute Artifact and an Arcum Dagsson . (But I'm still holding out hope that one day they'll un-ban Tinker !!)
August 28, 2013 12:10 p.m.
shaistyone says... #14
Trostani can be done very cheaply. Some of the best tokens you can make will come from cheap enablers like Phyrexian Processor , Budoka Gardener , Angelic Accord , etc..Here is a concept I drew up a while ago. Probably right around $100. Life is good. Trostani EDH
Something that can be inherently cheap is Edric, Spymaster of Trest . Most builds I have seen just want lots of cheap evasion creatures, which can often be grabbed at common.
August 28, 2013 12:37 p.m.
pookypuppy6 says... #15
@DaShPrime: Not necessarily, as long as you know where to look. There are plenty of good tokens you can make with Trostani, Selesnya's Voice . Perhaps the most hilarious of these is Phyrexian Processor , but Grove of the Guardian , Reach of Branches , Penumbra Spider , Phyrexian Rebirth , Miming Slime /Slime Molding /Wurmcalling and more can give relatively good quality tokens and work alright in a Commander setting.
August 28, 2013 1:24 p.m.
Basically you can make anything into a budge deck but only some themes really work well cheaply. I mostly build budget decks with a few that are borderline budget so you can really just look through all of the decks I have posted for ideas.
I really recommend Trostani, Selesnya's Voice I started with a super budget version of his deck won a few games and ended up putting in a few good cards to make the deck silly. If you take a look at my version of the deck Trostani, Token Master you should be able to get an idea of how to build the deck. Some of the suggestions in the comments are pretty good if you wanted to make the deck cheaper and still good.
Another good cheap one is A tail of eight and one half. The deck is filled with lots of good white stuff and the commander, Eight-and-a-Half-Tails , is good enough to win on its own. If you like being the player everyone looks towards to clean up the mess which is a typical board state, then this is the deck for you.
Another fun budget deck I can suggest is based off of Mayael the Anima , Mayael's Bombastic Aria. The deck play loads of good big creatures and wins out of no where. If you love the thrill of top decking then this is the deck for you.
If you want to make your own budget deck, I suggest that you find a good theme and a commander which strongly fits the theme. I would also suggest to build a two color deck since they tend to allow enough card selection to provide cheaper alternatives for staple cards and don't require as much of an investment in the land base. Most importantly pick something you enjoy. Budget means nothing if you don;t like the deck.
killroy726 says... #2
Bruna can be amazing especially if you can grab the right enchantments to put on her. as for rhys I have a deck made up on here: Champion of the conclave the average price is around $100 and that can very because there are a couple missing cards in the total but I think you can easily keep to that $100 price tag but sometimes like for me it just takes time to gather what you need buying a little bit at a time but keep at it!
August 28, 2013 7:32 a.m.