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1 year ago ::
May 16, 2012 - 4:15AM
#11
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Date Joined:
Apr 30, 2003
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Cost to obtain this deck using the cheapest prices on bidwicket.com, assuming $5 shipping and free basic lands:
Estimated total cost: 91.5
2 Clifftop Retreat: 2 @ 5.69; total 11.38
4 Evolving Wilds: 4 @ 0.1; total 0.4
4 Gavony Township: 4 @ 1.29; total 5.16
4 Shimmering Grotto: 4 @ 0.04; total 0.16
4 Woodland Cemetery: 4 @ 4.42; total 17.68
4 Avacyn's Pilgrim: 4 @ 0.05; total 0.2
4 Birds of Paradise: 4 @ 3.45; total 13.8
3 Blade Splicer: 3 @ 3.51; total 10.53
4 Craterhoof Behemoth: 4 @ 2.03; total 8.12
4 Geist-Honored Monk: 4 @ 0.43; total 1.72
4 Faithless Looting: 4 @ 0.09; total 0.36
4 Lingering Souls: 4 @ 1.69; total 6.76
4 Mulch: 4 @ 0.02; total 0.08
2 Trackers Instincts: 2 @ 0.07; total 0.14
4 Unburial Rites: 4 @ 0.18; total 0.72
4 Ancient Grudge: 4 @ 0.05; total 0.2
2 Ray of Revelation: 2 @ 0.02; total 0.04
2 Purify the Grave: 2 @ 0.03; total 0.06
3 Timely Reinforcements: 3 @ 1.33; total 3.99
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1 year ago ::
May 16, 2012 - 4:34AM
#12
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Date Joined:
May 24, 2011
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Please, do an article on BUDGET mana solutions. I feel like every time I try to make a deck, I come up with these awesome ideas and then run into the usual "Oh crap, every friggin land out there that fixes my mana is extremely expensive (Duals), or messes up my tempo (CIPT) or has some hugely disadvantageous drawback (IE - Tarnished Citadel). I would love to see this issue adressed, and what you would go about looking at when constructing a deck and having an extremeley slim budget. Hopefully it's something more in depth than "splash green". I understand different decks probably have different mana solutions, but regardless, I'd love to hear your take on it. Mana is so important in magic, and I feel like I lose to other decks a lot just because they can afford $12 lands and I can't.
I hear you on that, but do you think there IS a good solution? I think we saw Jacob's best shot in this deck which is essentially 5 colors. Run Birds, run Shimmering Grotto (which has some obvious disadvantages), and put most of the money in your deck into the dual lands that are the most essential.
This is one reason I hope WotC never changes out the dual lands used in the core set, so that investing in those once can keep paying dividends for years.
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1 year ago ::
May 16, 2012 - 7:21AM
#13
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Date Joined:
Jun 21, 2010
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Not to mention Birds of Paradise  is expensive again  . Prime Time needs to go home. I have to run Llanowar Elves  for my ramping purposes now... I traded my Birds off so fast for some Isolated Chapel  .
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1 year ago ::
May 16, 2012 - 8:51AM
#14
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Date Joined:
May 16, 2012
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I don't like it at all. First of all, the mana has been poorly sorted. I understand wanting to limit dual lands to control the cost to buy the cards (budget theme), but do you really think a five color deck can afford lands that produce colorless mana for a quasi-useful effect? Evolving wilds is a mixed solution. It allows you to grab a color that you need, but it costs you two of your allocated lands for that basic land card which reduces the probability of drawing into another land for the rest of the match. Few people are calculating the proper use of Evolving Wilds from a probability perspective, and this is exacerbated by the reliance on Shimmering Grotto which requires 2 mana to get the 1 you need. In short, if you start off with the idea of a "budget" anything the last thing you should do is make it a five color deck. Five color decks are always expensive because of the mana sources. It makes no sense whatsoever given the design parameters.
More importantly, what are the paths to victory here? It's all essentially down to a single combo triggered by a single card (unburial rights) and poses no significant offense without this. A control deck with a significant investment in removal and environmental control can get away with this ttype of combo reliance, but not a five color deck with no thought for defense. Remember that for every hand where you start with an unburial rights in your hand, you are also going to have a match where you don't see it until card 20. With bad luck, it might take longer, and if you do find it it's useless without the behemoth in your graveyard. What if it gets countered? What's the backup plan? Win with a few tokens or hardcast the Behemoth (which you have previously triedd to get in your graveyard)?
And what is tracker's instinct doing in here? It works exactly opposite the gameplan. It forces you to put the behemoth in your hand if its the only creature drawn-- a real risk since it's the only creature you actually want in your graveyard unlike a reanimator deck like with zombies-- and it risks putting the unburial rights in the graveyeard which forces you to have white mana for the flashback, another risk and potential delay.
This deck is poorly constructed, has elements that work at counter purposes to the combo, is over reliant on that combo without an investment in control to see it happens, and is not ideally positioned with mana. It also makes a poor design choice in going five colors with a budget theme. I give it an F- for quality and D- for creativity.
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1 year ago ::
May 16, 2012 - 11:30AM
#15
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Date Joined:
Jun 21, 2010
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I don't like it at all. First of all, the mana has been poorly sorted.
It is a difficult manabase, but it is roughly two colors, and 2 you can use at your convenience or later. The last color barely can be considered existent.
I will say this: t1st ramp ain't happenin, and if it is it probably ain't doing anything t2nd. Not enough t1st green. Birds of Paradise is good at manafixing, but this deck may actually be better off avoiding this plan. The ramp is just kind of arguably unnecessary and a hinderance to its other plans. This deck's at war with its mana and what it's going to with it, and that's what's going to get it killed. However, most budgets builds have that problem. There is arguable room for improvement, though, and I don't think it's dead in the water.
More importantly, what are the paths to victory here?
Even tokens is enough to win long games. URites is resilient to countermagic (not to mention countermagic is arguably less popular with Cavern of Souls  about.). G-HMonk wins games, even against Delver. The SB for Delver is not terrible, it gains a flood of defense, some relevant life, and the ability to flick  their equipment on the nose.
And what is tracker's instinct doing in here?
More Mulch would be better of course. But you underestimate the deck's flashback component. It's its key root to victory. It's grave puts win condiitons on the table, is removal, is more dredge, and has blockers, all lurking within.
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1 year ago ::
May 16, 2012 - 4:27PM
#16
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Date Joined:
Apr 14, 2012
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I actually suggested he take popular decks and budgetize them last week  , but Reanimator seems like a terrible choice. By definition, you need extremely mana-expensive and powerful creatures (preferably a lot of them) and those are nearly always extremely money-expensive. JVL, if you do another column like this (and i still think he should), please do a budget ramp or delver, those seem much more practical.
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1 year ago ::
May 16, 2012 - 4:36PM
#17
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Date Joined:
Jun 16, 2010
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Please, do an article on BUDGET mana solutions. I feel like every time I try to make a deck, I come up with these awesome ideas and then run into the usual "Oh crap, every friggin land out there that fixes my mana is extremely expensive (Duals), or messes up my tempo (CIPT) or has some hugely disadvantageous drawback (IE - Tarnished Citadel). I would love to see this issue adressed, and what you would go about looking at when constructing a deck and having an extremeley slim budget. Hopefully it's something more in depth than "splash green". I understand different decks probably have different mana solutions, but regardless, I'd love to hear your take on it. Mana is so important in magic, and I feel like I lose to other decks a lot just because they can afford $12 lands and I can't.
It's a fair question, but this is the wrong week to ask. There's probably never, ever going to be a budget and competitive deck of 3 or more colors, let alone 5. (Well, with Phyrexian mana... or artifacts and just splashing some of the colors... well, OK, almost never.) Mana is such a basic part of how the game works, and Wizards has made it pretty clear that they don't want to print dual lands without drawbacks again, that it'll always take broadly useful rares to play three or more colors, and broadly useful rares mean money.
So that's your answer: stick to few colors. Either just one, or two but make sure that you only need one color late and in small amounts. Green ramp with a few fatties in another color as finishers, for example.
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1 year ago ::
May 16, 2012 - 4:59PM
#18
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Date Joined:
May 16, 2012
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why isn't abundant growth mentioned in this deck or just generally as a budget way to fix mana? It only has the same amount of tempo loss as evolving wilds (if you have another land in hand), cantrips itself and is supremely flexible. It also allows you to run a few more green sources which can setup first turn BoP/pilgrim. Also, couldn't rampant growth (and more green sources) be considered here both as a mana fixer and resource accelerator?
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1 year ago ::
May 16, 2012 - 6:51PM
#19
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Ken Nagle has gone on record to say that the "good" mana fixing (read: nonbasic lands) is explicitly designed to be ubiquitously useful while fillling rare slots, as a means of goading out a higher level of spending on their products. Having this column do a study on some way to reconcile that goal with the player's goal of "building on a budget" would certainly have merit to it.
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1 year ago ::
May 17, 2012 - 2:57AM
#20
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..."window.parent.tinyMCE.get('post_content').onLoad.dispatch();" contenteditable="true" />So that's your answer: stick to few colors. Either just one, or two but make sure that you only need one color late and in small amounts. Green ramp with a few fatties in another color as finishers, for example.
I totally understand that a 5 colour deck is pretty much suicide if you can't afford the mana base (this deck was a waste of time for a budget column if you ask me) - But I'm just talking about mana fixing in general, not necessarily in a certain type of deck. I'd love to see him even list a whole bunch of budget solutions, or strategies for deckbuilding with a focus on mana fixing.
In a perfect world Wizards would recognize how important mana is and continue to reprint at least somewhat half decent lands every core set, ideally them being so abundant that they won't break a person's bank. There's nothing worse than losing just because someone can afford better lands than you, while you sit there and get out tempo'd or mana screwed/color screwed.
Even still, it seems like cards that get reprinted 2 or 3 times still tend to be expensive. Even BoP which has been reprinted more times than I can count still averages around $18 - $20 a playset. And that's only useful if you run green.
In any case, I'd like to hear JVL's take on the whole issue, and how he would go about solving it.
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