[Death_By_Beebles] Right after the first Design on a Dime contest, I was hankering for a rematch with Luther, but that didn't pan out. Instead, he got into a fight with a sandwich, and as interesting as those little squabbles tend to be, I wasn't really a part of their little battle... so I decided to take fate into my own hands, and challenged some people to a contest.

At first, I didn't think anyone would accept; but Cashew accepted the challenge and threw his hat into the ring. This was going to be a challenge for me. Unlike Luther, Cashew wasn't someone I could easily predict. Would he build a control deck or an aggro deck? I had no clue.

[Cashew] Which is exactly how I like to play, with my opponent having no clue. I tend to run decks that are impossible to predict and use cards no one else really sees coming throwing down staple threats to absorb control only for my opponent to get slammed by a homebrew combo/card out of right field. However, when it's tourney time I like to stick to my basics and ask myself what wins against everything?

Cashew:

In this case, I wanted a very simple deck to play that didn't rely on any one card to win or an intensive mana base. Being budget, it also meant no reliance on chase rares that cost an arm and a leg like Ichorid, Psychatog, Bitterblossom, Tarmogoyf, or Arcbound Ravager. So I was left with three deck archetypes in my mind: Red Deck Wins (Burn), Boros Decks Wins (Blitz Aggro), and Zoo (low-mid Aggro). Zoo has aggressively grown in popularity since Shadowmoor and Alara put it back into Standard. As such, the base price of even simple cards like Kird Apes is a little out of our reach with a mere $15 budget. Red Deck Wins dilutes quickly in power as well if losing top cards like Magus of the Moon and Grim Lavamancer. Plus, Red Deck Wins thrives off playing people with expensive decks and landbases, not budget decks.

Thus I went with Boros Deck wins where there were numerous replacements (many of them cheap), and power could be changed in various ways. Boros also meant only playing two colors which meant a far cheaper and reliable land base than Zoo. The goal of course with this Budget Boros Deck Wins deck will be to prey on other budget decks that rely slightly bulkier cards or a win condition. With no TammyGoyfs or big nasty early stops like Doran it's going to be hard to stop Boros's initial assault. The only budget threats I really had to worry about were Infest in Mono-Black Control and Pyroclasm from various decks. Here's a sample Boros Decks Wins deck

First off the cards that have to go out:
All the lands. At only a $15 budget this will the largest place to save cash. The listed land base is worth several hundred dollars, instead I'm going to run twenty basic lands evenly split ten and ten. That's only $3, huzzah! If I have any more cash later maybe I can put in some cheap tech power here like Terramorphic Expanse and Vivid lands. Or I can just keep it as it is, since Boros is notoriously easy to play with even a weak manabase.

Creatures is the tough area of replacement though. Grim Lavmancer sits just under $11, such that I barely even afford one. Replacing him means finding a cheap powerful card that can do some direct damage. Magus of the Scroll comes to mind at a mere $2, but even that's kind of expensive, then I remembered a card with a potential five damage swing that at it's worst deals two damage and chump blocks. Keldon Maurders (a meager four for 0.76) are a steal when compared to the $11 Grim Lavamancers. A great budget replacement.

Savannah Lions ($5.50) and Isamaru ($7), despite being amazing one drops, both have to go. Finding a replacement for a single 2/1 or 2/2, one drop is going to be pretty much impossible, since even uncommon Tattermaunge Maniacs run at $3 a pop. Jackal Pup is about the next best non-conditional replacement and it's still running $1.50. Jackal Pups were put on a watch list to maybe pick up, but in the mean time I added a cheap 1/1 that had advantage over 2/1's and other 1/1's - the Boros Recruit (four for .76). I gave up on having the absolute speed of this Boros and decided to go for creatures that could drop fast and dominate mid range creatures. Thus the other replacement was Boros Switftblade (four for 1.16).

Since I decided to attack the mid-range with low-range creatures, and I didn't have access to any low-range creatures that were naturally buff, I had to come up with some method of quickly growing my creatures and giving advantages. One road was combat advantage with Exalted, Flanking or Bushido. Exalted is still too expensive with Sigiled Paladins running $1.00 each and other key cards much higher. Flanking was always overpriced and frankly too slow. Bushido was almost my choice with great cards like Samauri of the Pale Curtain at .79 each.

In the end, I found a flanker, two natural boosters, and a card that coverted into natural damage. The best part was they all interacted well with each other, extremely well. When one was in play the others gained the exact bonuses from it. If it's not obvious, I'm referring to Slivers. Specifically, Cautery, Sinew, Sidewinder, and Plated. Seperate they are all fairly good early game aggro machines, together they are downright overwhelming. They also happen to be dirt cheap.

Which leaves me to my Spells. All of them were out, lets be honest they are expensive and in some cases kind of overrated (looking at you Firebolt). Losing Helix was a shame, but it is just far too much at $3 each. Molten Rain while cheap went because this is budget and there is a low chance of facing non-basic lands. There are all kinds of cheap nukes to replace things though like Yamabushi's Flame, Reckless Charge, Shard Volley, Rift Bolt, Sharpnel Blast, Galvanic Arc, Seal of Fire, Flames of the Blood Hand.

I chose Reckless Charge and Bonesplitters as they mesh well with double strike and give big creature hits. Galvanic Arc was chosen over the remaining due to it's simplicity. It also gave first strike to the various creatures that didn't already have it, although I constantly went back and forth between Yamabushi's Flame and Shard Volley as well. As said, this is a deck designed to attack and destroy slower decks, it won't do well if someone puts down a major stopper, but then again Boros never does.

Here's the end product.

This left me with $2.12 remaining petty cash. I thought hey maybe I could improve somewhere, and bring that total up to near $15.00, but that wasn't as much fun. If I play my cards right, I should have just enough cash to take Beeb's mother out for a celebratory fish sandwich after the match. After all, it'll be a short match with the speed of Boros and I have no plans for Friday night.

Death_By_Beebles:

Against Cashew, since I had no clue what he was up to, I decided to build a deck that could handle what it had thrown at it: an aggro-control deck that used top-of-the-line creatures and some powerful removal to take down opposing threats. I definitely had to give it my all; Cashew was talking smack about my mom. Along with my aggro-control decision, the next thing I wanted was a deck with a strong overarching theme, and at the same time, a theme that could be completely ignored and the deck would still be able to win without problems. A theme like that is hard to come by, and I spent a lot of time wracking my brains on how I was going to make things work for our competition.

I was almost in despair mode when I remembered some comments from my Eventide review Raiding the Dollar Bins article. I had used the Mimics of Eventide with gold cards from Ravnica block and hybrid cards from Eventide to build two very powerful decks. Readers had gone so far as to ask for decks for the Mimics I didn’t cover the first time. It was at that point that I decided to work with a new Mimic deck and give an aggro-control deck a shot.

After a quick game of “randomly pick a card,” my six-sided dice decided I was going to be using Green and Black as my color combination, and that meant my Mimic would be Woodlurker Mimic, who is a wonderful fellow when you’ve got some friends for him.

+4 Woodlurker Mimic: Cost ($0.60): Total ($0.60)

Lands had to follow soon after that. I decided to play a reasonably curved deck, with no mana costs over 4; I figured that 23 lands should be quite fine, and with a bit of fine tuning (that is, after I built the whole deck), I decided on:

+11 Forest: Cost ($1.54): Total ($2.14)
+12 Swamp: Cost ($1.68): Total ($3.82)

Up next, I needed some good Green and Black creatures to trigger my Mimic. My first thought was Noxious Hatchling, just like my other two decks (they both had their respective hatchlings too). It gets big, it hurts people, has Wither, and it triggers Woodlurker Mimic while filling out the end of my curve. I’ll take 4 please!

+4 Noxious Hatchling: Cost ($0.60): Total ($4.42)

Next up, I decided on a fun creature from Ravnica. Shambling Shell is a good creature, and I can use its sacrifice ability along with its dredge draw replacement to make sure I’m always triggering Woodlurker Mimics every turn, so that’s a definite yes.

+4 Shambling Shell: Cost ($0.60): Total ($5.02)

At this point, I thought it would be cool to have a sort of sacrifice theme for the deck, so I decided to use Plagued Rusalka as my first bit of removal. It takes out bigger creatures in a pinch, and it lets me sacrifice creatures, so in it goes.

+4 Plagued Rusalka: Cost ($1.16): Total ($6.18)

But what’s the point of sacrificing creatures if you aren’t getting any benefit from it? That’s why I chose Savra, Queen of the Golgari to be a prominent figure In the deck. Sacrificing a creature when she’s in play normally means your opponent sacrifices a creature, and they probably lose a creature from Plagued Rusalka’s ability. Or, if you have Shambling Shell out, replaying and sacrificing him becomes an automatic removal spell. That seems pretty good to me. Savra is a legend though, so three of her is fine.

+3 Savra, Queen of the Golgari: Cost ($2.07): Total ($8.25)

If we end up sacrificing too many creatures, I think we probably ought to have a good way to get them back. So, I turned to the very impressive three-drop Hag Hedge-Mage. Not only does it return cards from the grave, it also can cause opponents to discard cards. What’s not to like?

+4 Hag Hedge-Mage : Cost ($1.00): Total ($9.25)

Finally, I need to fill out my three drop, so Stalker Hag, goes in, since it’s perfect for my deck, and it’s got a great set of abilities. I have a 40% chance that this card will get to landwalk, so it's not a bad guess. It can probably be replaced if it turns out that your opponents aren't playing any of those colors.

+3 Stalker Hag: Cost ($0.57): Total ($9.82)

Now, no deck is complete without a few answers. I’ve decided to focus mainly on creature hate, and if it turns out I need more artifact or enchantment removal, I can always change the list. The first card on my list is Putrefy. This card is beastly expensive (.99 a pop!!) but I need to have them, so in they go. Hopefully I can stay in budget!!

+4 Putrefy: Cost ($3.97): Total ($13.79)

Reaching back all the way to Apocalypse, my next card is the wonderful Consume Strength. It is removal, and it makes my creatures more powerful, so I can probably get a two-for-one out of the card. Since this deck isn’t going to be gaining a lot of card advantage, this card is almost a requirement. Plus, it triggers my Mimics!

+4 Consume Strength: Cost ($0.60): Total ($14.39)

Finally, I’m going to continue the pattern with Consume Strength and go with its younger cousin, Cankerous Thirst. At one more mana in cost, it’s ability is good enough to kill even larger creatures, and give even more of a bonus. Good enough!

+4 Cankerous Thirst: Cost ($0.60): Total ($14.99)

OH MAN! Cutting it close! Thank goodness MTGFanatic is selling played lands, otherwise there’s no way I’d be able to play all 4 copies of Putrefy. We’ll see how my deck does against Cashew!

Here’s the full list and the cost breakdown. Wish me luck!

Alex Hoffman has been parading around with the pseudonym of Death_By_Beebles for three years now. He’s a writer for Magic Deck Vortex, and can often be found tinkering with his latest decks and preparing for biochemistry research labs. He is the author of Raiding the Dollar Bins and Pauper Chronicles at MDV, and blogs about manga at http://mangawidget.wordpress.com. Alex likes kittens, reading, and generally enjoying life. He doesn’t like Brussels sprouts. You can send him deck ideas, combos and suggestions at deathbybeebles@yahoo.com.

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MTG Theory: Card Design 101 . - by Cashew
Potatobrain's Guide to Token Decks. - by Potatobrain
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Memories of an Old Magic Player: Recrossing the River Jordan. - by Chris Newton
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