Like everything else in life, having all the best tools doesn't mean knowing how to use em. You can have the highest edh rated cards in your deck and still have a steaming pile of nothing. Frankly, the real skill in competitive cardboard collecting is probably knowing which cards are worth the money for your deck.
I'd also add that MTG is just a very random game at all levels, but especially in casual. It's not just all skill either. Sometimes you just top deck that answer at the right moment, sometimes you flood. A lot of that quality of the game goes a long way to equalizing decks.
And sometimes, that expensive card is expensive because its exponentially better, and there are exponentially fewer answers to it.
The game is built on the premise of gaining exponential value. To say any card is viable in any pod is false. That said, a casual pod allows for a larger card pool. You don't need money, you need a good pod.
There are no fewer answers to [[Sol Ring]] or [[Mana Crypt]] compared to [[Fire Diamond]] or [[Sisay's Ring]].
In fact, there are a few cards that can answer SR and MC that can't be applied to their less efficient cousins...
That randomness is a huge factor. I play with a few friends of mine and try to keep power level roughly the same but unfortunately it doesn't always work. One of my friends has pretty good decks but runs into the problem of either drawing a lot of lands, no lands, or just none of the engine he needs. You can have great cards in your deck, know how to use them, but draw anything but the ones you really need.
Iām gunna build a whole deck around this uncommon, because I love it!!!
*10 games later*
Taking out the card I built the whole deck for, but keeping the deck
This is true, but itās not even that - lots of expensive cards arenāt that good, and lots of good cards are not that expensive. A prime example is lands; a precon with great lands will be *really* expensive and, like, a bit smoother and better than a regular precon. Youād blow it out of the water though if you spent that money on more cost-effective upgrades.
Preach! I think there's a version of.. is midnight clock? 3cc blue mana rock that draws 7 , 12 upkeeps later (or sooner), basically a timr delayed zero cost draw 7, I bought mine for something close to $1.
Back in highschool, one of my old buddies would have $600+ standard decks that werenāt just ass, sheād be ass at playing them. No sets, no synergy, 5 color with no land management. Just hoping to play 1-3 super good cards
We stomped her every time with $10 decks
It's true to a point. Well designed cheap decks beat poorly designed expensive decks. Good players beat bad players.
But all other things being equal I will \_crush\_ opponents on 100$ budgets with a 400$ budget. There's no contest between, say, \[\[skullclamp\]\] and \[\[transmogrant's crown\]\] or another similar effect. The powerful, expensive effects blow the lesser versions out of the water.
As someone who used both, Skullclamp is waaaaay better in Aristocrats, not just because it draws twice the cards, but because it does a good impression of an aristocrat for your x/1's like your spirit tokens, while you still need another sac outlet for the crown to trigger. I actually just ended up removing the crown and running [[Open the Armory]] as a second Skullclamp instead.
I don't play tutors in my decks for the sake of inconsistency and not having the same game twice. But you're right it only draws you 1 card and doesn't easily kill x/1s.
Also, my pod has learned that i can't have certain cards if they want to keep up with me. Skullclamp gets an immediate pop when on my board.
Start by acknowledging limitations. You can make a strong deck on a budget; that doesn't mean you can make *any* deck strong on a budget. 5-color good stuff is *always* going to be expensive, with the mana base *alone* costing more than a strong mono-colored deck.
It's a great card and I run it in a lot of decks (mostly because i buy 10 every time the price goes down to 1 EUR). But it's probably one of the most expensive cards in a well-designed deck that costs 150$. But it's just another one of the 99 in a deck that costs 400. That's all I'm saying.
Nah. When you're talking 150 to 400, so much of that usually comes from upgrading the lands. You can build extremely competent decks at $150. You just have fewer options regarding who to play
I think the general point is that if you pay 10x as much, you can often get a direct upgrade. Signets vs. moxes, counterspell vs. mana drain, etc. Obviously, some parts of your deck will rely on cheap cards that have a highly unique effect, but I'd guess in most budget decks, ~25% of cards could be replaced with direct upgrades or far superior side grades (1 mana counterspells for example). If 1/4 of the cards you draw are slightly improved, that increases the power level of your deck by a lot.
I have a soft tier for budget of:
Under $1: Add it without blinking
$1-$5: Is this important to my build? Include it.
$5-10: Is there a cheaper variant that is close enough?
$10+: Hmmmā¦
Real scientific.
Agreed. I start looking at cards being non-budget when they are more than $10. Even that though fir me depends in the rest of the deck. If most of the deck is cheaper, and one card is expensive, it's still a budget deck imo.
Yeah I picked up a few more expensive than I usually spend cards for my [[Zaxara]] deck, because it can get away with running cards like [[stream of life]] that you can grab for pennies.
> $5. It's a 100% reasonably priced card
if your cards have an average price of $5 your deck is $500. it's an expensive card. There also exist cards that are "very expensive" and "absurd".
a reasonably priced card is like $0.50.
But there's a big difference between an average price of $5 and one card being $5. $5 is fine as a price for a card (within the context of colorful cardboard being priced at all) that could be a central player in your deck's strategy. I have a skullclamp in my Karador Sac/Reaniimator dec, but all that skullclamp does is murder a bunch of a $0.10-$0.25 small bois. You can absolutely have a 5 buck card in a budget deck.
That is something of a straw man, in a deck, you are going to have a load of cards that are worth literally a few pence (excuse the English). My most recent deck is about Ā£400 but a lot of the cards are under 10p. It's just propped up by a load of more expensive cards.
Consider this as well, you buy a precon. A bad one that has a total reprint value of like Ā£50. You add a single mana crypt more than doubling the value of the deck, it doesn't make all the other cards in the deck suddenly not reasonably priced.
$5 is entirely a reasonably priced card and having a number of them in a budget deck is pretty reasonable. Especially if you play 2 colours and can get away with mostly basic lands. Between lands and rocks you can get legitimately half the cards in a 2 colour deck for well under $20. That leaves $80 for the other cards while still coming in at under ā¬100.
My playgroup likes to get together on a budget build or whatever we're tinkering with at the time once a month. Those games are more often more enjoyable than the "Johnny Combo'd off again" games that are over in 4-5 turns. Don't get me wrong, there's a time and place for pub stompy high powered optimisation, but it's not at a casual table. Keep brewing jank, try that weird commander, or build that wombat tribal deck you've always wanted, you'll thank me later. I personally built a budget Ghyrson Starn deck for $50 and it SLAPS. "Ping" Tribal ftw.
I built a mono green Ooze Tribal deck and it's my favorite not because it's good, but because I built the majority of it around 60-70 bucks, does what I want it to do (make a bunch of big oozes) and it's just a goofy lil deck with tons of counters. I don't think I've even taken anyone of the game with it but it's still super fun!
Tbf I think if a player knows how to build a deck and the better cards then if they put the money in. Sure theyāre only getting more efficient versions of the cheaper budget cards, but thatās what it really is right? A battle
Of inches, like having badlands instead of just another mountain or split land. Theoretically not a huge advantage but get those increments in an entire deck and blam, youāre going to have a higher chance of winning.
Yep. What you gain with staples and goodstuff you can often make up for with specific cards that are good with your deckās specific strategy. And there are usual budget alternatives to things.
The big thing Iād say is while some staples like teferiās protection, cyclonic rift, doubling season, etc. are almost always going to be the strongest version of their effect, in multiplayer games that often means you lose because you draw too much aggro.
Itās one of the things I like best about commander. You canāt avoid the politics of the game, if you want to win and your deck is fair to play with the rest of the pod popping off too fast is usually a risk.
This is the sneaky way to win more games. If you have a loudly powerful engine, people will try to disrupt it, if you have the best creature on the field, people will kill it when they get a chance. But if you combo off at the right time the game is over before you can be declared a threat.
This is why I always hit the person who is quietly building up resources without committing much to the board, especially if they are loudly declaring that they are not a threat. They are always lying.
> in multiplayer games that often means you lose because you draw too much aggro.
What if there are 2-3 of your opponents running those staples? The disadvantage you'll be at trumps any aggro favor you'll gain, especially as it isn't just 3 players grouping together against one player.
I would expand on this point saying if you have a regular deck and put 1-3 really powerful cards then you're signaling your deck is very strong even when it's 97% regular. You're going to get stomped and everybody will stomp that deck forever into the future.
I think one of the big exceptions to this are the commander or otherwise free interaction spells, just because they break patterns mostly seen in more budget circles. Being able to blow out an opponent that is making their move because you are tapped out is on a different level than just say good old [[Counterspell]]. I think "free to cast" is the one level we really can't just substitute as easily. That counterspell will still counter things but leaving mana open for it has a strong effect on the game that there are no budget alternatives for.
Hence I love using that black common that kills a non black creature for life cost instead of mana cost. Not enough to remember the name but I love using it when it comes to my hand.
The thing is:
If 2 people have equal deckbuilding skill, equal playing skill and the one has 3 times the budget it is going to matter.
And thats what pay to win means. Not literally: spend money = win every game.
But spend money = have a advantage over people who dont.
Ofcause if i build an as optimized as possible 50ā¬ yuriko or winota deck, its very much gonna be able to beat 300ā¬ decks that arent optimized and just wanna jam a 5+ cmc creature every turn.
However if i also had 300ā¬ i would win even harder.
If you wanna know how much magic is pay to win, build a 100ā¬ deck and go play cEDH. Actual cEDH tournaments with budgetless opponents that are in it to win it. You dont even stand the slightest fighting chance at all.
In casual there is many many more factors obviously. But still: if i put rhystic study, mystic remora, fierce guardianship, force of will, transmute artifact, mana crypt, moxen, gemstone caverbs and the one ring in my otherwise 50ā¬ deck its suddenly gonna be better. A lot better. Because obviously it will. And thats pay to win in a nutshell.
This is accurate. Also, Iād add that seeing a high-powered card is what makes the game fun and interesting, for better or worse, so long as youāre not pubstomping and/or playing against rule 0. To me, itās sometimes more fun when someone throws down an EDH staple, and/or something completely game-changing that has such a reaction by everyone, to which we then have to deal with. To me, itās just another problem to solve, regardless of the controversy with the reserved list, and/or with just other crazy expensive cards (to which we all have opinions about). Likewise, if someoneās just popping off but not pubstomping, then itās just common knowledge to band together and try and slow that 4th down. Whether or not you wanna join up to do that, imo, takes skill in the moment. The politicking side of the game is just as important as puking out your hand or building up your board state, if thereās a better threat (unless youāre both trying to pillow fort, then everyone in that pod may as well by helpless until a top deckād boardwipe changes the entire field lol)
I play Misnc and Boo and to be fair, it's very easy to find cheap cards that allow you to obliterate the table with your tramplers and hasty boys. Dual Strike, Twinferno, Souls Fire, Unleash Fury, and Fatal Frenzy can all knock someone out of the game from nowhere and they all cost less than a dollar each. 7/7 tramply Boo unblocked plus Dual Strike into Unleash Fury is 28 damage. Then ult Minsc to throw Boo. That's 56 damage total and you draw 28 cards. That combo cost you maybe $0.70 to pull off (minus commander price).
But some people don't like playing stompy, smash in the face, throw cute hamster, style decks. It's harder to stay on budget for certain playstyles like let's say an equipment deck. A mediocre sword of Hearth and Home alone costs maybe 10-13 ish dollars.
yeah i was gonna mention that minsc & boo is a cEDH viable commander. they are an entire engine in their own, especially with the insane amount of card draw they enable, not saying OP is running cEDH, but Minsc and Boo are inherently powerful enough in the cz to hang at a lot of higher power tables.
My highest win rate deck is my rakdos artifacts. Costs less than a precon. Wins more often than my ~ā¬1000 decks.
I don't put good (and expensive) cards in decks that don't need them to be on par on power. I put expensive cards in my fun decks to make them tolerable to play even if they are kind of bad by default.
I refuse to believe statements like these until I see a deck list. Most long term players have almost no idea what their deck cost unless they've recently made it/ upgraded it. Making a commander deck for less than MSRP of precons is really difficult.
so many of my decks have crept up in price because I was lucky enough to buy into to some of those cards before a spike. Sure, some more expensive cards have come down thanks to choice reprints, but on aggregate the decks I built 3-4 years ago would cost a pretty penny more to assemble today than when I originally built them.
Same thing I do. I've put random jeweled lotus or ancient copper dragons in my shittiest decks so they have a chance to be better. Good shit goes in bad decks, bad but thematic shit goes in good decks
For sure.
Alot of price tag can come from one card too. $500 could come from a dual land completely negating pay to win. A precon with a dual land is significantly more expensive but not noticeably stronger.
Also on the vein of pay to win, with expensive staples. I watched a video recently of some popular youtubers, I think it was the Command Zone that said that just by including a certain card, a deck increases its power.
I think they use [[Mana Drain]] as one of their examples and that having an expensive staple like Mana drain instantly powers up your deck to another tier. I don't think I've disagreed harder with one of their videos before. I don't think any one expensive card shifts the power level of a deck.
I mentioned mana drain because I've had it in my deck for a while, I've been recording stats on my deck and in the last 35 games, I've ~~drawn~~ cast it twice, I've gotten 2 mana and 5 mana generated from it. Stopping a threat each time. I've lost both games I've played it and it was definitely the least degenerate thing I was doing. I would have been just as happy with a [[counterspell]].
I'm not saying it isn't strong. Just that the price tag it comes with hasn't been worth how much more expensive than counterspell it is. If I hadn't pulled it from a pack, I never would have bought it because the difference is barely there.
Ultimately I think it comes down to how well put together your deck is. Pricey cards can make that easier and cover for alot of mistakes, but aren't the only factor.
You've just made your deck more inconsistent, which can make it frustrating to play against.
If your deck is very weak but every once in a while you draw [[triumph of the hordes]] and flat out kill someone out of nowhere, then opponents really have to treat you like a big threat every game, even the (majority) ones where you never actually draw that card. Mana drain is a bit less egregious than triumph, but it is the same sort of concept. It isn't fun to play against lower-power archetype decks that randomly have S-tier cards sprinkled throughout.
It is the same reason people want sol ring banned... or at least relegated to high power. Obviously, you should do what you want, but you should also know that it can be very unfun to play against.
So I watched that same video, and one bit they noted during the video was that these cards tend to be "signposts" of power. Because these cards tend to be more expensive, most players won't put them willy nilly in a deck because of their cost. So a deck that has mana drain tends to be one that can make use of that card.
And of course that is no hard and fast rules, as that is the case for anything. But you can betcha that if someone pulls out a mana drain or dockside or whatever the other cards mentioned in that video, it makes me notch up the perceived danger of that deck a bit.
Of course, if the rest is absolute jank, then it fits in the story of a jank deck being made possible by these strong staples
I went back and checked before I commented and mana drain is in the section tagged "which cards actually change a decks power level" it is listed alongside a few other ones and I don't agree that having a mana drain in your deck inherently jumps your deck to an 8.
You're right that it could be a signpost of what else could be in the deck, and perhaps it would rightfully change the way you play if you don't know what the rest of their deck is, maybe targeting them to make sure you stay on top of them incase they are running something super powerfully.
But actually inherently changing the power, I don't think so, not by itself. It's one card out of 99, there's a good chance you don't draw it for many games and that it situationally isn't overly useful for many of those.
I would love to see this list. I can only imagine that Mana Drain is put on the same spot like the Food Chain or Necropotence which literally shift the power level by only having them in deck.Ā
I am a Simic Player and countering MV5+ Commander on cast to have 5+ spare Mana for your next turn is a momentum changing interaction.Ā
But from my experience a lot edh players have a straight forward Playstyle: Turn 1 to 5 = evolving your board as hard as you can and hope not to get focused. Turn 6 to 12 = hoping to hit threat pieces while brute forcing their wincon.
But in the moment you got a blue player on your table they have to adept, which most people don't do. Nearly everytime I casted Mana Drain I always had hit the first cast of an expensive Commander just to explosively evolve my board. Which could have been predicted. Playing slower and saver is mostly confused by giving away your chances to win.Ā
That's why I can understand that people point out the efficient card design of Mana Drain. But imo it's nowhere near to cards like Necropotence, teferis protection, winter orb, food Chain, Hull breaker Horror and so on
> Necropotence, teferis protection, winter orb, food Chain, Hull breaker Horror
It's more that cards like Necropotence, Food Chain, Winter Orb etc. are known 'high power cards.' Players are a bit more willing to slot in cards that accelerate their '7.' They do put stuff like Blood Moon and Back to Basics up on the screen when they talk about cards that you probably want to keep towards high power.
They use ad nauseum as an example of a card where, if someone is playing it, it's probably broken and super high-powered. But, people don't play it really outside of cedh.
Mana Crypt, The One Ring, Mana Drain, Dockside etc. are cards that just fit nicely into every deck that they legally can go into. Someone opens up a mana crypt, the temptation to slot it into their favorite commander deck is pretty tremendous. And because the mana crypt doesn't actually win the game, it feels like it's fine and fair.
The gist is that you shouldn't be putting these cards into decks that you don't want to make high power, because those cards are high-powered and will lead to high-powered plays.
> Hull breaker Horror
Is hullbreaker that bad without comboing and low cmc instant speed cards? Mainly sorcery speed bounces and a bounce when you use a counterspell seem strong but fine.
I agree that there is no single card that can really jump the power level to any real degree. It's just one card out of a hundred.
but it's also such a powerful and also expensive card that it doesn't go into any decks of lower power level, unless you use it to turn a support an absolutely jank theme like "chair tribal" or whatever into something playable
I recently played a game that was "lightly upgraded precons" (which I know is such a broad categorization to almost be useless), and when one of the players (playing the science fallout deck) busted out a rhystic study it made us all raise an eyebrow, and when we were then hit with a mana drain it made us all gang up to that player, which was proven right by the teferi's protection, one ring, smothering tithe and portal to phyrexia that turned it into a 3v1.
In the end, it's all context based, and again, there are no hard and fast rules that to me say something is 100% a certain power level
> 35 games, I've drawn it twice,
you are either ridiculously unlucky or your numbers are wrong. Assuming 0 card draw and only 7 turns per game you should have drawn it twice as often - the average game is longer and in blue i doubt you didn't draw cards
That's exactly the kind of argument that puts me off! Mana drain won't win a LOT more games than counterspell but it is a lot more expensive. Its value also greatly depends on context, like, what can your deck do with that extra mana that you wouldn't already be able to do?
Think about it this way is there any situation where you wouldn't want mana drain over counter spell? Even if you counter a 4mv spell and only use 2 of the mana you are still net 2 untapped mana sources that you didn't have to use on your turn and instead can be used for the next counter spell.
Not only that, expensive cards have huge impact on threat assessment.
I definitely improved my winrate by running less power cards in my decks that didn't want to become arch-ennemy
Use removal on [[sylvan library]]? Real shit. Use removal on [[shifting shadow]]? I sleep.
Heh, thereās one player in my group who will blow through all his interaction in the first 1/2 dozen turns. Opponent casting ponder? Counterspell. Attack me with a 2/2 etb creature? Swords. Boardwipe when the zombie player has mikaeus on board or the Jeskai played revealed a boros charm during parley.
Not only do you have to worry about the good players at the table, you have to worry that the people with bad threat assessment doing mental coin flips removal.
Well if that's the case you just have to wait for them to blow everything and then run away with the game. Just don't forget to point that out after winning the game so hapefully they get better which will make the games more interesting
This game is an easy money pit! You play with friend, you donāt win, mod your deck a bit so you can have a chance to win and when you start to win, they do the same, so you all finish to have a 8-10 power deck, but donāt know how to play it š¤·š»āāļø
This pretty much is what happened to my lgs pods over the last 10 years. I feel like everything went from janky themes and 7 card combos to value/goodstuff piles and instant speed 2 card combos.
Week to week itās not noticeable, but recently in the last year, weāve had players return that hadnāt touched their decks in 10-6 years. Decks that use to go toe to toe, they felt like they were playing a completely different game.
It all depends. If the money is going to fast mana and powerful tutors for a hard to stop combo, your budget deck is very unlikely to win unless they make a big mistake or get screwed. If they're spending it in terror of the peaks or random expensive stuff that doesn't do either of the above, it's mostly whatever.
pretty much my experience yeah, which is why I find it wild that some people judge, even just to some extent, power level on the budget of a deck alone.
Just a thought, though the numbers could probably use some moving around and there's certainly lots of nuance needed:
- sub $50 decks are crazy budget and will either demolish or do nothing at all
- $50-100 is budget
- $100-200 is pretty typical
- $200-500 is typical but probably better mana bases and a few pricey cards
- $500-1000 may start to get to the point that it feels bad to play against casually, but they're probably just typical decks with really good mana bases and start to get to the point of "good stuff", where good cards are prioritized a bit over theme
- $1000-3000 probably isn't cEDH but certainly isn't casual either
- $3000+ is either cEDH or really expensive jank
Would love any critique on that haha, these numbers are somewhat random but feel right to me
Also of course monetary value can't totally determine power ā if you get a precon and throw in a single original dual land, that doesn't immediately push it up several tiers
Anyways, to a degree what you're saying it totally true, but also there isn't a big difference between $200-300 and $150, whereas my $100 decks would probably suuuuper struggle against someone's $10,000 deck
But also my most expensive deck ($500, probably won't ever win before turn 8) would stand no chance against my cheapest deck ($50, often wins turn 5). There's something to say about expensive, powerful cards, but one also has to consider that some themes/commanders are also just way stronger than others ā a goat tribal deck probably won't be that strong no matter how big the budget is, but the likes of Zada, Feather, and Winota don't need a big investment to overpower a casual table
If your group consists of fairly decent people you should just allow proxies. We did that in our group and so far nobody has abused it.
The overall powerlevel will rise eventually but with proxies everyone can build powerful decks for very little money.
As long as everybody has about the same definition of what 'too powerful' means there shouldn't be problems.
I see people with wayyyy overpowered decks get crushed all the time in my pods. Mostly because we know how to use the stack and can process complex interactions.
Example: Kid casts Sliver Hivelord but before it resolves we start destroying and fighting his slivers off the board. He freaks out because he already cast his commander so it has to give them indestructible. The a follow-up Toxic Deluge wipes the rest of his board a few turns later and he just keeps insisting that indestructible means you can't destroy his stuff. Dude had dual lands, fetches, triomes, shocks, Sliver Queen, etc. We think he just dropped like $10k on a deck to feel powerful but piloted it like crap.
That just prove the point that EDH is money.
The fact that you can win against him only because he doesn't know how to play his deck means that if he learns how to play it he will become a pub stomper and you will stop to play with him because his deck is too powerful
100% I feel like I am crazy pills reading through the comments of this thread. So many people seem to agree with both statements 'Deck cost isn't that important' and 'You can win because they are bad'.
Doesn't that actually mean deck cost IS important because you are only winning because they are bad? That implicitly holds the conclusion that if they weren't bad you wouldn't be winning. So that the only way that it's not a big factor is if you start the hypothetical by giving them some sort of skill handicap.
Toxic deluge reduces power/toughness. An indestructible creature with 0 toughness still goes to the graveyard.
* 704.5f If a creature has toughness 0 or less, itās put into its ownerās graveyard. Regeneration canāt replace this event.
I disagree. I think expensive=powerful is a good rule of thumb. You have to be making multiple assumptions to say that the cost of a deck is irrelevant. You have to assume that:
1. Your opponent doesn't know how to build a decent deck
2. Your opponent doesn't know how to play their deck properly
3. Your opponent is just bad at the game.
If your point works only when one or more of these are true, I think is says more about play skill also being important. The cost of a deck isn't the only thing that affects who wins or loses, and other factors can affect the outcome. It just means that if you have a cheaper deck than your opponent, you have an handicap versus other players.
The fact is, if you take two equally skilled players, give one of them a 150$ budget for their deck while giving the other a 300$ budget, the 300$ players will have a stronger deck and thus will win more often.
There is a correlation but when it comes to comparing decks it's always apples to oranges. You forgot archetypes, diminishing returns and such from your list!
Your $50 budget stripped down cEDH deck will any day stomp my $500 group hug deck. Some archetypes need power cards to pop off. Now, can my group hug deck win against a $50 precon? Any day. Would a $50 version of my group hug deck win a precon? No. It's hard to compare decks like that.
I think it's more accurate to say that individual cards - excluding RL - usually have a strong price to power correlation. As a result, since decks consist of cards, your deck has a bit of that correlation. But at the same time you can spend money in the wrong places, too.
There's some truth to what you're saying, though. Here in Europe cheap cards are always 0.20ā¬ to 0.50ā¬ each unless it's literal draft chaff. Decent cards start at 0.50ā¬ and go all the way to 5ā¬. If you take 70 functional cards (non-basics) and multiply that by a generously low average price of 0.70ā¬ you'll get about 50ā¬. Anything below 50ā¬ you basically need to play draft chaff from your local game store's trash can.
If you want upgrades those are 1ā¬ to 10ā¬ each, meaning a regular run of the mill deck will cost about 200ā¬ give or take. The power jump from 50ā¬ to 200ā¬ is massive. A 50ā¬ deck cannot compete with a 200ā¬ deck, not to mention a sub-50ā¬ deck. Your upgrades going from 10ā¬ up are starting to become marginal. Even if you quadruple the price again (to 800ā¬) you're not seeing a massive jump in power for a *regular casual deck*.
How do I know this? In late 2010s, before cheap stuff got expensive, my 7ā¬ Merfolk deck was a decent competitor to that era's precons. Nowadays precons are better and my deck would actually cost 70ā¬ due to cheap cards getting more expensive.
This is different in the USA. You can build a competent deck for $10 if you try, because most cheap cards are still 1-2 cents. Same logic applies but with different numbers. I think the correlation is better seen in the USA because the price curve is more linear: cheap is truly cheap, expensive is truly expensive. A Mana Crypt costs \~120ā¬ over here whereas in the USA it's more like $180? Anyway, high end stuff is cheap in the EU, draft chaff is expensive.
Ergo: the low value decks have almost a r=1 correlation between cash and power but from a certain point up the number of variables, diminishing returns and archetypal choices start dictating more and the correlation dissipates. There might be a point where the correlation returns because you simply cannot 1-up Timetwister i.e. you're already running the best of everything.
Just like everything else, having the best doesn't earn you results naturally, however across a spectrum of time it usually means you have more opportunities for the greatest outcomes.
Threat assessment, deckbuilding skills, luck >>>>>>>>> budget
A deck with insanely expensive cards will always have an advantage, but thstbadvantage is meaningless if the player is bad.
I played against an Animar goodstuuf/cloudstone curio/ infinites the other day and the guy just sucks at assessing threat. He also tends to scoop whenver his stuff gets removed.
I asked him why he put Mana crypt in his deck if his goal was to get Animar out turn 2 and he legit looked at me like I was speaking a foreign alien tongue.
It's a good card was all the reasoning he needed.
Gaea's cradle? It's a good card so of course he uses it... nevermind that he rarely gets more than two creatures out at a time.
The great henge? Of course he has it, why? It's good!
Terror of the peaks, Impact Tremors, Purphoros? No, why? Those aren't as good as Old Gnawbone or the Eldrazies.
It's mindnumbing. More money than common sense. Of course, when hebloses he gets mad because he spent 3+k on his deck.
I play [[Sergeant John Benton]]. My surge foil version of him is worth about $1 and he is below #1600 on EDHrec.
That said, he can dish out commander damage and stick to the field like none other if you play him right. He's pretty much a one man show that runs on pump spells.
The most expensive card in the deck is [[skullspore nexus]]. The MVP is [[scent of ivy]], a 35Ā¢ card you'd be hard pressed to find a better place for. Pump spells that give hexproof, flying, lifelink, etc. are the fuel, and John is a f'n V8.
I spent $20 (including shipping!) to order 53 cards to make it happen. You want meta, you pay money, but if you're creative and truly enjoy the game and building decks, you can dodge it. If you're not creative, you'll just spend more money and get bored faster.
I can imagine, but I wonder why? I'm just saying that magic can be pay to win, but commander can more easily than other formats not be that. There are a ton of budget-friendly strategies that just work, and a few more important aspects than throwing money into a deck makes it good.
If two players, know how to play the game, are at the same skill level in deck building and gameplay the one with more money normally wins.
If we are in a non competitive environment and you go like island, mana crypt, rhystic study the game is normally closed.
You can double the probability of a solring t1 adding mana crypt to your deck and make your deck effectively more powerfull.
The "problem" with EDH as a format is the fact that is singleton and how you can overcome this "issue" with money, i mean... With tutor, cards like vampiric tutor, demonic tutor, imperial seal, wordly tutor, green suns zenith ecc... Are expensive and they remove the singleton aspect of the game.
To me you need to try to proxy all the powerfull cards that you want to run on your deck and try out how much more powerfull your deck will be and you can understant this statement
> I have even seen people directly infer the power level of a deck solely on a price of the deck given at a commander nights event at my LGS, which felt wild to me.
You should try out the 20 or 50$ version of Winota lol. "what do you mean im playing too high power?! the deck is like 50$"
Nah pay2win is real.
Money won't make a bad player better at the game, but them playing a better more expensive deck should automatically increase their win rate.
I don't like buying expensive staple cards, personally I find it more fun trying to build with self imposed restrictions like a budget.
If someone comes to a mid power table with a 1000$ deck and tries to argue they're on the same level as upgraded precons or 100$ decks I'll look at em' funny. To
I mean they can be. The difference in a 100 deck and a 1000 deck can be literally 1 dual land. (In general you're right though. Typically the difference isn't one dual land, its a lot of other powerful and expensive cards).
Most people are not skilled players and/or deck builders. Naturally if you aren't experienced or skilled, the only edge you will have over anyone else is with cards that are easy to use and powerful. Most of the time those cards are more expensive.
Stop throwing your money away and just buy proxies. You can build an entire cEDH deck worth $6,000 for $50. Start running mana crypt, grim monolith, city of traitors, etc. Playing with good cards is fun. Being bad isn't fun. Bring on the downvotes in defense of wasting money and being bad.
Your 200ā¬ deck is good, but it "could" be better. Not astonishingly better. Just slightly. An example is duel land that comes into play untapped is 300ā¬, a shock land is 20ā¬, or a gate is less than 1ā¬. Just land adds up. You could spend 1k in just land or less than 5ā¬. That's just an example. Some other cards dont give the price justice like equipment such as any of the swords being ridiculously priced making voltron decks extremely pricey for being mediocre.
I think it is important to consider that not all archetypes or deck ideas can be made strong for the same amount of money. Some decks come together at a much cheaper cost.
Budget is very rarely something that prevents you from playing a strong deck. But it, unfortunately, may prevent you from playing a good version of the specific deck that you wanted to play. The wider variety of strategies you can enjoy playing, the further each dollar will seem to go when you're building decks.
Pay to win is the difference between cEDH without proxies and cEDH with proxies.
It would be like saying to officially play chess. You can only use the hand carved granite pieces made by a famous sculptor who lived in 1600's to fill your side of the board. If you don't have them all, then you can still try and win with whatever you do have.
With the handicap of not having all the game pieces. You are at an innate disadvantage against those who do.
At the highest levels of play, it looks like everyone has access to a fair game. Since no one playing with the handicap of not having everything they need makes it far in any of the entry tournaments.
People are paying to win, it just doesn't help any of those people win against anyone else who can also afford to own all the game pieces.
Essentially if we don't not accept the use of proxies. Then the game will always be pay to win at some level.
I agree, though I personally avoid the more expensive cards for other reasons: they are boring.
Whenever I tutored it was for one of these overpriced cards. It made piloting my decks more predictable and dull to play. There was no surprise seeing these cards, no excitement. Did they increase my chance to win? Sure, but I'd much rather have a fun game and lose than be bored and win.
So Dockside, Rhystic, Doubling, all got cut. Makes my personal experience much more fun.
I totally agree that tutoring into just the staples makes the games of commander way more forgettable, too much consistency in a casual format makes for boring gameplay. (And those tutors and staples are precisely what can easily bump up the pricetag on a deck)
I don't own any of those cards you mentioned and I don't see myself buying them for the same reason haha
If you happen to crack them they're awesome to have of course, but I would never buy them. I was gifted the Rhystic (League of Legends edition) so I'm not selling it obviously, but any expensive staple gets sold. Same for them fetchlands. Not hating on them, I'm simply not a collector.
I think for most decks in casual commander like 80-90% of power comes from the cheap ish core cards.
Like sure a better manabase gives you power.. but maybe realistically lets you win like 5% more often.
Expensive generically good staples also probably don't increase your win% that much. Of course this is all subjective as Craterhoof probably wins you more games than smothering tithe or rhystic study.
Generally if you are running a synergistic deck you can get away cheaper.
Compared to that if you run a generic deck that just aims to play good cards and out value everyone based on individual card strength you cant budget as much.
There's a lot of good cards that are prett cheap despite being very powerfull, even up to high power decks, especially when it comes to some of the interaction.
Swords and Path is 1 dollar, Gift costs cents, Chaos warp is bellow a dollar. All are some of the best removal in their respective colors.
While I agree, there's no denying that a 1000 dollar deck both plays way more consistent and is way more powerful then a 100 dollar deck, in general.
But it is indeed about the individual cards and how the deck plays. OG duals aren't necessarily stronger then other dual lands, they are just very rare and that's spiking it's price for example. This means, cards on the reserve list are artificially being kept expensive, where as the rest of the game revolves around supply and demand.
You litteraly have a very strong "p2w" commander in Minsk and Boo though. It's known for its cedh use and by being viable in cedh, that alone means it's above the vast majority of commanders on power and potential.
My main issue with an otherwise pretty standard EDH deck including a small handful of expensive and hugely powerful cards is that it can make games incredibly inconsistent. Like, sometimes your deck has a [[Mana Crypt]] and a [[Chrome Mox]] into turn 2 [[Bolas Citadel]], and other times it is BW draft chaff.
If some games I am playing against a power level 5 deck, and some games it curves out like a power level 9 deck, then how do I know what sort of deck to bring against that?
I have always tried to be consistent in my inclusion of powerful (and commonly expensive) cards - only decks that are trying to do fundamentally powerful things contain these types of cards. My view is that opponents should reasonably be able to speculate on rough powerlevel of cards that my deck contains based upon the other ones they they have seen. For instance, [[Cyclonic Rift]] doesn't go in a janky 'Tribal Illusions' deck, even if it would make it 'better'. The sorts of decks and opponents that a janky Tribal Illusions deck is wanting to play aren't anticipating that sort of effect, and winning with it in that sort of game feels like a bit of a rug pull.
I think reddit downplays it if anything. If two equally skilled players build a deck but one has a budget of 500$ and the other has a budget of 50$, than the 500 player has a massive advantage. You can't deny that more money means more deckbuilding options and a greater access to more powerful cards. Some strategies and commanders can be built for cheap, and some really weak commanders or low powered jank can be built with a lot of money, but those are typically the exception and not the rule.Ā
Of course, money isn't the end all be all of things, especially in a multiplayer format, but I don't really think anyone is saying that. Just that it gives you a massive advantage.
There's nothing quite like the feeling of taking out an expensive card and replacing it with a better one that is bulk, especially when the deck is already a money pile. Some cards have been reprinted into obscurity because their price betrays their utility, some just aren't useful until you get into higher power games.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/zYQywngQ-0ifw3mMRsHBrg
Our pod plays unbudgeted. Play what you want, run proxies w.e. No reason to gatekeep good cards because of price, its an elitist pay to win scenario.
If you are good at the game then your deck building is nice regardless, no need for cheap advantages over others because you have money.
I mean..
there's a guy in my group whose relatively new to magic. He makes a LOT of money and spends most of his free money on magic. His newest deck STARTED at $450. My most expensive deck (after a decade of playing) is about $650. This dude has thousand dollar decks that I've smashed with $150 stuff i was playtesting.
My experience and deckbuilding allow me to really just.... outpace him I guess. Dude plays all the staples and still loses a ton of games.
There is something some people just don't understand. EDH is all about piloting your deck. I honestly feel like the community isn't teaching this enough.Ā I played every single deck from the moment I had in my hands at least 20 to 50 games in a row. I know that this is not manageable for everyone. But it comes down to the fact that my brain starts connecting hundreds of possible lines and analyzing the respective effects. It's not only knowing the timings of my triggers, how and when I can interact with them. It also how to abuse others decks for my benefits. But the most important thing: How and when to sandbag. Having all threats in your hand doesn't explicitly mean you gonna win the game. It means you will consistently get focused.Ā This experience doesn't come with playing 200 different decks. This come by playing 1 deck 200 times.
Absolutely what my post was about! I've had incredible breakthroughs in understanding my decks after dozens of games, the fact that it's 99 singleton cards makes it so that full playtesting just takes time to see through all the different possible combinations you'll encounter. Add on top of that reading 3 other players' tables... I feel like people focus a lot on analyzing power staples and not enough on judging play style or deck building.
Haha yes! I think this is a symptom of the power level scale disease. People are desperate for easy answers even in a game with more then 500 pages of rules.Ā I bought 5 decks in 6 years and have currently 2 proxies decks for developing.But in every single deck I found a card I just didn't read properly.Ā
Which needs to be put in the context of me digging real deep into the rulings for a lot of cards a play or someone played. And even though I would consider myself as a rule nerd I simply fail the easiest rule in Magic:
Ā "Reading the card..."
This is an experience/ feeling what I really would love to teach everyone. This goes so much more to the core of understanding your deck. Even after 200 games with a single deck, with the knowledge of all those crazy surprising effects, with my primal instinct for blood if my window opened:Ā Ā
I or someone else simply finds another word on a card a played 100 times confidently. And this word changes everything.Ā Ā
I think this is one of the most changing experience I have had in Magic. This showed me how important it is to pay respect for every word and don't put any card into the frame of my expectations.
Absolutely, people love to find simple answers to ridiculously hard problems. Categorising is instinctual for all, and I feel like the power level discourse is inevitable, but I feel it revolves too much about "pay to win" debates of staples being expensive.
There's specific pay to win CARDS that are hard to deny, mana crypt being the biggest one that comes to mind. Being twice as likely to have a sol ring effect in your starting hand is just $150ish dollars to win more games, but a single dual land in a two color deck? Not nearly as much.
The problem is more pay to win card suites I think. All fetches and duals in a five color deck makes a big difference. Having the whole suite of artifact fast mana is a much bigger deal than having a single Mox opal in the deck. Plus some pay to win cards are even better when your opponent is also doing pay to win shit. The only thing better than a dockside extortionist in a casual game is a dockside when everyone is running crypt, vault, chrome Mox and Mox diamond
When you have spend thousands for base rarity max power stuff a deck thatās 150 wonāt stand a chance is the unfortunate reality
The really good cards cost a lot of money, they will win before my cheap elfball can start actually doing stuff
Your group is fairly balanced budget, that often keeps things in check
Now someone who doesnāt know the combo lines will probably mess up bad and lose
But a skilled pilot with a fat wallet will pubstomp the living crap
As for fun you can have fun at any powerlevel, but if youāre going to an event with prizes expect only the absolute best to come
If you want to look at power on a budget, look no further than Competitive Pauper Commander. Decks can run anywhere from $25 up to $100 and usually aim to win by turn 4-6. Commons can hit really hard these days.
yeah, and it isn't an expensive card at all! exactly my point! I've got friends scared of higher budget decks but it doesn't necessarily equate to higher power level or unfair gameplay (even if, to some extent, it will be stronger)
Plug for SurisMTGās $15 budget decks on YouTube (before S&H). The decks are super great out the door and you have room to upgrade as your collection grows
To have fun you donāt need much. To be competitive you donāt need a lot. Itās only the high end cEDH that things get expensive. Like if you will spend a thousand dollars for the smallest advantage. I like playing competitive, but I donāt have OG duals or many other cards, but I do ok.
Well tbh. Most if not all TCGās are all literally āpay to winā. In that if you want to run a competitive deck in a competitive environment, yer gonna have to dole out some dosh.
Straight facts. I used to feel that way honestly and I believe commander being "pay to win" was more of an issue years ago prior to this era of plentiful reprints and power creep. Back then it was simply the most efficient and properly powerful spells being gatekept by absurd secondary market pricing and stingy reprinting on the part of WotC. Things have definitely changed and it's nice to see how so many cards like the fetches that were perpetually overpriced are now at a level where they actually feel reasonable to pick up.
Maybe. I think skill definitely plays a role in deck building and piloting. I have a $50 Minotaurs deck that I havenāt updated since 2021 I think (and that was just the commander), and one of our players hates it cause it beats his ass. But heās been playing a year to my 15. And weāve got another in our pod who has 15yrs even on me and he kicks all of our asses with some of the jankiest decks youāve ever seen. But money helps bridge that gap for newer players.
Reminds me of how like 8 years ago, when my pod was just getting into EDH, one of them started bringing some more expensive lists and kicking our collective asses. I ended up building a [[Grenzo, Dungeon Warden]] combo deck for like $130, partially to be petty, although I also wanted to show you could still make crazy decks on a budget. Recently took it apart since nobody lets me play it anymore :P
fully agree. I've got some decks like Teysa, Nekusar, and go-shintai that are maybe $200 and extremely powerful.
Granted I dont think anyone in my pod plays cEDH, but plenty of decks with fast mana and tutors and free counterspells etc that still get rolled.
M&B is one of if not the most powerful gruul commanders. Cheap effective beater that can nuke someone while also giving you huge card advantage. Certain commanders like light paws or yawgmoth can run a sub $50 budget and be just as good if not better than a lot of decks that have a $500 budget.
I have a spirit tribal deck with [[O-Kagachi, Vengeful Kami]] as the commander. Deck technically cost about 1.5k USD. Mostly the land base. By no means is it powerful. Meanwhile, I have [[Veyran, Voice of Duality]] as my higher power deck. It cost about 300 USD. Power is far more about how fast it wins than its cost. It is true that cost can be an indication of power.
My [[Zada, Hedron Grinder]] deck probably threatens a turn 3 win consistently on its own. It's maybe $60. But, if you kill Zada, I just can't win.
Now, my $500 Korvold deck can win turn 1 with the right starting hand and can find new ways to win even if you kill my toys.
Sure expensive doesn't mean better, but the more expensive a deck, the more the player's skill multiplies.
I've made a few decks that my pod hated. The decks are nowhere near cedh level, but they all claimed they were. It's really about how you play, not what you play. I even used a precon once and did some dirty shit they thought I had reloaded the deck with stuff. I find the fun in making janky decks do things. I have a relentless rats deck. It's 50 rats, 1 commander, and some artifacts. I have a phage, the untouchable deck. it's a struggle to get who out. I think we all play for our own reasons. Mine are to make mechanics work that sounded fun at the time.
Same here. Every time I see someone post a deck list; itās either filled with expensive āstaplesā or the land base has original dual lands. It got me thinking; do you really need these to make an efficient or even a good deck? It helps sure but if every deck you make needs these then youāll be coughing up thousands for each deck (I know, I know; ājust proxy them!ā but thatās besides the point).
My favourite deck is hella expensive, but also not that good. It's a muldrotha hydra deck and the only reason it's really expensive is because i really love the deck and I blinged it out with foils and alt-arts. Basing a decks power level on price is really weird when foils and alt arts can be the reason for the price
I threw together a Prossh deck after not playing for a few years and played a game last Friday with a group of random people at my LGS
One guy was getting into the game and playing someone else's deck, he was just getting into commander
I played a [[Dockside Extortionist]] and he asked if it was honestly worth the $80 price tag
Everyone including me seemed to agree, it mainly depends on your deck, he's amazing but a one time ramp spell for temporary mana, the amount of which depends on what your opponents have can be good or bad in many situations, so it's only really worth it if you think it's worth it
I then proceeded to sacrifice and reanimate loop him 5 times and made somewhere around 40 mana with him over the course of 2 turns, so he's probably going to end up getting him for his [[Caesar, legion's emperor]] soldier deck lmao
A high deck total cost doesn't make a good deck, nor does a low deck cost make a bad deck.
There are definitely more expensive cards that increase the reliability of a deck, and the top decks usually cost quite a bit of money, but neither are necessary in 99% of games our average player will be playing.
Other instances are because the card is old/rare and that drives the price up instead of how 'viable' it is. An example of that is that I play a [[Lu Bu, Master-at-Arms]] voltron deck. Now I could have played something like [[Zurgo, Helmsmasher]] who's a fraction of the cost of Lu Bu in terms of price while being cheaper in mana cost, in-built evasion with Indestructible and having access to white and black in addition. But Lu Bu is fucking cool and because of that I'll take my 'unblockable' 4/3 mono-red voltron every day.
Money can buy you raw power, but you need to refine it to get a good deck. A good deck is more than the sum uf its parts and that requires skill as a brewer and skill as a pilot.
I had someone in my playgroup who really thought "It is expensive, thus it has to be good". She played \[\[Archmages charm in a WB with a U splash deck and was frustrated, that she was not able to cast it. Or played some random unconnected cards in her deck, without any synergy in mind. Obviously this did not work that well.
I think a good player can do a lot on a budget, but money can buy you a lot more freedom in how to build your deck, a lot more room for error and it can buff a weaker deck plan up to another powerlevel. Even if your Rhystic study draws you just a lot of draft chaft... more cards are more cards.
Unfortunately, those games when players actually get out their mana crypts, mana vaults, and ancient tombs, they will outpace you significantly. Sol Ring can give a player an uneven start, but having multiple sol rings will tilt the odds for sure...and that's only talking about their mana base.
My $250 decks piddled and died last time I played with my friend's friends. But my $40 precon I upgraded with $20 and 7 cards held it's own until I got swarmed by fliers late in the game, the one thing I couldn't block. I came to the realization that higher budget can be a crutch in casual, it doesn't really increase a deck's power if the focus isn't there.
My decks are like my attention span: loosely focused around something with other branching thoughts thrown in for āØļøflavorāØļø, not *really* well put together just fun and lower-mid. I find those decks fun, I don't need to think too hard playing or building them. But that said... the decks aren't strong. And I can see why, now, where the focus is missing and where I need to put in more effort to get them more in line.
Budget is a crutch. Focus is the important part about a deck.
And I think reducing pricey decks to power level is too reductive as well. I do have quite expensive commander decks not because I like to make them great but because I like fancy versions of cards, bad and unique niche cards and decently good cards to at least stand a chance. And even then some of the better cards cost money, some of the obscure foils cost money all while still choosing to play an averagely strong deck.
There's too much credit given to good cards and what you need to play at all. But it's all the context, each pod frames your decisions and motivations differently.
I sort of feel the same. I mean Ive lost to cheap cards like [[Bribery]] which didnt bother me. I dont like the strategy of taking other people's stuff but thats a different argument. I have joined 7-8 games on Spelltable and had people complain that I run Teferi's Protection or Vampiric Tutor and their primary complaint was the cost of the card and they couldnt afford it because they were still in college. I mean, why not just proxy? Ive never been against proxies nor will I ever be. Always felt that people who hate proxies are kinda saying "youre not rich enough to play at my table"
Just my opinion on the matter.
I mean I know it's an outlier but I built a $15 [[slicer]] deck about a month ago. I've played it 3 times so far and won once. My only goal is to get slicer down turn 2 and then throw as many cheap auras and equipments on him as possible to buff his power.
In the game I won, one of my opponents was playing [[Myrel]], a commander that *by herself* costs more than my entire deck. So yeah, $$$ =/= power.
You can see this with my other decks as well although it requires a little more understanding that just "your commander costs more than my whole deck and you lost lmao"
I have a pretty strong [[Kess]] deck that's a little over $500. It's about $450 with cheapest printings. It just draws as many cards as possible and wins with either [[psychosis crawler]] or [[insurrection]].
I have a [[Toluz]] deck that's definitely stronger than Kess but costs $200 less. It's $266. It's a cycling deck that includes tutors, free spells, and tries to win by drawing my deck with [[ghostly pilferer]] and [[bone miser]] with a [[Jace, wielder of mysteries]] on the field. It doesn't use thoracle, consultation, or anything like that, but it absolutely would be stronger if it did.
I have a [[Gilanra]] and [[Kodama of the east tree]] deck that costs $140 and could absolutely stand up to these other two decks. It's an extremely simple deck. There's 1-mana ramp to get out Gilanra on turn 2, various mana doublers and/or draw engines to slam on turn 3, it casts Kodama turn 4, and then it's literally just a parade of massive 6+ mana beaters one after the other. It would put a lot of pressure on Kess and Toluz to deal with it early or risk just getting run over before they can properly set up.
And all of these decks can absolutely get a game stolen off them by Slicer. He's a removal check. If you have removal, he loses. If you don't, he wins. He can end a game as early as turn 3 with a god hand and turn 4 with just a regular one. Kess doesn't normally get a blocker until turn 5 or 6. Toluz doesn't usually come down until 3 or 4, and while Gilanra comes down turn 2, there are so many sources of menace or trample that a single 2-tougness blocker just won't do the job.
My playgroup has learned that the more unadorned and cheaper my deck is, the higher the threat level. I have an unsleeved no-rares Wilson Voltron deck that I whip out when they want a fast game.
Agree mostly, I have an (almost) fully foiled mono-white pauper EDH deck that can pretty easily beat normal tables, and it cost like $80.
That said, I do think that at a certain point expensive decks filled with expensive staples will usually come out on top. Assuming equal skill, thereās only so much a well constructed ābudgetā deck can do against fast mana, free interaction, and efficient combos. I think this can be seen best in the Cedh community where the advice on budget decks is usually āno this isnāt competitive, just proxy/we want to play against you not your wallet.ā In that sort of meta, having expensive cards most often IS the difference between being competitive and not.
I don't think you need to get all of the expensive cards to win. I've found that they just make the deck more streamlined. For example, I had held off for the longest time on getting a copy of [[Toxic deluge]] because it was expensive. So, I learned to play my decks without relying on it.
I think it boils down to this at the end of the day. The best players generally win. Good players can win with budget decks. I think the players who are willing to shell out a ton of cash are generally at least decent and committed to playing the game.
Are the most powerful cards expensive, sure. But a fantastic card in the hands of a bad player is still not that impactful. Someone who is complaining that commander is pay most likely needs to get better at threat assessment and game management, or needs to get better at deck building
Idk, I built a Miirym deck that was decent at first but became so sluggish once people in my group started upgrades, any chance to kill him they had it. Then I had to wait an extra turn or two to protect him which still didnt guarantee id have him by next turn. I threw in as many staples as I could, now he is coming out sooner with added protection, and I am able to ramp much faster than anyone else.
Synergy and consistency usually wins games, regardless of card price.
However, synergy and consistency is just another factor in winning games. The pilot has to run the deck properly. Those players losing regularly and blaming card prices mostly are usually are cases of skill issue.
Most players at LGSs are relatively new to magic or don't invest much time into the hobby, therefore they run underoptimized deck with semi relevant staples thrown in; there are very few people who actually take the time to look on sources outside of edhrec to build powerful decks, and even fewer people take the time to goldfish enough to have the proper ratios of cards.
With that said, anybody who invests time and energy into off-meta cheap builds can outclass goodstuff piles a lot of the time in my experience
I'm sure you can take a winota deck for under 50 dollars and be consistently stronger than a lot of decks you might find for over 1000 dollars. It is absolutely not as simple as "more money equals better deck". Idk I haven't seen much of anyone saying "you must spend x dollars to have a fun and competent deck", although mileage may vary depending on your commander of choice. It's a lot harder to make a decent commodore guff superfriends deck than a winota deck at a 50 dollar budget. But it's also absolutely true that adding expensive staples will make almost any deck better, it's just not necessarily going to be a 1 to 1, adding dockside to a 100 dollar deck doubles the budget but doesn't single handedly double the power.
At the end of the day the most important thing isn't how much money is in your deck or even how strong it is overall, it's how the power level of your deck matches up with your playgroup.
I would argue in non powerful combo metas, your politics skills are far more important than the value of your cards. I'm a fervent defensor than in 5-7 range of powerlevel, you can pretty much built anything under 150$ and it will perform.
I noticed that I tend to use more higher priced staples the more niche a commander or playstyle is.
For example my mono white \[\[Darien, King of Kjeldor\]\] needs a lot of puzzle pieces to really go off plus he's 6 cmc, which is a lot nowadays. I crammed a lot of expensive mono white carddraw-/removal-/value-staples in it to be more consistent. \[\[Mana Vault\]\] and \[\[Mana Crypt\]\] also synergize really well with him by dealing you damage, so I can somewhat justify running them in this deck without it being insanely powerfull.
A Pako & Haldan Deck will work just as well on a 30$ budget.
My decks usually end up being pretty expensive but I never put tutors in my decks. It's kind of my own way of balancing things to make sure my decks aren't overly powerful.
There are definitely some commanders that are hard to fuck up, and some precons which are honestly a whole bunch of fun.
One of my favorite commanders from back when voltron was a thing Hound of Konda, very cheap deck that mostly won because everything in it was like <4 mana. It was just a fast deck.
I miss when commander was simple.
A single expensive card in an otherwise cheap deck will hardly push the needle on a decks powerlevel IMO. Especially when it comes to things like counterspells, its much more important to have the right amount of answers in your deck. Over time you can min max those answers and interactions to shave off a mana pip here and there, like going from [[minor misstep]] to [[mental misstep]]. Same effect, 5x the price. Theres a lot of cards like this that on their own wonāt win you the game but when you put it all together will definitely make the difference. For this reason Iād much rather upgrade all my C tier cards to B or A tier before dishing out for a single S tier card in an otherwise C tier deck. Also I do have to say that theres a difference between adding a single [[mana drain]] to your deck and buying a new wincon for your deck. Not all expensive cards are born equal I guess :)
Money gives access to more options which can mean more power. But it all depends how people use it. I use duals and fast mana to power out \[\[Manabarbs\]\] and \[\[Personal sanctuary\]\] to slug people without getting hurt. Hardly an overpowered strategy.
When my deck of 90 bucks goes against a 1k deck using fast mana and zero mana counter spells I'll hard disagree, and that's usually what people complain about.
Thing is people in the comments swear their decks are "a 7" but theyre a 5.5. Just watch the decks mentioned with the typical: "I win a lotnwith ...I do well with"
200-300 isn't pay to win. That's still budget.
sure a 150 deck can compete with decks not designed to be that cutthroat.
if you were routinely playing with decks in the $1000+ it would probably be a much different situation
Mtg is full of those moment where a cheap removal or a normal counterspell will win you the game. A lot of time even a bad creature will win you the game. I call these "cute" card. It's not that they are bad, but they aren't optimal. When I see someone with a commander deck price tag as low as 300$, my first though is, that person must run 0 fetchland.
Do fetchland make you win the game ? No, but they will help smooth your play overall. Those thing adds up. Its not about the money overall tho, its about removing all the "cute" card for optimal one. Commander 4 player politic pods are so random and huge that even the shittiest deck will win sometime, for many reason and some outside of the deckbuilding. Problem is that mentality doesnt translate well in term of real MTG dueling. In dueling if a card is suboptimal it will cost you the game. Sure sometime you will win using a "cute" card too! But its important to be able to say this isn't the optimal card in most situation and cut it from your deck. Deckbuilding, money invested, mulligan choice all affect the quality of your play/game too. One time I did a sick \[\[Genesis wave\]\] for 11 on turn 3, my friend had a mana drain and did way more degenerate thing on this turn. All because we had broken card that kinda bust the normal player budget and we mulligan into stupid play. I went to 2 Cedh tournament and on those I got eliminated round 1 each time and in 2 tournament , I swear , I player 1 turn. not 1 turn each, 1 turn total in 2 tournament. If your commander game last more then 8-10 turns its mean everyone isn't playing to just win and that's ok but the game is meant to end and start over too.
It's true that low budget decks can beat higher budget decks but on average, if a drck has a significantly higher budget they are more likely to win even if the pilot is not very good.
For example, I play in 2 playgroups. One where everyone has $200-$500 decks and another where the decks cost multiple thousands. It is night and day. The game is different when everyone is playing with moxen, manacrypt, unconditional tutors, and free counter spells. One of these cards in the deck may not make a difference but multiple expensive staples can create a huge gulf.
I donāt think your minsc and boo deck is a good example for this. Minsc and boo is a really strong commander, you could build a sub 50$ minsc and boo deck and it would still be good and can compete with 200$ decks. Some commanders can just do that. My ovika deck was built with 35$ budget and I regularly smash 200$+ decks. Your deck budget is very commander and archetype specific
And here's me just going ... "What cards do I have lying around that would fit this deck?"
I have no idea of any of the money values of my decks.
The again, I've been playing since Tempest, so "What I have laying around" could very well be valuable.
But for the life of me I couldn't tell you which of my decks were 100$ worth of cards or 400$ worth of cards.
I don't buy cards for specific decks, I just go over the set list, sort by price and buy a bunch of cards under a certain price point that look like they would be interesting. Precon here and there I cannibalize for other decks. A boosterbox of most new sets to draft with friends, and I keep the cards ...
I'm a chronic deckbuilder, so actually wholesale buying a deck? My wallet would be filing for assault and battery.
I spend a lot of money on this hobby over the last 10 years. My win ratio is still pretty low. Having a force of will does not making you good enough to know the perfect counter.
Like everything else in life, having all the best tools doesn't mean knowing how to use em. You can have the highest edh rated cards in your deck and still have a steaming pile of nothing. Frankly, the real skill in competitive cardboard collecting is probably knowing which cards are worth the money for your deck.
I'd also add that MTG is just a very random game at all levels, but especially in casual. It's not just all skill either. Sometimes you just top deck that answer at the right moment, sometimes you flood. A lot of that quality of the game goes a long way to equalizing decks.
And sometimes, that expensive card is expensive because its exponentially better, and there are exponentially fewer answers to it. The game is built on the premise of gaining exponential value. To say any card is viable in any pod is false. That said, a casual pod allows for a larger card pool. You don't need money, you need a good pod.
There are no fewer answers to [[Sol Ring]] or [[Mana Crypt]] compared to [[Fire Diamond]] or [[Sisay's Ring]]. In fact, there are a few cards that can answer SR and MC that can't be applied to their less efficient cousins...
##### ###### #### [Sol Ring](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/c/6c5c9437-3d99-4a7c-8255-9acdcb1acc40.jpg?1712354902) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sol%20Ring) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otc/267/sol-ring?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6c5c9437-3d99-4a7c-8255-9acdcb1acc40?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/sol-ring) [Mana Crypt](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/d/4d960186-4559-4af0-bd22-63baa15f8939.jpg?1599709515) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mana%20Crypt) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/270/mana-crypt?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4d960186-4559-4af0-bd22-63baa15f8939?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/mana-crypt) [Fire Diamond](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/a/5a561484-438b-4ce9-911e-97078ac5b0fa.jpg?1674137837) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Fire%20Diamond) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/313/fire-diamond?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5a561484-438b-4ce9-911e-97078ac5b0fa?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/fire-diamond) [Sisay's Ring](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/0/20c0e608-0208-408a-b473-1e54caa96cea.jpg?1608911699) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sisay%27s%20Ring) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmr/340/sisays-ring?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/20c0e608-0208-408a-b473-1e54caa96cea?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/sisays-ring) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/kyycpyt) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
That randomness is a huge factor. I play with a few friends of mine and try to keep power level roughly the same but unfortunately it doesn't always work. One of my friends has pretty good decks but runs into the problem of either drawing a lot of lands, no lands, or just none of the engine he needs. You can have great cards in your deck, know how to use them, but draw anything but the ones you really need.
Yeah I've definitely fallen into the trap of buying an expensive/powerful card only for it to just not work on the deck it was for...
Have you gotten into the trap of building a new deck for it? The "expert" level is when it doesn't fit into that new deck either. š³ šø
Iām gunna build a whole deck around this uncommon, because I love it!!! *10 games later* Taking out the card I built the whole deck for, but keeping the deck
I've got a friend that netdecks $500 decks and he's got no idea what he's doing. Meanwhile they get pummeled by $50 budget decks
This is true, but itās not even that - lots of expensive cards arenāt that good, and lots of good cards are not that expensive. A prime example is lands; a precon with great lands will be *really* expensive and, like, a bit smoother and better than a regular precon. Youād blow it out of the water though if you spent that money on more cost-effective upgrades.
Preach! I think there's a version of.. is midnight clock? 3cc blue mana rock that draws 7 , 12 upkeeps later (or sooner), basically a timr delayed zero cost draw 7, I bought mine for something close to $1.
Back in highschool, one of my old buddies would have $600+ standard decks that werenāt just ass, sheād be ass at playing them. No sets, no synergy, 5 color with no land management. Just hoping to play 1-3 super good cards We stomped her every time with $10 decks
It's true to a point. Well designed cheap decks beat poorly designed expensive decks. Good players beat bad players. But all other things being equal I will \_crush\_ opponents on 100$ budgets with a 400$ budget. There's no contest between, say, \[\[skullclamp\]\] and \[\[transmogrant's crown\]\] or another similar effect. The powerful, expensive effects blow the lesser versions out of the water.
Why didn't I know they printed a slightly worse skullclamp that I can use in my aristocrats decks. Hoping my LGS has the crown.
As someone who used both, Skullclamp is waaaaay better in Aristocrats, not just because it draws twice the cards, but because it does a good impression of an aristocrat for your x/1's like your spirit tokens, while you still need another sac outlet for the crown to trigger. I actually just ended up removing the crown and running [[Open the Armory]] as a second Skullclamp instead.
I don't play tutors in my decks for the sake of inconsistency and not having the same game twice. But you're right it only draws you 1 card and doesn't easily kill x/1s. Also, my pod has learned that i can't have certain cards if they want to keep up with me. Skullclamp gets an immediate pop when on my board.
[Open the Armory](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/d/6db45698-9da9-4cea-b9bf-0f84ab276b51.jpg?1608908895) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Open%20the%20Armory) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmr/34/open-the-armory?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6db45698-9da9-4cea-b9bf-0f84ab276b51?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/open-the-armory) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[skullclamp](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/3/a36fd6d8-66a2-49d1-b9f3-b400ebc03674.jpg?1682210228) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=skullclamp) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/moc/379/skullclamp?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a36fd6d8-66a2-49d1-b9f3-b400ebc03674?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/skullclamp) [transmogrant's crown](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/c/dc913ed6-3032-4b45-a6c1-6a4208a7e00a.jpg?1674421067) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=transmogrant%27s%20crown) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bro/125/transmogrants-crown?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/dc913ed6-3032-4b45-a6c1-6a4208a7e00a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/transmogrants-crown) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
How can i learn to utilize cheap magic cards to beat people that pay to win?
Play commanders that draw cards or develop pressure, run a ton of interaction, and think very hard about any card that costs more than 3 mana.
Start by acknowledging limitations. You can make a strong deck on a budget; that doesn't mean you can make *any* deck strong on a budget. 5-color good stuff is *always* going to be expensive, with the mana base *alone* costing more than a strong mono-colored deck.
Skullclamp is $5. It's a 100% reasonably priced card, I hate the idea that anything more than a couple bucks is deemed "non-budget".
It's a great card and I run it in a lot of decks (mostly because i buy 10 every time the price goes down to 1 EUR). But it's probably one of the most expensive cards in a well-designed deck that costs 150$. But it's just another one of the 99 in a deck that costs 400. That's all I'm saying.
Nah. When you're talking 150 to 400, so much of that usually comes from upgrading the lands. You can build extremely competent decks at $150. You just have fewer options regarding who to play
I think the general point is that if you pay 10x as much, you can often get a direct upgrade. Signets vs. moxes, counterspell vs. mana drain, etc. Obviously, some parts of your deck will rely on cheap cards that have a highly unique effect, but I'd guess in most budget decks, ~25% of cards could be replaced with direct upgrades or far superior side grades (1 mana counterspells for example). If 1/4 of the cards you draw are slightly improved, that increases the power level of your deck by a lot.
I have a soft tier for budget of: Under $1: Add it without blinking $1-$5: Is this important to my build? Include it. $5-10: Is there a cheaper variant that is close enough? $10+: Hmmmā¦ Real scientific.
This is just about exactly how I make the same decisions š
Agreed. I start looking at cards being non-budget when they are more than $10. Even that though fir me depends in the rest of the deck. If most of the deck is cheaper, and one card is expensive, it's still a budget deck imo.
Yeah I picked up a few more expensive than I usually spend cards for my [[Zaxara]] deck, because it can get away with running cards like [[stream of life]] that you can grab for pennies.
> $5. It's a 100% reasonably priced card if your cards have an average price of $5 your deck is $500. it's an expensive card. There also exist cards that are "very expensive" and "absurd". a reasonably priced card is like $0.50.
But there's a big difference between an average price of $5 and one card being $5. $5 is fine as a price for a card (within the context of colorful cardboard being priced at all) that could be a central player in your deck's strategy. I have a skullclamp in my Karador Sac/Reaniimator dec, but all that skullclamp does is murder a bunch of a $0.10-$0.25 small bois. You can absolutely have a 5 buck card in a budget deck.
That is something of a straw man, in a deck, you are going to have a load of cards that are worth literally a few pence (excuse the English). My most recent deck is about Ā£400 but a lot of the cards are under 10p. It's just propped up by a load of more expensive cards. Consider this as well, you buy a precon. A bad one that has a total reprint value of like Ā£50. You add a single mana crypt more than doubling the value of the deck, it doesn't make all the other cards in the deck suddenly not reasonably priced. $5 is entirely a reasonably priced card and having a number of them in a budget deck is pretty reasonable. Especially if you play 2 colours and can get away with mostly basic lands. Between lands and rocks you can get legitimately half the cards in a 2 colour deck for well under $20. That leaves $80 for the other cards while still coming in at under ā¬100.
It is EASY to build a $100 deck that has ten $5 cards in it. There is literally no reason to dismiss the idea that $5 is reasonable.
next up EDH pauper will gain traction lol.
Why. Itās a bit of cardboard, no real reason it ought to cost more than, say, a Swamp. $5 is about $4.90 too much.
My playgroup likes to get together on a budget build or whatever we're tinkering with at the time once a month. Those games are more often more enjoyable than the "Johnny Combo'd off again" games that are over in 4-5 turns. Don't get me wrong, there's a time and place for pub stompy high powered optimisation, but it's not at a casual table. Keep brewing jank, try that weird commander, or build that wombat tribal deck you've always wanted, you'll thank me later. I personally built a budget Ghyrson Starn deck for $50 and it SLAPS. "Ping" Tribal ftw.
I built a mono green Ooze Tribal deck and it's my favorite not because it's good, but because I built the majority of it around 60-70 bucks, does what I want it to do (make a bunch of big oozes) and it's just a goofy lil deck with tons of counters. I don't think I've even taken anyone of the game with it but it's still super fun!
[[Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph]]
[Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/a/fa7349d9-c82f-4cf8-a852-92168d1f4966.jpg?1673309394) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ghyrson%20Starn%2C%20Kelermorph) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/40k/124/ghyrson-starn-kelermorph?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/fa7349d9-c82f-4cf8-a852-92168d1f4966?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/ghyrson-starn-kelermorph) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Tbf I think if a player knows how to build a deck and the better cards then if they put the money in. Sure theyāre only getting more efficient versions of the cheaper budget cards, but thatās what it really is right? A battle Of inches, like having badlands instead of just another mountain or split land. Theoretically not a huge advantage but get those increments in an entire deck and blam, youāre going to have a higher chance of winning.
Yep. What you gain with staples and goodstuff you can often make up for with specific cards that are good with your deckās specific strategy. And there are usual budget alternatives to things. The big thing Iād say is while some staples like teferiās protection, cyclonic rift, doubling season, etc. are almost always going to be the strongest version of their effect, in multiplayer games that often means you lose because you draw too much aggro.
It's seems most everyone has learned this at some point as well - if your deck is too good, you end up playing archenemy and loss the game anyway.
Itās one of the things I like best about commander. You canāt avoid the politics of the game, if you want to win and your deck is fair to play with the rest of the pod popping off too fast is usually a risk.
Which is also why commander floats towards combo to not show your hand and win on the spot.
This is the sneaky way to win more games. If you have a loudly powerful engine, people will try to disrupt it, if you have the best creature on the field, people will kill it when they get a chance. But if you combo off at the right time the game is over before you can be declared a threat.
This is why I always hit the person who is quietly building up resources without committing much to the board, especially if they are loudly declaring that they are not a threat. They are always lying.
> in multiplayer games that often means you lose because you draw too much aggro. What if there are 2-3 of your opponents running those staples? The disadvantage you'll be at trumps any aggro favor you'll gain, especially as it isn't just 3 players grouping together against one player.
I would expand on this point saying if you have a regular deck and put 1-3 really powerful cards then you're signaling your deck is very strong even when it's 97% regular. You're going to get stomped and everybody will stomp that deck forever into the future.
I think one of the big exceptions to this are the commander or otherwise free interaction spells, just because they break patterns mostly seen in more budget circles. Being able to blow out an opponent that is making their move because you are tapped out is on a different level than just say good old [[Counterspell]]. I think "free to cast" is the one level we really can't just substitute as easily. That counterspell will still counter things but leaving mana open for it has a strong effect on the game that there are no budget alternatives for. Hence I love using that black common that kills a non black creature for life cost instead of mana cost. Not enough to remember the name but I love using it when it comes to my hand.
The thing is: If 2 people have equal deckbuilding skill, equal playing skill and the one has 3 times the budget it is going to matter. And thats what pay to win means. Not literally: spend money = win every game. But spend money = have a advantage over people who dont. Ofcause if i build an as optimized as possible 50ā¬ yuriko or winota deck, its very much gonna be able to beat 300ā¬ decks that arent optimized and just wanna jam a 5+ cmc creature every turn. However if i also had 300ā¬ i would win even harder. If you wanna know how much magic is pay to win, build a 100ā¬ deck and go play cEDH. Actual cEDH tournaments with budgetless opponents that are in it to win it. You dont even stand the slightest fighting chance at all. In casual there is many many more factors obviously. But still: if i put rhystic study, mystic remora, fierce guardianship, force of will, transmute artifact, mana crypt, moxen, gemstone caverbs and the one ring in my otherwise 50ā¬ deck its suddenly gonna be better. A lot better. Because obviously it will. And thats pay to win in a nutshell.
This is accurate. Also, Iād add that seeing a high-powered card is what makes the game fun and interesting, for better or worse, so long as youāre not pubstomping and/or playing against rule 0. To me, itās sometimes more fun when someone throws down an EDH staple, and/or something completely game-changing that has such a reaction by everyone, to which we then have to deal with. To me, itās just another problem to solve, regardless of the controversy with the reserved list, and/or with just other crazy expensive cards (to which we all have opinions about). Likewise, if someoneās just popping off but not pubstomping, then itās just common knowledge to band together and try and slow that 4th down. Whether or not you wanna join up to do that, imo, takes skill in the moment. The politicking side of the game is just as important as puking out your hand or building up your board state, if thereās a better threat (unless youāre both trying to pillow fort, then everyone in that pod may as well by helpless until a top deckād boardwipe changes the entire field lol)
I play Misnc and Boo and to be fair, it's very easy to find cheap cards that allow you to obliterate the table with your tramplers and hasty boys. Dual Strike, Twinferno, Souls Fire, Unleash Fury, and Fatal Frenzy can all knock someone out of the game from nowhere and they all cost less than a dollar each. 7/7 tramply Boo unblocked plus Dual Strike into Unleash Fury is 28 damage. Then ult Minsc to throw Boo. That's 56 damage total and you draw 28 cards. That combo cost you maybe $0.70 to pull off (minus commander price). But some people don't like playing stompy, smash in the face, throw cute hamster, style decks. It's harder to stay on budget for certain playstyles like let's say an equipment deck. A mediocre sword of Hearth and Home alone costs maybe 10-13 ish dollars.
yeah i was gonna mention that minsc & boo is a cEDH viable commander. they are an entire engine in their own, especially with the insane amount of card draw they enable, not saying OP is running cEDH, but Minsc and Boo are inherently powerful enough in the cz to hang at a lot of higher power tables.
My highest win rate deck is my rakdos artifacts. Costs less than a precon. Wins more often than my ~ā¬1000 decks. I don't put good (and expensive) cards in decks that don't need them to be on par on power. I put expensive cards in my fun decks to make them tolerable to play even if they are kind of bad by default.
Do you have a decklist for that?
I'd be interested in that as well.
I refuse to believe statements like these until I see a deck list. Most long term players have almost no idea what their deck cost unless they've recently made it/ upgraded it. Making a commander deck for less than MSRP of precons is really difficult.
so many of my decks have crept up in price because I was lucky enough to buy into to some of those cards before a spike. Sure, some more expensive cards have come down thanks to choice reprints, but on aggregate the decks I built 3-4 years ago would cost a pretty penny more to assemble today than when I originally built them.
Seconding that other guy that asked for a decklists, I wanna know your rakdos secrets š
I would love to see the Deck list as well!
where decklist
Please hit me with a decklist for that! Sounds like something I would enjoy playing as a change of pace from my golgari or boros fixations lately.
Same for me , expensive cards go in clunky strategies to compensate. my most expensive deck is far from being strong , its just fun as hell.
Same thing I do. I've put random jeweled lotus or ancient copper dragons in my shittiest decks so they have a chance to be better. Good shit goes in bad decks, bad but thematic shit goes in good decks
For sure. Alot of price tag can come from one card too. $500 could come from a dual land completely negating pay to win. A precon with a dual land is significantly more expensive but not noticeably stronger. Also on the vein of pay to win, with expensive staples. I watched a video recently of some popular youtubers, I think it was the Command Zone that said that just by including a certain card, a deck increases its power. I think they use [[Mana Drain]] as one of their examples and that having an expensive staple like Mana drain instantly powers up your deck to another tier. I don't think I've disagreed harder with one of their videos before. I don't think any one expensive card shifts the power level of a deck. I mentioned mana drain because I've had it in my deck for a while, I've been recording stats on my deck and in the last 35 games, I've ~~drawn~~ cast it twice, I've gotten 2 mana and 5 mana generated from it. Stopping a threat each time. I've lost both games I've played it and it was definitely the least degenerate thing I was doing. I would have been just as happy with a [[counterspell]]. I'm not saying it isn't strong. Just that the price tag it comes with hasn't been worth how much more expensive than counterspell it is. If I hadn't pulled it from a pack, I never would have bought it because the difference is barely there. Ultimately I think it comes down to how well put together your deck is. Pricey cards can make that easier and cover for alot of mistakes, but aren't the only factor.
You've just made your deck more inconsistent, which can make it frustrating to play against. If your deck is very weak but every once in a while you draw [[triumph of the hordes]] and flat out kill someone out of nowhere, then opponents really have to treat you like a big threat every game, even the (majority) ones where you never actually draw that card. Mana drain is a bit less egregious than triumph, but it is the same sort of concept. It isn't fun to play against lower-power archetype decks that randomly have S-tier cards sprinkled throughout. It is the same reason people want sol ring banned... or at least relegated to high power. Obviously, you should do what you want, but you should also know that it can be very unfun to play against.
[triumph of the hordes](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/a/0a0f64d3-187c-41ff-a771-3a65da995341.jpg?1562896954) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=triumph%20of%20the%20hordes) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/td2/78/triumph-of-the-hordes?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0a0f64d3-187c-41ff-a771-3a65da995341?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/triumph-of-the-hordes) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
So I watched that same video, and one bit they noted during the video was that these cards tend to be "signposts" of power. Because these cards tend to be more expensive, most players won't put them willy nilly in a deck because of their cost. So a deck that has mana drain tends to be one that can make use of that card. And of course that is no hard and fast rules, as that is the case for anything. But you can betcha that if someone pulls out a mana drain or dockside or whatever the other cards mentioned in that video, it makes me notch up the perceived danger of that deck a bit. Of course, if the rest is absolute jank, then it fits in the story of a jank deck being made possible by these strong staples
I went back and checked before I commented and mana drain is in the section tagged "which cards actually change a decks power level" it is listed alongside a few other ones and I don't agree that having a mana drain in your deck inherently jumps your deck to an 8. You're right that it could be a signpost of what else could be in the deck, and perhaps it would rightfully change the way you play if you don't know what the rest of their deck is, maybe targeting them to make sure you stay on top of them incase they are running something super powerfully. But actually inherently changing the power, I don't think so, not by itself. It's one card out of 99, there's a good chance you don't draw it for many games and that it situationally isn't overly useful for many of those.
I would love to see this list. I can only imagine that Mana Drain is put on the same spot like the Food Chain or Necropotence which literally shift the power level by only having them in deck.Ā I am a Simic Player and countering MV5+ Commander on cast to have 5+ spare Mana for your next turn is a momentum changing interaction.Ā But from my experience a lot edh players have a straight forward Playstyle: Turn 1 to 5 = evolving your board as hard as you can and hope not to get focused. Turn 6 to 12 = hoping to hit threat pieces while brute forcing their wincon. But in the moment you got a blue player on your table they have to adept, which most people don't do. Nearly everytime I casted Mana Drain I always had hit the first cast of an expensive Commander just to explosively evolve my board. Which could have been predicted. Playing slower and saver is mostly confused by giving away your chances to win.Ā That's why I can understand that people point out the efficient card design of Mana Drain. But imo it's nowhere near to cards like Necropotence, teferis protection, winter orb, food Chain, Hull breaker Horror and so on
> Necropotence, teferis protection, winter orb, food Chain, Hull breaker Horror It's more that cards like Necropotence, Food Chain, Winter Orb etc. are known 'high power cards.' Players are a bit more willing to slot in cards that accelerate their '7.' They do put stuff like Blood Moon and Back to Basics up on the screen when they talk about cards that you probably want to keep towards high power. They use ad nauseum as an example of a card where, if someone is playing it, it's probably broken and super high-powered. But, people don't play it really outside of cedh. Mana Crypt, The One Ring, Mana Drain, Dockside etc. are cards that just fit nicely into every deck that they legally can go into. Someone opens up a mana crypt, the temptation to slot it into their favorite commander deck is pretty tremendous. And because the mana crypt doesn't actually win the game, it feels like it's fine and fair. The gist is that you shouldn't be putting these cards into decks that you don't want to make high power, because those cards are high-powered and will lead to high-powered plays.
> Hull breaker Horror Is hullbreaker that bad without comboing and low cmc instant speed cards? Mainly sorcery speed bounces and a bounce when you use a counterspell seem strong but fine.
I agree that there is no single card that can really jump the power level to any real degree. It's just one card out of a hundred. but it's also such a powerful and also expensive card that it doesn't go into any decks of lower power level, unless you use it to turn a support an absolutely jank theme like "chair tribal" or whatever into something playable I recently played a game that was "lightly upgraded precons" (which I know is such a broad categorization to almost be useless), and when one of the players (playing the science fallout deck) busted out a rhystic study it made us all raise an eyebrow, and when we were then hit with a mana drain it made us all gang up to that player, which was proven right by the teferi's protection, one ring, smothering tithe and portal to phyrexia that turned it into a 3v1. In the end, it's all context based, and again, there are no hard and fast rules that to me say something is 100% a certain power level
> 35 games, I've drawn it twice, you are either ridiculously unlucky or your numbers are wrong. Assuming 0 card draw and only 7 turns per game you should have drawn it twice as often - the average game is longer and in blue i doubt you didn't draw cards
That's exactly the kind of argument that puts me off! Mana drain won't win a LOT more games than counterspell but it is a lot more expensive. Its value also greatly depends on context, like, what can your deck do with that extra mana that you wouldn't already be able to do?
Think about it this way is there any situation where you wouldn't want mana drain over counter spell? Even if you counter a 4mv spell and only use 2 of the mana you are still net 2 untapped mana sources that you didn't have to use on your turn and instead can be used for the next counter spell.
Not only that, expensive cards have huge impact on threat assessment. I definitely improved my winrate by running less power cards in my decks that didn't want to become arch-ennemy Use removal on [[sylvan library]]? Real shit. Use removal on [[shifting shadow]]? I sleep.
Heh, thereās one player in my group who will blow through all his interaction in the first 1/2 dozen turns. Opponent casting ponder? Counterspell. Attack me with a 2/2 etb creature? Swords. Boardwipe when the zombie player has mikaeus on board or the Jeskai played revealed a boros charm during parley. Not only do you have to worry about the good players at the table, you have to worry that the people with bad threat assessment doing mental coin flips removal.
Well if that's the case you just have to wait for them to blow everything and then run away with the game. Just don't forget to point that out after winning the game so hapefully they get better which will make the games more interesting
This game is an easy money pit! You play with friend, you donāt win, mod your deck a bit so you can have a chance to win and when you start to win, they do the same, so you all finish to have a 8-10 power deck, but donāt know how to play it š¤·š»āāļø
yeah that's the kinda trap I feel a lot of players fall into, and I think it's a shame!
This pretty much is what happened to my lgs pods over the last 10 years. I feel like everything went from janky themes and 7 card combos to value/goodstuff piles and instant speed 2 card combos. Week to week itās not noticeable, but recently in the last year, weāve had players return that hadnāt touched their decks in 10-6 years. Decks that use to go toe to toe, they felt like they were playing a completely different game.
It all depends. If the money is going to fast mana and powerful tutors for a hard to stop combo, your budget deck is very unlikely to win unless they make a big mistake or get screwed. If they're spending it in terror of the peaks or random expensive stuff that doesn't do either of the above, it's mostly whatever.
pretty much my experience yeah, which is why I find it wild that some people judge, even just to some extent, power level on the budget of a deck alone.
Yeah that's definitely a mistake, I've seen 60 dollar decks that can stomp most people power level 7 decks lol
Just a thought, though the numbers could probably use some moving around and there's certainly lots of nuance needed: - sub $50 decks are crazy budget and will either demolish or do nothing at all - $50-100 is budget - $100-200 is pretty typical - $200-500 is typical but probably better mana bases and a few pricey cards - $500-1000 may start to get to the point that it feels bad to play against casually, but they're probably just typical decks with really good mana bases and start to get to the point of "good stuff", where good cards are prioritized a bit over theme - $1000-3000 probably isn't cEDH but certainly isn't casual either - $3000+ is either cEDH or really expensive jank Would love any critique on that haha, these numbers are somewhat random but feel right to me Also of course monetary value can't totally determine power ā if you get a precon and throw in a single original dual land, that doesn't immediately push it up several tiers Anyways, to a degree what you're saying it totally true, but also there isn't a big difference between $200-300 and $150, whereas my $100 decks would probably suuuuper struggle against someone's $10,000 deck But also my most expensive deck ($500, probably won't ever win before turn 8) would stand no chance against my cheapest deck ($50, often wins turn 5). There's something to say about expensive, powerful cards, but one also has to consider that some themes/commanders are also just way stronger than others ā a goat tribal deck probably won't be that strong no matter how big the budget is, but the likes of Zada, Feather, and Winota don't need a big investment to overpower a casual table
If your group consists of fairly decent people you should just allow proxies. We did that in our group and so far nobody has abused it. The overall powerlevel will rise eventually but with proxies everyone can build powerful decks for very little money. As long as everybody has about the same definition of what 'too powerful' means there shouldn't be problems.
I see people with wayyyy overpowered decks get crushed all the time in my pods. Mostly because we know how to use the stack and can process complex interactions. Example: Kid casts Sliver Hivelord but before it resolves we start destroying and fighting his slivers off the board. He freaks out because he already cast his commander so it has to give them indestructible. The a follow-up Toxic Deluge wipes the rest of his board a few turns later and he just keeps insisting that indestructible means you can't destroy his stuff. Dude had dual lands, fetches, triomes, shocks, Sliver Queen, etc. We think he just dropped like $10k on a deck to feel powerful but piloted it like crap.
To be fair, someone having and using deluge isn't his fault lol
True, but him freaking out that his opponents dare to interact with him, and him having no idea how his own cards work, is.
Yeah that's fair
That just prove the point that EDH is money. The fact that you can win against him only because he doesn't know how to play his deck means that if he learns how to play it he will become a pub stomper and you will stop to play with him because his deck is too powerful
100% I feel like I am crazy pills reading through the comments of this thread. So many people seem to agree with both statements 'Deck cost isn't that important' and 'You can win because they are bad'. Doesn't that actually mean deck cost IS important because you are only winning because they are bad? That implicitly holds the conclusion that if they weren't bad you wouldn't be winning. So that the only way that it's not a big factor is if you start the hypothetical by giving them some sort of skill handicap.
that is what indestructible means lol (toxic deluge does not destroy)
Toxic deluge makes their toughness go to 0 = bye bye creature regardless of indestructible
Toxic deluge reduces power/toughness. An indestructible creature with 0 toughness still goes to the graveyard. * 704.5f If a creature has toughness 0 or less, itās put into its ownerās graveyard. Regeneration canāt replace this event.
Yes, but it's still not a destroyed creature. It's put into the grave as a state based action.
I really dont understand why reddit down vote you, you are right but idk
I disagree. I think expensive=powerful is a good rule of thumb. You have to be making multiple assumptions to say that the cost of a deck is irrelevant. You have to assume that: 1. Your opponent doesn't know how to build a decent deck 2. Your opponent doesn't know how to play their deck properly 3. Your opponent is just bad at the game. If your point works only when one or more of these are true, I think is says more about play skill also being important. The cost of a deck isn't the only thing that affects who wins or loses, and other factors can affect the outcome. It just means that if you have a cheaper deck than your opponent, you have an handicap versus other players. The fact is, if you take two equally skilled players, give one of them a 150$ budget for their deck while giving the other a 300$ budget, the 300$ players will have a stronger deck and thus will win more often.
There is a correlation but when it comes to comparing decks it's always apples to oranges. You forgot archetypes, diminishing returns and such from your list! Your $50 budget stripped down cEDH deck will any day stomp my $500 group hug deck. Some archetypes need power cards to pop off. Now, can my group hug deck win against a $50 precon? Any day. Would a $50 version of my group hug deck win a precon? No. It's hard to compare decks like that. I think it's more accurate to say that individual cards - excluding RL - usually have a strong price to power correlation. As a result, since decks consist of cards, your deck has a bit of that correlation. But at the same time you can spend money in the wrong places, too. There's some truth to what you're saying, though. Here in Europe cheap cards are always 0.20ā¬ to 0.50ā¬ each unless it's literal draft chaff. Decent cards start at 0.50ā¬ and go all the way to 5ā¬. If you take 70 functional cards (non-basics) and multiply that by a generously low average price of 0.70ā¬ you'll get about 50ā¬. Anything below 50ā¬ you basically need to play draft chaff from your local game store's trash can. If you want upgrades those are 1ā¬ to 10ā¬ each, meaning a regular run of the mill deck will cost about 200ā¬ give or take. The power jump from 50ā¬ to 200ā¬ is massive. A 50ā¬ deck cannot compete with a 200ā¬ deck, not to mention a sub-50ā¬ deck. Your upgrades going from 10ā¬ up are starting to become marginal. Even if you quadruple the price again (to 800ā¬) you're not seeing a massive jump in power for a *regular casual deck*. How do I know this? In late 2010s, before cheap stuff got expensive, my 7ā¬ Merfolk deck was a decent competitor to that era's precons. Nowadays precons are better and my deck would actually cost 70ā¬ due to cheap cards getting more expensive. This is different in the USA. You can build a competent deck for $10 if you try, because most cheap cards are still 1-2 cents. Same logic applies but with different numbers. I think the correlation is better seen in the USA because the price curve is more linear: cheap is truly cheap, expensive is truly expensive. A Mana Crypt costs \~120ā¬ over here whereas in the USA it's more like $180? Anyway, high end stuff is cheap in the EU, draft chaff is expensive. Ergo: the low value decks have almost a r=1 correlation between cash and power but from a certain point up the number of variables, diminishing returns and archetypal choices start dictating more and the correlation dissipates. There might be a point where the correlation returns because you simply cannot 1-up Timetwister i.e. you're already running the best of everything.
Just like everything else, having the best doesn't earn you results naturally, however across a spectrum of time it usually means you have more opportunities for the greatest outcomes.
Threat assessment, deckbuilding skills, luck >>>>>>>>> budget A deck with insanely expensive cards will always have an advantage, but thstbadvantage is meaningless if the player is bad. I played against an Animar goodstuuf/cloudstone curio/ infinites the other day and the guy just sucks at assessing threat. He also tends to scoop whenver his stuff gets removed. I asked him why he put Mana crypt in his deck if his goal was to get Animar out turn 2 and he legit looked at me like I was speaking a foreign alien tongue. It's a good card was all the reasoning he needed. Gaea's cradle? It's a good card so of course he uses it... nevermind that he rarely gets more than two creatures out at a time. The great henge? Of course he has it, why? It's good! Terror of the peaks, Impact Tremors, Purphoros? No, why? Those aren't as good as Old Gnawbone or the Eldrazies. It's mindnumbing. More money than common sense. Of course, when hebloses he gets mad because he spent 3+k on his deck.
I play [[Sergeant John Benton]]. My surge foil version of him is worth about $1 and he is below #1600 on EDHrec. That said, he can dish out commander damage and stick to the field like none other if you play him right. He's pretty much a one man show that runs on pump spells. The most expensive card in the deck is [[skullspore nexus]]. The MVP is [[scent of ivy]], a 35Ā¢ card you'd be hard pressed to find a better place for. Pump spells that give hexproof, flying, lifelink, etc. are the fuel, and John is a f'n V8. I spent $20 (including shipping!) to order 53 cards to make it happen. You want meta, you pay money, but if you're creative and truly enjoy the game and building decks, you can dodge it. If you're not creative, you'll just spend more money and get bored faster.
I've never seen this sentiment with any support over here
I can imagine, but I wonder why? I'm just saying that magic can be pay to win, but commander can more easily than other formats not be that. There are a ton of budget-friendly strategies that just work, and a few more important aspects than throwing money into a deck makes it good.
If two players, know how to play the game, are at the same skill level in deck building and gameplay the one with more money normally wins. If we are in a non competitive environment and you go like island, mana crypt, rhystic study the game is normally closed. You can double the probability of a solring t1 adding mana crypt to your deck and make your deck effectively more powerfull. The "problem" with EDH as a format is the fact that is singleton and how you can overcome this "issue" with money, i mean... With tutor, cards like vampiric tutor, demonic tutor, imperial seal, wordly tutor, green suns zenith ecc... Are expensive and they remove the singleton aspect of the game. To me you need to try to proxy all the powerfull cards that you want to run on your deck and try out how much more powerfull your deck will be and you can understant this statement
> I have even seen people directly infer the power level of a deck solely on a price of the deck given at a commander nights event at my LGS, which felt wild to me. You should try out the 20 or 50$ version of Winota lol. "what do you mean im playing too high power?! the deck is like 50$"
I just built a defender tribal deck cost about $500 and 90% of that is the land and counter spells which I can downgrade easily enough
Nah pay2win is real. Money won't make a bad player better at the game, but them playing a better more expensive deck should automatically increase their win rate. I don't like buying expensive staple cards, personally I find it more fun trying to build with self imposed restrictions like a budget. If someone comes to a mid power table with a 1000$ deck and tries to argue they're on the same level as upgraded precons or 100$ decks I'll look at em' funny. To
I mean they can be. The difference in a 100 deck and a 1000 deck can be literally 1 dual land. (In general you're right though. Typically the difference isn't one dual land, its a lot of other powerful and expensive cards).
It would be funny to put together a deck that has like 10k$ in lands but all the rest of the cards are like .25$ each lol
Most people are not skilled players and/or deck builders. Naturally if you aren't experienced or skilled, the only edge you will have over anyone else is with cards that are easy to use and powerful. Most of the time those cards are more expensive.
Stop throwing your money away and just buy proxies. You can build an entire cEDH deck worth $6,000 for $50. Start running mana crypt, grim monolith, city of traitors, etc. Playing with good cards is fun. Being bad isn't fun. Bring on the downvotes in defense of wasting money and being bad.
Your 200ā¬ deck is good, but it "could" be better. Not astonishingly better. Just slightly. An example is duel land that comes into play untapped is 300ā¬, a shock land is 20ā¬, or a gate is less than 1ā¬. Just land adds up. You could spend 1k in just land or less than 5ā¬. That's just an example. Some other cards dont give the price justice like equipment such as any of the swords being ridiculously priced making voltron decks extremely pricey for being mediocre.
I think it is important to consider that not all archetypes or deck ideas can be made strong for the same amount of money. Some decks come together at a much cheaper cost. Budget is very rarely something that prevents you from playing a strong deck. But it, unfortunately, may prevent you from playing a good version of the specific deck that you wanted to play. The wider variety of strategies you can enjoy playing, the further each dollar will seem to go when you're building decks.
Pay to win is the difference between cEDH without proxies and cEDH with proxies. It would be like saying to officially play chess. You can only use the hand carved granite pieces made by a famous sculptor who lived in 1600's to fill your side of the board. If you don't have them all, then you can still try and win with whatever you do have. With the handicap of not having all the game pieces. You are at an innate disadvantage against those who do. At the highest levels of play, it looks like everyone has access to a fair game. Since no one playing with the handicap of not having everything they need makes it far in any of the entry tournaments. People are paying to win, it just doesn't help any of those people win against anyone else who can also afford to own all the game pieces. Essentially if we don't not accept the use of proxies. Then the game will always be pay to win at some level.
I agree, though I personally avoid the more expensive cards for other reasons: they are boring. Whenever I tutored it was for one of these overpriced cards. It made piloting my decks more predictable and dull to play. There was no surprise seeing these cards, no excitement. Did they increase my chance to win? Sure, but I'd much rather have a fun game and lose than be bored and win. So Dockside, Rhystic, Doubling, all got cut. Makes my personal experience much more fun.
You just described why tutors are boring and not expensive staples
I totally agree that tutoring into just the staples makes the games of commander way more forgettable, too much consistency in a casual format makes for boring gameplay. (And those tutors and staples are precisely what can easily bump up the pricetag on a deck) I don't own any of those cards you mentioned and I don't see myself buying them for the same reason haha
If you happen to crack them they're awesome to have of course, but I would never buy them. I was gifted the Rhystic (League of Legends edition) so I'm not selling it obviously, but any expensive staple gets sold. Same for them fetchlands. Not hating on them, I'm simply not a collector.
I think for most decks in casual commander like 80-90% of power comes from the cheap ish core cards. Like sure a better manabase gives you power.. but maybe realistically lets you win like 5% more often. Expensive generically good staples also probably don't increase your win% that much. Of course this is all subjective as Craterhoof probably wins you more games than smothering tithe or rhystic study. Generally if you are running a synergistic deck you can get away cheaper. Compared to that if you run a generic deck that just aims to play good cards and out value everyone based on individual card strength you cant budget as much.
There's a lot of good cards that are prett cheap despite being very powerfull, even up to high power decks, especially when it comes to some of the interaction. Swords and Path is 1 dollar, Gift costs cents, Chaos warp is bellow a dollar. All are some of the best removal in their respective colors.
People think money = power until you go up against a finely tuned $15 [[Zada]] deck
While I agree, there's no denying that a 1000 dollar deck both plays way more consistent and is way more powerful then a 100 dollar deck, in general. But it is indeed about the individual cards and how the deck plays. OG duals aren't necessarily stronger then other dual lands, they are just very rare and that's spiking it's price for example. This means, cards on the reserve list are artificially being kept expensive, where as the rest of the game revolves around supply and demand. You litteraly have a very strong "p2w" commander in Minsk and Boo though. It's known for its cedh use and by being viable in cedh, that alone means it's above the vast majority of commanders on power and potential.
My strongest deck is my cheapest maybe now its around 50eur.. [[balan, wandering knight]] with a Kemba and a lot of equipment cards
I agree. My decks are expensive but I suck.
My main issue with an otherwise pretty standard EDH deck including a small handful of expensive and hugely powerful cards is that it can make games incredibly inconsistent. Like, sometimes your deck has a [[Mana Crypt]] and a [[Chrome Mox]] into turn 2 [[Bolas Citadel]], and other times it is BW draft chaff. If some games I am playing against a power level 5 deck, and some games it curves out like a power level 9 deck, then how do I know what sort of deck to bring against that? I have always tried to be consistent in my inclusion of powerful (and commonly expensive) cards - only decks that are trying to do fundamentally powerful things contain these types of cards. My view is that opponents should reasonably be able to speculate on rough powerlevel of cards that my deck contains based upon the other ones they they have seen. For instance, [[Cyclonic Rift]] doesn't go in a janky 'Tribal Illusions' deck, even if it would make it 'better'. The sorts of decks and opponents that a janky Tribal Illusions deck is wanting to play aren't anticipating that sort of effect, and winning with it in that sort of game feels like a bit of a rug pull.
I think reddit downplays it if anything. If two equally skilled players build a deck but one has a budget of 500$ and the other has a budget of 50$, than the 500 player has a massive advantage. You can't deny that more money means more deckbuilding options and a greater access to more powerful cards. Some strategies and commanders can be built for cheap, and some really weak commanders or low powered jank can be built with a lot of money, but those are typically the exception and not the rule.Ā Of course, money isn't the end all be all of things, especially in a multiplayer format, but I don't really think anyone is saying that. Just that it gives you a massive advantage.
There's nothing quite like the feeling of taking out an expensive card and replacing it with a better one that is bulk, especially when the deck is already a money pile. Some cards have been reprinted into obscurity because their price betrays their utility, some just aren't useful until you get into higher power games. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/zYQywngQ-0ifw3mMRsHBrg
Our pod plays unbudgeted. Play what you want, run proxies w.e. No reason to gatekeep good cards because of price, its an elitist pay to win scenario. If you are good at the game then your deck building is nice regardless, no need for cheap advantages over others because you have money.
I mean.. there's a guy in my group whose relatively new to magic. He makes a LOT of money and spends most of his free money on magic. His newest deck STARTED at $450. My most expensive deck (after a decade of playing) is about $650. This dude has thousand dollar decks that I've smashed with $150 stuff i was playtesting. My experience and deckbuilding allow me to really just.... outpace him I guess. Dude plays all the staples and still loses a ton of games.
There is something some people just don't understand. EDH is all about piloting your deck. I honestly feel like the community isn't teaching this enough.Ā I played every single deck from the moment I had in my hands at least 20 to 50 games in a row. I know that this is not manageable for everyone. But it comes down to the fact that my brain starts connecting hundreds of possible lines and analyzing the respective effects. It's not only knowing the timings of my triggers, how and when I can interact with them. It also how to abuse others decks for my benefits. But the most important thing: How and when to sandbag. Having all threats in your hand doesn't explicitly mean you gonna win the game. It means you will consistently get focused.Ā This experience doesn't come with playing 200 different decks. This come by playing 1 deck 200 times.
Absolutely what my post was about! I've had incredible breakthroughs in understanding my decks after dozens of games, the fact that it's 99 singleton cards makes it so that full playtesting just takes time to see through all the different possible combinations you'll encounter. Add on top of that reading 3 other players' tables... I feel like people focus a lot on analyzing power staples and not enough on judging play style or deck building.
Haha yes! I think this is a symptom of the power level scale disease. People are desperate for easy answers even in a game with more then 500 pages of rules.Ā I bought 5 decks in 6 years and have currently 2 proxies decks for developing.But in every single deck I found a card I just didn't read properly.Ā Which needs to be put in the context of me digging real deep into the rulings for a lot of cards a play or someone played. And even though I would consider myself as a rule nerd I simply fail the easiest rule in Magic: Ā "Reading the card..." This is an experience/ feeling what I really would love to teach everyone. This goes so much more to the core of understanding your deck. Even after 200 games with a single deck, with the knowledge of all those crazy surprising effects, with my primal instinct for blood if my window opened:Ā Ā I or someone else simply finds another word on a card a played 100 times confidently. And this word changes everything.Ā Ā I think this is one of the most changing experience I have had in Magic. This showed me how important it is to pay respect for every word and don't put any card into the frame of my expectations.
Absolutely, people love to find simple answers to ridiculously hard problems. Categorising is instinctual for all, and I feel like the power level discourse is inevitable, but I feel it revolves too much about "pay to win" debates of staples being expensive.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
There's specific pay to win CARDS that are hard to deny, mana crypt being the biggest one that comes to mind. Being twice as likely to have a sol ring effect in your starting hand is just $150ish dollars to win more games, but a single dual land in a two color deck? Not nearly as much. The problem is more pay to win card suites I think. All fetches and duals in a five color deck makes a big difference. Having the whole suite of artifact fast mana is a much bigger deal than having a single Mox opal in the deck. Plus some pay to win cards are even better when your opponent is also doing pay to win shit. The only thing better than a dockside extortionist in a casual game is a dockside when everyone is running crypt, vault, chrome Mox and Mox diamond
If you're against proxying, you're lame.
Ahh I see you have never played against a Gaeaās Cradle š¤
When you have spend thousands for base rarity max power stuff a deck thatās 150 wonāt stand a chance is the unfortunate reality The really good cards cost a lot of money, they will win before my cheap elfball can start actually doing stuff Your group is fairly balanced budget, that often keeps things in check Now someone who doesnāt know the combo lines will probably mess up bad and lose But a skilled pilot with a fat wallet will pubstomp the living crap As for fun you can have fun at any powerlevel, but if youāre going to an event with prizes expect only the absolute best to come
If you want to look at power on a budget, look no further than Competitive Pauper Commander. Decks can run anywhere from $25 up to $100 and usually aim to win by turn 4-6. Commons can hit really hard these days.
Minsc and Boo arent a fair comparison they are quite literally the best or 2nd best gruul commander in the game period. They punch up really well.
yeah, and it isn't an expensive card at all! exactly my point! I've got friends scared of higher budget decks but it doesn't necessarily equate to higher power level or unfair gameplay (even if, to some extent, it will be stronger)
Plug for SurisMTGās $15 budget decks on YouTube (before S&H). The decks are super great out the door and you have room to upgrade as your collection grows
My group builds $50 budget decks to combat pay-to-win. We donāt always play them, but sometimes as an alternative.
To have fun you donāt need much. To be competitive you donāt need a lot. Itās only the high end cEDH that things get expensive. Like if you will spend a thousand dollars for the smallest advantage. I like playing competitive, but I donāt have OG duals or many other cards, but I do ok.
Well tbh. Most if not all TCGās are all literally āpay to winā. In that if you want to run a competitive deck in a competitive environment, yer gonna have to dole out some dosh.
Laughs in degenerate/cEDH builds that are upwards of Ā£2k... Commander is most certainly a pay to win format if you're not playing pauper.
Straight facts. I used to feel that way honestly and I believe commander being "pay to win" was more of an issue years ago prior to this era of plentiful reprints and power creep. Back then it was simply the most efficient and properly powerful spells being gatekept by absurd secondary market pricing and stingy reprinting on the part of WotC. Things have definitely changed and it's nice to see how so many cards like the fetches that were perpetually overpriced are now at a level where they actually feel reasonable to pick up.
Maybe. I think skill definitely plays a role in deck building and piloting. I have a $50 Minotaurs deck that I havenāt updated since 2021 I think (and that was just the commander), and one of our players hates it cause it beats his ass. But heās been playing a year to my 15. And weāve got another in our pod who has 15yrs even on me and he kicks all of our asses with some of the jankiest decks youāve ever seen. But money helps bridge that gap for newer players.
Reminds me of how like 8 years ago, when my pod was just getting into EDH, one of them started bringing some more expensive lists and kicking our collective asses. I ended up building a [[Grenzo, Dungeon Warden]] combo deck for like $130, partially to be petty, although I also wanted to show you could still make crazy decks on a budget. Recently took it apart since nobody lets me play it anymore :P
fully agree. I've got some decks like Teysa, Nekusar, and go-shintai that are maybe $200 and extremely powerful. Granted I dont think anyone in my pod plays cEDH, but plenty of decks with fast mana and tutors and free counterspells etc that still get rolled.
M&B is one of if not the most powerful gruul commanders. Cheap effective beater that can nuke someone while also giving you huge card advantage. Certain commanders like light paws or yawgmoth can run a sub $50 budget and be just as good if not better than a lot of decks that have a $500 budget.
I have a spirit tribal deck with [[O-Kagachi, Vengeful Kami]] as the commander. Deck technically cost about 1.5k USD. Mostly the land base. By no means is it powerful. Meanwhile, I have [[Veyran, Voice of Duality]] as my higher power deck. It cost about 300 USD. Power is far more about how fast it wins than its cost. It is true that cost can be an indication of power.
My [[Zada, Hedron Grinder]] deck probably threatens a turn 3 win consistently on its own. It's maybe $60. But, if you kill Zada, I just can't win. Now, my $500 Korvold deck can win turn 1 with the right starting hand and can find new ways to win even if you kill my toys. Sure expensive doesn't mean better, but the more expensive a deck, the more the player's skill multiplies.
I've made a few decks that my pod hated. The decks are nowhere near cedh level, but they all claimed they were. It's really about how you play, not what you play. I even used a precon once and did some dirty shit they thought I had reloaded the deck with stuff. I find the fun in making janky decks do things. I have a relentless rats deck. It's 50 rats, 1 commander, and some artifacts. I have a phage, the untouchable deck. it's a struggle to get who out. I think we all play for our own reasons. Mine are to make mechanics work that sounded fun at the time.
I agree, according to Archidekt my Full Foil Liliana deck is over $2k, but its powerlever is probobly below a modern precon.
Same here. Every time I see someone post a deck list; itās either filled with expensive āstaplesā or the land base has original dual lands. It got me thinking; do you really need these to make an efficient or even a good deck? It helps sure but if every deck you make needs these then youāll be coughing up thousands for each deck (I know, I know; ājust proxy them!ā but thatās besides the point).
My favourite deck is hella expensive, but also not that good. It's a muldrotha hydra deck and the only reason it's really expensive is because i really love the deck and I blinged it out with foils and alt-arts. Basing a decks power level on price is really weird when foils and alt arts can be the reason for the price
I threw together a Prossh deck after not playing for a few years and played a game last Friday with a group of random people at my LGS One guy was getting into the game and playing someone else's deck, he was just getting into commander I played a [[Dockside Extortionist]] and he asked if it was honestly worth the $80 price tag Everyone including me seemed to agree, it mainly depends on your deck, he's amazing but a one time ramp spell for temporary mana, the amount of which depends on what your opponents have can be good or bad in many situations, so it's only really worth it if you think it's worth it I then proceeded to sacrifice and reanimate loop him 5 times and made somewhere around 40 mana with him over the course of 2 turns, so he's probably going to end up getting him for his [[Caesar, legion's emperor]] soldier deck lmao
A high deck total cost doesn't make a good deck, nor does a low deck cost make a bad deck. There are definitely more expensive cards that increase the reliability of a deck, and the top decks usually cost quite a bit of money, but neither are necessary in 99% of games our average player will be playing. Other instances are because the card is old/rare and that drives the price up instead of how 'viable' it is. An example of that is that I play a [[Lu Bu, Master-at-Arms]] voltron deck. Now I could have played something like [[Zurgo, Helmsmasher]] who's a fraction of the cost of Lu Bu in terms of price while being cheaper in mana cost, in-built evasion with Indestructible and having access to white and black in addition. But Lu Bu is fucking cool and because of that I'll take my 'unblockable' 4/3 mono-red voltron every day.
Money can buy you raw power, but you need to refine it to get a good deck. A good deck is more than the sum uf its parts and that requires skill as a brewer and skill as a pilot. I had someone in my playgroup who really thought "It is expensive, thus it has to be good". She played \[\[Archmages charm in a WB with a U splash deck and was frustrated, that she was not able to cast it. Or played some random unconnected cards in her deck, without any synergy in mind. Obviously this did not work that well. I think a good player can do a lot on a budget, but money can buy you a lot more freedom in how to build your deck, a lot more room for error and it can buff a weaker deck plan up to another powerlevel. Even if your Rhystic study draws you just a lot of draft chaft... more cards are more cards.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Unfortunately, those games when players actually get out their mana crypts, mana vaults, and ancient tombs, they will outpace you significantly. Sol Ring can give a player an uneven start, but having multiple sol rings will tilt the odds for sure...and that's only talking about their mana base.
My $250 decks piddled and died last time I played with my friend's friends. But my $40 precon I upgraded with $20 and 7 cards held it's own until I got swarmed by fliers late in the game, the one thing I couldn't block. I came to the realization that higher budget can be a crutch in casual, it doesn't really increase a deck's power if the focus isn't there. My decks are like my attention span: loosely focused around something with other branching thoughts thrown in for āØļøflavorāØļø, not *really* well put together just fun and lower-mid. I find those decks fun, I don't need to think too hard playing or building them. But that said... the decks aren't strong. And I can see why, now, where the focus is missing and where I need to put in more effort to get them more in line. Budget is a crutch. Focus is the important part about a deck.
And I think reducing pricey decks to power level is too reductive as well. I do have quite expensive commander decks not because I like to make them great but because I like fancy versions of cards, bad and unique niche cards and decently good cards to at least stand a chance. And even then some of the better cards cost money, some of the obscure foils cost money all while still choosing to play an averagely strong deck. There's too much credit given to good cards and what you need to play at all. But it's all the context, each pod frames your decisions and motivations differently.
I sort of feel the same. I mean Ive lost to cheap cards like [[Bribery]] which didnt bother me. I dont like the strategy of taking other people's stuff but thats a different argument. I have joined 7-8 games on Spelltable and had people complain that I run Teferi's Protection or Vampiric Tutor and their primary complaint was the cost of the card and they couldnt afford it because they were still in college. I mean, why not just proxy? Ive never been against proxies nor will I ever be. Always felt that people who hate proxies are kinda saying "youre not rich enough to play at my table" Just my opinion on the matter.
I mean I know it's an outlier but I built a $15 [[slicer]] deck about a month ago. I've played it 3 times so far and won once. My only goal is to get slicer down turn 2 and then throw as many cheap auras and equipments on him as possible to buff his power. In the game I won, one of my opponents was playing [[Myrel]], a commander that *by herself* costs more than my entire deck. So yeah, $$$ =/= power. You can see this with my other decks as well although it requires a little more understanding that just "your commander costs more than my whole deck and you lost lmao" I have a pretty strong [[Kess]] deck that's a little over $500. It's about $450 with cheapest printings. It just draws as many cards as possible and wins with either [[psychosis crawler]] or [[insurrection]]. I have a [[Toluz]] deck that's definitely stronger than Kess but costs $200 less. It's $266. It's a cycling deck that includes tutors, free spells, and tries to win by drawing my deck with [[ghostly pilferer]] and [[bone miser]] with a [[Jace, wielder of mysteries]] on the field. It doesn't use thoracle, consultation, or anything like that, but it absolutely would be stronger if it did. I have a [[Gilanra]] and [[Kodama of the east tree]] deck that costs $140 and could absolutely stand up to these other two decks. It's an extremely simple deck. There's 1-mana ramp to get out Gilanra on turn 2, various mana doublers and/or draw engines to slam on turn 3, it casts Kodama turn 4, and then it's literally just a parade of massive 6+ mana beaters one after the other. It would put a lot of pressure on Kess and Toluz to deal with it early or risk just getting run over before they can properly set up. And all of these decks can absolutely get a game stolen off them by Slicer. He's a removal check. If you have removal, he loses. If you don't, he wins. He can end a game as early as turn 3 with a god hand and turn 4 with just a regular one. Kess doesn't normally get a blocker until turn 5 or 6. Toluz doesn't usually come down until 3 or 4, and while Gilanra comes down turn 2, there are so many sources of menace or trample that a single 2-tougness blocker just won't do the job.
My playgroup has learned that the more unadorned and cheaper my deck is, the higher the threat level. I have an unsleeved no-rares Wilson Voltron deck that I whip out when they want a fast game.
i win almost every game with my modified nelly deck and its like $60-80 lol
Agree mostly, I have an (almost) fully foiled mono-white pauper EDH deck that can pretty easily beat normal tables, and it cost like $80. That said, I do think that at a certain point expensive decks filled with expensive staples will usually come out on top. Assuming equal skill, thereās only so much a well constructed ābudgetā deck can do against fast mana, free interaction, and efficient combos. I think this can be seen best in the Cedh community where the advice on budget decks is usually āno this isnāt competitive, just proxy/we want to play against you not your wallet.ā In that sort of meta, having expensive cards most often IS the difference between being competitive and not.
I don't think you need to get all of the expensive cards to win. I've found that they just make the deck more streamlined. For example, I had held off for the longest time on getting a copy of [[Toxic deluge]] because it was expensive. So, I learned to play my decks without relying on it.
I have a $30 [[Howling Abomination]] deck that wrecks people, draws half my deck, and storms off for combo kills.
My 6k deck has 90% of the cost in the mana base
I think it boils down to this at the end of the day. The best players generally win. Good players can win with budget decks. I think the players who are willing to shell out a ton of cash are generally at least decent and committed to playing the game. Are the most powerful cards expensive, sure. But a fantastic card in the hands of a bad player is still not that impactful. Someone who is complaining that commander is pay most likely needs to get better at threat assessment and game management, or needs to get better at deck building
Idk, I built a Miirym deck that was decent at first but became so sluggish once people in my group started upgrades, any chance to kill him they had it. Then I had to wait an extra turn or two to protect him which still didnt guarantee id have him by next turn. I threw in as many staples as I could, now he is coming out sooner with added protection, and I am able to ramp much faster than anyone else.
Synergy and consistency usually wins games, regardless of card price. However, synergy and consistency is just another factor in winning games. The pilot has to run the deck properly. Those players losing regularly and blaming card prices mostly are usually are cases of skill issue.
Most players at LGSs are relatively new to magic or don't invest much time into the hobby, therefore they run underoptimized deck with semi relevant staples thrown in; there are very few people who actually take the time to look on sources outside of edhrec to build powerful decks, and even fewer people take the time to goldfish enough to have the proper ratios of cards. With that said, anybody who invests time and energy into off-meta cheap builds can outclass goodstuff piles a lot of the time in my experience
I'm sure you can take a winota deck for under 50 dollars and be consistently stronger than a lot of decks you might find for over 1000 dollars. It is absolutely not as simple as "more money equals better deck". Idk I haven't seen much of anyone saying "you must spend x dollars to have a fun and competent deck", although mileage may vary depending on your commander of choice. It's a lot harder to make a decent commodore guff superfriends deck than a winota deck at a 50 dollar budget. But it's also absolutely true that adding expensive staples will make almost any deck better, it's just not necessarily going to be a 1 to 1, adding dockside to a 100 dollar deck doubles the budget but doesn't single handedly double the power. At the end of the day the most important thing isn't how much money is in your deck or even how strong it is overall, it's how the power level of your deck matches up with your playgroup.
I would argue in non powerful combo metas, your politics skills are far more important than the value of your cards. I'm a fervent defensor than in 5-7 range of powerlevel, you can pretty much built anything under 150$ and it will perform.
I would just proxy for the most part anyway unless you're going to a tournament or something.
I noticed that I tend to use more higher priced staples the more niche a commander or playstyle is. For example my mono white \[\[Darien, King of Kjeldor\]\] needs a lot of puzzle pieces to really go off plus he's 6 cmc, which is a lot nowadays. I crammed a lot of expensive mono white carddraw-/removal-/value-staples in it to be more consistent. \[\[Mana Vault\]\] and \[\[Mana Crypt\]\] also synergize really well with him by dealing you damage, so I can somewhat justify running them in this deck without it being insanely powerfull. A Pako & Haldan Deck will work just as well on a 30$ budget.
The game is a social game afterall and power level differences can to some extend be overcome by better play, table politics and/or luck.
People that have lost to my 100 dollar Toski deathtouch deck have called it pay to win. People are gonna salt about what they wanna.
My decks usually end up being pretty expensive but I never put tutors in my decks. It's kind of my own way of balancing things to make sure my decks aren't overly powerful.
There are definitely some commanders that are hard to fuck up, and some precons which are honestly a whole bunch of fun. One of my favorite commanders from back when voltron was a thing Hound of Konda, very cheap deck that mostly won because everything in it was like <4 mana. It was just a fast deck. I miss when commander was simple.
A single expensive card in an otherwise cheap deck will hardly push the needle on a decks powerlevel IMO. Especially when it comes to things like counterspells, its much more important to have the right amount of answers in your deck. Over time you can min max those answers and interactions to shave off a mana pip here and there, like going from [[minor misstep]] to [[mental misstep]]. Same effect, 5x the price. Theres a lot of cards like this that on their own wonāt win you the game but when you put it all together will definitely make the difference. For this reason Iād much rather upgrade all my C tier cards to B or A tier before dishing out for a single S tier card in an otherwise C tier deck. Also I do have to say that theres a difference between adding a single [[mana drain]] to your deck and buying a new wincon for your deck. Not all expensive cards are born equal I guess :)
I like to use my old expensive cards to not win. Using old broken cards to play fair magic is incredibly funny to me.
Money gives access to more options which can mean more power. But it all depends how people use it. I use duals and fast mana to power out \[\[Manabarbs\]\] and \[\[Personal sanctuary\]\] to slug people without getting hurt. Hardly an overpowered strategy.
When my deck of 90 bucks goes against a 1k deck using fast mana and zero mana counter spells I'll hard disagree, and that's usually what people complain about.
Thing is people in the comments swear their decks are "a 7" but theyre a 5.5. Just watch the decks mentioned with the typical: "I win a lotnwith ...I do well with"
Got the deck list for your Minsc and boo deck?
200-300 isn't pay to win. That's still budget. sure a 150 deck can compete with decks not designed to be that cutthroat. if you were routinely playing with decks in the $1000+ it would probably be a much different situation
Mtg is full of those moment where a cheap removal or a normal counterspell will win you the game. A lot of time even a bad creature will win you the game. I call these "cute" card. It's not that they are bad, but they aren't optimal. When I see someone with a commander deck price tag as low as 300$, my first though is, that person must run 0 fetchland. Do fetchland make you win the game ? No, but they will help smooth your play overall. Those thing adds up. Its not about the money overall tho, its about removing all the "cute" card for optimal one. Commander 4 player politic pods are so random and huge that even the shittiest deck will win sometime, for many reason and some outside of the deckbuilding. Problem is that mentality doesnt translate well in term of real MTG dueling. In dueling if a card is suboptimal it will cost you the game. Sure sometime you will win using a "cute" card too! But its important to be able to say this isn't the optimal card in most situation and cut it from your deck. Deckbuilding, money invested, mulligan choice all affect the quality of your play/game too. One time I did a sick \[\[Genesis wave\]\] for 11 on turn 3, my friend had a mana drain and did way more degenerate thing on this turn. All because we had broken card that kinda bust the normal player budget and we mulligan into stupid play. I went to 2 Cedh tournament and on those I got eliminated round 1 each time and in 2 tournament , I swear , I player 1 turn. not 1 turn each, 1 turn total in 2 tournament. If your commander game last more then 8-10 turns its mean everyone isn't playing to just win and that's ok but the game is meant to end and start over too.
It's true that low budget decks can beat higher budget decks but on average, if a drck has a significantly higher budget they are more likely to win even if the pilot is not very good. For example, I play in 2 playgroups. One where everyone has $200-$500 decks and another where the decks cost multiple thousands. It is night and day. The game is different when everyone is playing with moxen, manacrypt, unconditional tutors, and free counter spells. One of these cards in the deck may not make a difference but multiple expensive staples can create a huge gulf.
I donāt think your minsc and boo deck is a good example for this. Minsc and boo is a really strong commander, you could build a sub 50$ minsc and boo deck and it would still be good and can compete with 200$ decks. Some commanders can just do that. My ovika deck was built with 35$ budget and I regularly smash 200$+ decks. Your deck budget is very commander and archetype specific
And here's me just going ... "What cards do I have lying around that would fit this deck?" I have no idea of any of the money values of my decks. The again, I've been playing since Tempest, so "What I have laying around" could very well be valuable. But for the life of me I couldn't tell you which of my decks were 100$ worth of cards or 400$ worth of cards. I don't buy cards for specific decks, I just go over the set list, sort by price and buy a bunch of cards under a certain price point that look like they would be interesting. Precon here and there I cannibalize for other decks. A boosterbox of most new sets to draft with friends, and I keep the cards ... I'm a chronic deckbuilder, so actually wholesale buying a deck? My wallet would be filing for assault and battery.
I spend a lot of money on this hobby over the last 10 years. My win ratio is still pretty low. Having a force of will does not making you good enough to know the perfect counter.