Budget Magic and Budget Cards

Lets start with a few definitions and assumptions.

There are quite a few good sources for "budget" Magic: the Gathering decks; some of the ones I regularly look at include Saffron Olive's Budget Magic articles on MTGGoldfish and Neal Oliver's Budget Brews on ChannelFireball.  The main quibble I have with most of the budget content available is that the budget is too high!  So below are some basic thoughts related to budget Magic.

Definitions (in almost alphabetical order)

• Budget deck - a Standard format deck with a "real" cost to build of about $20 US.  I use MTGVault to build decks (note that many of my publicly shared decks are from previous Standard formats), and their middle price is usually pretty realistic, but when I cite a price for a specific card, I am usually looking at the lowest price for a Lightly Played or better on TCGPlayer.  You can build other format decks on a budget too, but $20 is really stretching it to make a functional deck in any other format.
• Bulk rare - a rare card priced around $0.50 or less.
• Bulk mythic - a mythic rare card priced around $1.00 or less.
• Marginal rare - a rare or mythic rare card that costs somewhere in the $0.50 - $2.00 range.  We can include a few marginal rares and still make a budget deck.
• Playset - 4 copies of the same card.  I mention this only to say that most decks want playsets of their best cards, so keeping to a $20 budget usually means limiting the number of playsets of upper-end marginal cards.  A playset of a card that only costs $1.25 is $5, a quarter of our budget!
• Sleeper - a card that is only bulk or marginal because people haven't decided that it is good yet.  If you are trying to make money by playing the market, you want to buy sleepers because of the potential profit of selling after they pop.  If you are a budget player, you want to buy sleepers before they pop because that is how you play with better cards for less money.
• Secondary card market - (or just "market") cards sold as singles instead of unopened products.  Unopened product is the primary market.

Helpful Assumptions and Generalizations

The Standard market balances itself.  It took me some time to understand exactly why this works, but the general concept is that there is essentially unlimited supply of unopened product in Standard-legal sets (because WotC can always print more), so if the values of individual cards become too high, people who sell cards will open more product as long as they can make a profit by selling the singles, and then prices will go down as supply meets demand.  Thus, the average expected value (EV) of a pack of cards is less than or equal to the price of a pack of cards.  So within a particular set, there will always be a large number of bulk rares to offset the value of the expensive rares.  This is an important concept, because rares are important, and most of the untapped potential of a Standard environment is hidden in bulk rares.

Colors and lands make decks expensive.  One of the frustrations of playing on a budget is that better mana fixing is always expensive.  This applies in every format that exists, and the reason is that WotC prints most of the better mana lands at rare.  In Standard, rare dual or multicolor lands often range anywhere from $1.00 to $10 per copy (due to consistent high demand), and we just don't have room for many land playsets even at the best case of $1.00.  Basic lands are essentially free, so we'd much rather fill most of our land slots with those.  So most budget decks in most formats will have to be either mono-color or two-color in order to function.  There are exceptions -- decks based heavily in green can have more multicolored mana sources, and multicolor sets like Khans of Tarkir provide better mana fixing at common and uncommon -- but usually we are best off sticking to one or two colors.

Prices are always falling.  On average, over time, cards drop in price.  This is because more product is always being opened, and because people are more likely to spend their money on new cards and less likely to spend money on cards that will rotate out of Standard soon.  Some cards will increase or hold value, but those are the exceptions.  So we can usually get more for our money if we don't buy cards that were just released.  Many marginal rares will become bulk if we wait awhile.  The Pro Tour (two weeks after release of each set) is the biggest opportunity for cards to pop, so if we want to speculate on cards that we think are better than their price, the week before the Pro Tour may be the last chance.

You need some rares.  There is a very deliberate process to how Wizards of the Coast R&D assigns rarity, particularly now that Limited formats are a major part of their focus.  Common cards often have weaker stats than uncommon and rare cards, but more importantly, common cards are rarely better than 1-for-1.  They also tend to be low-complexity, which results in less potential for having hidden strengths.  Uncommon cards are extremely variable, but uncommon is where many of the better "support" cards for constructed come from -- removal, counterspells, cheap card draw.  Rare is a completely mixed bag, but rare cards almost always come with either high raw power or high/hidden complexity.  This is where you will get your scalable card advantage, your >2-for-1's, and your build-arounds.  And mythic rare is exactly what you would expect from the rest of the rarity progression.  At $20 budget, most purely strong mythics are out of your price range, leaving high-mana cost cards, mega build-arounds, and downright weird cards.  There are hidden gems to be found at mythic, but $0.25 - $0.50 rares offer a lot of punch if you can match their synergies with some uncommon and common cards.

You can win with cheap cards.  I believe that Wizards of the Coast R&D is committed to making a game that is fun and diverse.  They know that the more stratified the card quality and strategy quality becomes, the less fun people will have, the less they will play, and fewer cards will be sold.  Every set is obviously seeded with a variety of card types to appeal to their various audience segments -- the different psychographic groups, people who play different formats, and people who play at different skill and competition levels -- but there are enough cards that can win games that they can't all be expensive.  Sure, some strategies will be generally better than most in a vacuum, but R&D does try to ensure that every threat has an answer, and every answer has a threat that beats it.  You may have to sacrifice some consistency or some raw power, but there are other advantages you can gain, such as experience playing the same deck longer-term than people who shift decks with the metagame, or the element of surprise.  It's a wonderful feeling to know exactly what is in your opponent's deck when they have no idea what you are trying to do.
What do you think?  I know some of these assumptions are conditional, but I think that we can work with these.

FNM Draft Report 2017-02-10

I intend to talk about constructed Magic, but I will also do some reports on different formats when I get to play them.


So here's my draft report from Friday Night Magic on February 10.  This was my first time drafting Aether Revolt (AER-AER-KLD), but I ran a few practice drafts on Tappedout the week leading up.  I also played the prerelease, where I was 1 - 2 in matches, and I've been following the various articles about drafting this set.  I think one of my mistakes at prerelease was not realizing how flexible the mana can be in a set with a lot of artifacts, but I found a different source of flexibility in this draft -- playing green.


Here is my draft, with Pack 1 beginning on the upper left (sorry about the scrolling -- I wanted it to be big enough to read).

Ok, so first off, this is $10 FNM draft, not Pro Tour high stakes stuff, so of course if I open a planeswalker I'm taking it, even if it's not the best draft card in the pack,  There were maybe two other cards that I thought were better first picks, and serious players may have found more, but Ajani Unyielding was never in question for me.  Next I saw two high quality artifacts that improved my flexibility.  I was planning to play green-white, but as you can see, the first pack gave me very little in white.  By the end of the pack I was definitely in green and slightly in black, with enablers to reward me for a +1/+1 counters theme.  Rogue Refiner was also a possible draw toward blue and/or energy.

Pack 2 started with a Peacewalker Colossus.  There were some other reasonable picks, but with Ajani and two good mana fixers in Pack 1, I was at least splashing white anyway and this would make any other vehicles I came across more attractive.  After that, the rest of Pack 2 was mostly green, and I felt like I was getting pretty good green cards pretty late into the pack.  Renegade Rallier was an interesting signal that no one else was in green-white (I had taken the Maulfist Revolutionary from that pack and was surprised to see Renegade Rallier wheel back to me), and I finished the pack with a couple playable white cards,  This pack led me more toward energy strategies, especially with the two Peema Aether-Seers.  I was also pretty split between making black or white my secondary color, but I was firmly in green with 12 playable mono-green cards and several good split green cards and artifacts.

In my Kaladesh pack, my goal was to find a reason to go into white, black, or blue as a second color, and to find a card that spends energy well.  My Pack 3 rare was Dubious Challenge, one of the worst possible cards for draft.  I don't remember the uncommons, but they didn't seem quite strong enough to overrule the common Peema Outrider.  Servant of the Conduit is always good, and I had been planning on a splash since early in Pack 1, so it supported the energy, splash, and is at least a bear.  Gonti appearing next was the nudge I needed to solidify black as my second color, as he is a good enough rare that he signaled other good black cards might still find their way to me, and the 2BB cost is restrictive enough to prohibit splashing.  After a couple more solid green cards supporting the +1/+1 counters theme, and an Inventor's Goggles (which became much better with Aether Revolt but wasn't highly synergistic with my own cards), I received two more great gifts.  Rashmi at 7th and Aetherborn Marauder at 8th were very surprising.  The Marauder was the payoff I was looking for in +1/+1 counters, and Rashmi is an easy splash who can build massive card and mana advantage if she doesn't get zapped immediately.  Even on the wheel I was getting cards that my deck actively wanted like Kujar Seedsculptor and Attune with Aether.


In terms of numbers, I ended up with 4 rare/mythic and 10 uncommon, which is slightly above the 3 and 9 that would normally be opened in 3 packs.  Ajani is around $6 and Rashmi is about $1.50 right now.  Losing in draft is worse if you don't get any value out of the packs, but this was pretty good.

Many of the comments I've seen about AER-AER-KLD draft have suggested that the power of the cards feels underwhelming until the Kaladesh pack, and then it ramps up significantly.  I felt like this was doubly true for my draft, with a very good rare and mythic coming my way later than expected in the KLD pack in addition to all the normal playables.  I missed a chance to pick up a Hazardous Conditions, which is both on-color and fits the +1/+1 counter theme, but I was very happy with the amount of mana fixing and +1/+1 counters cards I was able to grab throughout the draft.  I was a little weak on traditional removal spells, with good sideboard removal for artifacts and fliers.  But Pacification Array is a monster of a removal spell, as it scales with their best creature in play, and Ajani himself is a strong removal spell.  I felt like I did a good job on my curve by drafting plenty of playable 2-drops and 3-drops.  The KLD 4-drops in Pack 3 were so strong that I cut all of my AER 4-drops.  I never found the big energy payoff card that I was hoping for, so I was content letting the Peema Aether-Seers sit out, even though I had drafted them fairly highly.  A 3/2 for 4 isn't good on its own, and I suspect its "Lure" ability is a lot trickier to get value from than it looks.  I had enough incidental energy to support Thriving Rhino, my best repeatable energy outlet, without adding mediocre energy producers.  I also never struck more vehicles to go with Peacewalker Colossus, and the Crew 4 cost doesn't match up well enough with my creatures, so Peace...out.



After the draft, here is the deck I started with.  After a couple games I ended up removing Prey Upon in favor of Highspire Infusion (one of my classic mistakes in draft is playing entirely at sorcery speed, so I am trying to make sure I always have some instant tricks), but otherwise my main deck stayed the same all night.  I feel like I built the deck pretty well, which is a big step up from some of my other drafts.  One of the pitfalls of online draft simulators is that you don't get to see how the deck would actually play out, so it's easy to just draft a bunch of cards in two colors and think you did great.  You have to play real games to learn good deckbuilding.

Here was my sideboard plan.  I had more cards sleeved up but never touched them.  Highspire Infusion actually stayed in the deck once I put it in -- I just took the picture for illustration.  Aetherstream Leopard (an aggressive creature that doesn't play well on defense) and a Forest were the first cards to come out for selective removal spells.  I learned a cute but simple trick from Frank Karsten's strategy articles, and I've used it a lot recently with generally good results: On the draw, side out a land.  This deck started with 16 lands, and I went down to 15 regularly in the second or third game, and I even went down to 14 once in Game 3 on the draw.  My side-ins were super cheap, so that helped also.  Prey Upon came in against bomb creatures (I had a little deathtouch in the deck, so Prey Upon can kill anything at a cost of card advantage).  Take Down came in against certain fliers and Natural Obsolescence came in against strong artifacts.

My most disappointing card was Renegade Rallier.  Sometimes I wasn't able to make Revolt trigger, but often I simply had no eligible targets in the graveyard.  I did get back a Scrounging Bandar with it at least once, but most of the time it was just a 3/2 that was slightly difficult to cast.



Below are my mana fixers (top row) and my MVPs (bottom row).  With 4 spells that gave me access to any color of mana, I rarely had trouble paying my black, blue, or white costs.  Renegade Map in particular was extremely strong, because it allowed me to keep even a hand with 1 Swamp and no other lands and search up a Forest.  Attune with Aether is almost the same effect, but it requires a Forest to work.



Gonti and Rashmi are different kinds of unfair card advantage.  Gonti only gives 1 card (unless you are unlucky enough to flip 4 lands) but you have access to cast it even if they die first (Aetherborn are non-sexual beings, so Magic Story uses "they" instead of "he" or "she").  Rashmi on the other hand, just keeps giving and giving as long as the opponent can't kill her.  I also really enjoyed getting Rashmi in this draft because she was my promo card at the Kaladesh prerelease, and I never once drew her during the tournament!  So this gave me a do-over.  My one quibble with Rashmi is that for some reason she is a druid rather than an artificer -- the flavor police would strongly disagree, and so do Inventor's Goggles.  Aetherborn Marauder was my only flier, but they (see that "they" again?) had the ability to completely reverse a game on their own.  They never came down as just a 2/2, always falling somewhere between 3/3 and 5/5 with all my +1/+1 counter producers (and the other creatures were always happy to donate).  And Pacification Array doesn't need much explanation -- it's one of those cards that you play on Turn 1 and the other guy just groans.

So how did the matches go?  There were 25 people in the draft (8-8-9 in draft pods), which meant we played 5 rounds and then cut to the Top 8 for prizes.



Round 1 was against R, a teen who also happened to be in black-green.  It did not start well at all, as he had his own Turn 1 Pacification Array in Game 1 (and I just groaned!).  I hung in a little bit, but he played first and I just never caught up.  Game 2 was where things got interesting.  We went back and forth a bit, and then he played a Platinum Angel.  Lucky for me, he didn't quite understand how it worked (he thought no one could win and the game would be a draw), so he didn't attack much at first.  Some other people gathered around because we were going slow, and everyone was in awe of the Angel, and about the time that R figured out he still needed to kill me, I drew my Ajani and sent the Angel off to work in the fields.  I even got a second shot with Ajani, but R had a Foundry Screecher that slowly killed me.  He made another mistake in this game by attacking with a Dhund Operative that he thought had deathtouch, and I made a mistake of attacking into his Lifecraft Cavalry because I had just played Pacification Array and sort of mentally noted the Cavalry as tapped even though it wasn't.  It was kind of a messy match, and I lost 0 - 2 just before time ran out.



Round 2 was against M, a veteran player in blue-black.  This was my statement round of the night.  Game 1 was pretty slow, as we bogged down the board with deathtouch creatures and no one was attacking much.  Then Rashmi came on the scene, and I buried M in cards.  One or two turns later, I played Ajani and revealed Rogue Refiner, then played Rogue Refiner and drew an additional card off his own ability.  Game 2 I put out a Scrounging Bandard and M played two Watchful Automatons.  I thought about casting Cruel Finality on my turn while his mana was down, but decided to wait.  On his next turn, he cast Tezzeret's Touch to make one of the robots a 5/5, and I interrupted the sequence with Cruel Finality to blow him out.  My next turn I had Aetherborn Marauder taking the counters off the Bandar to become a 4/4, and after that it was all over.  Win 2 - 0.


Round 3 was against N, a teen who plays often and at a fairly high skill level.  He had a red-white vehicles deck with Sram for card draw, the 3/1 flier who gives your vehicles flying, two Seige Modifications, and a bunch of first strike, double strike, and menace.  Game 1 he was on the play and just curved over the top of me with nonstop threats.  Game 2 I went down to 15 lands on the play, and I curved over the top of him.  Game 3 I went down to 14 lands, but he just had too much power and I wasn't able to keep up.  Sram and Solemn Recruit both contributed.  Loss, 1 - 2.  But he had to leave, and after he reported his win, he changed his mind and gave me the match win instead.  So that was very nice of him and lucky for me.


Round 4 was against S, another teen, playing blue-black.  He and a friend were casually opening packs and enjoying the discovery of cards they had never seen before, and I wasn't surprised to find that he was kind of new and not very knowledgeable.  Game 1 we just attacked each other until he was dead.  Game 2 we had just started when his mom called and he had to leave.  I felt good about this match either way, but he forfeited and I won 2 - 0.  I spent the remainder of my match time playing a little Standard with someone else who was idle -- that's a story for another day.


Round 5 was against D, another guy who I have played before (and lost to) at these events.  He was playing black-green.  I had 9 game points (3 wins) going in, and he had 7 (2 wins and a tie), and we were the 7th and 8th ranked players, but there were no other players below us with more than 6 points.  So he really needed the win, and I needed to get lucky with a loss, or tie, or win.  I've been in win-and-in situations before, and I have always failed to get what I needed.  Also, I was very tired at this point, as it was after 11 PM.  So there was a lot against me.  His deck mostly revolved around small deathtouch creatures, but after he already had me in a bad spot in Game 1, he played Demon of Dark Schemes and obliterated my board.  In this game I did get Rashmi out, and I made a minor error where I cast Renegade Rallier off her trigger and didn't notice that I could sacrifice my Unbridled Growth to trigger revolt until after I put Rallier on the table.  I mentioned the possibility but D insisted that putting it on the table indicated I wasn't going to do anything else before it resolved -- I think technically he's right, and I just need to pay better attention to things like that.  Game 1 went very long, and shortly into Game 2 I heard the "five minutes" call just after stealing his Demon of Dark Schemes with Gonti's ability.  I played the Demon and D immediately forfeited the game while still at 18 life, apparently thinking he was better off trying to hurry and win Game 3.  But he hadn't realized how close to running out of time we were, and he might have been able to hang on and time me out if he had tried.  After both mulliganing our Game 3 hands, we didn't start playing until 2 minutes were left.  So we drew the match 1 - 1 - 1 and I snuck into the top 8 with 10 points.


Round 6 was for prizes!  Winner gets the much maligned FNM promo Fortune's Favor and moves on, and loser gets 3 packs.  I was paired against S, a former "semi-pro" player who has won a couple of SCG opens in the past.  He was the 1-seed and I was the 8-seed, so he got to choose to play first.  After losing dice rolls all night, this was fine by me.  I was extremely tired but also excited about the opportunity to get some experience against a very good player.  The main thing I noticed was that he was very clear in communicating, which I appreciated.  His deck was a powerfully synergistic blue energy deck with just a little red.  Game 1 he just filled the board with little fliers and pinged me down to 10 before I decided I had no chance and forfeited.  He had the 2/1 flying pirate that adds counters when it hits, combined with the 1/3 who spends energy to Scry 1, so he was scrying every turn.  Then he got out the flash 0/4 guy who can spend energy to draw cards, and Padeem, who draws free cards every turn.  I think the last thing he played was a 4/3 Skywhale before I decided I had no chance.  Game 2 I showcased my sleepiness by trying to cast Unbridled Growth with a Swamp (I cast Pacification Array as my do-over).  He pulled ahead slowly with little fliers, but I actually pulled back into it with Pacification Array and a 5/6 Aetherborn Marauder.  But he had his bomb, Aethersphere Harvester, and along with bounce spells was able to grind me out.  Loss 0 - 2.


The winners of the first round of the top 8 split the remaining prizes and all walked away with a big stack of packs to go with their Fortune's Favor.


So here's what I walked away with:



All in all, a fun time and would (will) do again.  My official match record was 3 - 2 - 1, although I got a freebie from N and benefitted from a possible clock misplay by D, so I could have been as bad as 2 - 4.  In individual games, I was 5 - 7 (not including S forfeiting because he had to leave).  So I still have plenty of room for improvement.


Thanks for reading!