Garbage Deck Brewing Thread

ZephyrPhantom
I accidentally navigated away and lost my response. Blech. Oh well, I'll just put in my defense for a few of my choices:

Grave Strength has the benefit of pumping up a creature permanently and triggering the "+1/+1 and unblockable" ability on my Devourers of Memory. I'm not using it for general self-mill - I'm using it to turn a creature into an unblockable 10/9.
Mindwrack Harpy also serves a "help my Devourers" purpose - it gives me free self-mill every turn, which is important for making this work. I might look at upgrading to Nightveil Sprites, though - they're more aggressive, and they give me a bit more control over what I'm dumping.
Quest for Ancient Secrets fills up in, like, a turn. It's not slow in a deck that's self-milling 3-4 cards a turn. But yeah, I should probably cut it and put in something better.

I'm staying away from Delve creatures because my goal is to reuse my graveyard as much as possible. I might revise that, because Necropolis Fiend is... tempting.

EDIT: Ooh, Wand of Vertebra is interesting. I think I'm going to give some of those a try.

I did some playtests, and this deck is a lot faster... but Amplifire is just kinda... there? I honestly think you have too many creatures - there were a few times where I ended up tucking some cards that I really would have preferred to keep. In general, I found that the deck would be well on its way to murdertown before Amplifire came anywhere near the board.

Here's one of the decks I've been testing it against, which comes out to a nice, lean $9.56:


Weirdly enough, White has some of the most interesting creatures to abuse with Spy Kit that aren't Biovisionary, followed by Red (Pack Mastiff ($0.02) is pretty neat little puppy, and much more loyal than Cylian Sunsinger ($0.19)). Part of me things I should slip a few copies of Declaration in Stone ($1.83) in there as a boardwipe, but it's pretty expensive.

But yeah - play or flicker some strays to pump up your Spy Kit users, or just drop a Cleric or Pattern-Matcher to gets some solid ETBs (I've gotten 10 life off a Cleric of the Forward Order in this deck, which has a quality all of its own).

I kinda want to either expand it into Green so that I can include Pack Hunt ($0.36) and Timberpack Wolf ($0.06), or into Red for Pack Mastiff and Homing Lightning ($0.09). Blue and Black are actually surprisingly bad choices for this deck, though Mitotic Manipulation ($0.20) could be surprisingly potent in a creature-heavy deck.

...

I just realized that Bubbling Cauldron is only $0.12. Now that could be an interesting alternate win condition if I had more creatures...

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Some dumb deck ideas I'm playing with:

1. Wharf Infiltrator ($0.19) as the core of a Bloodrush deck. Swing with the infiltrator, toss a Rubblebelt Maaka to pump it up to a 4/4 after blockers are declared, then pay extra to create a 3/2. Could be a neat or deck, if I can figure it out. It might be more expensive, but Glint-Horn Buccaneer ($0.33) would give me some extra payoff.

2. An Elf deck entirely built around those elves that call more of themselves from your deck. Elvish Clancaller ($1.02) might be too expensive to really run as a full playset, but Growth-Chamber Guardian ($0.34), Llanowar Sentinel ($0.04), and Skyshroud Sentinel ($0.09) are much more affordable picks. If I wanted to toss a playset of all of those cards in as a deck's backbone, that'd come out to $5.96 for 16 cards, which might be a bit too much for it to squeeze in under $10.

3. A cheaper version of a Sigil Captain ($0.31) deck I built once. Seriously, there are a bunch of cheap 1/1s that are insane if you automatically pump them: Icatian Crier ($0.03), Grateful Apparition ($0.10), Segovian Angel ($0.18), Awakener Druid ($0.06), Wild Beastmaster ($0.14), etc. Special mention goes to Beloved Princess ($0.04), which becomes a 3/3 lifelink creature that will survive combat. Or just combo with Biomass Mutation ($0.14), Creeperhulk ($0.20),  Gigantomancer ($0.31)... you get the picture.

4. Just a note: you can get Jhoira of the Ghitu ($0.79) for cheap. This might be a nice opportunity to make a cheap Jhoira deck.

Well, Aeon Chronicler ($0.15) is a thing for Jhoira to play around with. I've also used her in the past to make it cheaper to play kickers. Slinn Voda, the Rising Deep ($0.14) is probably the poster-child for this, but consider cards like Elemental Appeal ($0.20), Fight with Fire ($0.06), Skizzik ($0.04), or Sphinx of Lost Truth ($0.20). That last is fantastic card advantage. Or be a jerk and splash Green for Thicket Elemental ($0.25) - I know I like cheating out a creature for .

What else... how about some Cascade goodies like Etherium-Horn Sorcerer ($0.13) or Throes of Chaos ($0.08)? Search the City ($0.11) for a five-card impulse draw that is one of the cheapest ways to score an extra turn? Or some Sagas, which will get two counters in the turn they drop - The Mirari Conjecture ($0.18) looks ripe for some janky exploitation with things that manipulate time counters, and then we have off-color Sagas like Fall of the Thran ($0.20) or The Eldest Reborn ($0.21). Entwine also has some fun cards you can abuse. Looking at you, Grab the Reins ($0.24), which essentially is unconditional removal + burn to your opponent's face for .

Fury Charm ($0.10), Jhoira's Timebug ($0.23), Rift Elemental ($0.14), and Timebender ($0.27) all come in under $0.30.

EDIT: Twinning Glass ($0.25) is very tempting, honestly.

EDIT EDIT: And, in an unrelated note:


I might need to fiddle with the list, but the whole idea here is to reduce the cost of Throes of Chaos down to , fill your hand with lands, and spam it.

This isn't a very sensible or "good" deck, honestly - I just wanted to see what I could do with Throes of Chaos.

arthurxiv Unfortunately, Forever Young doesn't turn on the Devourers. Mausoleum Secrets is a good idea, but I'm going to pass on the dredge cards - I don't really want to splash Green just for a couple of cards. As for Konrad and Tymaret, I'm just not feeling them.

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I'm currently testing Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist in place of Nin, the Pain Artist in my Draw Mill deck. Current verdict: interesting.

Here's an Aethermage's Touch (very cheap card) deck. Unfortunately the deck is very expensive compared to the price of its main piece.

The idea is to selectively draw instants in order to find an Aethermage's Touch, then use draw-and-place-back spells to put a huge creature from your hand on top of your library, then cast the Aethermage's Touch at the end of your opponent's turn, then attack with it, then flicker it to keep it on the battlefield.

I've got another Gruul deck that I've been messing with which falls below $10.

The goal here is to stack cost reducers and then cast Throes of Chaos for as many times as I possibly can each turn. It's not a fantastic deck (it doesn't really have a win condition), but it's pretty darn fun when you're basically vomiting stuff out of your deck. I might look into slotting in some Storm cards - I've hit storm counts of 6+ with some casual testing, so a couple of Grapeshots might not be amiss.

Speaking of vomiting spells onto the battlefield, I'm kinda intrigued by the fact that Hazoret's Undying Fury ($0.09) and Spellweaver Helix ($0.27) are so relatively cheap. The idea there would be fill up your deck with as many nonlands as possible, so that you can A) still have mana available to you and B) get 3-4 spells off each casting of Fury as many times as you can. It could be interesting to pair it with something like Gaea's Blessing ($0.14) - eventually, you'd hit the point where you can get infinite spells off unless your opponent has instant-speed graveyard hate or artifact destruction.

The real trouble is that decent mana rocks are kinda expensive, and they tend to be pricy enough mana-wise that filling your deck with them isn't a fantastic idea. And, unfortunately, having a ton of things that untap lands runs into similar problems.

There are actually quite a few cheap legendary critters from Ikoria:

Jegantha, the Wellspring is only $0.47.
Keruga, the Macrosage is only $0.37. I actually built a budget Keruga deck, but it's pretty boring. I might try again later.
Kogla, the Titan Ape is $0.40.
Lutri, the Spellchaser really benefited from that EDH ban, since it's only $0.47.
Obosh, the Preypiercer is only $0.66? Seriously? I expected it to be more expensive due to all the hype.

You could also get a playset of Yidaro, Wandering Monster for $3.28, which might make an interesting core for a cycling deck (along with your $0.23 Drannith Stingers, your $0.06 Quakefoot Cyclops, your $0.17 Rooting Molochs, your $0.29 Unpredictable Cyclones, and your $0.05 Viashino Sandsprinter)

I... might have to go build another budget cycling deck. One that's less of a combo deck.

EDIT: Oh, right, I also worked on that Hazoret's Undying Fury deck. It's... yeah, I fucked that one up right good. I'm not sure I could do any better without increasing my price cap, though.

Speaking of Hazoret... You can pick up Hazoret's Favor for only $0.09. And Primal Forcemage is only $0.27... Hmm. Or maybe just a Sparkspitter ($0.05), to turn cards in your hand into a 5/1 Ball Lightning for .

I do have a pretty fun little Aphemia, the Cacophony deck that I'd like to share at some point - Dead Man's Chest and Unholy Indenture are fun with Feast of Dreams and a Hateful Eidolon or two.

... Crown of Convergence is $0.21. Man, do I have a deck that I can slot that into...

ZephyrPhantom

Is Keruga Golems legal? Reason//Believe is a pretty neat card... but one of the halves has CMC 1. Unless I'm misremembering my split card rules, you consider both sides separately when determining the CMC of the card. Similar questions apply to Dead // Gone in your other Keruga list.

I like the Umori deck, though. I might have to give that a whirl.

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You know, I just got around to building a very Theros deck. It costs $6.62. I hope you enjoy my...


The deck's pretty simple - you use nasty auras to kill or neutralize creatures. Hateful Eidolon draws me cards, and both Aphemia and TCtD recycle those auras into zombies. Of particular note are Nyx Infusion, Spiteful Returned, and Unholy Indenture, since they happen to be the only auras in the deck that I wouldn't mind putting on my own creatures. It doesn't do very well against decks that field a bunch of big creatures or decks that can deal with enchantments efficiently... but eh.

Believe it or not, this is the only deck I've made recently that I actually like enough to share. Most of my other creations are either slight variations on earlier decks (to throw in cards from Ikoria - Aggressive Hippies, Glory of Ramp, and Memory Munchies now have versions with a few Mutate creatures in them), are really boring (Praise the Macrosage, my Keruga deck, is literally just a Simic cycling/"drawing cards matters" deck. It's aggressive but boring. Constant Vigilance is a Vigilance-tribal deck that runs cards like Knotvine Paladin as payoffs. It's painfully slow and not very interactive), or suck out of control (Hazoret's Vomit is a deck built around Hazoret's Undying Fury. It's painfully unfocused, and lacks any real payoff for spamming the Fury. Rabbit Drawstuff is a monoblue deck that tries to use Drownyard Temple to abuse cards that bounce or discard lands. Unfortunately, you guessed it, the deck doesn't really have a payoff.)

EDIT: I just ran a couple of test games with your Umori deck vs. the latest version of my Gruul Pia's Revolution deck. Umori won the first game because of sheer dumb luck - Pia got pretty mana screwed, and couldn't muster a defense. The second game, where Pia managed to get down a few solid blockers, went really poorly for Umori - all forward momentum just kinda stopped. I feel like the deck needs creatures that can serve as removal.

I also found another card recently that might go nicely in your Amplifire deck - Grief Tyrant would make Amplifire a mighty 16/16 if you hit it, and those four-plus -1/-1 counters it throws around after dying are nothing to sneeze at. It's a bit expensive, mana-wise, but that deck ramps quite a bit anyway, so...

Oh wow, I missed that rule change. I'll have to keep that in mind for the future.



I ran into it when looking at black auras to shove onto my opponent's creatures. And I'm glad to hear it! I'm curious about how well it plays outside of dumb test games.



I never posted it. It probably could use a few more eyes, though, so...



The good part is that Drownyard Temple combos with cards like Soratami Cloudskater... it just doesn't do it very well - ": Draw a card" is neat and all, but it's crazily inefficient. Dreamscape Artist is an important component to this whole mess, since you can essentially use it as ", , discard a card: Search your library for two basic land cards, reveal them, then put them onto the battlefield tapped."

It's a deck I really want to make work, but I can't really figure it out. I might expand it to to improve my ability to actually get those Drownyard Temples out, or into so that I can use those Temples with stuff like Aggressive Mining or some kinda "symmetric" land destruction deck. The option actually reminds me of a (non-budget) deck I fiddled with once that focused on swapping control of lands (with cards like Vedalken Plotter), and then using Chaos Warp and Reality Scramble to turn the land I "gave" them into more lands or permanents for me.



I don't think Umori's destiny is to be in a storm deck. Umori kinda wants to support an Artifact or Enchantment deck so that you have more options to play with.



I sometimes just fire up Gatherer and look at all the Uncommons and Rares in older sets. That and hefty use of the random card function, because what else should I use my time on?

Because the original build was mono-blue? I'd probably include the Hierophant in a green build, especially since that would make the whole thing much more mana-efficient.

I really should look into more landfall-style cards for that deck, just in general.

Ah, I misread you.

EDIT: Oh dear. Mutating a creature onto something you've dashed onto the battlefield means that you get to return all of the creatures involved to your hand. That's something you could build an Umori deck around - there are plenty of creatures that dash for 2-3 mana, and you can use it to spam mutations every turn. The fun part is that there are non-human creatures that dash for 2 mana in Black (Reckless Imp), Red (Screamreach Brawler), and Green (Treetop Ambusher).

And, because I'm some kinda deviant...


Just your standard party animal deck. The one bit of extra fun is how Satyr Firedancer (who brought all the sparklers) spreads out our burn.

You are contractually obligated to play shitty techno while Gallia is out, by the way. I'm terribly sorry.

I've been so busy that I keep forgetting to get back to this thread, haha.

Going back to Crown of Convergence what interests me is that there's a lot of cards that care about what the top-ish card of your deck is ranging from Courser of Kruphix to Erratic Mutation. There's definitely more than one way to build it even if you don't use the ability.

Also, Spellshift is Polymorph for instants and sorceries at 0.25 USD. I'm sure there's some overcosted instants and sorceries that could be cheated out with this.

While it unfortunately failed to pass the budget metric for this thread, I was recently trying to make a Balduvian Hydra and Rock Hydra deck. I've got a working list, but a quick glance should make it fairly obvious which card caused me to throw out the budget restriction:


MonoRock Hydras
4 Balduvian Hydra
4 Rock Hydra
4 Insolent Neonate
4 Goblin Chainwhirler
4 Boros Reckoner
4 Wily Goblin
4 Seasoned Pyromancer
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Mizzium Mortars
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
16 Mountain

Ultimately, the synergy with Nykthos is too good to pass up (and perhaps the only good way I've found) to get a bunch of big Red mana to cast a hydra that won't leave you massively down on card advantage or with too little life. (Treasonous Ogre) I suspect Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion is more a case of "If you got him down, you can just win the game with him (which defeats the point)." Gauntlet of Might and Gauntlet of Power are ridiculously expensive and Chaos Moon is more unreliable than all of them combined.

That aside, there are plenty of budget alternatives to the Red Devotion cards listed here - Ashenmoor Gouger, Boggart Ram-Gang Blood Knight, Sisters of the Flame you get the idea. (Burning Tree Emissary is surprisingly cheap though and probably a must for MonoR/MonoG budget devotion decks.) I'm mainly wondering if it's possible to force ramp in non-Green colors.

Speaking of forcing colors to do things they definitely shouldn't do, here's a deck I've been meaning to make for the longest time ever!

MonoWhite Burn

Burners:
4 Icatian Javelineers
4 Inquisitor Exarch
4 Zhalfirin Crusader
4 Suture Priest
4 Sunscorched Desert
4 Fire and Brimstone

More General Creautres:
4 Accorder Paladin
2 Savannah Lions (replace with Soulfire Grand Master if you don't mind the final price being 23 USD roughly)

Burn Support:
4 Equal Treatment
2 Soulfire Grand Master
4 Sunlance
4 Sandblast

Lands:
12 Plains
4 Shefet Dunes

Does it perhaps rely a bit too much on Soulfire Grand Master? Maybe. Is it perhaps worse than the average white weenie? Possibly. Am I surprised Equal Treatment exists and that Cleansing is far too expensive? Definitely! But is the idea of aping Eidolon of the Great Revel with Inquisitor Exarch and Suture Priest and Lightning Bolt with Sunlance worth it? I'd say it is.

Note that although I include Fire and Brimstone for the novelty of it if you expect your opponents to run less creature heavy decks or not attack, you might want Jinxed Idol instead.

I'd do budget Green burn next but I think the Budget Channel Fireball deck I posted a while back demonstrates that idea best. My next deck idea is likely something along the lines of budget nonHumans.


Lady Mapi Does the mutated Dashed creature go back to hand, too? If yes then that looks pretty fun. also, you, lo, hath been reborn and now carry on the shitposting on the sevens trophy, at sdfkjgh 's esteemed recommendation.

Sweet, haha. As for the trophy, I think sdf might be better poised to explain that since he handed it to me in the first place.

Re: Nyx Lotus - Yeah, Nyx Lotus really is that bad, haha. I've found enters the battlefield tapped is pretty damning for me when it comes to anything mana-related especially when you are trying to rock inefficient creatures that would have no hope otherwise of appearing at a kitchen table. Realistically your next best bet IMHO is to go Neheb but like I said by that point you might as well just have Neheb be the finisher. I'll actually probably give Chaos Moon a second look, though, there should be enough ways to self-bounce permanents easily that it shouldn't be hard to assmeble something interesting out of it. That said, I decided to share the Hydra deck anyway because it was an interesting deckbuilding process over the past three days and I did discover a bunch of janky stuff because of it, expensive and inexpensive, so it's a happy little accident in my book.

Going off what you mentioned though I think there's some potential to some kind of janky temporary-copy spam deck and Warp World being put together in the same deck somehow. Granted Warp World isn't cheap in terms of mana but I did just mention Spellshift for a reason!

As for Soulfire Grand Master, yeah, it's a shame, but I'll take my 5 lifegain off that nourishing Sandblast as an acceptable payoff for it. Glad you like the premise of the deck though, I plan to try it out whenever I can get time with my playgroup.


Thunder Brute looks pretty interesting and reminds me that I've wanted to explore more "bad common Red creature tribes" like Cyclopes for a while. Seeing as Chaos Moon gives Red creatures a measly -1/-1 in the worst case I might try and smash the two together.