Let's say that you have a budget that allows you to spend around $60 a month on magic cards. You want to start playing immediately, but you also want to start building your collection towards a meta deck. What's the optimal path to take?
My idea with this project is to create a roadmap for players looking to start with a budget prowess deck and upgrade this deck into Izzet Murktide, a top tier deck.
We start with a $60 investment in mono-red prowess. We then upgrade this deck in $60 increments towards Izzet Prowess. We then side-grade Izzet Prowess into a budget version of UR Murktide, then we continue to upgrade this until we add the Ragavans.
First $60 Upgrade:
We need to start building a modern power level mana base, so we are picking up two copies of Scalding Tarn. Fetches fuel our Dragon's Rage Channeler and let us shuffle away bad cards with Mishra's Bauble.
Second $60 Upgrade:
We are finishing our playset of Scalding Tarn first because fetches are always useful in modern and Tarn is both the most-played fetchland and the only fetchland shared between Prowess and Murktide. While optimally, we would want to diversify our fetches, this only provides a very small, situational edge against Pithing Needle, so we can skip on this edge for budgetary reasons. Fiery Islet is a staple in both decks, providing us with some protection from flooding out.
Third $60 Upgrade:
4 Arid Mesa
1 Underworld Breach
The card Underworld Breach has been spiking hard, so we can only fit one into this stage of the upgrade path, but the number of copies played varies from 1-3 in the 75. At this point, if you want to stay mono-red for a while, you can go ahead and pick up Shattering Spree, especially if you are facing lots of hammer and/or affinity.
Here's the deck after three upgrades, with a total price of around $230
Fourth $120 upgrade
It's going to take two $60 installments to go from mono-red to Izzet.
The Prowess List:
Fifth $60 Upgrade:
2 Flusterstorm
1 Mystical Dispute
2 Dress Down
4 Consider
4 Counterspell
We are picking up Flusterstorm to finish off our UR Prowess list. While the list ideally runs four copies of Flusterstorm, I would suggest a 2-2 split of Flusterstorm and Spell Pierce for budgetary reasons, since you won't need four flusterstorms for Murktide. We are also starting to pick up some of the cheaper Murktide staples.
Sixth $60 upgrade:
4 Shattering Spree
4 Murktide Regent
1 Brotherhood's End
We are grabbing copies of Shattering Spree to optimize our prowess sideboard while also picking up Brotherhood's End as a flex slot prowess sideboard card that's played in Murktide as well. We will also go ahead and pick up our four copies of Murktide Regent.
Seventh $120 Upgrade
4 Ledger Shredder
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Spirebluff Canal
At this point, you have enough to play a pile of murktide cards, but aren't quite there.
Eight $60 upgrade
1 Otawara, Soaring City
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Unlicensed Hearse
1 Brazen Borrower
You now have a functioning Murktide deck. You are still missing a playset of Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and some of the more expensive flexible sideboard slots like Subtlety and Fury, but you should be able to play Murktide at the LGS level with this list and play the deck competitively if you can borrow monkeys.
Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Upgrade
1 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
Just keep adding Ragavans at this point until you have a playset.
