I've decided to task myself with making decks as strong as possible with the smallest budget possible. The aim is to always remain under 50 GBP. This is the first iteration of Lu Xun and the very first attempt of making a deck of this kind.
The Main Aim - Try the hardest for cheep.
At the time of making this deck the most expensive card was Sol Ring! At a mighty 3 dollars.
The purpose of this deck was to try and close the game as fast as possible with our "unblockable" scholar that draws cards. It made sense to steer it in a voltron direction with equipment and auras to buff Lu Xun to a quick enough clock to start elimating players by around turn 6. With that turn aim this deck becomes quite weak to spot removal and wrath's as people will realise what this deck is doing relatively quickly.
So our backup plan is to get a few card draws in and try to attrition our opponents in a bogles like style with forcing them to spend resources trying to deal with every threat we present. The other 3 main creatures in the deck are Invisible Stalker, Blighted Agent and Triton Shorestalker. Blighted agent is a good way to beat lifegain decks or just find a way to kill opponents quicker with infect while Invisible stalker having hexproof and true unblockable make him a really good creature to voltron. I decided to stay away from cards like Diplomatic Immunity because with shroud we can't make our big guy bigger. Triton Shorestalker is just a solid drop in this deck and can start getting suited quicker than any of our other threats.
That makes our options for hexproof either limited or really bad leaving a Swiftfoot Boots as the premium for us in budget. In terms of hexproof/shroud we have three other cards that help us, the first being Pemmin's Aura, the second being Vanishing and the last being Ring of Evos Isle. Vanishing might just be the most wonky card to help this deck as Phasing also removes all enchantments and equipment attached to the creature and they then return still attached for the small cost of . This let's us protect our stronger equipment from cards like Argentum Armor, sadly this won't protect our things from cards like Krosan Grip.
Since we have very few creatures in the deck Heirloom Blade seemed like a really good equipment to add in, with two major points being:
The last point being the most crucial because in the face of a board wipe we have a strong chance of already having a new threat which is stronger than Lu Xun and can start equipping straight away instead of taking a turn off to recast our general. If we do hit the other 50% of the humans we have (as Lu is the only soldier in the deck intentionally) we get either Trophy Mage or Trinket Mage which are both extremely strong cards that help us tutor out equipment or in Trinket mage's case Sol Ring. The best cards to find with Trinket Mage are Sol ring then Bloodforged Battle-Axe as this allows us to slowly mass up power without dedicating more cards to the board. Trophy Mage Will be wanting to find Armory Automaton if we have no threat but loads of equipment in play or one of our stronger equipment's like Sword of Vengeance or Strata Scythe. To be honest all of the trophy mage hits are insane apart from Fireshrieker and Heirloom Blade since out our of drop artifact's these are not quite on the same level.
Grafted Exoskeleton is a really solid card that requires answering 100% of the time so this will need to be masked behind other tempting cards in the face of removal or counterspells. We do have some sweepers but only ones that don't effect our board such as Wash Out (Which is also severely underplayed). Cyclonic Rift obviously would be great but that is what I consider too above budget for this sort of deck so sadly that doesn't get in to this specific list. AEtherize and AEtherspouts are fine back up plans which will defiantly catch some people off guard as they aren't very played or at least not from what I've seen.
For ramp we have the classic Sol Ring as that card has seen so many reprints it keeps the price in range for this budget, it's partners in crime are:
I considered these to be the best fit for the deck as we want to be casting our cards as fast as possible and a turn 3 Lu Xun is going to be a solid start or turn 2 if we have sol ring in our opener. Though if we don't we can always play equipment on turns 1-3, Lu Xun turn 4 then equip the turn after. The key to having a strong budget deck is synergy and mana curve. Our card quality is going to be worse that's a guarantee but we can be faster and more efficient as the majority of players will be building up turns 1-4/5 and won't be able to answer our curve as fast as we deploy. Our synergy is very clear and with a quick glance we know which direction the deck is going towards which is perfect for anyone wanting to just sleeve this deck up and jam cards.
A quick note on Silver Myr and Etherium Sculptor, these have quite a strong part in the ramp portion as they act as creatures to protect from edicts while still providing strong ramp for mana.
For protection that isn't hexproof we have a few cards:
The cards above are a fairly strong suite of protection spells that are efficient and effective. The umbra's got an auto-include since they protect us from wraths and destroy based removal and still contributes to what our game plan is, yes even you Crab Umbra with pseudo vigilance. Being able to attack with lifelink and still block is a great as it will make most decks reconsider attacks. Counters help us maintain our presence while attacking or help prevent threats we can't answer easily from hitting the board.
Removal in mono blue is quite hard to achieve but it does have some really sweet budget options:
I wanted to put removal that was efficient mana wise and could answer mana threats. Reality shift exiling is really good and Imprisoned in the moon answers commanders really well and any problem threat. Spot removal is super under utilised in commander so getting to play some strong cards that fill those slots is always a bonus. I normally like to have 3~ spot removal cards in all decks I play preferably with exile if possible. The downside to these cards giving the opponent creatures doesn't really matter too much since we are playing a voltron/bogles style deck so creature combat is very bad against us unless it's cards with annihilator.
We do get to play a few utility lands since we are mono coloured but most of the good lands like Maze of Ith are quite expensive so we had to work with the below:
Cathedral was the only one I'm still unsure on, mainly because it enters tapped and the effect is quite subtle in a deck like ours. The rest add good card advantage and Buried Ruin helps us deal with removal better.
I like to include Elixir of Immortality in a lot of my decks as it gives ways to draw the cards we want to see most even if they get destroyed by cards like Vandalblast. We have quite a lot of draw with stuff like Curiosity attached to our commander so just getting the ability to draw our equipment again seems like a good way to go, plus it lowers the chance of drawing more lands when we are flooding late into the game if we can't close quick since our lands most likely won't ever got the graveyard apart from the 2 utility lands that sacrifice themselves.
Thanks for taking the time to read my essay on why this deck is great and I'll be making updates over time after playing it and figuring out its where it needs a pick up.
Feel free to leave comments and suggestions as I don't know every card out there and I will have missed a gem for sure :)
If you want a budget deck brewed around a general leave a comment with which one and If there is interest in different budget versions of this I can happily throw it together with a price if noted!
