I see what you did there

I would bury my Pitiless Plunderer to the Utter End in her Double Ds :)

In all seriousness, I love this concept. if one were to build a budget variant of this deck, what do you see as the non-negotiable pieces? Are there any cheaper, b-list cards that didn’t make the cut, but were close? Thanks.

0rc

Honestly I never looked at budget pieces when I brewed this. I dont brew on a budget.

I'd have to look over this build and see what I could possibly swap out. I have an idea of what I'd need to swap out though for this to even be considered budget.

KibaAlpha, thanks! I’m getting a lot of traffic on my budget brews. I’m thinking of building this. Any insight would be appreciated and I will of course accredit you.

Orc the easiest way to make something budget is to look at big price items. we will use phyrexian altar and mana crypt as examples.

Phyrexian altar at the time of this post is $66.80 on tcgplayer. replace it with a nantuko husk for at the most $1.00

you can make infinite colorless mana with basalt monolith and rings of brighthearth for $9.00

another obvious cost cut is the mana base, drop the scrubland flat out and don't replace it 34 lands with the amount of ramp in this deck is fine (allows space for infinite colorless to filter into something)

drop the good tutors for transmute cards, black has shred memory cmc2 tutor, netherborn phalanx cmc6, dimir machinations 3 cmc, dimir houseguard 4 cmc and brain spoil for 5 cmc

these few changes cut the price in half at least.

cvarena21989, thanks! I appreciate the input. I’m specifically wondering about key combo pieces. I want to create a $100 budget list. It will require swapping out many cards for strictly worse versions all while keeping irreplaceable core pieces. It’s something I do do for fun, because building decks out of bad cards makes one look at things they’ve never looked at before. Take a look at my budget builds and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Thanks again!

Orc if you just want a budget recursion loop these will get the job done

Ashnod's Altar + Falkenrath Noble + Pitiless Plunderer + Reassembling Skeleton roughly 13 dollars for the combo

Ashnod's Altar + Darkest Hour + Teysa, Orzhov Scion = infinite colorless and ping is paired with Zulaport Cutthroat

Ashnod's Altar + Bloodsoaked Champion + Pitiless Plunderer + Teysa Karlov

cvarena21989, thanks! Exactly what I’m looking for :)

Orc glad I could help each of those combos is less than 18 dollars and can have multiple interchanging parts for redundancy if you have a way to make infinite mana in deck you can replace the altar for nantuko husk for pennies if youre really trying to pair down hard. If you throw a Bolas's Citadel and splurge for Sensei's top you can draw and play your deck if your life total allows. So something like soul Warden to add sustain with creatures entering would put the Citadel online and could be spicy if youre able to cut corners in other places to get that top in the deck.

Out: Mausoleum Guard and Seraph of the Scales

In: Sensei's Divining Top and Toxic Deluge

Avg CMC lowered from 2.71 to 2.65.

Lowered Avg. CMC from 2.65 to 2.55.

KibaAlpha do shrink that avg. CMC, but don’t be shrinking’ those double Ds!!!

it seems to me that you could get better card draw with value if instead of Ancient Craving and Ambition's Cost you ran the ones like Village Rites , Altar's Reap , Costly Plunder , or Bankrupt in Blood

WhiteTrashMagic Your card-draw here is a sac-outlet in itself in this deck. With that many token-producers the 1 cmc... sorry manavalue instants seems pretty legit.

But i would recommend a Wurmcoil Engine . It's big, it hits hard and gains you life and when it dies, it produces scary tokens. Oh, and Inkshield could be a wonderful addition from the new C21-set.

In addition i guess an Ogre Slumlord could provide some pseudo-double-token-trigger effect and keep your boardstate

@ WhiteTrashMagic

Thank you for your suggestions.

I'm going to try out those cards. The initial build of this deck didn't have quite the number of token generators it does now, so those cards now look more promising.

@ Housegheist

Thank you fornyour suggestions.

Wurmcoil Engine is too expensive and doesn't create enough tokens.

Inkshield i want to put in here and will probably swap something out for it.

Ogre Slumlord is another card that is to expensive and it doesn't trigger on tokens diying.

If you're already running Citadel an Top why not run Aetherflux? Sensei's is just good stuff unless you are running it

jjkekoa

Aetherflux Reservoir isn't included for the same reason I've opted to not include Blood Artist , they are both single target. I'm going more with a Group Slug build.

You might want to check out my Teysa build. It's a competitive build and slightly more powerful. Not sure if you're playing with all cards you own. Mine are just proxies.

jsnrice

There are only two cards I don't own in paper, Volrath's Stronghold and Nested Shambler .

If your statement of your deck being more powerful comes from the competitive meter, you're best off ignoring that. It's so inaccurate it's not worth paying much attention to.

KibaAlpha I own all of my cards. Yeah it's a super strong cEDH deck you might want to check out. There's some things you might be able to use.

Have you considered Animate Dead?

May I suggest Murderous Rider instead of Hero's Downfall?

thom-le

Excellent suggestion. Thank you.

B0NGUS

I've hummed and hawed on your suggested card since it's recommendation. Finally seem to be getting to a point where I've found a spot for inclusion. Thanks for the suggestion.