Primer still under construction!
Budget Deck Series:
In this series, I'm building decks around $100 that are reasonably competitive. I've noticed that way too many "budget" lists are frankly bad. Budget players, by virtue of the fact that they're on a budget, need good advice more than anyone else. If they buy a shitty deck, they're stuck with it, and that's really unfortunate. I hope to contribute some less-bad decks to the pool to give budget players better advice than what they're currently receiving. I should note that I don't normally play budget decks, but I do play at a very competitive level.
You might like this deck if: you want to play a blazing-fast combo deck that isn't just a glass-cannon.
This deck works best at: tables with midrange creature strategies.
Win with Necrotic Ooze shenanigans. If that doesn't work, win with combat damage or Shaman of Forgotten Ways' biorhythm.
Four Ways to Win
Our main win condition is Necrotic Ooze Combo, hence the title for this deck. It's the easiest combo in the deck and also the hardest to stop, especially since this deck is loaded with discard effects.
The other three win conditions are Mike+Trike, Shaman of Forgotten Ways for the biorhythm effect, and Sepulchral Primordial to steal your opponents' creatures. These win conditions are a bit for emergency situations only, and I wouldn't rely on them too much.
We're not running Zulaport Cutthroat and Blood Artist because, well, there just wasn't enough room for them and they don't interact as much as our other cards and don't really fit our win condition. If we're going to devote a card slot to killing someone outside our combo, it needs to be really good. Shaman of Forgotten Ways and Sepulchral Primordial act as reasonable value generators outside of their possibility to simply win you the game; hence, we don't mind running them.
Underrated cards:
Whisperwood Elemental: In addition to being protection against board wipes, this thing can basically just cycle your whole board and draw you into some wincons. Imagine having a sac outlet, saccing and resaccing the Whisperwood Elemental to itself and having Victimize and Skullwinder and Necrotic Ooze. Things get even sillier with Mikaeus, the Unhallowed (permanents return flipped). If you don't hit your combo then, you're an unlucky bastard. So as both an engine to draw into your combo and as protection against control, this is a very beautiful card in this deck.
Llanowar Mentor
: Part of me is surprised to see hardly any Meren decks playing this, but I guess on the other hand, maybe it isn't so surprising considering how few even play vanilla dorks (according to EDHRec, only 19% of decks have either Llanowar Elves or Elvish Mystic, which is SHAMEFUL). I mean, it creates mana dork tokens and it is a discard outlet to fuel your GY combos. How much more could you possibly ask for??!?
Reclamation Sage: This is one of those cards whose inclusion or exclusion really signals whether or not someone is a good or bad deckbuilder. It's a little unfair of me to call this underrated-- 56.3% of Meren decks apparently run this. But really it should be 100%.
Comparison with Karador
Comparison to Budget Karador Boonweaver Hatebears
The tldr: Meren is better against creature-heavy decks and his combo is generally easier and faster to assemble on a budget. Karador works better against combo and control decks and is generally far more resilient against removals and other hate.
- Meren's combo is a little easier to assemble. And we're not even playing Diabolic Tutor or any transmute cards! Necrotic Ooze being 4 CMC means that it's a lot easier to get out with (since we have so many 3 drops already.) Our budget gives us ample room for Buried Alive, which sets up the combo beautifully. We have more room for sac outlets because Meren actually wants sac outlets whereas Karador needs them mostly just for the combo. We have discard outlets with
Llanowar Mentor
, Lotleth Troll, and Geier Reach Sanitarium.
Upgrades
First and most important upgrade:
Terastodon gives you more value when it ETBs, but Woodfall Primus has the distinct advantage of being a win alongside Mikaeus, the Unhallowed. This is a reasonable trade-off, if you ask me.
Next, the land base needs some improvements. Here's how I would address that:
Sadly this game is too goddamn expensive, and those are probably the best ways you can upgrade the lands so that you get more access to colors with fewer ETB tapped lands. You don't necessarily need to cut the cycle lands this early into the refinement process, but eventually they should get cut. It's worth noting here that the cycle lands are mainly in the deck because there are a lot of amazing cards in the deck you want to eventually draw into, but lots of really meh stuff too, so cycle lands can let you dig toward the good stuff.
Next, I'd start cutting fat stuff and adding tutors. Fat stuff like Sepulchral Primordial, Void Winnower,
Archfiend of Depravity
, and Savra, Queen of the Golgari are in the deck because, as referenced in the last paragraph, card draw quality in the deck is very volatile, so fat value stuff is pretty nice since it gives you some interim rewards. Adding tutors basically absolves the problem of volatile card quality-- cards that let you draw any other card in your deck. Hold onto your wallets, boys and girls, because the next few cards I'm going to suggest are insanely expensive:
The downside to cutting fat stuff means the Phyrexian Devourer combo becomes a lot worse. I'd still keep it, but you might want some additional combos. Protean Hulk becomes a lot more tempting as an instant win, although you'd need to add some support for it (Phyrexian Delver).
