Flagellum, Wow, Tinker would be incredible with Breya. I tend towards playing only budget $100 Commander decks and perfecting them within the price restraints, but sometimes I make the exception such as here with Breya. I've "tinkered" with the Invent Superiority Breya deck and found it to be very lackluster not because it's cheap, but because it's not build to use the strengths of Breya at all. She's merely the Commander there's not much synergy with her other than artifacts are in the deck. I'm also interested in what the Goldfish guys include in their $20 upgrade of it.

Exile of artifacts and creatures is very good vs Breya. You mentioned Merciless Eviction which can be devastating, you really need a counter for it or it can exile you out of the game. Sylvan Reclamation is another painful card to deal with. Thankfully, Breya has some build in protection vs exile as long as I'm not completely tapped out. She can sac artifacts in response to the exile instead sending them to the graveyard. Since I can sac Breya as one of the two artifacts that are required for her cost then as long as I can make two mana I can save any artifact from being exiled. Of course I don't have to sac Breya I can instead sac two other artifacts to save them. In fact, Breya's ability can be used multiple times as long as I have artifacts to sac and mana to spend. If I can't counter say Merciless Eviction then this is way to relieve some of the pain.

Some players are against using counterspells, but I'm not as long as I'm using blue I will use cheap counters to both protect my Commander and other cards. I feel this is especially important if I'm trying to win with combo because to stop the combo most likely an instant speed response will have to be made by my opponent(s). Counters are best way to "counter" this response. Board wipes that don't exile are not as bad as long as I'm using some form of artifact/creature recursion because putting artifacts in the graveyard is fine and can actually be benefical playing this deck. The only thing that board wipes stop are Thopter hordes which is also fine because the reason I'm making the Thopters are to sac them with Breya to use her abilities, they are going to die anyway. The Thopters can also always be rebuilt.

Diabolic Tutor and Beseech the Queen are fine budget tutor options. I actually forgot about Beseech. The problem with them is their and casting costs the budget manabase can't really support it with out some big changes. This deck for example is only splashing black. I had to pick one of the four colors to only splash and black was it. Blue is primary color using seven cards. White is secondary using two cards and red is tertiary using one card. There are only six total black cards including Breya and gold cards and no cards.

I could see reconfiguring the manabase to include a lot more black and in turn using these budget black tutors. I'll give this try and see how it plays.

It's so upsetting about Arcum Dagsson and the buyout bullshit at TCGPlayer, although he's now droped below $20, he's some what stabilized, atleast he is not continuing to go up in price. Muzzio, Visionary Architect is a really good suggestion I've never used this card in any deck before. His ability is a little expensive, but even with Breya in play looking at the top four cards for any artifact and put it directly into play could be very good. The downside is most of the time only having a combination of Signets and other mana rocks or artifact lands in play as the only artifact(s).

Here's the first update comment since I increased the budget of this deck. Big changes have been made. I did a lot of restructuring including shifting around the landbase. I added Academy Ruins, Diabolic Intent, Sphinx of the Steel Wind, Steel Hellkite, Talisman of Dominance, Talisman of Indulgence, Forbidden Orchard, Faithless Looting and Anguished Unmaking.

Cards I cut are Azorius Signet, Dimir Signet, Demonic Tutor, Magus of the Wheel, Memnarch, Hangarback Walker, Buried Ruin, Shadowblood Ridge, Drowned Catacomb, Glacial Fortress and Underground River.

I've been trying to find a way to fit in Academy Ruins while still staying on budget since it's such a good card with artifacts and has been mentioned many times in the comments. Replacing Demonic Tutor with Diabolic Intent was the key. This along with cutting five $2-$3 dual lands gave me the added cost I needed for Ruins. This also allowed me to still keep an unconditional tutor which I want to have at least one in the deck as well as Mana Confluence and City of Brass.

I cut Memnarch to account for the extra cost that Arcum Dagsson is making, thankfully he's starting to come down in price. I hate to lose Memnarch, but out of all the expensive cards in this deck he's the most expendable.

Azorius Signet and Dimir Signet were cut for Talismans, thanks Omut for the suggestion. I hate to cut Signets that make blue mana, but together these two are $6 and going up where as both Talismans price is much lower, less than $2.

The addition of Ruins means I wanted to include another card that can put artifacts into the graveyard, Faithless Looting. Magus of the Wheel is very good, but there's not room for him due to his current price. I also added a few more big budget artifact creatures to recur Sphinx of the Steel Wind and Steel Hellkite.

Because I'm cutting so many dual lands to fit Ruins in I wanted to also add another land that can make any color of mana to compensate for this. Forbidden Orchard was reprinted in Commander 2016 which means it's price will continue to drop.

Flagellum, You inspired me to do some research into more budget black unconditional tutors. I've found a gem, Insidious Dreams. It does two things at the same time that this deck wants to do, put artifacts of my choice from my hand into the graveyard and tutor for combo pieces even more than one. It's an instant which is great and it's only single casting cost.

Other possibles are Rhystic Tutor, Demonic Collusion, Diabolic Tutor, Increasing Ambition, Diabolic Revelation, Liliana Vess and Sidisi, Undead Vizier. I'm hesitate to use so many high casting cost tutors, but these are the only options. I also like Collusion because it does similar that what Dreams does, letting me put artifacts from my hand into the graveyard to buy it back and use it again.

Going by what you said about using black budget tutors how many in your opinion is a good amount to use? I intend to use one of either Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor or Diabolic Intent as my expensive tutor, most likely Intent.

Diabolic Intent, Diabolic Tutor, Insidious Dreams and Demonic Collusion. Your thoughts?

There's some other tutors to consider as well. Let's consider all your current tutors:

• Arcum Dagsson
• Fabricate
• Diabolic Intent
• Kuldotha Forgemaster
• Treasure Mage !<6 cmc
• Trinket Mage !<1 cmc
• Tezzeret the Seeker
• Muddle the Mixture =2 cmc
• Reshape
• Inventors' Fair

Other tutor cards available on the cheap aka ~$10 or less:

• Enlightened Tutor
• Beseech the Queen
• Planar Portal
• Night Dealings works well with Freya's ability
• Lim-Dul's Vault
• Long-Term Plans
• Citanul Flute creatures only
• Ring of Three Wishes
• Sphinx Summoner artifact creatures only
• Rune-Scarred Demon
• Plus the ones you've already mentioned.

The only ones that are worth running above IMO is Long-Term Plans and Enlightened Tutor. As far as your choices are concerned, Insidious Dreams is nice but if it's countered then you just discarded your hand for nothing. Demonic Collusion is also nice but expensive CMC wise. However, both ID and DC helps to fill up our GY. Long-Term Plans could sub in for one of those two possibly. Enlightened Tutor if you can manage to squeeze it in (or sub it for Diabolic Intent to free up ~$6; ET was recently reprinted but it's also more restrictive). Your call lol.

I'll to get back to you on if that's enough tutors when I'm not at work but I don't see why it wouldn't be after listing all of yours out :)

The one tutor you forgot: Gamble.

Shimmer Myr -> Vedalken Orrery
Sphinx of the Steel Wind -> Magister Sphinx

The best combo deck plays only a few cheap combos with all cheap tutors and all broken mana rocks and lands ever printed. So if your want a strong deck drop cards like Darksteel Forge and Mycosynth Lattice, but never cut something like Demonic Tutor.

Omut: Ah yes! I forgot about Gamble's reprint.

Unfortunately, being on a budget means you aren't going to have the best combo pieces or tutors. We'd all love Mana Crypt, Lion's Eye Diamond, Imperial Seal, ect. But they're just not going to be feasible on a tight budget. I do agree about possibly cutting Darksteel Forge and/or Mycosynth Lattice and replace them with Demonic Tutor though.

I would also cut Mycosynth Lattice its just not worth the 20$+ price tag for this deck. In my opinion.

Play tested my deck today. Got a T4 win and a T4 loss lol both against a no-budget Yidris doomsday storm deck which ran Lion's Eye Diamond and Mox Diamond to name a few.

First game I had a Grand Architect, Inventors' Fair, and Demonic Tutor in my opening hand. T2 tutored for Pili-Pala, T3 Grand Architect, t4 Pili-Pala turning it blue and created infinite mana to dome my opponent by repeatably sacing Breya + a thopter over and over. The second game I had to mulligan several times and mostly drew lands and Worldgorger Dragon, no tutors no nothing. Pitched Dispatch in hopes of getting anything decent and that was the mistake. T4 he spot removed Breya guaranteeing a hit and after playing solitaire for 10 minutes he brought the storm count to 18+ enough to kill me via Tendrils of Agony.

Conclusions:

• This is mostly for me: Worldgorger Dragon + Animate Dead combo is out. Without reliable discard Worldgorger Dragon is a dead card in hand. It's not synergistic since neither are artifacts and both aren't very tutorable.

• Tutors are beautiful and a must as we discussed before.

• Probably could use more counters/removal. Honestly did not have a whole lot of blue mana available with lands to run counters. Override may be decent, or counters with alternative costs like Foil or Thwart (but not these two particular ones for obvious reasons).

• Probably could take out most other high CMC 3 card combos like Sharuum. Magister Sphinx I feel may still be worth the spot because one ETB trigger is enough to almost kill an opponent (a mini Sorin). Breya is our most vital combo piece and any combo involving her is more reliable. This would also lower the curve.

• Ethersworn Canonist is lovely against storm decks... wished I drew her lol.

What are your thoughts about the two new cards revealed in AER ?

• Scrap Trawler

• Pia's Revolution: Enchantment. Whenever a nontoken artifact is put into your graveyard from the battlefield, return that card to your hand unless target opponent has Pia's Revolution deal 3 damage to him or her.

Stefouch: both of those are amazing. Tossing Breya in the bin to tempt 3 life loss isn't a bad idea either. It could let us avoid commander tax assuming Goblin Welder or something similar is out.

multimedia is this a budgeted version of the top scoring Breya deck on Tapped out (Breya the last metal bender)?I'm just curious because it looks like you just swapped stuff out of that deck for cheaper alternatives. Which makes all the sense in the world, as I am trying to do the same thing.

Vinman: multimedia started this deck as a $100 budget version but the budget has since increased to $200. There was a more focus on thopter generation (used to be called Breya's Thoptershop) but that theme has somewhat fell to the wayside a bit, instead focusing on more combo-oriented cards.

Flagellum, thanks for continuing the discussion here and answering questions while I was away.

The consensus seems to be to cut Mycosynth Lattice for more tutors. I agree with this; Lattice is great with Breya, but is ultimately expendable.

I'm cutting Lattice, Master Transmuter and Reshape for more unconditional tutors, Demonic Tutor, Gamble and Insidious Dreams. I prefer to include more unconditional tutors because they can all get Arcum Dagsson, artifact specific tutors can't. Transmuter is great, but her price is starting to increase. Pretty soon I will have to choose between using her or Dagsson and in my opinion Dagsson is better.

This change gives this deck a lot of more versatile tutor options:

1. Demonic Tutor
2. Diabolic Intent
3. Gamble
4. Insidious Dreams
5. Fabricate


6. Arcum Dagsson
7. Kuldotha Forgemaster
8. Tezzeret the Seeker

I've also cut the Bounce lands, Azorius Chancery and Izzet Boilerworks for more basics, 1x Island and Swamp.

Vinman, this deck is not based on The Last Metal Bender. Both decks were created about the same time, one month ago. This deck started as Breya's Thoptershop with more of a Thopter theme and has evolved into now focusing on combo with Breya. From the beginning I wanted to make the best viable budget Breya deck starting with a $100 budget and then increasing to $200 because $100 is not good enough. I applaud The Last Metal Bender's creator, but $2200+ for a Commander deck is crazy. If you're looking for a budget version of The Last Metal Bender this deck is not that, but it's a fine budget Breya combo deck.

Holy crap, Master Transmuter has gone up. Nim Deathmantle and Krark-Clan Ironworks too now and Breya is catching up with Yidris on EDHRec. I don't think we can deny that Breya is causing all these increases. Arcum seems to finally be settling down after the TCG buyout at least. Still all these things make fitting the budget that much tougher.

Flagellum, yeah Ironworks is really up, was $5 last month. Check out Chromatic Lantern it's going through a buyout I think. It was reprinted in Commander 2016 and was $4 last month. It's now pushing into $10? In my opinion Lantern should be a Commander staple like Sol Ring and be affordable to all players. Wizards needs to print a lot more of it. I'm so glad that Arcum has stabilized and is starting to come down. It's kind of frustrating that this deck can't have a constant list because of these drastic price changes at TCGPlayer.

Changes made yesterday all have to do with using a less expensive version of Demonic Tutor. The Revised version is actually the one I have and it's nearly $10 less than other versions of the card. All I needed to do was add the [3ED] in the card editor after it. It turns out that a lot of cards are also like this; using other versions are $1-2+ less.

I added back in the blue producing Signets: Azorius Signet using the Dissension[DIS] version and Dimir Signet using the Ravnica[RAV] version. I cut the Talismans for them. I added Ethersworn Canonist, thanks Flagellum for the suggestion. This was between Canonist or Phyrexian Metamorph and I chose Canonist because she has the ability to actually shut down or at least stall some decks, helping me to assemble a combo with Breya.

Magister Sphinx replaces Sphinx of the Steel Wind, thanks Omut for the suggestion. Counterspell replaces Stoic Rebuttal.

Two Island were cut for Underground River and Careful Study. Study gives me more blue draw as well as more ways to put artifacts into the graveyard.

If you want more looting type draw, Quicksmith Genius and Riddlesmith are two options.

Amazing primer. Keep the good work!

Btw, I made a $100 budget (W/o basics) thopter tribal deck. No infinite combos so it's a more casual deck but it will fulfill anyone's cravings for whirly gizmos :) Figured I'd post it here seeing as this deck morphed from those humble beginnings lol.

Breya's ROFLcopter Factory

Stefouch, thanks so much and thanks for the upvote! Do you have a budget Breya deck?

Flagellum, very nice. Haha, I like the name whirly gizmos you should change your deck to that. If you would like I'll put a link to your Thopter tribal deck in the description. I'll make a new section called Viewers Budget Breya Decks.

Alright, Breya's Whirly Gizmos it is! That would be swell if you did make a link to it :) Still debating running both versions lol. Either that or starting a Rakdos, Lord of Riots party deck... Decisions

@multimedia: Unfortunately I have no budget list. I only have this one: Breya Engine: Angry Esper Queen. This is a Sharuum reconversion, and your primer helped me alot, even if it was written on a budget focus.

I wouldn't play Insidious Dreams, too much risky for my own taste. And doesn't put the tutored cards into hand, only on top.

Stefouch, Wow your Breya deck is impressive, $7200+ for a Commander deck, woah! It's one of the most expensive Commander decks I've ever seen. How long have you been collecting/assembling your Sharuum deck? Are all foil versions of cards really worth the extreme extra price?

Insidious Dreams can be risky your right about that, but I need another unconditional tutor for this deck. What could take it's place of the same price and utility? Diabolic Tutor is an option, but I very much dislike the card. Your thoughts?

You're right about Dreams and it's drawback not putting the cards I tutor for in my hand, but it's instant much like Vampiric Tutor the card I choose to put on top I will draw for my next turn. I'm also playing quite of few cheap draw spells which can help to draw the cards I put on top from Dreams. These are not ideal, but I need to improvise some due the the budget.

@multimedia:
For a replacement to Insidious Dreams, if you need another unconditional tutor, I would suggest you to try Lim-Dl's Vault. It's instant speed and cheap (mana et $-wise). I see a lot of competitive combo EDHs playing this little gem.
Other ideas are Reshape and Enlightened Tutor.

About my "expensive" deck, I started to acquire the foils cards about 3 or 4 years ago. I play Magic since 1998 and thus already owned some $$ cards like Lion's Eye Diamond or Mox Diamond. I got the expensive cards like Timetwister, Mishra's workshop and Bazaar when they valued two times less. Now they worth together one-third of the deck's value. I live also in Europe, meaning prices are much cheaper because we use references from a website that put sellers and buyers from all Europe together in competition (professional and not) instead of two private companies like TCG and Starcity, well known for their max-profit businesses.

Buying foils is only a matter of personal preference. For me, it is like a collection fever. I love old brown artifacts, so I created an EDH (Sharuum at first, then Breya) to play them. Then I stopped Modern and Legacy competitive events, I sold some cards and found myself with a bunch of money, and decided to "pimp" my EDH deck.

Stefouch, I also started playing Magic as a kid when Revised was out just missing Unlimited. I stopped playing after Ice Age for many years for school/work only returning to the game about two years ago. Since returning I only buy singles. I live in the US I have to deal with the high prices of Magic cards which is one reason I preach budget and build budget Magic decks. My overall collection is however not budget it consists of mostly Revised, Legends, The Dark, 4th Edition, Ice Age and some Unlimited cards.

I've mostly played Standard, Elves causally since returning to the game, but fell in love with Commander about six months ago and since it's all I really play. I find it the most fun of the Magic formats and it's great if I want to I can use old cards from my collection in decks.

Changes made today are added Phyrexian Metamorph(000) and Lim-Dul's Vault(ALL) cutting Magister Sphinx, Insidious Dreams and Glacial Fortress.

Metamorph replaces Sphinx, Island replaces Fortress and Vault replaces Dreams, thanks Stefouch for the suggestion.