Budget Goal: Zada for <$20.
About the Deck: When Zada was first spoiled, I got happy. He was a mono-colored legendary version of
Ink-Treader Nephilim
. My playgroup used to occasionally allow Nephilim commanders, but only on nights where everybody had brought a Nephilim deck. Fast-forward to BFZ, and we get our legal commander version of Ink-Treader. Zada's not four-colored, but he'll do. Especially since WotC decided to do the stupidest thing and not include Nephilim with each deck in C16. The biggest difference other than the color is that Zada only affects your creatures. When I first made and posted this deck, I had forgotten and overlooked that little fact, and put stuff in that wanted to target all creatures. So, this deck is easy to keep cheap. There are soooooo many cards you can switch out. This is seriously the most "framework" idea for any of my Extreme Budget decklists. All you need are tons of things that target a creature, and things that give you tokens. Fill the rest of the deck with ramp and removal, and you're golden.
The instants/sorceries that I chose to target Zada mainly do a couple things. First, we have tons of things to make him "buff." I'm going to use
Distemper of the Blood
for this example. Distemper gives Zada Trample and +2/+2 until end of turn. So, you're either in a situation where you're swinging in with Zada, a 3/3 that becomes a 5/5 with Trample, against your opponent, or you're in a situation where you have Zada and quite a few other creatures. If you target Zada, every single one of those creatures gains Trample and gets +2/+2 until end of turn. Since Distemper only costs 1R, you will easily be able to cast more than one of these per turn. You will want to save these spells for use at the right time. Don't just swing all in because you can. Be aware of blue players with open mana. Assess the board. You don't have an infinite number of these spells. If you find yourself running out, you might want to replace one of the mechanics you find yourself using/needing less of with something like
Junktroller
or
Reito Lantern
to get these cards back.
Since it is easy to end up with an empty hand, I've added a few cards to help with draw.
Expedite
and
Crimson Wisps
both let us target Zada, and draw a card for each creature we have. Only have two creatures out? Paying a single red mana for drawing two cards is far from a bad deal. Play either of these after you play a card giving you tokens, and you also get some haste on those tokens.
This deck is built more toward having lots of creatures than it is toward buffing up Zada. Of course, you can easily swap out some of the token generation for more instants/sorceries to target Zada if you want. There are a couple cards that give you quite a bit of tokens.
Twinflame
will almost double your creatures. I say almost because you'll have to kill off the Zada copy, but it's a great thing to have especially if you have a handful of creatures out already. Then there's Empty the Warrens. I wrote above about how easy it will be to run out of cards in hand. If this is the last one you cast after a slough of other spells, you get a ton of goblins. The only real downfall is that this card is at sorcery speed. If it were instant, it would very likely be out of budget range. Oh, yeah -- it would also be BUH-ROKEN.
There are also lots of damage spells to help whittle down your opponents a little at a time. My favorite one is Psychosis Crawler for when you play cards like
Expedite
or if you're playing against somebody playing a Nekusar, the Mindrazer deck.
So basically, early game play some ramp, get out some creatures. Later on, buff your homies, swing in for kills. That's the quick & dirty of this deck.
