Magic the Gathering Secret Santa

With a rare meet up for the three of us earlier this month, we decided to do a MTG deck secret Santa this year, with each of us building a deck for someone else in the trio. The only stipulations were:

• The value of the commander cannot exceed £5.
• The value of the deck outside the commander cannot exceed £50.

We thought it would be fun to explain and give some tips on budget deck building, so check out our deck ideas below!

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Stu’s Deck for Jamie

I was very excited for this challenge. I have lots of cool cards that I’ve been wanting to play around with but which don’t make the 99 in more competitive decks. However they would be perfect for this! I have a lot of cards from the Adventures of the Forgotten Realms set as that really helped consolidate my love for MTG and I cracked a lot of boosters at that time. I had always liked the idea of the ‘Party’ Cards but they seemed to struggle to fit other decks and I saw this as an opportunity to lean in to them. Not only are they cheap cards (which I already own most of!) but they have a unique play style and also reference Dungeons & Dragons which we all love playing.

My first thought was a mono black deck as basic lands don’t break the budget but then I thought it would be more fun with two colours to let me include more of the Party mechanic cards. I also remember Jamie loving the idea of ‘Background’ cards and thought this was the perfect chance to use one to introduce a second colour. I also love commanders that have some sort of draw a card mechanic which ‘Folk Hero’ does. ‘Burakos’ is really cool as he generates extra mana in the form of treasures (and these treasures also play into an aristocrats sub theme). He also most importantly counts as all of the ‘Party’ classes which helps a lot with the deck’s game plan.

This deck is a midrange deck which has a relatively low curve and likes to play out lots of cheap creatures – the vast majority of these are either ‘Clerics, Rogues, Warriors or Wizards’ which are needed to create the party and generate extra value. I was worried that this would be a bit inconsistent if Jamie drew several rogues but no warriors for example, so I added the ‘Changeling’ cards in to help smooth this out and build consistency – this was cool as I hadn’t used many of these cards previously. The deck also has some fun cards to buff up the board to hit for more damage with Mikaeus the Lunch, Jazal Goldmane and Mirror Entity all being able to buff the board whilst also being ‘Party’ members themselves.

The deck has an aristocrats sub theme to help punish opponents for killing off creatures and to help close the game out. Mirkwood Bats & Marionnette Master are in there to help add extra damage in for sacrificing treasures. Also there’s a few good aristocrats pieces that are within the ‘Party’ classes, eg Nadier’s Nightblade and Zulaport Cutthroat, so the sub-theme fits nicely alongside the deck’s primary game plan.

My deck also has an alternate commander, Nalia de’Arnise, who plays off the ‘Party’ mechanic in a different way for some added variety. She also is just a great card in the 99 and helps generate more value as well as pumping up the board.

Jamie’s first reaction: What a fun deck! The party mechanic is a cool one allowing some serious synergy within the cards which is very cool! Black is a colour that I really don’t play enough with and requires a bit of thinking around recursion and life management, but it’s been fun playing around with it more. Burakos’ ability to create a decent amount of extra mana every time it attacks really helps, though I did get a bit mana screwed in our first couple of games. Once it got going though it really became a monster in combat! Interestingly also Stu put a few shapeshifters in the deck which are great for giving me maximum flexibility when it comes to ensuring I have a full party.

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Jamie’s deck for Tom

So the deck I built for Tom is Lulu, Loyal Holiphant paired with the background Cultist of the Absolute.

It’s an Orzhov aristocrats/go wide counters deck that is all about sacking or buffing tokens to grind out opponents. My reasons for doing so is I wanted something we’ve not seen before with the background mechanic (as a side note it’s funny that Stu built an Orzhov deck with a background- clearly we were on the same wavelength!). Additionally Tom doesn’t typically run black in his decks so I wanted to give him something different to try out.

My thought process with the deck was to turn the sacrifice cost in Cultist of the Absolute into a benefit for his deck, by ensuring the +1/+1 counters from Lulu always come online. I also added some cards that tap outside of combat and cards with etb effects so Tom feels less bad for sacrificing them as the card has already fulfilled its purpose!

When building the deck, my first step was going through cards in my binder. Doing so I found quite a few cards to fit the theme, and then it was a case of focusing the playstyle so it wasn’t too scattergun. I also thought it was important not to include too many colours as typically colour fixing lands are spenny. So to keep it simple whilst ensuring I had budget to spend on cool cards meant limiting it to one or two colours really. Finally, I thought it was better for a couple of ‘okay’ cards rather than one mega spenny card in the 98. Given the typical length of games, chances are Tom is not always going to draw that mega card and so the rest of the deck risks feeling lacking as a result. My final tip is to look for cards one level ‘lower’ than you may originally want. This is because lots of cards are good but are a lot cheaper because there’s a better, more spenny one out there that people typically pick for more competitive decks.

Toms first reaction: I’ve always wanted to build a background deck, so when I saw the commander/background combo, I was hyped to try it out! On top of that, I used to play a ton of Neverwinter on Xbox, and Lulu plays a big role in one of the quests, so having her as my commander felt like a fun nod to that. Trying to keep track of all the triggers was hilarious, and you could tell Jamie put a lot of thought into making the deck really synergize, which was awesome. We did notice it could use a bit more card draw, but overall, Jamie built me a seriously badass deck!

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Tom’s deck for Stu

For my Secret Santa, I got Stu, which was a bit tricky. He’s got tons of decks and is always building new ones, so coming up with something unique was tough. But since he loves black and enjoys complex strategies, I decided to make a commander deck that fits his style. While going through my commander binder, I found Judith, Carnage Connoisseur and thought she’d be perfect.

The deck’s plan is to get Judith out and then cast lots of instants and sorceries. With Judith’s ability, each instant or sorcery can either gain deathtouch and lifelink or create a 2/2 red Imp creature token that deals 2 damage to each opponent when it dies. This helps control the board by reducing opponents’ creatures while also gaining life and making Imp tokens. I added several ways to take advantage of the Imps’ death triggers to make the deck more effective.

During playtesting, I realized I needed to adjust the number of instants and sorceries. Since Judith gives deathtouch to these spells, there were too many board wipes, which wasn’t ideal. After tweaking it, the deck ran more smoothly.

Seeing Stu’s reaction when he drew some of the deck’s cooler cards was awesome. I’m really looking forward to playing against this deck more in the future.

Stu’s first reaction: This deck slaps! And it’s a really cool deck to play with. It includes black which is my favourite colour but the commander leans in to a spellslinger style deck which I’ve not played around much with. The alternate commander, Torwaki is a lot of fun to play with and I’ve thought about building a deck for him for a long time. I really enjoyed giving spells death touch and wiping the whole board with a 1 damage ping spell (and also gaining a surprising amount of life). There’s some really fun instants in this deck as well as other payoff cards that damage opponents or generate more value from casting spells. I really enjoyed playing it and can’t wait for some more games. Gimli, Counter of kills ended up being a MVP in a couple games as he really punishes opponents for sacrificing things which Jamie & Tom’s decks are built around!

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All images are taken from the Magic the Gathering card database – can be accessed at https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Default.aspx