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Casual
$50 EDH Deck?
Hello again and welcome to another star studded edition of “More than one way to play.” This week’s article started out as a “$20 EDH Deck”. I wanted to put together something anyone on a budget could build to get a feel for EDH, but not sink a whole lot of dough on, but that soon turned out to be impossible. I put together a few tries, but they just weren’t any fun. You could throw together 100 cards in the same colors for $20, as long as you used 40 basic lands, but nothing I tried played out very well. I decided to up my budget. “$50 EDH Deck” is much more achievable!
I decided on Mayael the Anima as my general. Naya is the “shard” of 5+ power creatures. While Mayael gives you a way to cheat in the big guys, she is prone to die a lot, so a lot of mana ramp is necessary to help cast your fatties without Mayael’s help when necessary. Big fatties with lots of ramp seemed like a good place to go, since both mana ramp, and huge fatties can be very inexpen$ive, while still very playable in EDH. Here’s the list I came up with.
Total price buying every card except for basic lands from www.coolstuffinc.com: $49.08.
I went with mostly basic lands. Most of our mana ramp depends on fetching basic lands anyway, so this serves both our budget theme and provides plenty of targets for our ramp. Seven non basic lands that can produce multiple colors, including 3 bounce lands, help smooth out our mana a bit. Two “fetch” lands go with our additional mana ramp fetchers to pull some of the basic land out of the deck. The other four non basic lands are a 4/4 First Strike man land, a way to give our fatties double strike, a chump blocker generator, and the one card that no EDH deck should be without, Reliquary Tower.
26 Mayael targets means that slightly more than 1 out of every 4 cards in the deck is a 5+ power creature. Since Mayael’s ability lets you look at the top 5 you should hit every time, right? Well in theory anyway! Do you know the difference between theory and practice? In theory they are the same, in practice they are not.
Most of our fatties are fairly self explanatory, fatness with great evasion like Flying and Trample or some other useful ability.
Krosan Tusker serves a dual purpose as both a Mayael Target, and mana fetch. Apply as needed.
Bull Ceredon, and most likely Cliffrunner Behemoth, are attacking right out of the gates with both fatness and haste. Throw in either Lifelink or Vigilance for a tasty beatdown treat.
Spearbreaker Behemoth loves to help out all of his fat friends by making them, and himself, indestructible at will. Vagrant Plowbeasts can achieve much the same result if Spearbreaker is busy. Paleoloth returns the favor by bringing back from the dead any of those fatties that Spearbreaker or Plowbeasts missed.
Arashi, the Sky Asunder, Flameblast Dragon, Mordant Dragon, Spitebellows and Hateflayer all serve as additional removal on a stick!
Meglonoth is just good old fashioned EDH goodness with his great “reverse Trample” effect.
Myojin of Infinite Rage is the finisher. Get a few fatties on the board and remove that counter! Hold back a couple lands and make sure the Darksteel Ingot is in play and you’re off to the races. Heaven forbid you actually have Elfhame Sanctuary out when this goes off!
Cream of the Crop is great to set up a continual Mayael stream of fatness. Get fatty number one into play, then use Cream of the Crop to setup your next fatty on top of your deck.
Weatherseed Treefolk and Greater Good set up a great pay 5, draw 5 discard 3 combo repeatable over and over. Mix in Paleoloth and you are drawing/returning mad numbers of cards to your hand.
Lurking Predators is just stupid in this deck. Combo this with Cream of the Crop and it just gets extremely stupid! You’ll be putting a fatty into play almost every time an opponent casts a spell!
Lightning Greaves, Shield of the Oversoul and Whispersilk Cloak are some great ways to give Mayael a little protection. Did I mention she dies a lot?
Should you ever get a little protection on Mayael you’ll pretty much stop playing spells and just Mayael over and over. Elfhame Sanctuary is great when this happens, you guarantee you won’t draw a fatty, and continually thin that deck out .
Besides all the removal on a stick, you get plenty of good targeted and non targeted removal. You should be able to get rid of, or neutralize, anything that’s too annoying.
Savage Beating is one of my all time favorite EDH cards. For only seven mana you can do an absolutely amazing amount of damage. This is probably one the most aptly named cards ever!
Titanic Ultimatum is big finisher number two. If Myojin doesn’t find his way onto the board, just a few fatties with +5/+5, First Strike, Trample and Lifelink should seal the deal.
So that’s my budget EDH deck. I actually have built this deck as listed and it’s totally not bad. It can hang in there with most anything. This would be a great deck to start with and add to over time. Some obvious additions would be some better lands like real dual lands, real fetches and shock lands. A scroll rack and/or Sensei’s Divining Top could help with priming Mayael’s ability, and even a Sylvan Library could help you get there. Genesis and Eternal Witness are always great additions to a green deck. Combine Genesis and Eternal Witness with Yosei, the Morning Star and lock someone out of the game with the help of Greater Good. You could also throw in some better fatties, both Akroma’s and Baneslayer could work. If you build this deck, or something like it, I would love to hear about, leave me a comment below!
Until next week this is Dale Lovelace telling you there is more than one way to play!
Dale Lovelace is a DCI judge from Tampa, Florida. He loves casual and
"weird" Magic formats, including Elder Dragon Highlander. He'll talk
about EDH, those other formats and some seriously cool things you can
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I’ve been looking to build an EDH deck for a while now, and looking through this list, I already have about half of the cards. I might put this deck together and see how it works for myself. Thanks for the great article.
Great article, Dale. I have been playing against a Mayael deck for some time, and I can say she’s a great General. My only suggestion (and still keeping it budget) is Seedborn Muse. She’s $1.50 and absolutely invaluable in this deck!
Is there something wrong with my browser, or is the list not actually visible here?
Seedborn Muse would be the hotness. She could probably slide in the Magus spot.
@aret I see the list down the right side of the article in both Firefox and Internet Explorer… Shrug…
@aret – You need to have Javascript enabled to see the decklist. Otherwise you can view it at: http://mtgurl.com/U3ap
Great list, just got exposed to EDH and this might be my first deck.
A lot of friends have been pressuring me to play EDH with them. But I can’t seem to come up with any great ideas. This deck idea looks fun. I like it because I have been playing naya style decks since shards was released.
Kazuul is only $0.6 and helps protecting you from swarm.
O wow, yeah Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs seems pretty good. I’ll have to find a spot for him in my deck!
I built a Mayael deck awhile back and (unfortunately) still have yet to get into an EDH game near me… I’ve tested it as a “singleton” deck and it was still pretty fun… Some cards that seemed pretty good in it not on your list:
Nature’s Will
Privileged Position
Mana Reflection
Where Ancient’s Tread
In the Web of War
Knotvine Mystic
I actually bought way too many cards for the deck (though none were more than $2-$3 bucks), so I have several other cards that could probably use some testing, but these seemed pretty damn good when they came out.
Great article Dale!
The best part of Mayael is that she is one of the quintessential EDH Generals. She allows for a lot of customization, and a lot of room for growth if you decide to invest more money (Lands are always a great investment). Its also very fun to play, and fun to play against (unlike the Azamis of the world!!) I will also say that this is best as a multiplayer deck (the way EDH is meant to be played!) because it can be rather slow out of the gate. I personally run a heavy beast version that utilizes Contested Cliffs and cards that can tutor for it (Crop Rotation, Expedition Map, and if you want to spend the cash, Knight of the Reliquary.
Here is some more cheap fat that interacts well with this deck:
Stalking Vengeance (woe to whoever board sweeps you!)
Blazing Archon (Always use protection!)
Bloodfire Colossus (Cheap Sweeps!)
Woodfall Primus (2 for 1… then another 2 for 1!)
Mossbridge Troll (Potential finisher, see the interaction with Mayael’s Aria.)
Rhox (He Rhox… get it…)
Khamal, Pit Fighter (Suprise!)
Scourge of Kher Ridges (Anti-Flying)
Other creatures:
Seedborn Muse: (I agree with the above comments on this card. Its hard to lose if you resolve this with an active Mayael on the board. The more players, the better this gets)
Spells:
Jokulhaups: (Sometimes you need to press reset on the Nintendo… then blow in it.)
Steely Resolve: (Name Elf to protect your Ladyfriend!)
Mayael’s Aria: (Fits the flavor of the deck, and with Mossbridge Troll you auto-win)
Lands:
Mosswort Bridge (never a problem fullfilling its req’s)
Wirewood Lodge (Untaps Mayael!)
Artifacts: Rings of Brighthearth (extra Mayel activation!)
Mageslayer: (Slays mages.)
See you in the shop!
in a high mana cost deck like this i would reccomend
RECROSS THE PATHS
works well with your big dudes, is mana ramp and deck stacking all in one!
recross the paths sounds like it should make a great addition to the deck
1. its mana ramp
2. potential setup for mayel
3. goes great with signets(casting multiple times a turn)
4. with a large amount of mana heavy spells, your chances of losing the clash are slim
i also like the mossbridge idea mine’s shiny!
@CraigSid
I don’t have it in my deck now, but for Steely Resolve, better to name Shaman… lot more elves out there, some of which may not be yours. ;)
Love the iteration of this deck! I’ve been playing with my Mayael deck for months now, and can’t believe I missed Savage Beating and Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion. Savage Beating is even better than Relentless Assault. I’ll have to squeeze that in somehow.
Some things I have in my deck that have proven useful in all sorts of unexpected ways are a bunch of small mana-producing creatures (Elvish Harbinger, Knotvine Mystic, Druid of the Anima, Birds of Paradise, Bloom Tender). Not only do they provide me with ridiculous amounts of mana by turn 3 if I get lucky and draw the Bird and the Knotvine in my opening hand, but I’ve had people target me with Telemin Performance during a game and get a completely innocuous mana dork instead of a fattie. Hilarious fun times!
I’ve also had a lot of fun exploiting landfall, though a lot of the cards don’t really fit in the budget theme because they’re a bit spendy (Admonition Angel + Realm Razer + drop a land directly after, or Admonition Angel + Rampaging Baloths + Scapeshift = your opponents weeping and cursing your name).
One fattie suggestion that DOES fit with the budget theme is Borborygmos. Throw Mr. Tummy-Grumble down and give him double-strike to make him ridiculous, or give him double strike AND equip him with the Whispersilk Cloak for maximum ridiculousness.