The Art of Outperforming Your Budget: A Deck-Building Methodology

There’s this idea that Commander decks live and die by their price tag. If you don’t have the flashy lands, the tutors, and the splashy mythics, you’re just going to sit there while everyone else plays "real" Magic.

Here’s the secret: that’s nonsense. The absolute joy of playing on a budget is watching someone’s £100 card crumble to a 50p uncommon they’ve never heard of before, or seeing your lean, focused deck outpace a pile of individually powerful staples with no coherent game plan. It’s one of the best feelings Commander as a format has to offer, and  it’s proof that good construction and sharp play will always beat a pile of expensive Game Changer Soup. (And besides, some of the most memorable and fun games the store has seen were budget events: a partnerless Francisco, Fowl Marauder pulling off a highly improbable win against three much stronger decks, for example, or Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant, Farmer Cotton, and 98 lands cleaning up at rule 0 everything-has-partner night.)

Most people building Bracket 4 decks are just throwing money at a problem, hoping raw power will carry them: after all, why shouldn’t they be on a powerful card like Drannith Magistrate in their War Doctor/Clara Oswald deck? There’s no way that could backfire horribly. The reality is that a well-built Bracket 2 deck will run circles around just about any sloppy Bracket 4 list, and it’ll do so with style if you know how to pilot it. Don’t believe me? Let’s get into it.

Consistency Beats Power - the Design of the Pyramid

What's more consistent that just running 40 of the same card?

The worst feeling in Magic is sitting there, being unable to do anything. Either your deck isn’t firing, or someone across the table has all the answers to lock you (or the entire rest of the pod) out. We can’t stop the second problem, but we can make sure our own deck does its job as often as possible. This is the foundation of the pyramid that is your deck.

Commander is a 100-card singleton format, and without expensive tutors, inconsistency is baked in (and, to some, part of the appeal). So instead of chasing raw power, we aim for consistency. Every choice you make should smooth out variance and give your deck something to do every game. The rest of this article is how I do exactly that.

Resources - the Materials of the Pyramid

 

Magic runs on three resources: Life, Mana, and Cards. Everyone knows lifegain-for-the-sake-of-lifegain doesn’t win games (it feels good right up until someone poisons you, wallops you with commander damage, or mills you out), so let’s focus on the real engines: mana and cards. (You may well point out here that pyramids don’t normally have engines and we’re mixing our metaphors, but Amonkhet Raceway begs to differ.)

Without mana, you don’t get to play. Sure, there are exceptions like Manaless Dredge, but in Commander you need a proper ramp suite. Cultivate and Kodama’s Reach are classics, and I’ll usually aim for about 10 ramp pieces. If your deck’s plan is built on ramping, that number jumps up to 15-18. Even if you’re outside of green, you still have access to mana rocks like sol ring and arcane signet, mana dorks like ornithopher of paradise, and other colourless land ramp like solemn simulacrum (also known as sad bot, to his friends).

Without cards, you run out of gas. I like at least 10 ways to draw, often split between ~7 cheap cantrips (Ponder, Preordain, Brainstorm, Opt, Consider, Curate, Deliberate) and ~3 big draw spells like Blue Sun’s Zenith, Transcendent Message, or Stroke of Genius. (Outside of blue, every colour has access to a few good solid draw pieces, whether you’re on Sign in Blood in black or Thrill of Possibility in red.)

This isn’t rocket science - just make sure your deck always has mana and cards, and you’ll already be ahead of most tables and, to return to our metaphor, half way to building a pyramid that would make Nicol Bolas himself jealous.

Interaction - Protecting the Pyramid

You can’t just goldfish your way through Commander. If you don’t interact, you’ll get buried under someone else’s nonsense.

The good news is that interaction scales beautifully on a budget. Swords to Plowshares doesn’t care if it’s exiling a bulk rare or a $100 Metalworker. Wrath of God wipes out mythics just as easily as draft chaff.

And here’s the real point: only well-constructed decks, piloted by competent players, are resilient to a skilfully wielded piece of spot removal. A single cheap answer can flip a game on its head if you know when to use it - and that’s where budget players get to shine. Sure, that 20/20 commander with hexproof, indestructible, and half a dozen other keywords swinging into you may look dangerous, but one Perplexing Test later it’s in their hand and all those auras they sunk mana into for the past 3 turns are sitting in their graveyard. Rule of thumb here is, again, around 10 pieces of spot removal - some of which can hit non-creature permanents in case of pricey powerhouses like Rhystic Study or Smothering Tithe - and 2, maybe 3 board wipes: blowing up your own board alongside everyone else’s looks unappealing right up until your options are ‘cast Blasphemous Act and recast your commander on your next turn’ or ‘get buried beneath a few thousand copies of Scute Swarm when the next player untaps’.

Colours - Simplifying the Pyramid

Here’s a hard truth: once you go past two colours, your mana base is either expensive or inconsistent. Without fetches, shocks, and untapped duals, your three-plus-colour deck is going to stumble. And every tapped land you play is basically handing your opponents a free turn.

Want your deck to perform above budget? Stick to one or two colours (maybe a very light splash). Mono colour decks are underrated, and two colour decks give you more than enough toys without tanking your mana. If you ever do want to invest, lands should be the first upgrade - they’re pricey because they’re powerful. If you really want to run 3 colours or more, focus on lands that can enter untapped and 3-cost mana rocks that tap for any colour and, ideally, do something the deck wants to do anyway: Dragonstorm Globe in a dragon deck, for example, or Everflowing Chalice if your commander can consistently fill your hand.

Accessing the Engine - Building the Pyramid

Smooth early game = smoother everything else.

If you’re in green, lean your basics toward forests so your ramp spells always work on turn two. If you’re in blue, lean on islands so you can start cantripping from turn one. Your early colour needs to come online first - the rest will follow. It’s also advisable to learn when to mulligan and what a solid keepable hand looks like, but that’s a topic for another article.

Curve matters too. Three-mana counterspells like Cancel are fine; four-mana ones are a trap unless they do something ridiculous. Same goes for removal. Keep your answers efficient, and don’t clog your hand with slow, clunky spells.

For land counts, I use a simple rule: 43 minus the number of cheap draw spells. With 7 cantrips, that’s 36 lands. It’s not perfect, but it’s consistent, and consistency is the whole point. If you’re unsure, go with the safe standby of 36 lands; if you’re building landfall, you can probably bump this to 40 and use the extra slots for a few more cheap fetches like Cabaretti Courtyard for those tasty, tasty double landfall triggers - and to help thin your deck.

Avoiding Synergy Traps - Shoring up the Foundations

Let’s talk about Doubling Season. Yes, it’s famous. Yes, it does wild things. But here’s the truth: it’s a 5-mana enchantment that does nothing on its own and immediately becomes a removal magnet. If you want to find out if someone has a convenient Generous Gift or Beast Within in their hand, which is about all the average copy of Doubling Season manages to do, Revelation is a much cheaper and more direct option. (Disclaimer: don’t run Revelation either outside of Bracket 1. It’s funny, but it’s also terrible.)

On a budget, that’s suicide. I’d rather have another token generator that actually does something the turn it lands. And guess what? It’ll also be cheaper in both mana and money.

It’s important to make the distinction between powerful and good. Doubling Season is powerful, but it isn’t good in a lean, budget-conscious build. Compare that to a proper dual land: not flashy, not powerful in isolation, but always good because it quietly makes your deck run better every single game. One is a win-more luxury; the other is a rock-solid foundation. And for the cost of a Doubling Season, you can get a Farseek, a Nature’s Lore, a Three Visits, and probably a couple halfway reliable targets for them like Sunken Hollow or Canopy Vista that can enter untapped and fix your mana for good measure.

Plenty of guides talk about ratios like “25 theme cards to 7 synergy cards.” I think you’re almost always better off cutting the synergy fluff and jamming more theme. The synergy cards are fun, sure, but they’re also win-more and expensive. If you want your deck to punch up, you don’t need them.

Committing to the Theme - Finishing the Pyramid

Your commander is your north star. Build around it like you mean it.

If your commander cares about tokens, then even your ramp and card draw should help you make tokens wherever possible. If it cares about instants and sorceries, then lean into spellslinger versions of your staples - cut Farhaven Elf and run Cultivate instead. And if your commander flickers creatures? Suddenly Farhaven Elf is the better option.

If you’re new, the safest move is to stick to two colours and commit fully to one theme, whether it’s burn damage, flicker, elves, or wet elves(also known as merfolk). Half-hearted decks always stumble: all those token synergy pieces on your board are good, sure, but they’d be much better if you actually had any token generators in hand to use them with. Going all in on theme gives you synergy, and synergy is what makes a budget deck feel like a "real" deck. Once you’re confident, you can start layering in subthemes, but learn to walk the main path first.

This is the step that turns a budget pile into a deck that actually hums. By aligning every card with your commander’s plan, you squeeze every drop of value out of your budget. And that’s how a Bracket 2 deck knocks over a Bracket 4 Game Changers Pile like the jenga tower it is.

Closing Thoughts

Budget, from a certain point of view, is less of a handicap and more of a filter. It strips out the bloat, forces you to focus, and rewards you with a deck that just works.

You don’t need a binder full of mythics and a bottomless bank account to win games. What you need is consistency, interaction, clean mana, a functional curve, the sense to dodge overpriced traps, and above all - commitment to your theme.

And here’s the great joy of budget play: landing that perfect, cheap piece of interaction and watching an expensive deck collapse because it wasn’t built to withstand it. Only well-constructed decks, piloted by competent players, can survive a skilfully wielded answer. That’s where you shine.

Follow these principles and your "budget" deck won’t just keep up. It’ll surprise people. It’ll punch above its weight. And it’ll prove what I’ve been saying all along: a well-built Bracket 2 deck will stomp a sloppy Bracket 4 deck nine times out of ten. (If your opponent lucks into the 2-card Win The Game Combo they found on google after you’ve burned through all your counterspells, for example, no force on Earth or any other plane can help you and may Richard Garfield have mercy on your soul.)

Because in Commander, it’s not the size of your wallet that matters - it’s how sharp your deckbuilding (and your play) is.