The Most Common Budget Commander Decks | EDHRECast 113

EDHREC has compiled the data for the most common commanders built on a budget, and it's time to review the results! Which commanders are built most often at a low price? More importantly, which STRATEGIES tend to be the most budget-friendly? Let's find out!

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Music: "Crunk Knight" by Kevin Macleod licensed via Creative Commons:

[EDHRECast]

We can't provide the whole list, but we wanted to give you a list of as many of the top budget commanders as we could. Enjoy!

1. Zada, Hedron Grinder
2. Grunn, the Lonely King
3. Mowu, Loyal Companion
4. Hallar, the Firefletcher
5. Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant
6. Isperia the Inscrutable
7. Anax and Cymede
8. Depala, Pilot Exemplar
9. Odric, Master Tactician
10. Ulrich of the Krallenhorde
11. Tolsimir Wolfblood
12. Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive
13. Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrig
14. Kazarov, Sengir Pureblood
15. Kangee, Aerie Keeper
16. Adeliz, the Cinder Wind
17. Tiana, Ship's Caretaker
18. Eutropia the Twice-Favored
19. Daghatar the Adamant
20. Valduk, Keeper of the Flame
21. Shanna, Sisay's Legacy
22. Tibor and Lumia
23. Odric, Lunarch Marshal
24. Daxos of Meletis
25. Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun

[cooperaa]

I'm glad Dana didn't let Joey's "All the ding-dang time" comment slide.

[kevinscott]

I think playing a strategy outside of its typical colors is a good budget option. My personal example is Brudiclad, as you avoid the expensive token staples in green while keeping plenty of options in Izzet

[andras]

When you mentioned the expensive hydras I was kind of curious, because I built a Gargos deck a while ago because Hydras where my pet tribe when I was a kid, so I already had both Kalonian and Primordial hydra, so I went and checked the price of those two and my jaw dropped.

[supermassivi]

I think Aristocrat decks are realy good to build on a budget, but I one thing that can be pushing up de average cost, more than especific card like Dictate of Erebos is that aristocrats decks are black and cards like Demonic anda Vampiric Tutor, Necropotence and other black staples

[sages]

Like you guys mention in the video, I think there's a fairly good reason you don't see life-gain decks on a budget too frequently!

As someone who was drawn to life-gain when they started playing EDH and did build a budget life-gain deck I can say that I found very quickly that life-gain by itself just isn't that great, it needs to work alongside other strategies to pay off. The thing about life-gain is that it is cheap because it doesn't actively win you the game on its own, paints a target on you in EDH where having a high life total gives people an excuse to swing at you to keep it under control, and doesn't really stop you from loosing as combos, alternate win-cons, and commander damage can be common. Because of this if you love life-gain strategies (like I do) you need to find a way to make it win the game for you which usually falls into one of two categories, those being using your life as a resource or using a high life total as an alternate win-con. You need your pay-off and that is not cheep unfortunately!

What you find when you look at these two strategies is that they start to jack up the price, as to use your life as a resource you want to be running things like Necropotence which can make the deck a little pricey and to win with life based alternate win-cons like Test of Endourance you need to pillow-fort hard to protect it and yourself and cards like Greater Auramancy or No Mercy that are used in strategies like that aren't cheap either. Lastly some life-gain decks go combo and go for infinite life/just combo kill with something like the Blood-Bond combo but I find that these decks get more expensive, not necessarily because they need expensive cards (though Exquisite Blood has shot up recently...), but rather because casual playgroups often dislike combos so people tend to power up combo decks to be able to play them at higher power tables.


At the end of the day a +1/+1 counter theme or a token theme, as you folks mentioned, can stay lower budget because they are a strategy that in and of themselves win you the game. With life-gain that just isn't really the case. You need your life-gain strategy and your win strategy (or payoff cards if you prefer) and while they can be related (very closely related even) I think that will always be more expensive than a strategy like +1/+1 counters where the payoff cards improve your strategy rather than having your strategy be impossible without them.

Just my 2 cents, great video!

[CrabBaskets]

I was considering before you got to the list that voltron would be the most popular budget archetype. Loved the video guys, thank you for the amazing content!

[gysahlgemuse]

I play Knollspine Dragon in Rakdos, Lord of Riots. Drop it in the second main for two red and draw 6 cards or more. If all your creature spells are that much cheaper, you tend to empty your hand pretty quick.

[wyattgrenstiner]

One of my fav budget commanders is borborygmos enraged. He has removal on the commander and if you play keen sense and a library of Lang you can go infinite.

[draconic]

Budget is relative. That said mostly budget mostly isn't an issue till I start looking at the mana base. Usually I'd like to build another 5 color deck but I don't feel like buying the duals/fetches atm so I'll put it off for now.

[magicalpro]

Ironically grabbing a good deck with staples is budget... hear me out.

You make a $50 deck. Get tired of it. Take it apart. It's just a pile of chaff... so you kinda throw away $50. Then another budget commander that does something similar comes along and you wanna build that. Another $50... rinse and repeat. Collection doesn't grow(except for chaff) . Equity is not built.

Now if we'd built a decent deck and upgraded investing like $150-200 (over time instead of initially off course) then we're guaranteed to have some of staples that hold/grow in value. When that deck gets disassembled it's not just chaff.

Example - when the card "Gamble" got reprinted a couple times a few years back the price tanked. Mana crept got reprinted, went down to $60, then a few months later rose back over $100. That $60 could have bought that at the time instead of a pile of chaff. Same with vampiric tutor, used to be $20 then, went up a lot, got reprinted, and went down to $20 again, then went up to $80.

Moral of the story. Would you rather your $20 be a vampiric tutor or a pile of chaff that ends up lost in your collection? Make sure to pick up a $5 - $20 card once in a while.

Edit : spelling

[ErasmusHereticus]

As an owner of an, admittedly not that budget, Hallar, the Firefletcher deck I can confirm it slaps. People just don't see the power coming, so thanks for putting him out there :)

[couver]

One of the best things about the multiplayer aspect of commander is that you can build on a budget and still compete since you don't have to pour all your resources into dealing with everything at the table on your own. This was a great episode! I was surprised to see aggro and lifegain not at the top here. I think a lot of recent commanders (especially in W) fit those two archetypes and can be built on a budget. God-Eternal Oketra for instance is a great budget aggro commander as is Linden. The new Daxos is fantastic at the helm of a budget lifegani deck. Thanks for yet another great episode guys!

[aaronodst]

That Knollspine and Borborygmos combos seems nasty, super glad to hear about it.

[edgarventura]

I started magic with the wrath of the mortals event deck, than in 2018 I "discovered" commander, now I wanna build a deck for each commander in the game (just build, buy is another story), with this video I've thought to start at the ones that I already have, then go to set by set, building a deck for each legendary creature in that set.

Edit: I'm definitely using EDHREC a lot!

[jaysde]

perhaps aggro is "hidden" in the tribal archetype; they primarily win by attacking/damage don't they?

[Yamipaladin]

My current most budget deck is a Feather the redeemed deck. I couldn't tell you what the most expensive card is but the whole thing couldn't be much over $50

[GroundThing]

38:13 I'm actually surprised at aristocrats not being more common on a budget, for kind of this reason. It limits you to commanders containing Orzhov (but that's a pretty common color combo for aristocrats anyway, since white can provide cheap token bodies to fuel the engine) but Martyr's Bond serves well as a budget replacement for Dictate or Grave Pact, and most of the other pieces are fairly cheap. The best I can guess is that maybe it performs best with at least an additional color besides orzhov, so the mana base is the primary stumbling block, but Idk.

[ryhym]

14:50 it’s funny because Kaseto, which I built from the precon cards, is probably my most expensive deck I own. But that’s mostly because of the mana base and my prerelease promo The Immortal Sun

[JohnSmith-hsez]

One aspect of budget that has changed for me in the past few years is that I now own a lot of the staples. For example: I own a cyclonic rift that I got through trading and I own all 10 shocklands from when they were recently in standard. So when I go to build a deck, I only include budget cards that I don't already own. However, because I own some of the staples the on paper price is much higher than the actual price I am paying.