I am an old thyme 94/95 player who has dipped his toes back into the MTG waters at various times, most recently in NPH and INN in the Pauper World. Vintage Masters and the Power 9 bought me back to MTGO but I perceived Vintage to be too spendy, so I continued with my Pauper path (which has been great).
I do however live in Asia so I play MTGO at odd hours in regards to USA/Euro time. Therefore Pauper games are not always ongoing. I thought about exploring other formats so that I can get my game on when I have time (sadly I have little of that, and due to young children often have to drop when I can get my game on). The Professor's recent video on budget duals got me thinking- could I make a dependable no CITP tapped budget dual color manabase for constructed? It turned out I could, especially if I used black as the base.
A mixture of Taint Lands, Check Land, Pain Lands and possibly Odyssey Filter Lands and Lairs lets one create a pretty solid 2 color base. The key is to have enough swamps. Shocks would improve things but they are not super budget. If using Shocks, one could create a solid 3 color mana base as well (if including Black for the Taints). Black has Dark Ritual for mana amp, but you could also use Lotus Petal, and Spirit Guides as mana ramp as well.
In addition, I remembered an old Pauper to the People episode that discussed the relation of Pauper and Vintage. Which got me looking around at prices. It turns out that a combination of banned/restricted lists, recent reprintings and lack of overall enthusiasm now has some all time great magic cards priced at below 0.1 tickets. [[Necropotence]] AND [[Yawgmoth's Bargain]] at less than 0.2 tix total? Really?!? Sign me up! So, I started putting the following list together. It is primarily for the Vintage JFF room, but it is loads of fun to play:
HOWEVER, finding out that Mox Diamonds were ~10 tix a playset (FTV Foils), it got me rebrewing. What I ended up with was probably akin to a Tezz Vault Key netdeck (I did brew it myself except to Inkwell), but it is super budget. I don't know why some Foil cards are so much cheaper than their non foil, but I am not complaining!
Any advice would be welcome, especially if it is 2-3 tickets or less.
One doesn't need the Power 9 to have fun, or to be competitive it seems (with a 100 tix Dredge Deck). Vintage can be a bit of an arms race, so you have to reign yourself in, lol.
I now have casual Pauper and Vintage games firing at all times, and it is good times and great oldies.
Wow, thanks for the feedback. Those decks are pretty cool. I am considering a budget Oath deck with Core Augurs as the fetch target. 2000% cheaper than Gris and still pretty nasty.
As for the epiphany, it's an instant and no discard with a artifact in play, and thoughtcast can turn into a small ancestral. However they both feel a little slow, Nights whisper (or sign in blood for cheap) might work out better. I need to play some matches to get a better feel, so far I have been golfishing to see how everything fits together. What's the best draw 3? And is the BBB draw 4 for 50% life too dangerous?
One function of the mox diamond that is superior to alpha moxen is that they are rainbow. This is actually pretty significant. However the card disdvantage can be a problem. Lairs and Rav bounce lands can even this out a bit actually and offer more color fixing. I am not sure which is better, they both also carry mulligan risk so maybe 2 is the most to play. Bouncelands offer ramp while, lairs give a smoother curve and more fixing.
The mana base is pretty nice actually, with mox diamond offering rainbow three colors is not that tricky even without shocks (or duals and fetches). The Deck is now a grixis with wheel and pyroclasm MB, but I could see it going UBW for even more control.
Mana confluence is dropping like a rock, less than 2.5 tix now.
I added a few pyromancers, wheel to the MB and a few pyroclasm in the SB, but i didn't have enough red for reliable pyromancer, so reverted to 2 delvers plus wheel. Mana flood was definitely a problem with too many mana sources. I'll post an update after a few more games. Goldfishing doesn't really give you a realistic feel for running a game. Neither does having vault key in your opening hand, which happened lol.
4x Mox Diamonds is a no go with this budget mana base. 2 feels about right. They are useful when flooded and smoothing out turns 3-5, but are not great in 1-2 unless flooded or you get a godhand (which can happen).
I could see this deck having more counters, but I want to see how a harder discard strat works (may be bad with delve in the wild).
Jace was 0.02 tix, so I thought I'd give him a spin. Cheap repeatable card draw seems like a good thing, plus Jace is a target!
This kind of budget mana base can't handle 3 colors so well. A playset of mana confluence may be a good investment if I want to continue with Vintage (which I think I do, even if budget at the moment).
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I am an old thyme 94/95 player who has dipped his toes back into the MTG waters at various times, most recently in NPH and INN in the Pauper World. Vintage Masters and the Power 9 bought me back to MTGO but I perceived Vintage to be too spendy, so I continued with my Pauper path (which has been great).
I do however live in Asia so I play MTGO at odd hours in regards to USA/Euro time. Therefore Pauper games are not always ongoing. I thought about exploring other formats so that I can get my game on when I have time (sadly I have little of that, and due to young children often have to drop when I can get my game on). The Professor's recent video on budget duals got me thinking- could I make a dependable no CITP tapped budget dual color manabase for constructed? It turned out I could, especially if I used black as the base.
A mixture of Taint Lands, Check Land, Pain Lands and possibly Odyssey Filter Lands and Lairs lets one create a pretty solid 2 color base. The key is to have enough swamps. Shocks would improve things but they are not super budget. If using Shocks, one could create a solid 3 color mana base as well (if including Black for the Taints). Black has Dark Ritual for mana amp, but you could also use Lotus Petal, and Spirit Guides as mana ramp as well.
In addition, I remembered an old Pauper to the People episode that discussed the relation of Pauper and Vintage. Which got me looking around at prices. It turns out that a combination of banned/restricted lists, recent reprintings and lack of overall enthusiasm now has some all time great magic cards priced at below 0.1 tickets. [[Necropotence]] AND [[Yawgmoth's Bargain]] at less than 0.2 tix total? Really?!? Sign me up! So, I started putting the following list together. It is primarily for the Vintage JFF room, but it is loads of fun to play:
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/super-budget-dimir-mtgo-vintage/ (not really very powerful)
HOWEVER, finding out that Mox Diamonds were ~10 tix a playset (FTV Foils), it got me rebrewing. What I ended up with was probably akin to a Tezz Vault Key netdeck (I did brew it myself except to Inkwell), but it is super budget. I don't know why some Foil cards are so much cheaper than their non foil, but I am not complaining!
Any advice would be welcome, especially if it is 2-3 tickets or less.
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/super-budget-dimir-mtgo-vintage-tezzeret-vault-key/
And using the formatting of the forum (not sure how to do it):
2x Dark Ritual
2x Diabolic Edict
3x Drowned Catacomb
4x Duress
1x Gurmag Angler
1x Inkwell Leviathan
1x Library of Alexandria
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
4x Mox Diamond
1x Necropotence
1x Ponder
1x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Sol Ring
4x Spell Pierce
1x Steel Hellkite
8x Swamp
4x Tainted Isle
2x Tezzeret the Seeker
1x Thirst for Knowledge
2x Thoughtcast
1x Time Vault
1x Tinker
1x Tolarian Academy
1x Treasure Cruise
4x Underground River
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Voltaic Key
1x Yawgmoth's Bargain
1x Yawgmoth's Will
3x Null Rod
4x Planar Void
2x Rebuild
4x Steel Sabotage
One doesn't need the Power 9 to have fun, or to be competitive it seems (with a 100 tix Dredge Deck). Vintage can be a bit of an arms race, so you have to reign yourself in, lol.
I now have casual Pauper and Vintage games firing at all times, and it is good times and great oldies.
As for the epiphany, it's an instant and no discard with a artifact in play, and thoughtcast can turn into a small ancestral. However they both feel a little slow, Nights whisper (or sign in blood for cheap) might work out better. I need to play some matches to get a better feel, so far I have been golfishing to see how everything fits together. What's the best draw 3? And is the BBB draw 4 for 50% life too dangerous?
One function of the mox diamond that is superior to alpha moxen is that they are rainbow. This is actually pretty significant. However the card disdvantage can be a problem. Lairs and Rav bounce lands can even this out a bit actually and offer more color fixing. I am not sure which is better, they both also carry mulligan risk so maybe 2 is the most to play. Bouncelands offer ramp while, lairs give a smoother curve and more fixing.
The mana base is pretty nice actually, with mox diamond offering rainbow three colors is not that tricky even without shocks (or duals and fetches). The Deck is now a grixis with wheel and pyroclasm MB, but I could see it going UBW for even more control.
I'll post an update when it is more stable.
I added a few pyromancers, wheel to the MB and a few pyroclasm in the SB, but i didn't have enough red for reliable pyromancer, so reverted to 2 delvers plus wheel. Mana flood was definitely a problem with too many mana sources. I'll post an update after a few more games. Goldfishing doesn't really give you a realistic feel for running a game. Neither does having vault key in your opening hand, which happened lol.
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/super-budget-dimir-mtgo-vintage-tezz-vault-key-v2/
4x Mox Diamonds is a no go with this budget mana base. 2 feels about right. They are useful when flooded and smoothing out turns 3-5, but are not great in 1-2 unless flooded or you get a godhand (which can happen).
I could see this deck having more counters, but I want to see how a harder discard strat works (may be bad with delve in the wild).
Jace was 0.02 tix, so I thought I'd give him a spin. Cheap repeatable card draw seems like a good thing, plus Jace is a target!
This kind of budget mana base can't handle 3 colors so well. A playset of mana confluence may be a good investment if I want to continue with Vintage (which I think I do, even if budget at the moment).