Budget Magic: $63 (33 tix) Standard Temur Summonings

Tweet by SaffronOlive // Oct 11, 2016

video budget magic standard Kaladesh

Laphi, Budget Magic lovers! It's that time again. The long, long wait is over: Kaladesh is out on Magic Online! As such, this week we are heading to the brand new Standard format for what might be the most successful Budget Magic deck of all time! Back during spoiler season, I wrote a little bit about how I thought Metallurgic Summonings was the most underrated card from Kaladesh and even included a brew based around the enchantment's synergy with Part the Waterveil and Nissa's Renewal. The original list was green-blue, but after seeing the results from the first week of Standard, I realized we needed a splash of red to be able to deal with aggressive creatures and Smuggler's Copter. The end result is a deck I'm calling Temur Summonings!

We'll talk more about Temur Summonings after the videos, but first a quick reminder: if you enjoy the Budget Magic series and the other video content on MTGGoldfish, make sure to subscribe to the MTGGoldfish YouTube Channel to keep up on all the latest and greatest.

Temur Summonings: Deck Tech

Temur Summonings vs. GW Aggro

Temur Summonings vs. Jeskai Flash

Temur Summonings vs. UB Control

Temur Summonings vs. UW Spirits

Temur Summonings vs. WB Control

The Deck

Temur Summonings is essentially a somewhat controlling ramp-combo deck. The basic idea of the deck is that we spend the early turns filtering through our library to find our combo pieces and ramping up to five, six, and then 10 mana, which allows us to win the game by attacking with a bunch of 6/6 Construct tokens! Let's start our discussion with the namesake card of the deck: Metallurgic Summonings.

The Combo

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Metallurgic Summonings is the card that makes our entire deck work, and many of the other cards in our deck are included to maximize its power. The idea here is that we'll ramp into Metallurgic Summonings on Turn 4, and then for the rest of the game, just about every spell in our deck comes with the kicker of a Construct token. Once we untap with Metallurgic Summonings, it becomes really hard to lose the game. Sometimes, we win right away by stringing together Part the Waterveils and Nissa's Renewals; other times, we play a more controlling game, making blockers at instant speed and filtering through our deck with card draw while eventually winning the game by using the second ability on Metallurgic Summonings, which usually draws us 10 or more instants and sorceries from our graveyard!

While it might not be that obvious, Metallurgic Summonings is actually fairly difficult to deal with onces it hits the battlefield. Right now, most Standard players are focused on beating artifacts like Smuggler's Copter and Fleetwheel Cruiser, but many of the common artifact-hate cards don't deal with Metallurgic Summonings. Fragmentize and Natural State can't hit it due to CMC restrictions; creature removal can deal with our Construct tokens, but we can always make more; and while a few people are playing Appetite for the Unnatural, it hasn't been widely adopted. As such, once we get it on the battlefield, it's likely to stick around and win us the game.

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Part the Waterveil and Nissa's Renewal are absolutely insane in our deck, closing out the game quickly once we get a Metallurgic Summonings on the battlefield by making 6/6 Construct tokens and helping us get back in the game when we are behind. They are also our most important combo pieces when it comes to winning in one big turn with Metallurgic Summonings.

As far as the combo finish, there are a couple of ways to go about it. The most straightforward is to play a Metallurgic Summonings and then, on the following turn, start chaining together copies of Part the Waterveil. Remember, with a Metallurgic Summonings on the battlefield, we are basically awakening Part the Waterveil for only six mana, since it comes along with a 6/6 Construct token. The only problem with this plan is that it requires several copies of Part the Waterveil to actually finish the game.

Because of this, a more common finish is to play Metallurgic Summonings and then play Nissa's Renewal the next turn as the ultimate stabilization card, gaining us seven life and giving us a 6/6 token (which means that even if we were dead on board, we should survive another turn), while also ramping us to the point where we should have 10 mana the next turn. With 10 mana, it often only takes a single copy of Part the Waterveil to finish the game, since we can awaken it and get two 6/6s (one with haste). Playing it this way also gives us the opportunity to cast a Part the Waterveil without awaken and also cast some other spells (most often some sort of card draw) to find more action for our extra turn.

Finally, there are times when we play these cards without Metallurgic Summonings. Part the Waterveil (along with a few creaturelands) is our backup plan for winning the game if our opponent can deal with our Metallurgic Summonings. We just ramp up to 10 mana and hope to awaken Part the Waterveils several turns in a row, and Nissa's Renewal helps us get to 10 mana to start the process.

The Ramp

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Natural Connection might look like a bad Rampant Growth because it costs an additional mana, but as odd as it sounds, it might actually be better than Rampant Growth would be in our deck for two reasons. First, being instant speed means it resolves way more often than it should, since our opponent almost never counters it when we play it on their end step, because they are afraid we are going to untap and do something even more devastating. Being able to pressure our opponent's resources at instant speed is one of the reasons that Temur Summonings is insanely good against any type of control deck. Second, being three mana instead of two allows us to make a bigger token with Metallurgic Summonings. Once we have our mythic enchantment on the table, it becomes risky for our opponent to keep attacking because there's always a chance we use Natural Connection to make a surprise 3/3 blocker and eat their attacker.

Cultivator's Caravan was initially put in the deck as just another ramp spell, allowing us to go from three mana to five mana and cast Metallurgic Summonings a turn early. After playing with it, however, I realize it does something else that is pretty important. There are some situations where, after resolving a Metallurgic Summonings, we play a Part the Waterveil to get a 6/6 and then, during our extra turn, we attack with the 6/6 and cast another Part the Waterveil (giving us two 6/6 Construct tokens). Ideally, we'd like to kill our opponent during our second extra turn, but since our deck doesn't really deal any incidental damage to opponents, we are going to be two points of damage short (6 + 6 + 6 = 18). With a Cultivator's Caravan sitting around, we can cast a random spell, get a small Construct token or two, and use those to crew the Cultivator's Caravan to get in the last points of damage. It's also helpful on defense when our opponent goes to kill a 6/6 we left back to block; in response, we can use it to crew the Cultivator's Caravan and still have a large blocker.

Card Draw / Filtering

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Glimmer of Genius, Cathartic Reunion, and Tormenting Voice help us find our combo pieces and whatever else we may need. Glimmer of Genius has the downside of being expensive, but it also digs four cards deep thanks to the scry and can be used to make a surprise 4/4 blocker. Cathartic Reunion and Tormenting Voice, on the other hand, don't really generate card advantage, but they do a great job of helping us cycle through out deck. In the early game, they help us find our Metallurgic Summonings, Nissa's Renewal, and Part the Waterveil, and in the late game, they allow us to filter away excess lands and find more spells to continue making tokens with Metallurgic Summonings. They also offer one of our best ways to get six artifacts on the battlefield to activate the second ability on Metallurgic Summonings, get back all of our spells from the graveyard, and close out the game, since they are cheap and easy to chain together.

Removal

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Radiant Flames and Harnessed Lightning are our ways of staying alive against all of the aggressive decks in Standard. Radiant Flames wipes away pretty much every creature in RB Aggro and WR Vehicles—two of the most popular decks in Standard—and in matchups where it is bad, we can always discard it to Cathartic Reunion or Tormenting Voice. Meanwhile, Harnessed Lightning kills both Smuggler's Copter and Fleetwheel Cruiser at instant speed for only two mana, and thanks to the energy we get from Glimmer of Genius, it can occasionally take down a large creature in the late game as well.

Basically, these cards allow us to live long enough to get to our powerful late game. Against aggressive decks, we don't need to keep them in check forever; we just need to survive until we start flooding the board with tokens, gaining life with Nissa's Renewal, or chaining together Part the Waterveils. Radiant Flames and Harnessed Lightning are essential in achieving this goal.

The Mana

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The mana in Temur Summonings is a delicate balance. Having some number of creaturelands is important because they allow us to pressure planeswalkers and also help finish the game, much like Cultivator's Caravan. On the other hand, we don't have that much room for nonbasic lands because we want to make sure that our Nissa's Renewals and Natural Connection always have basic lands to find when we cast them. While I'm not sure I have the mix quite right, the mana base seems to be working out pretty well in its current form. I'd like to have more creaturelands, but I worry about cutting Cinder Glade because having a green-red dual is extremely helpful in casting Cathartic Reunion / Tormenting Voice on Turn 2 and then Natural Connection on Turn 3.

Non-Budget / Ultra-Budget Temur Summonings

Normally, this is where we have two more deck lists—one that is ultra budget (around $50) and one that is non-budget—but we don't really have either this week. As far as making an ultra-budget list, at $63, Temur Summonings is pretty close to the ultra-budget range already, and I don't think the cost of the changes (in messing up the deck) is worth saving $10. On the other hand, I don't really have a non-budget list either. The list included everything I wanted and just happened to come in under the budget. That said, I've played a lot of matches with this deck (more matches than with any Budget Magic deck in the history of the series), and as a result, I do have a few thoughts on potential changes to the sideboard based on all of the matches I've played.

The Sideboard

During our video matches, our sideboard consisted of counterspells in Negate and Revolutionary Rebuff, more removal in Lightning Axe and the fourth Radiant Flames, artifact destruction, and Fevered Visions. After playing a bunch of matches with the deck, I'm pretty sure a few things in the sideboard need to be changed.

First, as far as cards that underperformed, Revolutionary Rebuff was extremely disappointing. While it can occasionally help win a counter war, there are just too many artifacts floating around that it can't counter. The same is true of Lightning Axe, which simply doesn't kill everything we need it to. Finally, our artifact removal is pretty scattered and not all that effective. So, these are the areas we are looking to improve.

After playing a bunch of matches, there were a couple of things I realized we really needed to answer that our sideboard was lacking. While our deck did a good job of fighting against Smuggler's Copter, there were a few times when we really struggled against other bigger artifacts. Second, while Eldrazi titans aren't a huge part of the format, there were a couple of times when we ran into trouble against energy-based decks that were using Aetherworks Marvel to cast Emrakul, the Promised End and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger early in the game. As such, here's my current sideboard for Temur Emerge.

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Fevered Visions is a huge trump card against any slow midrange or control deck. In many cases, we simply cast it on Turn 3 and win the game. This is especially important because one of the best answers control decks have to what we are doing is Lost Legacy exiling Metallurgic Summonings, and while it is possible to win after getting Metallurgic Summonings exiled, it is much more difficult. As such, Fevered Visions works like a hedge against Lost Legacy coming out of opposing sideboards. It's also key to keeping planeswalkers in check. Our deck has a ton of inevitability if the game goes long, so instead of damaging our opponent, we can send the two damage a turn at our opponent's planeswalkers to keep them from going ultimate and plan on winning the game over the long haul.

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We cut Revolutionary Rebuff altogether and go up to the full four copies of Negate, which not only gives us a nice, clean answer to Vehicles but also ensures we can force through our combo pieces when need be. Against other decks with counters, our main way of winning is by getting ahead on mana thanks to our ramp, at which point we can cast more spells per turn than our opponent, and casting two spells with Negate backup is a pretty guaranteed way to force through our second spell.

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Ceremonious Rejection gives us a one-mana answer to everything from Smuggler's Copter to Elder Deep-Fiend to Emrakul, the Promised End to Metalwork Colossus. If we didn't already have four Negates in the sideboard, I'd look to play even more copies (it's possible that a three / three split is correct). It's basically the opposite of Revolutionary Rebuff, hitting a ton of important targets in our current Standard format.

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Aether Meltdown comes in over Lightning Axe as our removal of choice from the sideboard. Since we don't really care that much about actually killing our opponent's threats (instead, we just need to slow them down until our late game takes over), Aether Meltdown gives us a flexible answer to everything from various Gearhulks to Depala, Pilot Exemplar to Fleetwheel Cruiser at instant speed for just two mana.

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Finally, we have a few one-ofs. Summary Dismissal gives us an answer to Emrakul, the Promised End and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. Having the fourth copy of Radiant Flames seems necessary in a world where RB and RW aggro are among the most played decks in the format, and Imprisoned in the Moon gives us an additional answer to Eldrazi that can also deal with planeswalkers. While Fevered Visions does a good job of keeping planeswalkers in check in controlling matchups, it's nice to have an answer for more aggressive lists (where we don't want to sideboard in Fevered Visions) that feature the card type.

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. All in all, we went 5-0 in our video matches, and in sum, I've played 25 matches with the deck between queues and leagues, winning 18 (72% match win percentage). The deck is not only very competitive, but it's amazingly fun to play and super cheap. Give it a shot; I don't think you'll be disappointed! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive, or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.