By: Luis Eguizábal

Many of you have asked us to do Decks-Techs of Budget Decks, which include some of the cards that we mentioned in the article of the best cards quality-price relation in Magic Old School.

I present my Monoblue Merfolks list which includes many of the mentioned cards:

Maindeck:

4x Flying Men

Very affordable in its edition of Time Spiral. An efficient Turn 1, which skips Moat, and can scratch 3 or 4 life points easily that can be definitive.

4x Triton of the Pearl Trident

Another Turn 1, that may seem weak but with Lord of Atlantis and Sunken City may be a problem for the opponent.

4x River Merfolk

For two mana hits two and it can also mountainwalk. If we have the help of the Lord of Atlantis, River Merfolk will have mountainwalk and islandwalk, which makes it almost impossible to block in this format.

4x Lord of Atlantis

One of the tech-cards of the deck. It inflates our merfolks and gives them evasion. Very accessible price in its version of the Fifth Edition (€ 15 playset).

4x Serendib Efreet

The best blue creature of the format. Although it is not a merfolk, it is essential to play it in any blue aggro deck.

4x Psionic Blast

The blue bolt. In addition to being our removal against big annoying creatures can serve to kill our opponent.

2x Control Magic

Two other cards that can serve as removal, and also hit our opponent with their own creatures (always a pleasure).

2x Sunken City

Underrated card that is practically a blue Crusade. It will be the perfect complement for the Lord of Atlantis to enlarge our creatures, including those that are not merfolk like Flying Men and Serendib Efeet. It is not advisable to play more than two copies, because it’s big defect is that it demands two blue mana each turn, but it’s very worth it.

3x Phantasmal Terrain

The Phantasmal Terrain has a double function: to help us with mana-denial blocking an specific color of our opponent and, on the other hand, to make our merfolks unblockable (when they have islandwalk) turning the opponent ‘s land into an island or a mountain (to make it unblockable River Merfolk).

2x Boomerang

As we don’t play Counterspell we don’t have the possibility of fight against a Moat, or a Juzám Djinn in the first turns. We can return to its owner hand with a Boomerang at the end of the turn, that gives us the necessary time to win. Other versions can play 4x Counterspell (without boomerang) but when I play aggro I like to be 100% aggressive.

1x Braingeyser

The best option to draw cards in Old School after Ancestral Recall, LoA, Timetwister and Wheel of Fortune. In the advanced game, Braingeyser can make us recover many cards in this deck that easily use all the cards in hand.

1x Recall

It allows us to recover what we want from the graveyard. Especially useful when we draw a lot of lands, and we can change those lands of the hand for useful cards from the graveyard as creatures or Psionic Blast.

1x Maze of Ith

Another card that can work as removal, especially useful against Juzám Djinn, or opponent’s Serendib Efreet. It also allows us to attack with all our little creatures, and our opponent blocks any of them, we can untap it and prevent all of the combat damage.

1x Sol Ring

The best budget mana accelerator, allows us to play a Serendib Efreet or a Control Magic on Turn 2. Awesome!

2x Mishra’s Factory

Very good against control, it’s a land, and also a creature, this mean that we have a total of 22 creatures in the deck (24 if we count the Magic Control). We cannot take more than two, because we need the 17 blue lands to make sure that we can play in turn 2 any card that requires a double blue mana cost.

4x Strip Mine

Destroy the opponent’s Mishras and allow us to do manna-denial, as we develop our game of small creatures. Destroy LoA and Maze of Ith. It is essential to play the four.

1x Tolaria

Enter on the battlefield untapped, so it counts as one more island. The ability to eliminate bands until end of turn is not extraordinarily useful, but is important to say that it survives a Tsunami. It is also beautiful and very cheap.

16x Island

Sideboard:

4x Psychic Purge

On tournaments where proxies aren’t allowed, the most played budget deck is usually monoblack. The psychic Purges are useful against Hymn to Tourach (doing 5 damage to the opponent), and destroy small creatures like: Order of the Hand Ebond, Order of Leighbur, Lions of Savannah, Pixies of Argoth, Elvish Archers …

4x Energy Flux

As blue is a color that has nothing to destroy the artifacts, Energy Flux is the best solution. In addition, we don’t play artifacts, and it will not affect us. We can annul the opponent’s moxen balancing the game a little against decks with P9.

3x Blue Elemental Blast

Perfect to counter the Red Elemental Blast, or opponent’s bolts that destroy virtually all of our creatures.

3x Nevinyrral’s Disk

Unfortunate, in some games, will be permanents that we cannot remove. Very big creatures like Erhnam Djinn, Juzám Djinn, or enchantments like Moat, or even worse, The Abyss. To destroy all of this and reset the game: Nevinyrral’s Disk

1x Black Vise

You can play a copy, or up to four copies on sideboard if you want. It will always be a problem for control decks, and it will help to scratch some points of damage.

Here is a summary of what is this Budget deck, which is not as competitive as a White Weenie or a Mono Black, but is very fun and perfect to start in format making a small spending because the total price of the deck is between € 120-150.