Budget Magic: $97 (31 tix) Standard Devils' Goggles

Tweet by SaffronOlive // May 10, 2016

video budget magic

Dobry dźeń Budget Magic lovers! It's that time again. This week we are heading to Standard for a super spicy Mono-Red tokens brew I'm calling Devils' Goggles. One of the cards that's been on my bucket list is Descent of the Dragons. I've tried to build around the card a couple times, but never figured out a way to make it work. Strangely enough, some of the seemingly underpowered Devil token producers from Shadows over Innistrad ( Dance with Devils and Devils' Playground) got me started down the Descent of the Dragons path once again, and amazingly, this time it worked!

Let's get to the videos, then I'll talk more about Devils' Goggles. 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.

Devils' Goggles Deck Tech

Devils' Goggles vs Esper Superfriends

Devils' Goggles vs Mono-White Humans

Devils' Goggles vs Spirits

Devils' Goggles vs Mono-Black Eldrazi

Devils' Goggles vs UW Humans

Devils' Goggles: Ormanhdal Wars

The Deck

If you haven't figured it out by now, the idea of the deck is to make tokens, lots and lots of tokens, often with the help of Pyromancer's Goggles. Since we have a bunch of tokens hanging around, we can upgrade them to 4/4 flying Dragons with the help of Descent of the Dragons or into Ormendahl, Profance Prince by flipping Westvale Abbey.

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Pyromancer's Goggles is the card that makes our deck so explosive. I think Devils' Goggles has an argument for being the deck that best abuses Pyromancer's Goggles. Out of the 33 non-land, non-Goggles cards in our main deck, 28 are Red instants or sorceries, so we are almost guaranteed to be doubling up a spell every turn once the artifact hits the battlefield.

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This token package is the main synergy in our deck. While most of these cards are passable on their own, with Pyromancer's Goggles they become amazingly powerful. Dragon Fodder is pretty much on-curve filler. We needed something to do on turn two, and Dragon Fodder is the most synergistic option for the slot. Typically we use it to make two 1/1 Goblins on turn two, which we can use to chump block or get in for some early damage. In the late game, we can make four 1/1 Goblin tokens with the help of Pyromancer's Goggles, which is a lot of bodies for two mana.

Dance with Devils and Devils' Playground are the real reason to play the deck. While they might look overcosted, the fact that the Devil tokens deal damage when they die makes both cards much more powerful than they appear at first glance. They make it incredibly hard for our opponent to attack during a board stall. Each of our 1/1's has the potential to take down a two powered creature or, if our opponent is low on life, go at our opponent's face. With Pyromancer's Goggles, Dance with Devils makes four Devils at instant speed and Devils' Playground makes a massive eight Devil tokens, which is a ton of power, toughness, and damage for their mana cost.

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The one problem with our Devil token plan is nearly all of our creatures are 1/1's, which can make it difficult to attack. This is where our finishers, Descent of the Dragons and Westvale Abbey, come into play. Each of these cards allow us to upgrade our 1/1 tokens into game ending threats.

The great part of Descent of the Dragons and Westvale Abbey is that we not only get some big, evasive creatures, but we often get to wrath away our opponent's board since we get to deal damage with all the Devil tokens we sacrifice. We can also combo off in a manner similar to GB Aristocrats, sacrificing five Devils and getting a hasty Ormendahl, Profane Prince for 14 points of evasive damage.

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Since our deck wants as many tokens as possible to power up our Descent of the Dragons and Westvale Abbey, we can't rely on Devils alone. Thopter Engineer and Pia and Kiran Nalaar are both on curve in their own right. They let us clog up the ground and air, which is important, because it takes a few turns to get our Pyromancer's Goggles up and running.

Foundry of the Consuls and Spawning Bed are really important to flipping Westvale Abbey. While doubling up a Devils' Playground with Pyromancer's Goggles gives us more than enough tokens to make an Ormendahl, Profane Prince, both Dragon Fodder and Dance with Devils fall one token short. As such, we often use Foundry of the Consuls and Spawning Bed during our opponent's end step to get the last creatures necessary to flip Westvale Abbey. They also give us chump blocker for specific problems. Foundry of the Consuls lets us block a Dragonlord Ojutai or Archangel Avacyn, while Spawning Bed lets us fizzle lifelink on cards like Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet by sacrificing the Scion token after blockers are declared.

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Magmatic Insight and Tormenting Voice are simply too much value to pass up in a Pyromancer's Goggles deck. In the early game they smooth out our draws and help us find our missing pieces. In tandem with Pyromancer's Goggles, they provide an overwhelming amount of card advantage, drawing us three cards for one or two mana. Once we get to the point of the game where we are doubling up Magmatic Insight or Tormenting Voice, it becomes really, really difficult to lose.

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Finally, we have a little bit of removal. Fiery Impulse helps us stabilize in the early game and almost always has spell mastery thanks to our token producers, Magmatic Insight, and Tormenting Voice. Fall of the Titans can often kill two opposing creatures without Pyromancer's Goggles and with the artifact it can either deal a lethal amount of damage to our opponent or act like a Plague Wind.

Sideboard

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Most of the sideboard is pretty straight forward. We have a couple copies of Rending Volley to kill Archangel Avacyn and Dragonlord Ojutai. We have a set of Fiery Temper as additional removal against aggressive decks and a couple Smash to Smithereens for artifacts. We also have three copies of Vessel of Volatility, which should probably be something else. I started out with the enchantment in the main deck, worrying that our deck would be too slow, but then ended up adding Thopter Engineer, which does a good job of slowing down the game and helping us live until we get Pyromancer's Goggles online. I moved Vessel of Volatility to the sideboard, thinking it could be helpful against control by allowing us to be more explosive and land an early Pyromancer's Goggles. That said, I never ran into a matchup where I actually brought them in.

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Impact Tremors is the most important card in our sideboard. As I was building the deck, the one card I was afraid of most was Virulent Plague. As a Mono-Red deck, we don't really get an answer to enchantments. Then I realize that maybe we didn't need our tokens to stick around to win the game. If we brought in Impact Tremors, we could transform into the world's jankiest burn deck, since cards like Dance with Devils and Devils' Playground would deal two damage for each token they create. We could deal 16 damage with a single copy of Devils' Playground doubled by Pyromancer's Goggles. Combined with Fall of the Titans and Fiery Temper, we just might have a chance of beating Virulent Plague.

As the matches progress, I realize that maybe Impact Tremors was good in other matchups as well. Against decks like UW Humans, what often happened was we would get into a massive board stall. We had a ton of tokens, our opponent had a bunch of Humans, and we would just stare at each other for a bunch of turns until someone flipped a Westvale Abbey. In these situations Impact Tremors gives us a way to win the game without attacking by going into chump block mode and slowly draining our opponent's life total as more tokens enter the battlefield under our control.

The problem with the ultra-budget version of Devils' Goggles is that we lose the namesake card, Pyromancer's Goggles. There simply isn't any way to fit three copies of a $15 card into a $30 budget. We also lose Westvale Abbey for the same reason. In their place we max out on Descent of the Dragons. As a result, this version will play a lot differently, being pretty much a straight forward token deck with a semi-combo finish in Descent of the Dragons. I'm not confident this one will work very well, considering how important Pyromancer's Goggles and Westvale Abbey are to the deck.

As I was building the deck, I really, really wanted the full four copies of Westvale Abbey. It's super good in this deck, but I couldn't find a way to make it work under budget, so we had to go with two Westvale Abbeys and two Spawning Beds. Well, for the non-budget build we not only get four copies of Westvale Abbey, but Chandra, Flamecaller as well. Otherwise, the deck is pretty much the same. While I think the version of the deck in the videos is solid, I'd upgrade to four copies of Westvale Abbey as soon as possible. Chandra, Flamecaller can wait.

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. All in all, we went 3-3 with the deck, but I felt that with a little luck and better sideboarding we could have been 5-1. Both matches against UW Humans were incredibly close, and we likely would have won the Ormendahl Wars if I had brought in Impact Tremors or had not sideboarded out Descent of the Dragons. Even the match against Spirits, which was probably the most lopsided, went to three games. Overall I felt like in every match we lost we were on the verge of winning, and in most of the matches we won, we completely blew out opponents out.

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.