Old School Budget – Part 1 – Liga Madrileña Old School MTG

NOTA DEL AUTOR: Si quieres encontrar este artículo en castellano, lo tienes en este enlace:

https://showandtellmtg.com/articulos/old-school/944-old-school-barato

Hello to all! I am new on writing on this page. My name is Diliz (@diliz13 on twitter) and from today I am going to write about Old School for you. Before we start, I want to say a thing or two about me. First of all, I am new on this page but no new to writing. I have written a few articles in Spanish that can be found here:

https://showandtellmtg.com/component/contact/contact/30?Itemid=107

Second, you have to know that English is not my second language: is my third. So I want to apologize from the beginning if something is wrong written or badly expressed. And last, this article series is gonna alternate between new articles (written in both languages) and old articles that I’m gonna translate to English. The original Spanish can be found in the link above.

This is one of the las type. Is an article I used for introducing Old School to the people willing to play the format but hasn’t got much budget (like all of us). To make this possible, I am going to put here one deck of each color, but with certain conditions:

Budget means no Pack, no Bazaar of Bagdad and no Library of Alexandria.
I’ll try no to put very expensive cards but there sure will be cards up to 30€ (this is reserved list).
If I want a Chronicles Erhnam djinn, it will be 50 cents. If I want Arabian Nights one, it will by 500 bucks. So like every format, budget adjusts on how much you pimp your deck.
The main idea is to put some top 8 decks and to cut the expensive cards to make a good deck affordable.
The decks are EC (Eternal Central) format as is what we play in Madrid. Moreso, four strip mines make aggro better, and Fallen Empires has some decent creatures.

The great thing about this format we love, is that this writings and the decks never get Old (see what I did here?) so we can rewrite this series and they are totally “actual”. After this long introduction, we are ready to welcome the action! The first color is green.

MONOGREEN

Green is the color of mana accelerants and all the doping stuff. It has a lot of small great creatures, and disenchant effects. In this color is our friend Erhnam djinn too, one of the biggest threats of the formats. With his 5 ass is very difficult to kill without Swords, they will need two bolts for sure. And in the case they were thinking about blocking our little critters, we have the two best doping spells in the format: Giant growth and Berserk, not counting Pendelhaven.

This top 8 deck is very fun to play, it works as a land destruction deck. With Strip mines and 4 Ice storm, it has 4 Nafs asp that taxes mana too. If all of this does not work, you always can play the aggro style, with a lot of creatures (Mishras included) and the Growths to finish before the opponent can do anything.

Is very easy to make this deck pocket friendly. To start, we have to put 3 more Strip mines in, because it was a Swedish top 8 and they play with a single Strip. The cards coming out, are the expensive ones: Mox emerald and Berserks. If you still have gaps, you can put in a pair of Erhnam for the matches that go long. Is a great deck that puts up results consistently and is very fun to play.

MONORED

Instead of making the typical Sligh deck with a lot of artifacts, we are working with oldest tribe in magic: Goblins. Before existing in Legacy, Historic or Standard, this deck started with the first Lord (Goblin King) in Alpha. The two cards you don’t see in the photo are two shatters. This deck is a true budget, from a player of our Liga El Norte no Olvida (North Remembers) that does not have money and is buying in expensive cards from month to month and little by little. That’s why there is only a Blood moon and the vast majority of the deck is white bordered.

Setting creatures aside, this deck has best bolts in the format: Lightning bolt and Chain lightning to deal with blockers and Fireball as a finisher. The idea is simple: start dealing damage with our little goblins (the best is Goblin balloon brigade, because of the evasion) and to finish with the bolts.

If we want to control opponents creatures, we can put Meekstone in. It won’t affect our critters and our opponents are going to suffer because they habitually would play strong creatures. It sure is not going to be the first time a tapped Serendib kills his owner on his upkeep. We can meke this deck even more aggressive with more direct damage as Goblin grenade or creatures as Ball lightning, but the first thing I will buy to make this deck even better is to buy another Blood moon or two. If the card is played in Modern or Legacy, here is much better with all the duals played, it can be game if you play it soon enough.

MONOBLUE

The best of playing blue in this format (above the P9) is the counters. And of course, we have one of the best creatures in the form of Serendib efreet, wich you can have a Revised playset for 40€. If we want to go budget with monoblue, all we have to do is play another well-known tribe: Merfolks. This deck won the Liga Ilicitana:

As you can see, it´s playing all the Power 9 pieces he can, and a Chaos Orb too. They make a difference, but we are talking about budget and the best thing you can do is take them out and play more counters. Change the Mox and the Lotus for mana, and put in more Counterspell and /or Force spike. I think Force spike is a very underestimated card that works well in tempo or fast creature decks, and this deck fits into this definition. As you can see, this deck has answers for everything and is very fun to play.

This is all for today, folks! Next day I’ll talk about the two missing colors, that I think they are the best. Every month White weenie and MonoBlack put great results on all the Spanish monthly leagues.

Funniest thing making this article, has been founding that each deck (and each color) has a different approach to the game, and the way they win and interact with the opponent. I hope you liked this article as much as I liked writing it. I apologize again for my bad English and remember, if you want to say anything (how good/how bad has been this, new article ideas or simply say “hi”) I am @diliz13 on Twitter. May the Black Border be with you!