Decklist on Moxfield

Introduction#

This deck is a response to a Discord deck-building challenge I joined. It attempts to achieve a cEDH-viable Rule of Law style stax and tax deck that can hang at any table based on solid fundamentals rather than a blown-out mana base and artifacts.

The rules were simple: $75 budget, Commander-legal format, and the cost of the Commander is excluded from the budget.

This deck is optimized towards these rules to leverage the value of the Heliod // Ballista combo with multiple redundant combo pieces, efficient and effective stax, decent tutors, and a game plan built around staying protected while slowing everyone else down.

Deck lists at this budget are nearly impossible to call “cEDH” in any real sense of the word, but this list is an attempt to apply the meta, combo, and card analysis principles present in cEDH play at the constraint of budget.

A $75 budget means that you have less than $1 per card on average, and that each card over $0.75 in value has to be extremely worthwhile. That being said, a surprising amount of the standard meta stax pieces present in top-tier Heliod lists are present here, too.

Why Heliod?#

Heliod // Ballista is relatively expensive for this budget as far as two-card combos go, but it provides a distinct benefit in this challenge that by my measure other decks couldn’t beat: Heliod goes in the zone and is thus exempt from the price of the list, even though it’s one of the more powerful (and thus more expensive) two-card combos. Heliod in the zone hides a significant part of our cost, ensures constant access to one side of the deck’s win condition, and plays well in the current competitive meta.

Other commanders fit this description, e.g. Thrasios, Kinnan, etc…, but at this budget, it’s harder to make them as proportionally competitive as a higher-budget list. When searching and brewing on other lists before fully committing, I found that this list ended up with a surprising amount of solid stax cards that show up in the highest budget Heliod decks that there are, but were extremely budget friendly.

For example, Aven Mindcensor, Containment Priest, Spirit of the Labyrinth, and Rule of Law all clock in at under $1. This deck benefitted from white’s access to historically cheap but powerful tax and stax effects, as an attempt to shape play in a way that’s beneficial for us.

Choosing a mono-color build lets us focus the budget on key pieces instead of on a land base or supporting rocks. Heliod // Ballista puts a combo piece in the command zone, and since Commander cost is exempt from this list, it’s a key way to reduce deck cost while keeping power as high as possible.

Comparing to costs of some other popular MTG combos, from high to low:

  • Thoracle / Consult - $29
  • Heliod / Ballista: $20.06
  • Animate Dead / Worldgorger Dragon: $6.39

Once you look at converted mana costs for each of these combos, the trend becomes clear: The more expensive in dollars a win con is, the less mana it generally requires to execute.

But of the above combos, only Heliod can push a bunch of the cost into the command zone, while maintaining a relatively low CMC for the full Combo.

Barring other effects, Heliod // Ballista requires 4 for Ballista, 3 for Heliod, and 2 to give Ballista lifelink to start the loop. Thoracle is drastically lower to the floor, with the entire combo costing an unbelievably small 3 mana to win the game, but part of the combo can’t be pushed into the zone like with Heliod // Ballista.

In Heliod // Ballista, half of the combo can always be reached in the command zone. Between that and it’s reasonably low CMC (7 to cast, plus 2 to start it), the value of the primary combo line is hard to beat when you’re going for power with and reliability.

Game Plan#

This deck wants to slow down the game while it keeps up with any ramp efforts by land matching via cards like Weathered Wayfarer, Keeper of the Accord, Knight of the White Orchid, etc. At the same time, it’s attempting to draw into or tutor out Walking Ballista or Triskelion in order to pair it up with Heliod to close out the game.

While Heliod is the end, the deck’s stax pieces are the means. This list runs a healthy amount of stax and tax across various effects while attempting to include a decent draw package to delay opponents while we dig for a win condition.

Combat and effective trades should be used to delay your opponents as well. There are enough cards to fetch from the graveyard that you can trade or chump block your way through a mid-game, reanimating as you go and having a fallback in case Walking Ballista gets removed, or even possibly for Heliod if commander tax becomes expensive.

Tutors#

The popular tutors in this format are out of the question because of budget. This requires us to look a little harder for viable options, but there are workable options.

The most expensive card in this list - Enlightened Tutor - is a key way to find answers and should be looked at as your path to a win any time you can play it. It can be used to tutor for a win con, or if you already have one, it can find you protection for it, in the form of Alseid of Life’s Bounty.

Scrapyard Recombiner finds us either Triskelion or Walking Ballista for $0.99, both of which are key combo pieces.

Ranger of Eos can actually find two creature cards, which in our case can be abused to bring protection along for Ballista via Alseid of Life’s Bounty. This is extremely strong in this deck and is shockingly valuable for such a cheap card, clocking in at $0.28 a card.

Salvage Scout, Buried Ruin, Sequestered Stash, and Sevinne’s Reclamation are able to return an artifact from graveyard to hand, which is useful in cases where a combo piece is countered or destroyed.

In a similar vein, Sun Titan can fetch several cards from the graveyard if things go south, and is a great backup for this list, while also being a great vanilla beater to deter combat.

Stax#

Analyzing the current meta for this challenge means attempting to prevent the most common combos in the format, while still countering as many lines as possible, all while choosing the best choices in the given budget. In this case, the focus is on:

  • Tutor hate, to stop typical cEDH fetch tactics
  • Yard hate, to stop recursion and removal circumvention
  • Taxes, to slow everything down
  • ETB silences, to stop popular win cons like Thassa’s Oracle

The budget for this deck does mean excluding or choosing less efficient cards for certain slots as compared to the real cEDH list, but a surprising number of the regulars in a typical Heliod cEDH list show up in our budget version. Aven Mindcensor, Alms Collector, Containment Priest, and more in this list see regular play in some of the most powerful decks in the format, and they are all sub $1 cards.

Some non-standard choices get made to flesh out the rest, though, as our more expensive pieces become impractical. Cards like Dauntless Dismantler give us both a stax piece, targeted removal, and even a way to slow down treasure tokens.

As with all stax lists, some of the stax effects present in this list can cancel out or interact poorly if you don’t plan moves accordingly.

Graveyard Hate#

A lot of cheap value comes from graveyard access. This deck attempts to control for that with a yard hate package with key includes like Stone of Erech, Calamity’s Wake, and Samurai of the Pale Curtain serving as the foundation pieces for stopping graveyard interaction.

Removal#

At this budget, we have to be extremely choosy about removal and weigh it against other options like taxes or draw. That being said, white historically possesses some of the most efficient removal in the game.

This deck runs your typical package with Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares, with both being sub $1 cards, they are right at home in this list. But more expensive removal like Farewell is notably absent from this list.

Mana and Ramp#

Even mild mana rocks come under serious question in a $75 list. In this list, I have opted to only run rocks that are still worth it, instead leaning on basic plains and cheap land matching like Weathered Wayfarer (still can’t believe that card is sub $1 either) to keep us competitively paced.

A key reason for choosing mono white for this challenge was the ability to forego expensive color fixing lands and instead spend that money on cards for finding key pieces as fast as possible.

Non Basic Lands#

Mono-color decks in general have less use for non-basic lands, because of the lack of need for color fixing. Within the tight budget constraints, non-basics must be evaluated even more strictly.This deck does have the notable budget includes of Remote Farm and Ruins of Trokair.

Competitive Meta#

This deck pays special attention to other powerful cEDH archetypes and tries to shut off multiple different ways that combos can go off, namely graveyard interaction and ETB / LTB effects. On top of that, it plays some silence effects and some tax pieces to make sure everyone is paying their fair share.

To counter green ramp, this list runs a grip of land-matching cards to ensure that green cannot ramp without me getting mine.

Black has a lot of cheap graveyard interaction and at this budget, digging into the graveyard will be too tempting for the opps, so this list runs a healthy amount of graveyard exiles and locks to keep that value out of reach. Black also has several tutors that will likely see play, so Aven Mindcensor makes the list to stop that whenever it can.

Blue and Red tend to cast lots of free spells, so cards like Vexing Bauble and Damping Sphere make an appearance to shut off free cards.

Considering#

  • Static Orb: At >$3 this is possible to fit in the budget but would require some adjustment, and it has very synergistic effects with several other cards in this list, so it would be a strong addition.
  • Rebuff the Wicked: This is a decent counterspell in white but it’s expensive for this list, even for being so cheap among other counters. It’s worth considering in the case that Basalt/Rings combo is removed, which should free up the budget.
  • Mana Tithe: This spell is usually only worth it early game, or else you have to wait for the player to spend all their mana before it can be reliably used, but this deck is lacking in options for stopping opponents from interacting with your stack.

Potential Cuts#

  • Brave the Elements: This card might get cut because it only targets White creatures. I might consider a better protection card if I can find one in a better budget.
  • Winter Moon: At this budget, I doubt many lists will be able to have a significant amount of non-basic lands in their deck, so in this hyper-constrained meta, this card might be counter-intuitively worse than it is in a no-budget or higher-budget list.
  • Approach of the Second Sun: This card is in the deck as a backup win con but it’s pretty expensive, and the list would likely be better served by a more synergistic effect like Static Orb or a counter like Rebuff the Wicked than by this backup.

Changelist#

  • Removed Oswald Fiddlebender - removed because it can’t fetch out Ballista without some type of ETB to keep it alive.
  • Added Rings of Brighthearth / Basalt Monolith to add a redundant combo line for Ballista.

References#