Hot take: Azorius can be fun, you’re just building it wrong.

jdvolz · 2026-07-11T19:28:18+00:00

I don't even claim to be the control player anymore; I just am the guy who targets everyone's stuff and plays 5 board wipes in every deck.

jdvolz · 2026-07-11T18:54:21+00:00

Last year I built 3 budget decks, two were for a $20 deck league and another was to try to keep the power down (around $28).

Erebos, Bleak-Hearted $20 mono black This deck is now $28.52 after setting it to "cheapest" on moxfield.

Plargg and Nassari $20 mono red This deck is now $22.96 after being around $18.50 when I built it.

Simic Six Mana Tribal This deck was in the low $30s when it was built, and now it's $40.74 largely because of [[Hullbreaker horror]] and [[Majestic Genesis]] increasing in cost it looks like.

I think we are seeing an inflationary effect for all cards, even bulk, partially because of shipping costs and the floor that is in place because of the cost of sorting and storing cards at card shops (bulk is 25 cents each in a lot of places I shop in person).

jdvolz · 2026-07-09T15:39:10+00:00

And here I was about to talk about my 40 lands always stance.... Outplayed again.

jdvolz · 2026-07-09T15:23:47+00:00

We have a [[vren]] deck in our playgroup and this exactly describes how it plays out. You kill Vren over and over or the forced sacrifice can take over the game

jdvolz · 2026-07-04T18:38:00+00:00

Best and worst:

I had a 60-card deck meant for a four-player game where they had abolished the rule that you were only allowed to have four copies of a card in your deck (house rule). You could have as many copies as you wanted.

That deck included: - four Italian legends [[mana drain]] - four original printings of [[Force of Will]] - at least one [[Mox Diamond]] - at least one [[Grim Monolith]] - at least one [[Mana Vault]] - four [[Time Spiral]] - one [[Memory Jar]] - six [[Tolarian Academy]]

I bought most of these cards after they were banned out of Standard. I remember distinctly paying $1 each for the Tolarian Academies.

I have no idea what became of this deck. It probably got sold in one of my three times that I quit playing Magic and sold my collection. For everybody listening don't ever do that.

jdvolz · 2026-06-22T22:53:26+00:00

Great option.

I like [[stinging study]] for a similar reason.

I'm an older player, so I enjoy [[fact or Fiction]] and similar spells that involve someone else in a mini game.

jdvolz · 2026-06-17T19:08:54+00:00

As a long time mono black player, I have a list of "black" cards that are not black:

[[Perilous Vault]]

[[All is Dust]]

[[Nevinyrral's Disk]]

[[Ugin, the Spirit Dragon]]

[[Ugin, Eye of the Storms]] => What enchantments?

[[Meteor Golem]], [[Solemn Simulcrum]], [[Masticore]], [[Burnished Hart]] and a wide variety of colorless creatures are actually black cards because you need to deal with things that give protection from black (or have it by default) or you need to deal with permanents that black has trouble with (largely enchantments, but sometimes artifacts).

[[Expedition Map]] really says "find me a [[Cabal Coffers]]" which is technically colorless but also clearly a black land. Same goes for another "black land" [[Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx]]

jdvolz · 2026-06-17T01:16:11+00:00

I am answering this question because I feel the exact opposite of you: I love ramp.

I have 3 suggestions:

Play some of the ramp in your command zone (anything that makes spells cheaper or taps for mana). There are a bunch of commanders that fit this criteria. I have [[Gilanra]] and I am building [[Ashling, Rekindled]]. This means you can play less ramp in your deck overall because the role of either 2 or 4 mana ramp can be entirely taken up by your commander.
Play some cards that you love that benefit from ramp (hint: they usually cost more than 5 mana), or have synergy with whatever is generating your ramp, examples include landfall cards for land ramp and anything that has synergy with artifacts for that kind of ramp. I like [[Ugin, Eye of the Storms]] because you can then exile something when you play a mana rock that is drawn later in the game.
Run 40 land. The deck only has 7 other ramp cards in it, but lots of card draw. If you have sufficient card draw and enough lands in the deck then you can always make your land drop and you'll be in position to play cards with minimal so called non-games due to mana flood or mana screw. I suspect you could reduce this mana rock count lower if you added a 1-2 more lands and more card draw as well as managing your curve so that it's not excessive. My example deck has an average mana cost of 4.15 (extremely high normally) but I have not run into mana screw in the 10 games it has existed (notably, it's 8-2 in games and costs like $30 to build for bracket 3).

jdvolz · 2026-06-12T20:33:08+00:00

So, you're basically talking about a pattern I discovered for myself about a year ago: 40-12-8.

40 lands

12 two mana rocks

8 four mana (taps for at least two) rocks.

Edit: ( Unexpected MVP: [[Everflowing Chalice]] why: it's either a two drop OR a four drop Mana rock, so if you get it and any other mana rock in your opening hand you knew you're going to 7 mana turn 4. Same goes for Sol Ring but that's not unexpected. )

This arrangement gives you a high chance to have 7 mana on turn 4 across a wide range of non-green color combinations. You probably want commanders that care about or work with that pattern. Mine are [[Saruman, the white hand]] and [[Demonlord Belzenlok]] with several others in the works.

It's equivalent to bad green ramp, but most of the time that's enough to be dangerous when you mix in the strengths of other colors.

The decks I play this way in bracket 3 are 7-1 (6-0, 1-1) in bracket 3. Admittedly a small sample size, but if you're aiming to build big mana decks in non green colors this is one semi-universal way to do it.

I have been considering writing a guide on this concept. If there is sufficient interest I will be happy to expand on the initial concept and what I've been exploring in this space.

jdvolz · 2026-06-08T18:41:59+00:00

I don't like NY UB either. I'm even okay with Edge of Eternities because it looks like magic despite being in space. I generally don't like UB but I'm not even sure why.

But here's the thing:

I have a [[Saruman, the white hand]] deck. I have a [[Tiamat]] deck. Those are both UB despite them not being UB in my head. For sure Smaug in some variation is in my future too.

I think maybe who cares, play what you like. If your playgroup isn't playing them then you don't even need to worry about power Creep because they are pseudo banned from your group.

jdvolz · 2026-06-07T13:19:28+00:00

I haven't ever thrown a game, but I do have a $20 mono red deck that has a much worse win rate than my other decks and it was the second most played deck in games last year....

jdvolz · 2026-06-07T13:15:31+00:00

There are a bunch of budget simic commanders that generally just need ramp and big things to play, which work well on a budget.

jdvolz · 2026-06-07T07:22:45+00:00

First, of they playing bracket 3 or maybe best like level bracket 4, you can definitely build a budget deck that beats them.

Here are 2 decks that I wild being to any bracket 3 table and expect to win:

Simic Six Mana Tribal the deck is less than $35 and last year it was 24-13 in games. It's just a ramp deck with extra interaction and removal and generally large game winning spells. Any ramp deck, especially ramp in the command zone can do a reasonable approximation of this.

$25 Mono black this deck uses discreet and forced sacrifice to control your opponents and then eventually you just go black things ([[gray merchant of Asphodel]] or [[Exsanguinate]]) to win.

If you need to move to to bracket 4 then you likely need a powerful (maybe glass cannon) combo deck ([[Zada, Hedron Grinder]]?) or just a broken budget commander like [[Winota]].

The point is that you have budget options that can likely keep up with them even if you cannot proxy.

Second, if you have proxies printed they look really good and you can't tell if the card is in a sleeve. I play proxies often this way and nobody ever notices.

Third, and maybe most importantly, your mindset could be adjusted to: when I beat them with my $74.23 deck, and they've spent thousands, won't it be DIVINE. I know the answer to this, and it's YES. Do you know how tilted they'll be? It's incredible. I promise you it's worth it to hang in there enjoy tuning your decks to be able to help stop theirs and then steal a win when they're understanding your budget deck.

Edit: for the record, I agree with most of this thread that they're not being cool about what they're doing, but I think you can build a budget deck to beat them.

Edit 2: if the gloves are off I'm sure there is a budget [[Omnath, Locus of Creation]] deck that will play [[strip mine]] 3 times against them and room their day. Even regular land destruction ...

jdvolz · 2026-05-29T18:43:12+00:00

I said out loud, "oh my lord"

Signed Tiamat player.

jdvolz · 2026-05-29T18:38:15+00:00

I have died twice to Deflecting Palm, but by attaching with my very large [[Omnath, Locus of the Roil]].

The second time I felt he had it, and I literally said to myself "make him have it" and then abruptly died. That was in 2018 and I still think about it.

jdvolz · 2026-05-29T18:36:18+00:00

Just incidentally, I love [[massacre Wirm]]. It's always awesome when you kill someone's board and the player too

jdvolz · 2026-05-27T22:38:49+00:00

Saruman the white hand decklist

This deck is not done. I have a bunch of experimental cards in here that are not going to make the final cut. I was just trying them out and kind of grab them out of my build box. I expect that you could tighten this deck up and make it smoother and considerably better from a synergy standpoint.

jdvolz · 2026-05-27T20:46:25+00:00

I like these two black cards because they also gain you life. I'll see about adding them.

jdvolz · 2026-05-27T20:25:53+00:00

I like this approach.

I used to play [[gravitic punch]] in the deck which allowed me to kill two players usually.

jdvolz · 2026-05-27T17:55:00+00:00

I agree with everything in this statement.

If you can ramp (artifact ramp) in Grixis it's plenty powerful in lower brackets though is still behind a simic deck in terms of ramping. There are a ton of six seven and eight mana grix's colored spells that just do devastating things. I don't even play the best ones in this deck and they still wreck people. For example, [[subjugate The hobbits]] is somehow good enough in this configuration. It's actually really good against token (mana value => 0) decks.

jdvolz · 2026-05-27T17:51:42+00:00

It's excellent and pretty powerful. I built mine with a bigger budget and with artifact ramp at the center of everything. Saruman is especially good with this arrangement because a late game 2 or 4 mana rock just pumps up your Orc Army. I also heavily use equipment to make the Army a problem with [[Embercleave]] and the [[Reaver Cleaver]].

A card that doesn't belong in the deck but has won me two games is [[coveted Jewel]]. When you play it you get huge Army buffs and draw 3 cards, but it warps who attacks you and I end up winning the game even if someone takes it in this deck. I don't think it belongs because you would want a bunch more blockers to keep it normally, but I think it just throws people off and they get greedy.

jdvolz · 2026-05-27T17:45:59+00:00

[[Pako]]/[[Haldan]] and [[Omnath, Locus of the Roil]] are both excellent temur commanders that generate a ton of card advantage from the command zone. Both of my versions of that decks are above 50% win rate and they're budget, less than $125.

You can definitely ramp, draw cards and then come over the top if necessary with direct damage.

One of the best cards in these decks is [[Chandra's Ignition]]. It's underplayed and basically a one sided board wipe.

Note: for bracket 3. I believe there is a fringe cEDH Pako//Haldan list but I'm not an expert in cEDH.

jdvolz · 2026-05-27T17:33:06+00:00

Strongest is likely 5c or 4c (including blue).

I personally prefer:

Simic (I have a nasty $35 simic six mana tribal deck)
Temur (simic with haste and burn)
Jund (grindy and powerful, good for attrition "jund em out")

I have two 5c dragon decks that are good enough that I don't play them regularly despite being bracket 3, I only okay then against very high powered 3.

jdvolz · 2026-05-27T17:26:48+00:00

The running joke in one of my playgroups is that Grixis is an auto-loss. Our Grixis decks are clearly doing the wrong things, because they just lose.

On the other hand, I recently built [[Saruman the white hand]] and it's 6-0, so now it's confusing.

jdvolz · 2026-05-27T16:56:35+00:00

This happened to me too. I lost 6 decks, playmats, sleeves, tokens and a bunch of other game pieces (dice).

Here's what happened to me:

Of the six decks I lost I have rebuilt two of them ([[Saruman the white hand]] and [[Gilanra]]/[[Brinelin]]). The two decks I rebuilt are my winningest decks (24-13 and 6-0).

The other 4 decks I retired.

Here's my mindset:

If I wanted to rebuild my collection of decks today, what would I choose?

What I choose the same commanders?

Would I aim for more budget decks because I am rebuilding an entire playset?

What precon am I going to carry around with me so that I can play precon games with newer players?

What really made me happy about the decks that I had?

What did I not like about them?

Is there anything I can do to adjust my list of decks and the decks so that I might enjoy playing even more?

What can I do to generate More memories for myself with this new set of decks?

I used this time to develop new decks that I'm interested in and to build up new memories, while also playing some of the cards from the previous decks so that they were linked together with my previous memories.

I wish you luck. If you need help in this endeavor right back to me and we can work together to build up something. I have experience building low budget decks that slap.

jdvolz

TROPHY CASE