Top 10 Best MtG Budget Commander Decks

By playing your creatures and spells at instant speed, you can catch your opponent off guard and gain a significant advantage. Nightpack Ambusher and Frilled Mystic are your main threats, while Essence Capture and Sinister Sabotage provide countermagic. Start by choosing an archetype known for being budget-friendly, like Mono-Red Aggro, White Weenie, or a base color deck with simple mana requirements. Next, look for prebuilt decks, either starter packs or from online decklist resources, and upgrade them gradually.

Cheap Deck Cores

MTG Decks for Every Budget: Build Smart, Play Strong

There were two enchantment-based decks I could have talked about, the other being Bogles. This build uses Slippery Bogle and Gladecover Scout along with a huge pile of aura spells to make massive hexproof threats that are very difficult to deal with. Given that Storm has been a mainstay of Modern since day one, edh deck investing in this powerful combo deck should set you up on a good path as you venture into the format.

Ancestral Anger gives you card draw and trample on a creature for a turn, with an increasing stat boost for every Ancestral Anger in your graveyard. The whole deck can be built without a single rare, as all the cards talked about are either common or uncommon. Well, that’s it for our look at the best budget decks for MTG Arena in 2025. Whether you’re a fan of aggressive strategies, control decks, or something in between, there’s a budget deck out there for you.

MTG Pack Simulator

A pretty cheap deck featuring everyone’s favorite tribe of annoying little red creatures is 8-Whack. The name is a pun on the popular mono-black deck “8-Rack” that wins by combining discard spells with eight copies of The Rack, with copies five through eight being Shrieking Affliction. I tend to look at Constructed decks as being just 60 cards and ignore the sideboard. It’s a bad habit that stuck with me from my days as a teenager playing Yu-Gi-Oh where many players didn’t bother with it or had no idea how to do it.

Not the most powerful Midrange deck, but if you’ve played the Shigeki and Skyturtle combo, this deck feels very similar. This is a commonly built deck as a budget option for players on the Ranked ladder. Generous Visitor snowballs surprisingly well for costing one, and Jukai Naturalist making Enchantments cheaper lets you play out your hand pretty quickly. If you’re a fan of Enchantress and already have all the cards for this, then this deck should come easily to you.

I’ve been playing Magic since a little before the start of the Modern format. I have fond memories of playing with Soul Sisters and getting horrifically crushed by it. You can generally end up with multiple decks without spending much more than you spent for just the one if you look at cards that overlap across a number of decks. This deck is all about taking advantage of the absurdly low mana costs of both Daemogoth Titan and Daemogoth Woe-Eater. The catch is that these two Demons require a regular sacrifice to stick around.

The Mana

I have built well over 20 decks for myself, and I also build for most of our playgroup as well so… We can draw a ton of cards off Jhoira alone, but eventually we’ll reach a point where we have no more artifacts in hand and fizzle out. Recently I did an article showing how to play Commander on Magic Online for free using Cardhoarder’s new free 5 ticket loan accounts and five Commander decks that you can borrow for free using the program.

Unfortunately, as you might expect, there are a number of bad matchups that 8-Wack can face. Rakdos Scam, for instance, is dominant in the meta for a reason and can crush 8-Wack thanks to cards like Fury. Alongside this, Living End is an incredibly punishing match-up that you really won’t want to face. Build for the sake of building, and play what makes you proud to play.

Related to that last point is to find a new way of doing something. Pure freedom, being in the moment, and letting people live their best lives. Is what came out of that idea, and it’s a great change from the usual safisticblooddeathfireexplodiness that the color combination is known for.

While there are a few different routes for building around the Anvil, a Blood Token theme is probably the best route to go if you want to close out the game quickly. Voldaren Epicure and Bloodtithe Harvester are both great cards if you’re trying to get aggressive, but the card I feel like people are sleeping on the most here is actually Sanguine Statuette. With the amount of Artifact sacrificing that the deck does, starting turn three, that card is a 3/3 hasty creature for two mana that comes with the upside of making a sacrificeable token when played. Unlike many of the other decks we’ve looked at so far, though, this deck can grind out a long game if it needs to and has incredible reach. Very powerful deck, and if you are missing Deadly Dispute in Standard, I highly recommend you take it for a spin. So, how cheap can we get the deck on Magic Arena while still keeping its power?

Kenrith does a lot of things, but my personal favorite is his last black ability, which reanimates dead creatures. Mind, you can do this as many times as you want if you have the means to pay for it. I am using $1 as the breaking point for this list since it allows most of the really good budget cards to be a part of this list. The maybe-board is a listing of those cards which are borderline budget and may fluctuate into a budget range on a good day. The side board includes budget cards which are amazing but need to be built around to be automatic inclusions.

Furthermore, being a mono-colored commander means that the mana base could be as simple as 30 or so mountains. Toxic is a mechanic where when a creature with the ability deals combat damage, they will get a certain number of poison counters. If an opponent has ten or more poison counters, they automatically lose the game. Selesnya Toxic is an aggro deck that wants to deal as much toxic damage as possible to win the game early.

Thanks to this, it’s only a matter of picking the right deck, after all, if it’s not powerful, you can always upgrade it. While this does inherently demand spending a bit of extra cash, not every Commander card is $50. At its core, Bant Toxic uses its namesake mechanic to blitz through opponents by applying poison counters. The deck primarily does this by going wide, filling the board with Phyrexian Mites from Skrelv’s Hive and Crawling Chorus.

Digital Deckbuilding The How-to Guide to Building a Commander Deck Using EDHREC, Archidekt and Commander Spellbook

Then – and this is where it gets good – you can cast that spell if it’s a nonland card. Different colours will have different removal, so Black and White are going to be able to use cards that destroy and exile. Blue will have to counter spells or put creatures back in their owner’s hands. Red will mtg card be able to use spells that deal damage to destroy things, and Green is stuff with cards that let your creatures fight other creatures.

You can build ramp decks in various ways, like relying on mana rocks or ramp spells. But however you do it, the main goal for ramp is to cast big spells to put you in the front seat of every other deck. Before choosing your commander you might want to know the most common Commander archetypes. Understanding and utilizing mulligans is vital in Commander games. The mulligan rule allows you to shuffle an unsatisfactory opening hand back into your library and draw a new one with one fewer card. If your opening hand doesn’t support your early game plan or lacks the resources required for consistency, it’s wise to take a mulligan and hope for a better draw.

How to Build a Great Commander Deck (4 Steps)

Then, when it comes to adding a new card to your deck, you’ll have an easy time deciding which cards to replace. However, if you’re playing a commander that doesn’t generate value, such as [c]Kaalia, the Vast[/c], you’ll definitely want to include many ways of drawing extra cards. [c]Farseek[/c] counts as mana ramp, but so does [c]Dockside Extortionist[/c], and those are two very different cards. [c]Pyretic Ritual[/c] is also a form of mana ramp, although it only works when you cast it.

This can be fun, just to see how your deck compares to another person’s. It can also be an extremely helpful way to see things you missed. The compare decks tool is available in the top right corner of the deck page.

Land Types

Some would call this “card advantage” or just straight up “card draw” but I think the concept is a lot more nuanced than that. I like the term “velocity” because it evokes a feeling of speeding through your deck, and there are different ways to do that. Commanders of all colors exist to support these familiar, out-of-the-box deck strategies, from Meren of Clan Nel Toth and Trostani’s Selesnya’s Voice to Edgar Markov and Melek, Izzet Paragon. Yeah, a lot of decks play around 38 or lower, but that’s right around average for decks that don’t want to be playing lands like crazy and just want to make sure they have lands to play. And you can still find lists with 40 lands without looking too hard.

This will also help make sure you don’t go over the budget you have. If you have a limit to spend around $100 on a deck, this will help you narrow your choices and keep your budget in mind. Commanders like Phenax, God of Deception fall in the first category, while commanders like Grolnok, the Omnivore, and Sidisi, Brood Tyrant fall in the second. If you’re super into control and want to become a master at playing the archetype, check out Corey Burkhart’s in-depth course over on Spikes Academy. Choosing your commander is the most important part of where to start, since your commander will lead you where you want to end up most of the time.

I hope you and the other players in your community enjoy Digital Deckbuilding as much as I do. Every card on an EDHREC commander page is assigned a synergy score. Joey Schultz of EDHRECast offers a fantastic explanation of Synergy scores in this YouTube video. Synergy score is calculated by subtracting a card’s inclusion rate in all eligible decks, from its inclusion rate in decks for the selected commander. A high synergy score means a card is more unique in a given commander deck, compared to other decks with overlapping color identities.

What is the best ratio for Commander decks?

Feel free to be creative when planning on how to cast your powerful spells earlier than your opponents expect. Without mana ramp, you’re restricted to playing one land per turn. If you want to play a five-mana card, you’ll have to wait until turn five to do so assuming you draw enough lands.

Let’s go over some of the most important factors and how they affect your land base. Riku of Two Reflections is probably the most popular tokens commander, followed by Rhys the Redeemed. But any commander that can exploit the ETB mechanic can be used as a token payoff, like Purphoros, God of the Forge. Because of this you need to know what kind of deck you want to build. I’m reconstructing my blue/red wizard tribal because my last one had no cohesion to it. It was my first EDH, so I’m still trying to figure out card ratios.

In an Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle deck, a ramp spell that you can cast on turns 1-2 would mean you can cast your commander on turn 3, making 1-2cmc ramp is far more valuable than 3+cmc ramp. Always remember the purpose of ramp in your deck and what you’re using it for. Once you’ve got your theme, you need to flush out the deck itself.

There are plenty of lands out there, but the best ones come into play untapped so they can tap for mana right away. As for how many tutors you should play, I say play as many as you can! Obviously, we’d all love to just draw the perfect card each turn, but anyone who’s played a game of Magic knows that hardly ever happens. The more tutors you play, the more likely you are to get your hands on the card you need. 100 cards is a good number of cards to play with, so you can have a good mix of different types of card in your deck. Cards in a Commander deck can generally be sorted into the following types.

Card Draw and Cantrips

To use this feature, enter the name of your commander, or names of your partner pairing, in the appropriate fields, paste your list as plain text in the Decklist box, and submit. EDHREC presents a page for each of the thirty-two possible color identities. The data on these pages is divided between two tabs called Staples and Mana Staples. The staples pages conveniently display cards that will generally work for any commander in a given color-identity. Similar to card packages, using the staples pages can save time and trouble compared to searching for individual cards.

It doesn’t always have to be an obvious one either; sometimes just wanting to play all of the best cards in a mana colour is a good enough idea. That said, the more niche it is, the more fun you’re likely to have – and the more creative you can be with your card choices. A big part of the fun of Commander is in building a deck and finding obscure cards to include. Since most of your creatures are artifact creatures, you can attack with them freely and still have blockers since they’ll untap.