Table of Contents
In Commander, there are a lot of very powerful staples available. Since you can play cards from the very first set of Magic, the price tag for these staples can be quite high. Luckily, new cards have been introduced with the same effect, but weaker. This gives you budget options for all the best Commander staples. While these cards are strictly worse than their more expensive counterparts, they’re still good enough to see play in budget decks.
Budget Options For Tutors
Tutors are the most important kind of card in Commander. Decks are made out of 99 cards, so they add a massive layer of consistency. They let you get whatever card you need out of your deck for any given situation.
Any Card Tutors
These are tutors that can search for any card and put it directly into your hand. The usual staples are Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor, and Grim Tutor. All of these let you tutor for any card at the cost of paying life. These kinds of tutors are exclusively in Black, and are the only color that can tutor for any card with no type restriction. However, this selection of cards is quite pricey.
The most common budget option for tutors is Diabolic Tutor. It is costly at four mana, but a tutor is a tutor, making it still a worthwhile card to run if your deck wants a tutor and you don’t want to drop a ton of money on a Demonic Tutor. In a similar vein, Profane Tutor is quite affordable, essentially a Demonic Tutor that you have to suspend for two turns first. The card doesn’t have a mana cost, so if you can play it without paying its mana cost (such as with cascade) or with an alternate casting cost, you can cast it without suspending it. Mastermind's Acquisition puts a card directly from your library into your hand. Its other mode does not work in Commander. Wishclaw Talisman is a cheap tutor, but comes with the downside of after using it once, an opponent gets control of it, so you’d better make sure that tutor counts!
Instant and Sorcery Tutors
Compared to “find any card” tutors, instant and sorcery tutors are much cheaper, but can still have an above average price tag. Mystical Tutor is the best one, but it is usually over $10. Personal Tutor isn’t overly expensive, but might be out of budget for some and lets you put any sorcery card on top of your library. Even though Spellseeker can only tutor for instant and sorcery card with mana value 2 or less, it’s still quite pricey since a lot of the best ones have this mana value.
For a budget version of Mystical Tutor, you have Solve the Equation available. The instant or sorcery goes directly into your hand instead of on top of your library, but it is a bit costly in mana and a sorcery as a downside. Mystical Teachings costs a decent bit of mana for an instant tutor, with the bonus of being able to cast it with flashback to use it twice. Waterlogged Teachings tutors for instants, or can be used as a tapped dual land.
Artifact and Enchantment Tutors
There are not a ton of artifact and enchantment tutors, and the best ones, along with all the best tutors, are pricey. Enlightened Tutor puts any artifact or enchantment on top of your library. Even though Idyllic Tutor only tutors for enchantments, it’s also pricey. For Equipment tutors, even Steelshaper's Gift is pricey despite its narrow use.
For budget options, Sterling Grove can sacrifice itself to put an enchantment card on top of your library. It also gives your enchantments shroud to give them a layer of protection. If you’re trying to tutor for Auras or Equipment, Open the Armory and Axgard Armory are great budget ways to do this. For budget options for artifact tutors, your options are limited to Loyal Inventor and Scour for Scrap.
Creature Tutors
Practically every deck plays creatures, even ones focused on noncreature spells. So, creature tutors are very useful for getting them out of the deck. Worldly Tutor and Sylvan Tutor are nearly identical with the exception of one is an instant and the other a sorcery. Eladamri's Call is harder to cast since it needs two specific colors, but is still worth a bit of money.
Congregation at Dawn can tutor out for three different creature cards and put them on top of your library. This shuts off your ability to draw other cards, so make sure you have lands to play if you do commit to using it. Time of Need can only tutor for legendary creatures, but at two mana and a low price tag, it’s worth running if you have any useful legendaries in your deck. Summoner's Pact lets you tutor for any Green creature card, but if you can’t pay its cost on your next turn, you’ll be out of the game.
Budget Options For Draw Power
Draw power is vital in Commander. With 99 card decks, you have a lot of cards to get through in order to find your best ones. While tutors can help with that, you still have to draw them. So, draw power is how decks get to their best cards, or ways to get to them, quicker.
The One Ring is one of the best draw spells ever printed. It lets you continuously draw cards every turn and gives you protection for a turn. Necropotence offers you a way to draw a constant stream of cards at your end step. Ad Nauseam can potentially draw your entire deck, so long as you don’t burn yourself out with its effect.
Necrodominance is directly inspired by Necropotence and offers a very similar effect. The downside is that your maximum hand size is lowered, but when you draw so many cards that doesn’t matter. Greed is a good budget way to draw cards, turning life and mana into card draw. In Five-Color decks, Jodah's Codex can be a way to get a free draw any time you untap it. Eye of Vecna is cheap and lets you pay mana every upkeep to draw a card. It even draws when it enters for some extra draw power.
Stax Staples
There are a lot of very powerful Stax pieces in Magic. Unfortunately, the best ones come with with a rather high price tag. Humility makes every creature into a 1/1 and gets rid of abilities. Drannith Magistrate shuts down your opponents’ ability to cast spells outside their hand. This includes their commander, which is why it’s both powerful and pricey. Opposition Agent makes it so opponents searching their libraries turn into you searching them and playing whatever kind of card they were searching for.
Final Showdown can shut down all creature abilities for a turn. It can also be used as a board wipe or protection spell Avatar's Wrath lets you shut down your opponents’ ability to cast spells from anywhere but hands, but only for one turn cycle. It does also wipe the board, so you’ll have to be prepared for it. Aven Mindcensor makes it so when your opponents search their libraries, they’re limited to the top four cards. A downside to budget options for Stax pieces is that they are pretty noticeably weaker. But, if you need to save money, these are the best substitutes for the better versions.
Direct Budget Options
While the other cards listed here are a part of a larger category, such as tutors or draw power, there are some expensive staples that don’t quite fit into any of them. These are cards that have a hefty price tag, but alternate versions that are much more affordable.
Land Tax turns opponents having more lands than you into basic lands in your hand. Gift of Estates gets lands into your hand, and these don’t have to be basic lands. You can get any card with the Plain typing including dual lands. Similarly, Oreskos Explorer puts Plains into your hand equal to the players who have more lands than you. These cards only trigger once as opposed to Land Tax, but are suitable budget options.
Teferi's Protection is essentially a full turn cycle of “opponents can’t do anything to you.” Not your permanents, not your life totals, nothing. Which is why it’s such an expensive card. If you’re willing to give an opponent an extra turn, Perch Protection does everything Teferi's Protection, just with more of a cost (but you do get four 2/2 tokens as a compromise). Flare of Fortitude doesn’t offer as thorough protection since it doesn’t phase your permanents out, but protects your life total from changing. It can even be cast for free if you have a nontoken White creature to sacrifice. The downside is that your permanents can still be exiled, which isn’t the case with the other options.
The Magus Cycle
There is a cycle of cards called the Magus Cycle. These are creatures with effects that are identical to other powerful effects. For example, Magus of the Balance has Balance‘s effect. Magus of the Wheel is Wheel of Fortune, and Magus of the Order is Natural Order The Magus Cycle lets you use effects for cards that are otherwise banned or very expensive due to being on the Reserved List. The effects are a bit harder to activate since you usually have to pay mana and tap the Magus cards, but the effects are just as powerful.
When To Pick Budget vs Power
As you’ve probably noticed, budget options for Commander staples are always weaker. After all, they’re budget cards for a reason. However, why should you pick budget over power? Why invest in Orcish Bowmasters when you can play Fate Unraveler? It’s weaker since it can’t target any target, but still gets the job done burning opponents when they draw cards.
The obvious answer is because you don’t want to spend the money on the more expensive cards. With having to acquire a total of 100 cards, the price tag for a Commander deck can add up. Even if every card in your deck only costs $1, that’s a $100 price tag. Of course, there are cards that are worth pennies (if even that) that are still great so you can build decks cheaper than $100.
You may want to use budget options so you can afford one of the more expensive cards. If you’re playing a Mono-White deck, you might want to budget for buying Smothering Tithe in it so you can ramp, something Mono-White is notoriously weak at. So, you opt to buy one expensive card, and skimp out on other powerful cards in favor of budget options to make sure your deck stays within a reasonable price.
“Necessary” Expenses
In some archetypes, there are expensive cards that are more “non-negotiable.” They do too much for the archetype, if not being cornerstones of the archetype, so you kind of need to run them. If you’re playing a Discard deck, Tergrid, God of Fright is practically a requirement. Without it, the archetype is so much weaker; you may as well not even bother with it. So, you need to budget for these “necessary” cards. To help make sure your deck stays within budget, you have to look at budget options in other areas to make sure you can afford the required cards for your deck.
This is especially true when it comes to commanders. Some powerful commanders have a high price tag, such as The Ur-Dragon or Toxrill, the Corrosive. So if you want to play these commanders without breaking the bank, you’ll have to be prepared to make the 99 weaker with budget options.
In Conclusion
When you’re building on a budget, you have to accept you’ll need to play weaker cards. The cards with the best effects are expensive for a reason, after all. Luckily, the budget options in many cases aren’t weak to the point of being near-unplayable, and are pretty close to their more expensive counterparts.
Overall, there are a lot of budget options for the best Commander staples. Are they weaker? Yes. Does that matter in budget decks? Not exactly. When you’re building budget decks, you know they’ll be weaker than more optimized builds. However, they are still solid enough to power up your decks, and you can always upgrade to the more expensive versions down the line if you ever acquire them.
