Hello all and welcome to this weeks Budget Brews! Winning is nice, but it isn't our main goal here at Budget Brews, instead we just try and have some fun! We tackle a few different ways to build here at Budget Brews, we either look at trying to make the more competitive decks cheaper on the wallet, or we just come up with something new that's easy on the wallet!
This week on Budget Brews we're going to look at a deck list someone showed me on Twitch during the SCG Open this weekend. He told me the name of the deck was “clue storm” and instantly my interest was piqued. With the name like 'storm' I thought it might be some crazy take on the Modern Storm deck (since the Open was Modern, that's just where my mind was). I was, however, surprised to see it was a Standard deck, and it was most definitely a budget brew!
The deck doesn't operate like any version of Storm that you're used to seeing, so the name is a little misleading, but in games where you can get your engine revving your screen will be literally filled clues. With all of the enablers in Shadows Over Innistrad it's not that hard to do, there also seems to be a ton of pay off cards for having a ton of clues in play, and even cashing in those clues (the biggest one being Tireless Tracker who saw play in Legacy Lands over the Weekend at the MTGO MOCS).
All told the deck runs about $122CAN if you pick it up on WizardTower.com, and it'll run you about $60CAN in TiX if you're looking to play on some MTGO.
Originally, the deck ran Hangarback Walker as opposed to the Thopter Engineer I changed it because the one standard all-star is still a bit on the pricey side, and the point of having him in the deck is because he makes you a bunch of artifacts when he explodes. Declaration in Stone, makes this not happen, and between that and Anguished Unmaking he just disappears more often than you get actually get the payoff from him. So, I felt like it was okay to replace him with a creature that gives you an artifact as soon as they hit the field and gives all of your future artifacts haste. Something that's beneficial with a card like Thopter Spy Network on the field.
Get your clues:
Tireless Tracker has been proven to be a Standard all-star (even being spotted in some eternal formats' decks like Lands) hence it being one the more expensive cards the deck. The deck needs it though. It gives you clues and can become your beater.
Ongoing Investigation is a card that has little if any constructed play, but in the late game when we're flooding our board with Thopter Tokens it's all pay off. In one of my test matches I even played against a mill deck when the activation became great. We aren't using our graveyard for anything, so we might as well pretend we're still in the Delving days of old and make use of that graveyard.
Tamiyo's Journal gives us a Clue every turn without fail, and gives a way to tutor up whatever we might need. It's something I've played in other decks, and if you're going to the long game, it's a great card.
This unassuming little Spirit is something that's good both in early and the late game. The evasion can give you some early 1/1 beats, and later it's only going to be upping our clue count.
Alright, why do we need all these clues anyway? What's the point?!
Ghirapur Aether Grid is a great card against tokens since we can usually just snipe them down with our army of clue tokens, and if the game stalls long enough we can tap our clues sideways and snipe our opponent one point at a time.
Confront the Unknown is a card I looked at confusingly at first. Then I played it. It's a great 'gotchya' card and can turn your Tireless Tracker into a quasi-Emrakul, sending a ham-fisted punch to the opponent's throat and can end the game in a hurry. Like I said, Tireless Tracker is a must have for this deck.
Throughout my testing of the deck I found that it's one of those decks that once you have the engine up and roaring ready to go it's a blast to play and can win fairly often. People aren't expecting it and don't know what in the world you're up to, but if you don't have the engine going the deck is worse than that pretty BMW that just wont start.
Thanks for joining me while I untap the multiverse, and I look forward to brewing up something for next week!
Have an idea for something you'd like me to brew up? Give me a shout in the comments! You can also follow me on Twitter, @maibuddha, Reddit /u/maibuddha, or you can join my Facebook group!
