The Essentials

The essential part of any Caw Blade list is the squadron hawks which give the deck its consistency and the equipment which makes them so threatening. In particular, Sword of Feast and Famine has allowed many Caw Blade lists to play aggressive and then controlling after untapping their lands. In order to make this deck budget friendly we will have to leave out Sword of Feast and Famine as well as Gideon Jura and a full set of manlands but feel free to add these wallet busters to your own lists if you can.

Puresteel Paradise

Puresteel Paladin gives us a great way to get some free cards and is amazing with metalcraft. This deck will have to be fairly aggressive in order to be competitive and get a win before its facing a Sword of This and That or whatnot. Our Paladin also wants equipment density and the best way to reach these goals is with living weapons. Mortarpod and Flayerhusk will do the job nicely here. Lets also add Mirran Crusader and hero of bladehold to give the deck a little hitting power as you can often pick these up cheap on a certain online auction site, especially the prerelease ones. If your budget can’t stretch to this then I’d recommend getting a job, or using Blade Splicer and Emeria Angel instead.

O-no-he-didn’t

Oblivion ring is a great versatile tool available to us white mages and so I suggest packing a playset of these catch-alls. Other cards that have proved useful are Day of Judgment and Sun Titan and I see no reason not to include them here. These have both dropped in price recently with the reprintings in M12.

Magical Christmas Land

So once we have our Puresteel Paladin engine pumping away at full speed we want to take advantage of his free equip ability. How about Argentum armour? Mortarpod combined with basilisk collar could also be great for clearing blockers or other problems. I also want to find room for an Etched Champion to help us reach metalcraft quickly and take advantage of it when its there. Dispatch would also be very useful with metalcraft.

The Decklist

Plains x23

Puresteel Paladin x4
Squadron Hawk x4
Hero of Bladehold x4
Sun Titan x1
Etched Champion x1
Mirran Crusader x3

Mortarpod x4
Flayer Husk x4
Basilisk Collar x2
Oblivion Ring x4
Day of Judgement x2
Argentum Armour x1
Dispatch x3

If you have tectonic edges or inkmoth nexus then feel free to add them to the mono white land base, I’ve left them out here for budget purposes although Tectonic edge is pretty cheap.

I hope you have enjoyed my attempt at a budget caw blade list, join me next time when I’ll be posting results against decks that populate the FNM scene and suggesting improvements or changes to this build!

Thanks for reading

Creeping Tar Pit x3
Darkslick Shores x4
Drowned Catacomb x4
Tectonic Edge x4
Island x6
Swamp x5

Inquisition of Kozilek x4
Duress x1
Preordain x4
Dismember x2
Go for the Throat x1
Into the Roil x2
Mana Leak x4
Spreading Seas x4
Stoic Rebuttal x2
Jace Beleren x2
Jace’s Ingenuity x1
Black Sun’s Zenith x2

Solemn Simulacrum x2
Wurmcoil Engine x2
Grave Titan x1

Sideboard 
Duress x2
Flashfreeze x3
Go for the Throat x1
Memoricide x2
Mental Misstep x2
Negate x1
Vampire Nighthawk x4

The main mainboard differences here to many others are the 4 spreading seas, 2 zeniths instead of one and in the sideboard mental misstep and 4 vampire nighthawks.

The spreading seas are useful against most decks but really make game 1 winnable against valakut. Most importantly is that they slow most decks down by at least a turn, giving you enough time to black sun’s zenith an aggro deck or Solemn Simulacrum into one of your 6 drops against any other. For example, against mono red they have allowed me to prevent my opponent kicking a goblin bushwacker when he had an alarming number of creatures out. I was then able to black sun’s zenith the following turn.

The extra Zenith is mainboarded to add further protection against aggro decks in game 1. Now lets talk about the sideboard; mostly standard stuff here but the 4 vampire nighthawks replace the spreading seas against aggro. Mental misstep has been really good. Lets you beat goblins/mono-red by stopping turn 1 goblin guides on the draw. Also hits most of their spells. Its also worth bringing in against splinter twin/pyromancer ascension where they have multiple ponder/preordain/lightning bolt as you remove all of your maindeck removal. Beware kiln fiends in their sideboard though! This has caught me out once. Other than that its standard UB sideboarding.

U/B control probably isn’t the best positioned deck at this point in time but it is a great deck to play. It has

access to a number of answers for most threats and personally I enjoy it because of the mix of hand disruption mixed with counter spells meaning that you get a lot of information and have to work out the best time to use counters and to play your threats.

Thanks for reading and let me know what you think of my choices in the comments below.

As you may remember from my last post I’m building a budget EDH deck. I’m going to talk you through my most recent additions, all of which are available for $5 or less. Most of these are great additions to any EDH deck that can play them so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t.

My first 2 choices are both blue creatures. Empress Galina lets you take control of an opponents general and Arcanis the Omnipotent taps to draw 3 cards which is going to give you massive card advantage after a few turns.

Tidings, Gifts Ungiven and Careful Consideration all help to get you what you need from your deck. (Gifts Ungiven is on the ban list so should only be played with your opponents permission. I’ve since removed it).

I also added 3 black spells. Phyrexian arena for card draw, Promise of power for card draw and a powerful flying creature and Buried alive to search for my creatures to unearth or use a rise from the grave spell on.

Sun Titan x1
Consecrated Sphinx x1
Emeria Angel x1
Squadron Hawk x4
Sword of Feast and Famine x2
Blade Splicer x3
Oblivion Ring x2
Day of Judgement x3
Dismember x2
Into the Roil x1
Preordain x4
Mana Leak x4
Spell Pierce x2

Venser, the Sojourner x3
Gideon Jura x1
Jace Beleren x2

Sun Titan x2
Frost Titan x2
Squadron Hawk x4
Batterskull x1
Sword of War and Peace x1
Mortarpod x1
Tumble Magnet x2
Stoneforge Mystic x4
Day of Judgement x2
Preordain x4
Mana Leak x4
Spell Pierce x1

Who wouldn’t want to open Karn Liberated? Such a powerful game changing card in limited, as long as you can survive long enough to get to 7 mana! Better open some myr, viridian emissarys and maybe a mycosynth wellspring too!

Drawing cards and proliferating could really help out as a late draw.

This card is going to see play in most formats, and its going to be useful this weekend too.

This card will most definitely be winning long games this weekend. Clears the board and removes any more threats your opponent may have. Nice.

This will save you from infect until your opponent can find some removal (if they can), and then use it to kill a 2/2 for 2 mana, fine by me =).

This card is going to be great this weekend, and casting it on turn 4 will give you a great advantage.

Its hard to find a time you wouldn’t want these great equipment!

Well that’s it for today, good luck to anyone participating in a prerelease this weekend. I’ll be playing in Reading, UK.

What cards are you hoping to open?

Venser, the Sojourner x3
Gideon Jura x2

Sun Titan x2
Frost Titan x1
Squadron Hawk x4
Bonehoard x1
Contagion Clasp x3
Tumble Magnet x2
Everflowing Chalice x2
Day of Judgement x3
Preordain x4
Mana Leak x4
Stoic Rebuttal x2
Spell Pierce x1
Tectonic Edge x4
Seachrome Coast x4
Glacial Fortress x4
Celestial Colonnade x3
Plains x6
Island x5
The main changes are the increase in artifacts and the squadron hawks, there are also a lot less creatures than my previous lists. The sideboard is meta dependent but its Spreading seas, day of judgement, ratchet bomb, flashfreeze, kor firewalker and divine offering
at the moment.The tumble magnets have been very useful and easy to refill with Venser or proliferating with the clasp. The clasps have been great at getting Venser to ultimate a turn quicker and the chalices help cast him a turn quicker. With all the artifacts, Stoic rebuttal is often a hard counter for 2 blue mana.
Once New Phyrexia launches I will be most keen to try out Dispatch and Exclusion Ritual. See my article on Venser and New Phyrexia for more info.

First up is Blade Splicer, for 3 mana you get a 1/1 and a 3/3 with first strike as long as the 1/1 is about? That’s value there. Things only improve when you consider blinking this with Venser.

Exclusion Ritual is next. Its almost a Spine of Ish Sah for one less mana, plus it also prevents your opponent from casting another of the same card. When you blink it with Venser your opponent can cast spells with the same name as the first card again but they wont be getting it back.

This card has generated a lot of excitement and it could work here too.

A Venser deck playing enough artifacts (contagion clasp, everflowing chalice, the blade splicer golems) could definitely benefit from this 1cc removal.

Batterskull will help in any control deck but with living weapon and Venser its even better here!

Thanks for reading, as always your comments are welcome. An updated Venser deck will be posted soon.

First I had to choose a general, I surveyed my collection of Legendary creatures, not a large collection at all and decided on Sedris, the Traitor King. There is a lot I like about Sedris; his cost allows me to use 3 colours, blue has always been a favourite of mine and there are a lot of great blue cards about, also his ability means that I can do a lot of interesting things with my graveyard in this deck.

With a graveyard theme decided on I searched my card collection for cards with synergy. First I needed ways of getting my creatures into the graveyard that benefit me somehow. I came up with Thunder-Thrash Elder and Caldera Hellion; 2 cards with devour that sacrifice my creatures to make themselves stronger. Vivisection; sacrifice a creature and draw 3 cards, and Necrotic Plague; a card which will slowly eat mine and my opponents creatures – the advantage being mine have unearth. I also came up with Malfegor and Thought Gorger.

With all of my sacrificial requirements I’d need some good targets.

I can use unearthed creatures for sacrificing as well.

Some other nice finds were Palinchron which untaps 7 lands when it comes into play; with an unearth of 3 this can allow me to use an extra 4 mana that turn. Kuldotha Phoenix can be returned to the battlefield from the graveyard for 4 when I have metalcraft. With all the

creatures dying Deathbringer Thoctar wanted an invite to the party.

Next I added some ramping, blue and black draw spells and some removal and the first version of my deck was complete.

In the next article I’ll discuss some great budget EDH must-haves that I added to the deck.

As always, comments are appreciated!