When I go to Commander night, I never know what is going to happen. I may have a decent idea, but sometimes a player we don't know joins us. Sometimes people feel like doing something really aggressive, and others want to chill out and battlecruise. The best way to have fun is to make sure you've got a varied pile of decks in your bag, ready and able to meet the requirements of the table at the time.

But we all know, this can get expensive! Price and expense are relative based on who you are, but even if the money doesn't actually matter to you, buying a premium Commander deck, chock full of staples and the strongest versions of cards, will cost a decent amount of money.

I've done a lot of budget work in my columns, but I thought it'd be fun to set a budget for the next four decks and build them all for that budget. $100 seemed like a good amount. So, scrounge up that Benjamin and keep your eyes on this space - with a little luck, some research, and a willingness to break the mold, let's see if we can do four decks in four weeks for $100 total. And let's start with this guy.

Imoti is a 5 mana, Simic () 3/1. That's... not a great deal. However, we need to remember we get a free spell for our trouble, worth as much as four mana, thanks to Cascade. And it's that last ability which really gets us going, because all our spells which cost six or more are going to have Cascade as well. Seems like we can do something with this.

A couple of quick notes. This is hyper budget time. We have $25 total for each deck, but this is the first one and I don't know what the other three will be yet, so if I can make this really cheap, I will. (Heck, if I can come in under the $100 budget, I'll take that as a win!) So, we're not going to splurge on anything here. That will automatically affect how this deck gets built: we're probably not running Sol Rings.

Basic Lands don't count toward the cost. Surely you can find some of those for no dollars.

Finally, on Cascade - Cascade stacks, so if you have a spell with Cascade which is given Cascade by Imoti, you'll have Cascade Cascade. Both of them will trigger separately and must be resolved separately. I wrote an article about how Cascade works which is worth checking out if you decide to build this deck (or, frankly, run any deck with Cascade as a theme).

Okay, let's take a look at the deck. For anyone familiar with my Top Five Deck-Building Tips for Beginners, we know we want to ramp, draw, and do a thing (plus run 40 Lands).

Normally, we look to ramp to our Commander. That means we only need enough ramp cards to give us a good shot of playing our Commander early. However, even though we're only going for a five-mana Commander, we're really aiming to be able to cast one 6+ mana spell every turn, and sometimes we may want to be able to do more than that. To get there, we're going to run a lot more ramp than normal along with our 40 lands. I'm also normally a fan of spells like Cultivate, which get you multiple Lands per spell. However, since we're so budget, we're going to use a broad spectrum of ramp so we can wrench more value out of our spells. Some examples:

• Hedron Archive and Simic Locket both can be sacrificed later for cards.
• Invasion of Zendikar // Awakened Skyclave and Beanstalk Giant turn into relevant Creatures.
• Gilanra, Caller of Wirewood, Snapping Voidcraw, and Troyan, Gutsy Explorer draw us cards.
• Krosan Drover reduces the cost of our larger spells.
• Gift of Paradise and Overgrowth make a Land tap for more.
• Eureka Moment and Urban Evolution let us draw some extras and play an extra Land on our turn.

The mix means we sacrifice speed (from cheap spells like Sol Ring) for value by drawing extra cards or making it so we don't lose all our ramp if someone destroys all the Artifacts.

Our Lands hit that 40 count, with just under half Basics. We don't have to worry too much about Lands coming into play tapped, so we have a good amount of fixing and some side benefits. I really like Rogue's Passage here, but Littjara Mirrorlake is a particularly good find. We have a number of big Creatures; copying one for five mana could be just the play we need to push our damage over the top or draw out a Wrath we know someone is sitting on so we can rebuild.

Another funny thing about building this deck: normally we want draw to be cheap and quick - spells like Brainstorm are great, but because we get so much value from casting expensive spells we're leaning into the draw spells no one runs like Boon of the Wish-Giver. Six mana, four cards, plus we Cascade? Worth waiting. It does mean rather than drawing a card or two, we'll really refill our Hand every few turns. Every once in a while, we'll hit one of these off a more expensive spell thanks to Cascade, but that's okay too - we're still getting two spells for the cost of one. We've also got some stuff like Garruk's Uprising to keep cards flowing. In play-testing, I always had a full grip; I think the smallest Hand size I had was four cards, and that lasted one turn.

The goal here is going to be ramp, play Imoti, then start dropping bigger spells to gum up the board and cause problems for our opponents. While we're at it, we'll add extra stuff to the board (whether ramp or support cards). It's not terrible to flip into a Fierce Empath and get to hunt for another big Creature, or Tatyova, Benthic Druid so we start drawing even more.

With that in mind, we have a selection of big ol' Creatures here which are chosen based on my preferences (I really like Giant Adephage, for example) and price (everything in the deck is super cheap). You should feel free to run what you've got to keep costs down; as a rule you want a reason to run a big dumb Creature (Bygone Colossus, for example, is just a 9/9 for 9, but we can Warp it for {3} and Cascade for 9 - Cascade cares about the mana value, not what you paid). Otherwise, though, you want more value - Meteor Golem destroys something, Glacier Godmaw helps us with ramp and pumps our whole team, stuff like that.

Pinnacle Kill-Ship is a fun one here, surely killing something when it Enters. Stormkeld Vanguard and Natural Reclamation both destroy an Artifact or Enchantment, and Aethersnipe and Brinelin, the Moon Kraken aren't the only spells which will bounce a troubling permanent. If you have a Beast Within or Pongify kicking around, you might consider dropping them in, but this deck will interact in the red zone.

We have a number of cards which care about what we're trying to do. Thryx, the Sudden Storm reduces the cost of our spells and makes them harder to stop, while Thunderous Snapper rewards us for casting the kinds of spells we want to cast. Monstrous Vortex gives us an extra Cascade in the form of Discover, and Kozilek's Unsealing will do some serious work for us.

Imoti, Celebrant of Bounty | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Imoti, Celebrant of Bounty

• Creatures (29)
• 1 Annoyed Altisaur
• 1 Aethersnipe
• 1 Beanstalk Giant // Fertile Footsteps
• 1 Brinelin, the Moon Kraken
• 1 Bygone Colossus
• 1 Drowner of Truth
• 1 Drownyard Lurker
• 1 Farhaven Elf
• 1 Fierce Empath
• 1 Giant Adephage
• 1 Giant Ankheg
• 1 Gilanra, Caller of Wirewood
• 1 Glacier Godmaw
• 1 Greater Tanuki
• 1 Krosan Drover
• 1 Maelstrom Colossus
• 1 Mechanozoa
• 1 Meteor Golem
• 1 Mirrorshell Crab
• 1 Sapphire Dragon
• 1 Snapping Voidcraw
• 1 Sword Coast Serpent
• 1 Tatyova, Benthic Druid
• 1 Terastodon
• 1 Thryx, the Sudden Storm
• 1 Thunderous Snapper
• 1 Troyan, Gutsy Explorer
• 1 Warped Tusker
• 1 Wretched Gryff

• Instants (8)
• 1 Artistic Refusal
• 1 Dig Through Time
• 1 Eureka Moment
• 1 Into the Story
• 1 Mental Journey
• 1 Natural Reclamation
• 1 Rowdy Research
• 1 Spring // Mind

• Sorceries (8)
• 1 Aminatou's Augury
• 1 Boon of the Wish-Giver
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Interpret the Signs
• 1 Stormkeld Vanguard // Bear Down
• 1 Treasure Cruise
• 1 Urban Evolution
• 1 Verdant Mastery

• Enchantments (8)
• 1 Confiscate
• 1 Garruk's Uprising
• 1 Gift of Paradise
• 1 Kozilek's Unsealing
• 1 Lay Claim
• 1 Monstrous Vortex
• 1 Overgrowth
• 1 Sandwurm Convergence

• Artifacts (5)
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Heaped Harvest
• 1 Hedron Archive
• 1 Pinnacle Kill-Ship
• 1 Simic Locket

• Battles (1)
• 1 Invasion of Zendikar // Awakened Skyclave

• Lands (40)
• 10 Forest
• 9 Island
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Hidden Cataract
• 1 Hidden Nursery
• 1 Lakeside Shack
• 1 Littjara Mirrorlake
• 1 Lush Oasis
• 1 Mosswort Bridge
• 1 Quandrix Campus
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Simic Growth Chamber
• 1 Simic Guildgate
• 1 Tangled Islet
• 1 Temple of Mystery
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Thornwood Falls
• 1 Thriving Grove
• 1 Thriving Isle
• 1 Vineglimmer Snarl
• 1 Woodland Stream

Buy This Deck Export text

Let's get one thing super clear here: If you're used to a Commander deck that behaves itself, this is not that deck. The sheer volume of ramp means you're very often going to flip into a ramp spell off your Cascades. That's okay - the more mana, the better, because your next draw spell is going to pull two more big Creatures and it'd be nice to play them on the same turn! However, we're trading consistency for power here - sometimes, we're going to get unlucky and wind up doing nothing but ramping. Other times, we're going to throw up big Creatures all over the board and run everyone over before they know what hit them.

One of the points of a super-budget deck like this is to keep it super cheap, so I don't think I'd do anything to change this other than pick the big spells I already own rather than ordering the ones I picked but you don't have. Also, don't be afraid to ask if people have cards they're willing to hand over or share - my playgroup regularly texts each other with cards they need to see if someone has them, and when they're cheap, they're gifts. Use your own collection to make changes and keep the price even lower.

When using the cheapest possible price here on this website (including cards not in near-mint condition and being willing to hunt for the cheapest possible price), I got this to $23.87 on this website. A great start!

Total spent: $23.87

Total left: $76.13

Thanks for reading.