Budget Alternatives

Building a Commander deck on a budget

Commander is a singleton format: a hundred cards, one of each, so a deck has room for a lot of different effects. That is also why its price can climb so quickly. Most of a strong deck's cost sits in a handful of cards that many decks want: mana that comes faster than your land drops, card draw engines that run all game, tutors that find your best card, interaction that costs no mana, and lands that fix your colours without slowing you down. Take those out and the same deck often costs a fraction as much.

The good news is that very few cards in Magic are the only way to do what they do. Most expensive staples have cheaper cousins that do the same job, a little slower or a little less often. This tool finds them for you.

How the alternatives are chosen

Every card here is described by its function tags from Scryfall Tagger, where the community labels what each card does: ramp, repeatable treasures, tutor to hand, counterspell, one-sided board wipe and thousands more. Two cards do the same job when they share those tags, and a rare tag counts for more than a common one: sharing “repeatable treasures” says much more than sharing “spot removal”. A card's alternatives are the cards that share the most of its job, ranked by how much they share and then by how often they are played.

An alternative must also be legal in Commander, fit inside the original card's colour identity, and cost at most 40% of it, at least $2 less and no more than $10. Prices are each card's cheapest paper printing on Scryfall, so a card that has a cheap reprint counts at the reprint's price. They are TCGplayer's in dollars unless you choose Cardmarket in Settings: then they are Cardmarket's in euros, by the same rules in euros, so an alternative is always cheaper where you buy.

Same job, not the same card

A budget alternative is rarely as strong as the card it replaces, and the reason is usually easy to see. Demonic Tutor costs two mana and Diabolic Tutor costs four; both put any card from your library into your hand. Smothering Tithe gives you a Treasure whenever an opponent draws a card unless they pay two, while Monologue Tax gives you one when an opponent casts their second spell in a turn. Both make mana for you all game, but the second makes less.

So read each card before you swap it in. Ask whether your deck needs the speed of the original, and whether the cheaper card's drawback matters for your plan. A deck that wins slowly loses little with a four-mana tutor; a deck that races to a combo might.

Checking a whole deck

Choose “A decklist” above and paste your list. The tool finds every card in it that has a cheaper alternative, lists them from most to least expensive, and adds up what you could save by swapping each one for its cheapest alternative. It's a quick way to see where the money in a deck sits, and to build a budget version of a list you found online. To see how the swaps change the deck's bracket and power, run the new list through the deck analyzer.

Where the money goes

The most expensive part of most Commander decks is the mana base. Original dual lands are on the Reserved List and cost hundreds of dollars, but lands with the same basic land types, such as shock lands and the cheaper typed duals from more recent sets, fix your colours the same way and work with the same cards that fetch them. The Land Database lists every cycle by price. After the lands come fast mana, tutors, draw engines and free counterspells, and every one of those categories has budget options here.

Questions