Are you looking for a budget deck to play? I'm here to start a new series: Under50, where I explore decks below 50 USD. Although I'm no genius deckbuilder, I still want to share my experiences deckbuilding with a limited budget. Hopefully, you'll be able to find decks that you can build without breaking the bank! Today, I'll be building a variant of a popular F2P deck: Big Beasts Nature.

Deck Overview

Deck Link: GUDecks

This mid-range deck focuses on getting out over-statted units, maximizing their value on the battlefield. Threats that are not dealt with quickly can quickly snowball into wins. By using a number of cards from the Core and Welcome set, the cost of this deck lies at only 0.007 ETH, or about 28 USD! As this deck doesn't have very specific key cards it needs to have in order to work, upgrading this deck does not have to cost a lot; take a look at the Card Swaps section for some changes that you can make to this deck.

Starting Conditions and End State

Rank: Ethereal Diamond
Play Period: Weekdays
End Rank: Ethereal Diamond
Win Rate: 54.5% over 22 matches

Deck Performance

The deck's main strategy is easy: Bring out big units early to control the board, and finish the game before the opponent gets a chance to play their game-changing late-game units. It performs well if you manage to get out multiple creatures on curve - especially units like Ornery Goat, which if undealt with, becomes a menace in the early game.

Getting out big units like Riled Ursine and Green Giant is the key to winning most matches. Ferocious Rougarou also helps seal the deal if it survives a turn.

However, it performs pretty mediocrely if you match up against control decks which manage to deal with your threats. Control decks tend to have lots of removal which will impede your ability to control the board.

Against aggressive decks, once you make it past the early game and maintain board control, you should be heading towards a win.

While playing this deck, I faced against someone who had a 1-of-1 Mythic card - Temnys of Thebia, Chronicler! Oh, to be blessed by the Card Pack RNG.

Mulligan Strategy

Always mulligan so that you have plays every turn - respect the mana curve! If going first, an example hand might be to mulligan for a 1-drop, 2-drop, and 4-drop, using the extra mana gem on turn 3 to get out a big unit early. As the deck has many early game cards, it should not be hard to mulligan for a hand that can play units every turn.

Card Swaps

As a budget deck, this variation of the deck contains many subpar cards that can be switched out if you have them, or if you are willing to spend more money. Swapping cards is relatively easy - just ensure a good mana curve on your deck, and pick creatures that have value.

Here are some things you can swap:

Brazen Moose is a strictly better Riled Ursine, and I'm not too sure why I didn't just use Brazen Moose instead - it costs only 0.0001 ETH (40c)! More stats is always good. Brazen Moose can also replace Ferocious Rougarou.

Moon-Crazed Cyclops can be considered an almost better Overgrown Rhino, as long as you deal damage to the opponent on the turn you play Moon-Crazed Cyclops.

If you find that Green Giant isn't making enough of an impact on the turn you play it, you might want to consider Giant Pangolin. Being able to deal with an opponent's threat immediately, it makes a strong impact on the turn it is played at the cost of some stat points.

These are just a few examples of card swapping that you can do to improve this deck's performance. There are many other options available, like including Canopy Barrage for early removal or Celestial Stag for more value. Try them all out!

Conclusion

Big Beasts Nature is a formidable deck for climbing the early ranks without requiring much money. Although this deck isn't very interesting to play, you'll get familiar with the concepts of efficient trading and outvaluing opponents, which are useful things to know as you climb up the ranks.

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