Budget Magic: $97 Air Nomad Legacy (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Budget Magic! If you've been following the channel for a while, way back to its earliest days, you might remember the card Favorable Winds. The enchantment was the foundation for several sweet budget decks nearly a decade ago. And now, thanks to Avatar, we have an upgraded version in Standard in Air Nomad Legacy! Is the enchantment strong enough to make a blue-white fliers deck work on a $100 budget? Is Favorable Winds back? Let's get to the video and find out!
Budget Magic: Air Nomad Legacy
The Deck
Air Nomad Legacy is a tempo deck built around fliers. The deck's primary plan is to stick some cheap flying threats early, use Air Nomad Legacy to pump our team, and then disrupt our opponent just long enough to pick up the victory with our air force!
Air Nomad Legacy is a pretty simple card: for two mana, it gives all of our fliers +1/+1 and also leaves behind a Clue token when it enters. The more fliers we get on the battlefield, the more power and toughness the enchantment adds, which is perfect for our deck since we're overloaded with fliers!
As I mentioned in the intro, we really need to get some threats on the battlefield quickly with this deck because if we can get out on the front foot, our tempo plays—which we'll talk more about in a minute—are much stronger. As a result, we're playing a ton of one-mana 1/1 fliers, which don't look especially threatening on their own but turn into real threats once they start getting buffed by Air Nomad Legacy. Momo, Friendly Flier might be the best of the bunch, ramping out our first non-Lemur flier each turn and also growing as we play more fliers, which often allows it to hit for two or three even without Air Nomad Legacy. Momo, Playful Pet is more of a synergy piece thanks to its leaves-the-battlefield trigger that can scry 2 (which is almost drawing a card), make a Food token, or pump something with a +1/+1 counter. Vigilance is also a nice bonus, allowing us to swing with Momo and still have it back on defense to chump block, if necessary. Finally, Spyglass Siren has been a solid Standard card for two years now, and it's even better in our deck thanks to our flying theme.
So, why is getting on the board quickly so important to our deck? Because of our two big tempo three-drops: Aang, Swift Savior and Aven Interrupter. The two cards are pretty similar, as three-mana flash fliers that temporarily deal with a spell on the stack (or, in Aang's case, a creature on the battlefield) by putting it into exile thanks to airbend and plot, respectively. While these cards aren't permanent counters because our opponent will be able to replay the exiled cards for two mana (normally, if we can stack up some Aven Interrupters, they get more expensive thanks to its static ability), they are a great way to slow our opponent down a bit by fizzling a removal spell or clearing a blocker out of the way so we can force through more damage. When we have a board and are pressuring our opponent, Aang and Aven can feel unbeatable, letting us smash through for a ton of flying damage while our opponent has to spend their mana and time recasting their threats. But they get much worse if we get behind on board because our opponent can replay their stuff at a discount. The good news is that we're typically pretty good at getting ahead on board, which makes these cards two of the best in our deck. And they get even better with some help...
We have two more fliers in our deck, and you might be familiar with them from the self-bounce decks that have been running around in Standard for a while now: Nurturing Pixie and Sunpearl Kirin. Along with being efficient fliers, these cards are incredibly synergistic in our deck. The most obvious trick is that we can use them to pick up our Aang, Swift Savior or Aven Interrupter to exile another one of our opponent's spells. I had one game where, with the help of our self-bounce fliers, I managed to Aang the opponent four turns in a row, which is tough to beat. They are also good with Momo, Playful Pet, letting us trigger its leaves ability, and also with Air Nomad Legacy itself, which we can either pick up to make another Clue if we need more cards or—if we are looking to force through damage—bounce the Clue rather than a creature to get as many threats on the battlefield as possible. The flash on Sunpearl Kirin is also huge, letting us do tricks like pick up Aven Interrupter with a spell on the stack and immediately recast it to plot the spell!
Rounding out the deck are a couple of enchantment-based removal spells in Case of the Gateway Express and Sheltered by Ghosts. The idea of Case was that it would be a removal spell that could also pump our fliers and that, in a pinch, we could bounce and replay to kill another one of our opponent's creatures. But it felt a bit clunky in practice, to the point where it might be worth cutting. Sheltered by Ghosts is great, but because it's a one-of, we didn't draw it very often in our games.
Finally, we have Waterbender Ascension, which I wanted to try as a budget replacement for Enduring Curiosity. Since our deck is full of cheap fliers, it seemed that if any Standard deck could make Waterbender Ascension work, it would be this one. But after playing with it a bunch, I'm not sold. It turns out that even in our deck, it just takes too long to turn on Waterbender Ascension. Out of all the games I played with the deck, it really popped off once, but most often it either wouldn't turn on at all or the game essentially would already be over by the time it turned on, so the extra cards didn't really matter. Even though it doesn't have flying, it's probably better to just play actual Enduring Curiosity in the deck if you want some card advantage, although it does increase the budget a bit, especially in paper. While I still think Waterbender Ascension is a solid Commander card, my first impression is that it's just too slow and inconsistent in Standard.
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, the deck felt great! We went 5-1 with the deck for a spectacular 83% win percentage (albeit with a small sample size). The tempo plan felt super powerful; both Aang, Swift Savior and Aven Interrupter are great in the deck on their own, and when we find them both, it's pretty easy to slow the opponent down long enough to let our fliers pick up the win.
I really like the deck's self-bounce sub-theme. Not only did it play well, but it also added a lot of cool tricks. Sometimes, fliers decks can feel like mindless aggro builds where you just spew your hand and hope for the best. But we have so many instant-speed shenanigans and run on such tight margins—which makes even play super important—that Air Nomad Legacy is anything but. Rather than the old Favorable Winds decks, it actually feels more like a Faeries-style deck thanks to all the flash cards and disruption.
As far as changes to make to the budget build of the deck, I was pretty happy with the creatures but not as happy with the removal and Waterbender Ascension. The easiest thing to do is replace Waterbender Ascension with Enduring Curiosity (especially on Arena, where both cards are the same rarity price since they are both rares) and maybe trade our Case of the Gateway Express for Ride's End or Get Lost.
The Budget
Currently, the deck is $97 in paper and 24 rares on Magic Arena, and I'm not sure there's a great way to reduce the cost without giving up a lot of power. Waterbender Ascension can go, which cuts four rares from the deck. But otherwise, the rares are eight lands (which I think are necessary for the deck to function since tapped lands really hurt our curve-out plan), Momo, Aang, and Aven Interrupter, which are some of the best fliers in the deck. If you do want to play the deck on the cheapest budget possible, I'd do something like this. (Just be warned: I think the ultra-budget build is meaningfully worse than the budget build.)
This gets the budget down to $35 in paper and zero rares on Magic Arena, but you basically end up with a straightforward flying aggro deck without the tempo tricks of Aang, Swift Savior and Aven Interrupter. The mana base also gets clunkier, with eight tapped lands. While I don't think the ultra-budget build will be truly competitive, it does seem like it still should be able to pick up some wins just by being aggressive and evasive.
On the other side, if you are looking for some potential non-budget upgrades, other than adding more rare lands to the mana base (like Starting Town), I don't think there's really a ton to change, although there are a handful of cards worth testing, at least. Kitesail Larcenist offers a flying removal spell. Jackdaw Savior could be solid against control decks, helping us fight through removal, and Quantum Riddler is one of the best cards in Standard—it has flying and is in our colors, which probably makes it worth running. That said, like I said, I was generally happy with how the budget build of the deck plays, so I don't think there should be a huge amount of pressure to rush out and make upgrades.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
