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Browse > Home / Strategy / Articles / Fifty Free Decks for Modern and Pioneer on Magic Online

Fifty Free Decks for Modern and Pioneer on Magic Online


One of the biggest upsides of Magic Online is its card-rental programs. In general, these programs work like subscription services, where you pay so much a week or a month and get access to all of the cards you need to play various formats. But if you're not looking to pay anything at all to play Magic Online (outside of the $5 it takes to make an account), the two big card-rental programs—Cardhoarder and ManaTraders—both offer free versions of their services, with Cardhoarder loaning out $5 (or tix) of cards for free and ManaTraders offering $7 of cards for free. If you sign up for both free card-rental programs you can borrow up to $12 (or 12 tix) of cards at any one time. This might not sound like much, but considering how cheap most cards are on Magic Online, $12 of cards actually goes a pretty long way toward building competitive decks. 

As such, I thought it would be worth creating a resource for players looking to play Modern and / or Pioneer online for free. Below, you'll find a bunch of decklists that cost $12 or less on Magic Online so you'll be able to play them for free with the help of the free-card-rental programs. Some of them are my lists (if it's a deck we've played on Budget Magic, I included the video so you can see it in action, although some of the lists have been updated slightly since the video went live) while others are submissions from viewers. My current plan is to update the list of decks every set release as prices change and new cards enter the game, so make sure to check back in the future for fresh lists! (And if you have your own free Magic Online list and would like it included, please send it to me or leave a link in the comments.) Thanks to everyone who sent in decks for this project!

Last but not least, if you haven't signed up for the free-card-rental programs yet, you can apply for the Cardhoarder program here and the ManaTraders program here. Now, let's get to the decks!

Pioneer

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Maze's Ends Gates is a good option for grinding Pioneer leagues. It has posted 5-0 finishes in the past, and we played it on Budget Magic, if you'd like to see it in action!

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Modern

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Enchantress is a really fun budget archetype in Modern. While the number of tapped dual lands can be an issue against aggro, pretty much all of the best cards in the archetype fit in under the $12 budget. We played it on Budget Magic a while ago. If you'd like to see how it plays, here's the video!

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While it's slightly over budget now thanks to some recent price increases, I still wanted to feature Real Affinity because we played in on Budget Magic and it was pretty competitive. Plus, prices change so quickly on Magic Online that it could easily be back under $12 soon. Here's the video, if you want to see the deck in action!

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When people ask me for the most competitive budget deck in Modern, I usually direct them to some 8-Whack variant. The most recent version we played was 12 Whack, and like usual, the deck was very good for its price. If you're looking for a deck to grind leagues with, 12 Whack is perfect because it's not only good enough to post a good win rate but also wins quickly, which helps you get in more matches and (assuming you perform well) win more prizes. Here's the video!

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Clerics aren't the most competitive tribe in Modern, but they do have a fun, grindy play style. While I wouldn't recommend the deck if your goal is to post the highest win percentage possible, as a semi-competitive option the deck is pretty sweet.

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Snow Stompy is one of those decks that looks janky on paper, but the list performs surprisingly well every time we play it. A surprising number of top-tier Modern lists have a hard time dealing with a massive Abominable Treefolk; plus, who doesn't love janking out wins with a 20/20 Marit Lage with the help of Marit Lage's Slumber? Here's how it performed on Budget Magic a while ago.

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Zirda's Mantle is hilarious when it goes off, and the combo can definitely steal some wins, but it's probably a bit too inconsistent to be a truly competitive option. 

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Affinity is a classic budget-friendly archetype in Modern, to the point where we've played several different versions of it over the years. I'm not sure which build is the best, but Fling Affinity does a great job of closing out games by surprise with a huge burst of direct damage from Kazuul's Fury or with burn spells like Shrapnel Blast and Galvanic Blast.

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If you like drawing a lot of cards and sacrificing things for value, Plumb the Forbidden is probably the perfect free Modern deck for you!

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No one expects the morph you flip over with Soulherder or Ephemerate to be a massive Akroma or Maelstrom Djinn!

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Burn is another archetype that can be very competitive on a budget since all of the best burn spells are super cheap. 

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Demon of Death's Gate is a card we've played a couple of times in budget decks, and it always overperforms. Apparently, a 9/9 flying trampler on Turn 2 is pretty good, even in Modern! Here's the last build we played for Budget Magic.

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A couple of years ago, Hollow One was in the conversation for the most competitive budget deck in Modern. While it's not quite as good as it used to be thanks to changes in the meta, it can still get off to some incredibly explosive starts and steal a lot of wins!

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Calibrated Blast is an incredibly high-variance archetype. It can 5-0 if you run well and hit the right matchups, even in free form, but you can just as easily go 0-5 if you hit the wrong matchups and run poorly. Just mulligan for Calibrated Blast or Throes of Chaos and hope for the best!

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today! Hopefully, these free decks will be helpful for getting into Magic Online on the cheap. While not all of them are super competitive, some of them are more than good enough to grind leagues with (one of the upsides of Magic Online is that a 50% win rate in leagues is profitable, so you don't have to win at an absurd rate to earn prizes and build a collection). As I mentioned in the intro, my plan is to update this article every set release by dropping decks that are over budget and adding in new cheap decks as they are built. So if you have a deck that's 12 tix or less on Magic Online, make sure to leave me a link in the comments, and I'll add it to the list! If you try out some of these decks and have success, make sure to let us know about that in the comments too because, ideally, at least some of these decks will be good enough to help players grind into a collection on Magic Online for free! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.



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