Thirty Casual Decks under $20 for Magic: the Gathering Kaldheim Standard
This week marks the release of the newest Magic: the Gathering set, Kaldheim, which means it's time to look at a bunch of super-cheap decks that you can play on your kitchen table or on Magic Arena without spending much money or many wildcards! Kaldheim is overflowing with interesting tribal synergies, with all 10 two-color pairs supporting a different creature type, which heavily influenced our decks today. If you are someone who loves tribes and creature types, you'll almost certainly find something you're excited to play among our lists today!
Like in the past, with today's decks, we tried to minimize the number of rares that show up in decks, to make them easier to acquire. For the Kaldheim-only decks specifically, none of the decks has more than one of each rare since those are the numbers you're likely to open if you crack a couple of boxes. These decks are appropriate for fun, casual play both in paper and on Magic Arena and for new players. If you're looking for higher-powered decks (more appropriate for FNM), we play budget decks every week on the Budget Magic series, with a typical budget of $100. If you want to go all-out, you can check out fully powered decks used in tournaments and by pro players.
Standard
First, we have Standard decks, which take advantage of all of the cards currently legal in Standard. Right now, Standard features the sets Throne of Eldraine, Theros: Beyond Death, Ikoria, Core Set 2021, Zendikar Rising, and now Kaldheim. The primary goal of these decks is to keep the price tag down under $20 in paper, which means (mostly) avoiding mythic cards altogether and minimizing the numbers of rare cards whenever possible, which has the added bonus of allowing players to build these decks on Magic Arena even if they don't have many wildcards.
Oh yeah, I should also mention that there are a few decks built around the snow mechanic that come in over our $20 budget because right now snow lands are somewhat expensive (a single Snow-Covered Forest is almost $1!). Rather than excluding snow decks I decided that I'd put them in even though they are over budget because once Kaldheim releases the price of snow-lands should drop and the decks should end up $20 or less. If you see a deck that costs $30 or $35, this is almost certainly the reason!
Kaldheim Only
Finally, we have some decks made only with Kaldheim cards. If you're brand new to Magic, Kaldheim is the newest Magic set, and its tribal theme makes it a perfect set for a new player to jump into the game! While limiting the decks to just one set makes them less powerful than Standard decks, the upside is that you should (on average) get all the cards you need to build all of these decks by opening a couple of booster boxes of Kaldheim for tabletop. They are also perfect for casual play on Magic Arena, especially if you are just starting out and don't have many cards in your collection, because they don't require many rare (or any mythic) wildcards to build. Plus, over the next few months, most of the reward packs on Magic Arena will be Kaldheim, so many of these cards naturally will show up in your collection soon, if they haven't already. These decks won't compete at the FNM level or on the competitive ladder on Magic Arena, but they are great starting points if you're looking for a way to stretch the amount of fun you get from your booster boxes or from free-to-playing Magic Arena casually! One last thing before we get to the decks: unlike the Standard decks, each rare will only show up as a one-of in the Kaldheim decks, no matter how good it might be in the deck. This is partly to help keep the price of the decks down (both in paper and on Magic Arena) but also because if you open two booster boxes of Kaldheim, you should end up with about one copy of each rare in the set. If you happen to open multiple copies of one of the rares in the decks, don't be afraid to upgrade by sticking it in over one of the less powerful lower-rarity cards!
Once again, the same warning about snow lands applies to Kaldheim-only decks. Right now prices are very inflated, but you should end up with all that you need for free if you do a single draft on Magic Arena or open a couple of boxes of Kaldheim in paper. Rather than leaving out one of the main mechanics of Kaldheim I decided it would be better to include the snow lands even though they make the prices of some decks look a lot higher than they really are in practice.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. A quick reminder on the way out the door: all of the decks we talked about today are designed to be for casual play, like having fun with a friend on your kitchen table or for unranked play on Magic Arena, and they aren't really designed for competitive play. If you're looking for more powerful (but still budget-friendly) decks that are perfect for Friday Night Magic, make sure to check out our Budget Magic series. If you are looking for competitive tournament-worthy decks, you can find them on the metagame page. Hopefully, these super-cheap decklists for Kaldheim Standard will be helpful and fun! If you have any questions, make sure to let me know in the comments. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, feelings, and suggestions, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
