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Browse > Home / Strategy / Articles / Thirty Casual Decks under $20 for Magic: the Gathering Streets of New Capenna Standard

Thirty Casual Decks under $20 for Magic: the Gathering Streets of New Capenna Standard


This week marks the release of the newest Magic: the Gathering set, Streets of New Capenna, 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! 

Streets of New Capenna is the eighth set in our current Standard, joining Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, Innistrad: Crimson Vow, Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, Strixhaven, Kaldheim, and Zendikar Rising. This means Standard is at its maximum size, which means two things. First, we have a ton of cards to work with. Second, Standard will be rotating when the next set is released, with Zendikar Rising, Kaldheim, Strixhaven, and Adventures in the Forgotten Realms leaving the format. As such, our focus today will mostly be on cards from Streets of New Capenna, Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, and both Innistrad sets, which will be legal in Standard for another year. 

Our plan for today is simple: make as many super-cheap decks as possible. For Streets of New Capenna–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 or ladder play on Magic Arena), 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, although we'll do our best to avoid cards that are rotating in a few months, to try to keep the decks legal for as long as possible. 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. This has the added bonus of allowing players to build these decks on Magic Arena even if they don't have many wildcards.

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Zero-Rare / -Mythic Standard Decks

Thanks to viewer RookerKdag and the Artisan Discord, we have a new section this time around: Standard decks with zero rares and mythics! The main benefit of these decks is that they are inexpensive on Magic Arena, where all cards of a rarity cost the same, although they are fine options for tabletop play as well. While I've made a few changes to some of the decklists, a huge thanks to RookerKdag and the entire Artisan Discord server for their hard work!

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Streets of New Capenna Only

Finally, we have some decks made only with Streets of New Capenna cards. 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 Streets of New Capenna for tabletop play. 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 of Streets of New Capenna, 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 New Capenna 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 New Capenna, 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!

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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 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 Streets of New Capenna 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.



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