Brew For Your Buck - Six Permanents (more, actually) on a Budget
Six | Art by Andrew Mar
Permanent Perfection
Hello fellow brewer and welcome back to Brew For Your Buck, where we swap out the top 10 most expensive cards in a deck with 10 budget cards that add a unique twist. Speaking of unique twists, I thought we'd do something a little extra for the last article of 2024, and it's inspired by one of my favorite cards printed this year:
Six is an awesome recursion/card advantage engine, turning lands in hand into spells from graveyards. Thing is, Six only gives our permanents retrace, so in addition to replacing the top 10 expensive cards, we're also going to replace all of the remaining instants and sorceries with permanents! Looking at the average list for Six, the price comes in at $262.55. Let's replace the top 10 first, then work on the rest of the instants and sorceries:
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- Crucible of Worlds ($20.81)
- Exploration ($14.36)
- Heroic Intervention ($9.60)
- Azusa, Lost but Seeking ($8.19)
- Titania, Voice of Gaea ($7.80)
- Life from the Loam ($6.55)
- Conduit of Worlds ($6.17)
- Archdruid's Charm ($5.66)
- Walk-In Closet // Forgotten Cellar ($5.43)
- Lightning Greaves ($4.57)
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Total Value of Cuts: $89.14
We're actually not saving a ton by cutting the most expensive nonlands. Fortunately, this deck has a bunch of expensive lands in it, even for a mono-colored deck. Believe it or not, the lands hold more value than the nonlands in this case. Replacing them leads to an additional $105.16 in savings, for a total of $194.30.
Now let's look at the remaining instants and sorceries. Only one of them (Crop Rotation) is over the $2 mark, so these are in no particular order:
- Crop Rotation
- Splendid Reclamation
- Flare of Cultivation
- Beast Within
- Harrow
- Kodama's Reach
- Malevolent Rumble
- Cultivate
- Mulch
These end up saving us another $6.30, so we'll add that to the final savings of $200.60. This means we're up to 19 nonlands we need to replace. Let's not delay it any further!
Additions
As we look at all the sweet permanents to add, let's keep in mind what we want to so with Six: Discard lands to cast permanents from the graveyard. So we want lands in hand, and powerful permanents that we can re-use multiple times.
Self-Sacrificing Permanents
The first thing I thought of for this deck were permanents that self-sacrifice for an effect. We don't need to worry about having a way to get them in the graveyard, since they do that themselves. The most well-known example was already in the deck: Sakura-Tribe Elder. I looked around for cards that did a similar thing:
I couldn't resist adding Mindslaver ($1.33). It's mana intensive, but our green deck that's focused on lands shouldn't be too worried about that, and using Mindslaver over and over is just too funny. It's also a strategy play. If you need access to an effect like a board wipe that is typically only found on sorceries, you can use Mindslaver to "find" one.
In a similar fashion, Hope of Ghirapur ($1.32) can help keep instant and sorceries from getting cast. Let's say you don't want a board wipe to resolve and you know the white player has a Wrath of God in hand. You can repeatedly hit them with Hope, sacrifice it, and then cast it again in your second main phase to soft lock that player. Rude, but effective.
Llanowar Druid ($0.23) can basically double your mana every turn, which really helps to cast multiple things out of the graveyard per turn. Just remember sequence your casts correctly so that you don't have to wait for the druid to lose summoning sickness.
Vessel of Nascency ($0.16) is powerful in this deck, letting you draw the best card from your top four and also keeping the graveyard filled, which for our deck is basically another hand. Three mana to "draw" four cards seems pretty great!
Elixir of Immortality ($0.54) is our emergency bail out button if we get a bit overzealous with filling the yard. Just mill it over and wait to play it until you really need to. Reshuffling lands isn't the worst thing either, since we want them in our hand to keep playing stuff from your graveyard.
Khalni Heart Expedition ($0.16) replaces ramp spells we removed like Cultivate and Kodama's Reach. The deck will be fairly mana hungry and keeping a critical mass of cards to ramp early is important.
Sagas for Six
After searching for the self-sacrificing permanents, I realized there is a whole subset of cards that do exactly that. Sagas have been immensely popular since their debut, and work great here to provide value turn after turn. The Mending of Dominaria ($0.16) is an obvious inclusion. It mills, recurs lands, and shuffles your graveyard into your library.
However, I think The Binding of the Titans ($0.10) fits even better than Mending. It fills the yard, provides life gain and graveyard hate, and then recurs a land so you can cast it again. At only two mana, casting it over and over is a lot more palatable.
The Hunger Tide Rises ($0.07) and The Huntsman's Redemption ($0.12) both offer chump blockers and tutor effects that only get better when you can use them multiple times. Both work well with the finisher we'll be adding later (hint hint) and both cheap enough to recur.
Sixy Support
With all this zone kung-fu going on (hand, graveyard, battlefield) I also wanted a few ways to make that more efficient. One of the best ways is Savvy Trader ($1.40) which reduces the cost of spells we cast with retrace.
Foster ($0.30) is a card that I didn't know existed until I found it in my research. With all of our self-sacrificing creatures, we can use this to find another one and fill the graveyard. Remember, for us, filling the graveyard is kind of like drawing cards anyways, so think of this as a one mana way to draw a bunch of cards.
It doesn't hurt to have a few ways to gain incidental life. Skola Grovedancer ($0.05) is a way to keep our life total high while we're digging through the graveyard towards a win.
Loaming Shaman (0.03) is another bail out button in case we're close to decking, but it also allows us to be selective about which cards end up back in the deck. It can even let you stack your deck if you've got most of it in your graveyard, so you can live on that edge of decking out.
Golgari Grave-Troll ($0.68) is the "best" dredge card out there, so it seems like an easy include as a way to stock the graveyard. By "best" I mean it has the highest dredge number, but there's other options out there in case you can't find the troll (or want more dredge in your life)
I also want to throw in Genesis ($0.43). It's a great card to have sitting in your graveyard normally, but it's really cool with the Dryad Arbor already in the deck, since we can guarantee having a land each turn to discard. It's mana intensive, because it's adding the from Genesis' ability on to whatever you're casting, but it works in a pinch.
Perennial Behemoth ($0.22) goes in to replace the Crucible of Worlds and similar effects that we removed at the start. It's expensive in comparison, but really gums up the ground and can be unearthed if really needed.
Path of Discovery ($0.22) allows the 39 creatures in the deck to do exactly what we want: put lands into hand and anything else into the graveyard. It's a little expensive, but you can always pitch it until you're ready to cast it.
It's not lost on me that this deck plasn to do a LOT of durdling. Our last addition is a finisher with a wonderfully punny name: Rumbleweed ($0.28). This is a permanent-based Overrun that can be cast for as little as one mana, and I fear for your opponents if you can manage to cast it twice in a turn. Of course, you have to yell "let's get ready to rumblllleee" when you do.
Wrap Up & Savings
Let's see what we saved, with a big table!
74% is a pretty successful way to end the year, and we've dropped the price below $100. I love the idea of this deck. Restriction breeds creativity, and I'd be excited to see what new permanents are released each set to upgrade this list.
Next time, we'll have the 2024 stats article so we can look back on this year and what we've learned about budget brewing, which cards we remove a lot and which cards we've added the most. I'll also ask for feedback on the series so make sure you look out for that! Until then, if you have feedback for our Six list let me know in the comments and I'll see you next time when we brew for your buck!
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Please note: card prices listed in this article are accurate at the time of writing, but prices can vary over time and between locations.
Brian Cain
Brian played Magic intermittently between 2003 and 2017 when he fully embraced his love for Commander. Finding ways to maximize the value of each piece of cardboard in the deck is one of his favorite things to explore, especially if it involves putting lands in the graveyard! Outside of Magic, Brian works as a consultant in the marine industry, turning his passion for boats and ships into a career.
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