u/e7SHI

I've been tweaking this deck for over three years now, nearly the day this commander was announced - and it's slowly settled into a janky budget mess you see before you, sitting just north of $100 per TCGplayer pricing, and figured I would take the opportunity to share. After posting about my Morcant deck, which is just mean spirited even when aimed at casual play, I went back to focus on tweaking an older deck I'm a bit more comfortable with in my favorite play style; trash gimmick decks teetering on the precipice between bracket 1 and 2.

So, I present today, my [[Bill Ferny, Bree Swindler]] mono-blue jank treasure voltron horse-typal deck, and get ready for some of the greatest deals in your life.

The Deck:

https://moxfield.com/decks/M7DqYdbXAE-cI-ZNCTp2jw

Mono-blue jank treasure voltron horse-typal is pretty self explanatory, I'd say. The goal of this deck is to play horses, dress things up like horses, and do some good ol' fashion swindling, of course.

Bill is cheap, and wants to be blocked - when he is, you get a choice of creating a treasure token, or, giving your opponent a horse, removing him from combat, and creating three treasure tokens. He boils down to either smacking our opponents in the face, or giving them a horse and getting rich - this is really a win win for us in either direction.

With that hard earned money, we're looking to load him up with cool stuff. The more stuff, the strong her he gets, and the more our opponents start thinkin' that horse isn't such a bad deal after all.

Used horses, like new:

We're here to buy and sell used horses, so let's talk horses. There are a whopping 15 available in our colors, and we probably don't want to run any of them. The worst thing Wizards has ever done was not giving bill access to white.

We attempt to run as many purebred horses as we can -- [[Phantom Steed]], [[Surge Mare]] or [[Wavebreak Hippocamp]] for example, are all "ok", but at the surprise of no one, we do supplement our horse inventory with cheap changeling cards like [[Changeling Wayfinder]] or [[Universal Automaton]]. After all, anything can be a horse if you squint hard enough.

We also have a few build your own horse options available with [[Birthing Boughs]] and [[Maskwood Nexus]]. Perhaps not the best value, but anything to get horses on the field - speaking of bad value, this is possibly the one and only time you will see someone play [[Reflections of Littjara]] and name "horse", or [[Moonlit Meditation]] to make bill spit out three [[Diamond Mare]] every turn.

The value of our horses doesn't really come from the creatures themselves, so much as having fodder to be able to trigger bill. While he can nab us a treasure when blocked, we really want that 3 treasure boost by dishing out shitty horses, so whatever cheap junky horses we can get, we take. Plus, giving players horses is just dumb and I love it.

Oh, last thing, horse related? Horse adjacent? [[Lu Xun, Scholar General]] and [[Sun Quan, Lord of Wu]]. Can't have a horse deck without a lil' horsemanship, as a treat.

Horses for sale:

Smell that? nothing better than that new horse smell. Now that we've got the horses, and 3 potential buyers sitting in front of us, we want to get them in the seat of some serious horsepower.

We run just about anything we can that will force a block. [[Nemesis Mask]], [[Grappling Hook]], [[Magnetic Web]] etc. will all force a sale, or at the very least let us target some unsuspecting creatures with the worlds worst commander.

Even if we don't force it, running equipment like [[Quietus Spike]], [[Orcrist, Goblin-Cleaver]] or [[Rogue's Gloves]] can certainly help persuade opponents to want to block, turning Bill into a bit of a "pick your poison" situation as the game progresses.

Sometimes, opponents just won't take the bait - and so for those stubborn buyers, we have a few tricks up our sleeve like [[Sudden Substitution]] or [[Mystic Reflection]] to force a horse, of course. There is truly nothing more satisfying than responding to an opponents commander being cast with reflection, turning it into a [[phantasmal mount]].

We buy used horses:

So you've burnt through your inventory, and need some horses to sell? In addition to cards like [[Callous Oppressor]], [[Dissipation Field]] or [[homeward path]] to snag our horses back, the interaction we run is largely in the form of bounce. Both to use against opponents creatures, or our own to get them back in our hand in a pinch.

This makes our best mass removal options cards like [[Aetherize]] or other wide-bounce spells like [[Devstation Tide]], or [[Consuming Tide]]. You could, of course, stick [[Cyclonic Rift]] if you've got the real world money to spend, but pretty embarrassing to do for a Bill Ferny deck.

[[Coveted Falcon]] and [[Meneldor, Swift Savior]] also come in handy here, both targeting creatures you own and returning it right to the field**.**

Winning the Game:

So you've been buying and selling used horses, possibly the worst interaction you've ever played in your life, now what? How does this deck actually win?

Don't get your hopes up, pal - it probably doesn't. But, if you get lucky, primarily you're gonna win through commander damage. The usual suspects like [[Access Tunnel]], [[whispersilk cloak]] or [[Rogue's Passage]] can get the job done.

Alternatively, you just beat down your opponents and Bill makes his own way through. Cards like [[Nettlecyst]], [[Adaptive Omnitool]] and [[Tarrian's Soulcleaver]] are our heavy hitters, synergizing really well with our treasure tokens. There are honestly just a ton of equipment cards you can choose to run that make Bill hard to deal with, and this is where you can adjust to your budget and play preferences accordingly - though I highly recommend [[Kusari-Gama]] as some solid removal, paired with our many forced-to-block cards.

You may have also been asking "what is it we're spending all the treasure on"? The deck doesn't have a crazy curve, but realistically, you'll be spending treasure to re-cast Bill or move around equipment as needed. Don't forget you can trick out your ponies, and turn those otherwise bland cards into something that is annoying to deal with.

But, hey, that's no fun- so in our back pocket, we're running [[Mechanized Production]] and [[Rise and Shine]] to give us a bit more to do with our treasure tokens.

Tie it all together:

So there you have it. Mono-blue horses. The TL;DR is make Bill an annoying threat, you either punch your opponents in the face, or give them a horse. Everything in the deck is centered around the idea that we want horses on our field, and Bill to be a pain to deal with each turn, peppered with some fun little horse-related interactions along the way. It's probably being a bit generous to call this a bracket 2 deck, but hey, it's certainly a good time for any casual table, and the world needs more janky semi-functional themed decks.

For some less trashy ideas, I've previously shared a Xu-Ifit budget deck that cheats in Eldrazi and other big ass creatures, and a Tellah deck that plays Balatro to blow up the entire table at once, if you're looking for some more budget-friendly builds. All (including this Bill deck) include a detailed primer as well.

As always, appreciate any feedback, and if you've made it this far, thanks for reading!

Gamecube turns on and starts the boot logo, then it gives me the calendar needs to be set text but seems to freeze here, what could cause this? I thought it would run even with a dead battery, is this a capacitor issue?

I'm broke as hell and find myself in the worst hobby for it, so I spend a lot of time putting together crap budget decks that do the thing for (usually) around ~$100. Generally, I try to stick with commanders that don't see as much play, like Felisa or Tellah, I guess for the challenge of trying to figure out how they work, but thought I'd try my hand at a more popular and recent commander to see if they can be tuned for cheap. I also like a good typal deck that has a lot of synergy, and this lead lead me to [[High Perfect Morcant]] (actually, it was the goat feet, but nevermind that).

Anyway, does Morcant need much explanation outside of "Play elves, stupid"? Not really, but for the hell of it, I've spent some time putting together a nicely tuned deck just right at the $99.70 mark (per TCGplayer pricing at the time of posting this) that is focused more towards a casual bracket 2~3 range (as "casual" as Morcant can be, anyway). This list has no game changers, tutors, infinite/combo cards or infect - stuff that's just generally not really fun to play against in a more casual setting. What it does have is a really drawn out primer that probably goes on too long, and every card (including the considering list, which includes a lot of $$$ powerups) is tagged up for ease of understanding what it's in the deck to do, why it's there, and what we want to focus on. Can we do it for cheap? We sure as High Perfect Morcan

Decklist here with a brief rundown below:

https://moxfield.com/decks/QAgA-eLnAkGBYuVc3XyiPQ

Budget Morcant

So again, Morcant does not require much explanation, but as a brief overview to establish our base, she's got two abilities we're looking to utilize: When her or an elf enters, each opponent has to choose a creature they control, and they put a -1/-1 counter on it, and; you can tap 3 elves to proliferate.

While a very mean pair of abilities, there are also (surprisingly) downsides that need to be considered when putting together a deck.

1. when you trigger the blight, it's your opponents who get to pick where the -1/-1 counter goes. This means that token decks or creature heavy decks will have an easier time taking the counters on the chin, as they can generally spread them out. Other +1/+1 counter decks can shut us out completely, negating the counters and giving us nothing to proliferate.

2. Tapping three elves to proliferate (at sorcery speed only) is quite a high cost, when elves generally want to tap themselves for abilities, or for attacking/blocking etc. Since we run no infinite untap shenanigans, we will need to weigh the most opportune times to proliferate vs holding back on resources.

What this leads us to want to do is get a foothold on the board early, and really lay on the pressure with Morcant's triggered ability to maintain temp and ensure we stay ahead on board presence. What this is really going to boil down to is: we want to play a shit load of elves. This is going to help us take advantage of the numbers game with Morcant. Keep the opponents board low, while we build ours wide and tall, and elves are decent with +1/+1 counters to give us something really worthwhile to proliferate. The basic aim of the game is as follows:

1. Play a lot of elves.

2. Generate -1/-1 counters, and +1/+1 with those elves.

3. Dimish our opponents combat resources while building up our own, looking to win through damage.

Elf Stuff

So, yeah, "Play elves, stupid". You can stop reading here. But really, we want to play a lot of elves, because if we are outpaced by larger (or more) creatures, Morcant becomes less effective. To get there, we want to run a lot of elves (there are 40+ here), run some decent ramp (more mana = more elves), and draw a lot of cards. If you are going to spend money to upgrade anything in this deck, it should be on card advantage outlets.

Ramp is easy, if there's like, one thing elves are known for it's probably this. Run all the staples ([[llanowar elves]], [[arbor elf]], [[elvish mystic]] etc). We actually do not run [[Sol Ring]], [[Arcane Signet]] or any sort of mana rock - while it is riskier, creatures are just more prone to removal, if we're spending the mana, we want it to be an elf. A good opening hand is going to have at least one cheap piece of ramp in it, so you can get the commander on the field early.

All that mana isn't going to mean shit if you've got nothing in your hand, though, so if you are going to spend money to upgrade anything in this deck, it should be on card advantage outlets. There are a lot of elves that give some sort of card draw, like [[miara, thorn of the glade]] or [[legolas greenleaf]], though some of our best options are easily repeatable triggers like [[champions of the perfect]], [[beast whisperer]] or [[massacre girl, known killer]]. That last one isn't an elf, but damn if that doesn't synergize like hell with Morcant.

We also utilize a few options to dump out elf tokens, like [[galadhrim ambush]], [[lys alana huntmaster]] or [[imperious perfect]] to keep up pressure. Anything that gets an elf on the ground is going to help grind down our opponents boards. If you are generating multiple elves a turn, or have a big burst of elves that enter, this can potentially be a board wipe against low-creature decks.

Basically: play elves -> get more elves -> repeat.

Counters

So you got a lot of elves, it's time to both knock down your opponents board while building up your own.

While we do run a few options for support (like [[blowfly infestation]], wither with Massacre Girl, or [[Black Sun's Zenith]]), -1/-1 counters will (almost) exclusively be coming from Morcant herself. There's not much else to say regarding -1/-1 counters - they will come naturally with playing elves. Just keep in mind, your are just forcing opponents to blight - they are the ones choosing where to put a -1/-1 counter (things like [[generous patron]] or [[nesting scarabs]] will not trigger), and at one counter per elf, it can be a little slow with some bad draw on our end.

Because of this, I would play Morcant assuming the worst, in that we should not be expecting her to be a complete board wipe in the command zone at all times. Rather, she is a method to consistently erode your opponents creatures. Like I said earlier, Morcant is a numbers game. Each elf we play weakens our opponents, and at the same time, we want to play some +1/+1 synergy to turn our dinky little elves into muscle-bound beefcakes made to kill. The lower we can drag down our opponents board and the higher we can build ours, the more success we will see.

To this end, we're running a lot of support for +1/+1 placement. Some creatures do this to themselves (cards like [[Gala Greeters]] or [[Pelt Collector]], while other cards are more useful to spread the love. Cards like [[Arwen, Weaver of Hope]], [[Ivy Lane Denizen]] or [[Tromell, Seymour's Butler]] can make our mass of elves a huge threat, even those mana dorks or tokens that come in later in the game - and even if opponents are stacking all their -1/-1's on a single target, this gives us something worth proliferating for.

We do not run other +1/+1 staples (think [[hardened scales]]) specifically to make room for more elves. I would rather get more frequent triggers of blight than I would more +1/+1 counters, as we want to keep a good balance.

You could run anthem cards like [[elvish archdruid]] or [[leaf-crowned visionary]] (in fact, we do, but only because they coincidentally provide other utilities in line with our strategy), but I prefer to focus on +1/+1 counters as I salivate over the idea of synergy in a deck. Counters mean proliferation, and means we have an excuse to activate Morecant more. Er, More-cant.

Proliferation

In an ideal world, our opponents are spreading out the -1/-1 they are forced to place, and we can proliferate and blow everything up. Like I mentioned above, creature heavy decks could pose a problem as they can stack counters on a single target, and worse yet, a +1/+1 counter deck can eat those -1/-1 counters completely and leave us with nothing to proliferate. This is part of the reason we want to run +1/+1 support, as it gives us the most bang for our buck.

In addition to the +1/+1 counters, it makes other counter-based utility cards that much better with access to proliferation. [[communal brewing]], for example, can enter and you choose to let nobody draw a card. While it only gives us a single ingredient counter, we can simply proliferate it to increase the number of +1/+1 counters our creatures enter with.

The other issue to consider, is the cost of tapping 3 elves isn't exactly cheap when in a lot of cases we want those elves for mana, attacking, or blocking. It's going to be a trade off. While at higher brackets, you can sort of "cheat" this, for our purposes, you have to weigh when it's more beneficial to tap to activate Morcant.

We run small handful cards to help with this, such as [[copperhorn scout]] to untap other creatures, or [[Dionus, Elvish Archdruid]] (the most expensive card in this deck btw) to give some untap support, but again, just keep in mind it is sorcery speed so we are somewhat limited. [[Quest for renewal]] is a great card we can proliferate, but untapping all our creatures during each of our opponents untaps doesn't do much for Morcant since we can't activate her here. Just something to consider, otherwise, make sure to make your proliferations count.

Interaction

So admittedly, this deck is a little light on the interaction - don't be like me though, Morcant is, by default, deservedly, going to have a huge target on her back. Nobody likes receiving -1/-1 counters. Make sure you run some cards that can keep her alive. Stuff like [[biosynthic burst]] or a [[golgari charm]] can come in clutch and save our asses. Because this deck is very heavily reliant on Morcant, it will crumble to heavy targeted removal or board wipes.

On the other side of things, make sure you are running removal. As mentioned above, I wouldn't consider Morcant to be an "all-board wipes all the time", so you're going to want some targeted removal like [[assassin's trophy]] or [[beast within]] that can target any permanent. There are elves like [[gnarlroot trapper]] or [[glissa sunslayer]] that also deal with deathtouch, and [[windswift slice]] is another synergistic option that can alternatively be used to generate us some elf tokens.

Use these options to keep Morcant or other key pieces alive, so you can continue to lay on the pressure. If your cadence is interrupted, it can be hard to recover from.

Recap

So: ramp, play Morcant earily, start playing elves to put on the pressure. Look for a card advantage outlet, and just snowball from there. Proliferate where you can, and work to cripple your opponents and beat them down with buffed out elves.

Morcant is the kind of commander that is both easy to scale in price, as well as adjust which bracket she's at. You can easily make some cuts here and still perform better than your average precon, and likewise, if you have more money than I do, you can scale her up hard.

Even on a budget, tutors like [[fauna shaman]] or [[elvish harbinger]] can really increase the consistency of the deck if that's more in line with your playstyle, and if you really want to be an asshole, you can explore including poison counters. There is some decent support for a golgari elf deck with stuff like [[triumph of the hordes]] or [[phyresis outbreak]] and elves like [[viridian corrupter]] or [[glistener elf]]. If you are interested in exploring some upgrades and budget increase options, I've included a section on this at the bottom of the primer attached to the decklist.

Anyway, do with all that information what you will. Morcant is a strong commander, even on a budget, so why waste money on a precon? I appreciate it if you've made it this far before downvoting, and would love to see other peoples builds if they are willing to share.