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Budget Magic: $35 (15 tix) Standard UR Tutelage Mill

by SaffronOlive // Aug 5, 2015

Chichewa Budget Magic lovers, it's that time once again. This week we are heading back to Standard for a Budget Magic heavily influenced by Pro Tour Magic Origins which took place this past weekend. If you didn't keep up with the coverage, one of the highlights of day one was Andrew Cuneo getting about three minutes of camera time in a back up feature match. During these three minutes he cast an Alhammerret's Archive and about 10 draw spells looking for a copy of Sphinx's Tutelage. Eventually the deck list trickled out, and by Sunday Cuneo had finished the Pro Tour with a winning record in constructed (6-4) playing the craziest UR Mill deck you'll ever see. I'll talk a bit more about the deck in a minute, but first let's get to the videos. Oh, and a quick reminder — if you enjoy the Budget Magic series and the other video content here on MTGGoldfish, make sure to subscribe to the MTGGoldfish Youtube Channel to keep up on all the latest and greatest.

UR Tutelage Mill Deck Tech

UR Tutelage Mill vs Mono-Black Devotion

UR Tutelage Mill vs Mono-Red Aggro

UR Tutelage Mill vs Sultai Control

Pro Tour Deck List

When I saw Cuneo's deck on camera, it immediately came to mind as a potential candidate for the Budget Magic series. Considering that 90 percent of the deck is common and uncommon draw spells and the finisher Spinx's Tutelage is an uncommon as well, how much could it possibly cost? Well, as you can see, the answer is $230, which is a bit out of range for our $100 budget.

However, when I started digging into the list I realized almost all of the expense associated with the deck was tied up in a handful of cards. Most notably a $150 playset of Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, but also $50 of non-basic lands between Temple of Epiphiny, Shivan Reef, Flooded Strand and Bloodstained Mire.

So the easy solution was to simply replace these cards with cheaper alternatives. While Jace, Vryn's Prodigy is very good (and, according to Cuneo the reason he built the deck in the first place) it isn't essential. In fact, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy has a major downside — being the only creature in the deck it turns on all of our opponents Bile Blights, Hero's Downfalls and Ultimate Prices which would otherwise be dead cards (at least in game one). In place of Jace, Vryn's Prodigy we have three copies of Fiery Impulse and an additional copy of Roast to give us more play against aggro decks like Mono-Red and UR Ensoul Artifact which are on the upswing following solid Pro Tour performances. As for the manabase, we are simply playing Evolving Wilds and a few more basics in place of the more expensive dual lands.

If you have copies of Jace, Vryn's Prodigy and the various UR dual lands, by all means play the Andrew Cuneo version posted above. But if you don't and still want to have some fun milling your opponent out (my current record is 10 cards with one Sphinx's Tutelage trigger and 46 cards in one turn, although we probably could have milled 70 but our opponent ran out of library before we ran out of mill), here's what I'm playing in this week's videos.

Now typically I'll go through the list and break down the card choices but since Andrew Cuneo himself did the very same thing today on ChannelFireball, I'm going to skip this section for this week; far be it from me to try to explain a deck better than the pro who created it. So instead I wanted to post just a couple of short quotes from Andrew about the deck, while also encouraging you to read his article for yourself:

On Sphinx's Tutelage: it's "the most important card in the deck. Before you have one out, you're basically just trying to get one into play."
On Send to Sleep: it's "a two-turn Fog in the right circumstances."
On Dictate of Kruphix: it "allows you to build up an enchantment buffer to protect Sphinx's Tutelage from Dromoka's Command."
On Disperse in the sideboard: it "can come in to get problematic permanents like... Orbs of Warding."
On the deck in general: "it is a powerful deck that will hopefully catch people off guard."

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. If mill, control and drawing cards appeals to you, please build the deck — you won't be disappointed! It's super fun to play and surprisingly competitive even without Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. As always, leave your thoughts and ideas in the comments and you can reach me on Twitter (or MTGO) @SaffronOlive.