I generally like to think of budget deckbuilding as an art. Building a deck on a $50 budget, or a $25 budget, or even a $5 budget has a certain flair to it that I think qualifies as its own art form. Ask two people to make a $25 deck with a certain commander, and no doubt both decks will have their own unique twists with different things the builders are proud of. But, interestingly, I think this artistry falls apart under the most extreme budgets. Sure, there’s still a little bit of the flair there, but the process of building it shifts from “what cool things can I do with this budget?” to “how do I make this deck function?” And I definitely ran into this exact issue while working on this week’s deck: $1 Shao Jun.

Via Moxfield

For a time I had a big, long-winded section here about what it takes to make a deck on this kind of budget. Instead, I’ve decided to save that for later, maybe as its own article in the future. But suffice to say, making a deck on a $1 budget is a uniquely challenging and rewarding experience. I would recommend playing a deck like this in a pod of similarly-restricted decks. These games may take more turns than normal, but I would say they end up taking a similar amount of time.

So with that out of the way, let’s actually dig into the deck I built. Which, funny enough, actually started out as an Arbaaz Mir deck before I realized that while “historic” was a slightly broader category to build around, the word “nontoken” made it almost impossible to build around at this budget.

The Core

The main thing Shao Jun needs, unsurprisingly, is artifacts. The gameplan is to tap them for damage over and over again, and also to swing with Shao Jun until the opponents are all (hopefully) dead. Gold Pan, Blood Servitor, and Marauding Dreadship are a good place to start. Each of these cards gives us two artifacts for a relatively low price. The all-star here, however, is You’ve Been Caught Stealing, since it’s trivial for this deck to make three Treasures with it.

We also have a few sources of repeatable artifact token makers. Replication Specialist is one of my favorites as a lover of clone effects. Magnifying Glass is serviceable since it comes stapled to a mana rock, and Ceremonial Knife works very well with our flying, first strike commander. We also have a couple cards that benefit us if we tap them: Volatile Wanderglyph and Moonfolk Puzzlemaker. Both of these give us a little bit of card selection when they become tapped, with Wanderglyph being my favorite of the two.

There’s another angle we can build around a little bit thanks to the fact that Shao Jun is a somewhat competent Voltron commander thanks to her built-in evasion. Equipment in particular are great here, since they still do their thing even if we tap them with Shao Jun. Civic Saber is basically just a 1 cent version of Bonesplitter, and Dwarven Hammer helps us to push through any blockers our opponents do manage to scrounge up. And of course, we have the previously-mentioned Gold Pan and Ceremonial Knife. There’s also one non-equipment card that contributes to the Voltron plan: Goldfury Strider. Strider has a similar activation cost to our commander, but you get to distribute the damage in a different way, giving two commander damage to a single opponent rather than one damage to each opponent.

And then, of course, we have the basics: card draw, ramp, and removal. I tried to run synergistic pieces where possible, but unfortunately, it wasn’t always possible. We have Mnemonic Sphere and Korvold and the Noble Thief as great card draw options, and Silver Bolt is…definitely one of the removal spells of all time. Being able to throw it down turn one for some commander synergy is worth it though. Our Ramp package is a bit light due to the fact that the deck is fairly low-to-the-ground, but the tight budget certainly didn’t help either. Turns out, even most of the bad ramp is a bit hard to pull together with just $1. We do still have a few options though, like Magnifying Glass, Horned Stoneseeker, and the fan-favorites of Korvold and the Noble Thief and You’ve Been Caught Stealing (it’s me, I’m the fan).

Winning

Our primary win conditions have already been mentioned: We want to burn our opponents out by tapping our artifacts and by attacking with our commander. We are, basically, an artifact-flavored burn deck. I’d say we have three cards in particular that stand out as being the most helpful to this plan. First, there’s Ceremonial Knife, which helps speed up our Shao Jun clock and pumps out tokens for us to tap. There’s also Replication Specialist, which can really help us boost our artifact count late in the game, and Goldfury Strider, who we can play and instantly go for a commander damage kill if we have enough artifacts.

The Spice

Unfortunately there wasn’t a ton of space for silly stuff here, but there were definitely a couple liberties I took in making this deck. First there’s Brimstone Vandal, who is a funny little pinger that helps out the burn plan, but maybe not enough for some of you who I know despise the day/night mechanic. But given how relatively simple this deck is, I think there should be enough leftover mental bandwidth to manage one card with this mechanic. I also have a Kami of Industry in here, which is a card I loved in Neon Dynasty limited even if it also wasn’t great there. Realistically, getting to bring  back an artifact for a single turn isn’t going to take over the game for us, but it could draw us some cards with Mnemonic Sphere or get us an extra token with Ceremonial Knife. The deck also has Hampering Snare, which isn’t necessarily silly or spicy, but I wanted to call attention to it as a card you could pretty easily replace if you wanted. It’s mostly here as a 1 cent card with some utility against go-wide decks, which this deck doesn’t have many ways to deal with.

Breaking the Bank

This was a very difficult deck for me to build. With the number of 4-6 cent cards I cut, I think a $1.50 version would be noticeably stronger, and a $2 version would feel like a completely different level of deck. That said, a few “expensive” cards still did make it in. Shao Jun comes in at 7 cents and is, for obvious reasons, a necessity for this deck. We also have Mnemonic Sphere at 5 cents as our most expensive non-commander card, but well worth it in my eyes. It sits around dealing damage for as long as we need it to, then graciously sacrifices itself to draw cards. And we can even sacrifice it for those cards after tapping it for damage in the same turn. There’s also Korvold and the Noble Thief at 4 cents, which in my eyes is probably the best card in the deck. A four-mana card that (slowly) makes us two treasures and then draws us three cards is just very good, and frankly, much needed.

What’s Missing?

There are, unfortunately, a lot of cards that couldn’t make the cut. Remember all those 4-6 cent cards I mentioned? Many of those are missing. Nimblewright Schematic is a great way to make multiple tokens. Whirler Rogue gives us two artifacts and a way to make our commander unblockable. And don’t even get me started on Detective’s Satchel and Gleaming Geardrake. I struggled for hours to cut those two, and they would be back in a heartbeat if they would just drop by a cent or two.

There are also some cards that would be easy pick-ups for a slightly higher budget version, but were just unfathomable here. For example, Sharding Sphinx could put in a huge amount of work, but 11 cents made including it basically impossible. Dowsing Device is in a similar position, letting us turn every artifact we make into a buff for our commander, and Loyal Apprentice is a cheap, reliable way to pump out an extra artifact token every single turn.

There’s also Genesis Chamber for a much higher budget version of this deck. It’s a great include in theory, but $3 is, sadly, way too expensive.

Wrapping Up

This deck was its own special challenge. I’ve built $1 decks before, but they were less synergy-based than this one, and I really wanted to build around the commander here for a change of pace. If you like challenging puzzles, forget crosswords or Wordle or whatever. Just make a $1 commander deck. Seriously, my brain was fried after hours of trying to make this thing the best it could be. And I mean that in the best possible way.

You can find me on Bluesky if you want to ask questions or talk about this deck, or find out when I post my treatise on budget deckbuilding (whenever I get around to it). Or follow me there or on Moxfield to see what I brew up in the future! You can also leave a comment on the deck on Moxfield if you want to chat there.

Thanks for reading!