I'm looking to make a $50 budget deck which you can see here.
The deck feels generally well-balanced for normal play, but seems to have the issue that it can't really win until it draws one of its combos, those combos being:
Ivy Lane Denizen + Herd Baloth/Scurry Oak
Vigean Graftmage + Faeburrow Elder/Kami of Whispered Hopes/Incubation Druid
Devoted Druid + Swift Reconfiguration
The Ivy Lane combos produce infinite creatures, the other combos produce infinite mana, with Devoted Druid also letting grab infinite nonland topdeck-casts from Falco by spending the -1/-1 counters. Once I hit any of them, I can crank out enough resources to make a play toward winning the game.
However, the game feels awfully slow and inconsistent when it revolves around drawing at least one of three specific cards, plus one of the 1-3 matching combo pieces, and then having both on the field, uncountered, long enough to win the game. Feels fragile, more than a lot of combo decks I see others go for.
Am I doing this right? I currently have Threats Undetected and Shared Summons in the deck to try and help set myself up for this a bit better, and I figure that my draw/scry options, with Falco's help, can dig pretty far for cards like these, but I want to know if maybe I'm going about this totally wrong.
Oh no I totally get it. I had a feeling it was a $50 hard cap, but just in case it was more of a I have $50 to make a new deck sort of thing Crusade might have been worth it. Hard cap I would have the same feelings you did about 1/100 cards being a fifth of the decks budget. Glad I could help even if it was just a card or two!