Arena Standard - Growing Hunger Budget Upgrade (2022)

13 36
22 14 0 24
Midrange

This is a budget deck upgrade for Growing Hunger, the Golgari (G/B) Starter deck on MTG Arena unlocked through the Color Challenge.

This Deck Upgrade costs: 6 Common WC's || 9 Uncommon WC's || 0 Rare & Mythic WC's
All other cards in the deck, including the rares and mythics, are obtained for free from the other Arena Starter Decks.

This deck revolves around the +1/+1 counter theme, but like most Golgari decks it's primarily going to play out as a G/B midrange deck. To make this kind of deck as strong as possible we need strong creatures and good removal. The upgrades to this deck are pretty cheap, but I think the power level rises significantly with these changes.

 

CREATURES 

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These creatures make up the bulk of our army. Jaspera Sentinelimage is much less impressive when not paired with Magda, Brazen Outlawimage but it still works well in this deck for a couple reasons. 1.) We have a few ways of growing our creatures with +1/+1 counters, so even a 1-drop can develop into a decent threat; and 2.) Having Jaspera in play lets us curve out much more aggressively while still having access to our protection in Snakeskin Veilimage. The latter is the main reason we included 3 copies of this card in our deck. Moss-Pit Skeletonimage doesn't see play in top tier constructed decks, but for our budget purposes it gets the job done. It's a decent 2-drop that can also be kicked for more stats, so we have some flexibility in how we play it. Later in the game it'll be a recurring 5/5 which is both very on theme for our colors and decently powerful paired with all our removal. Boreal Outriderimage is the other card we added 4 copies of to this deck. We're running snow lands to enable this effect - more synergy for our +1/+1 counter theme and a decent on-curve play that can grow our other creatures. 

 

NON-CREATURES

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Like I mentioned before, Snakeskin Veilimage is our source of protection via hexproof, and it even gives our creatue a +1/+1 counter to boot. It's a really strong effect in our deck and is very accessible to us when paired with Jaspera Sentinelimage. I added 4 copies of Emergent Sequenceimage because it's really good in a counters-focused midrange deck. It's a solid 2-drop creature that can ramp us and it comes in with counters on it so it synergizes very well with the rest of our deck. Our removal package is Poison the Cupimage and Binding the Old Godsimage. The original deck ran Power Word Killimage but there are too many dragons and angels in the meta to be able to run it in a BO1 environment. We kept the 2 copies of Poison the Cup because it's a decent removal with a nice upside if we foretell it, and went up to 4 copies of Binding because it is some of the best removal available to our colors. Destroying any non-land permanent and then ramping the next turn is a crazy powerful effect and we want to take advantage. 

 

The other cards in our deck are powerful 1-ofs, almost all rares, that we get from the other starter decks. All of these cards are individually very strong and have good synergies with +1/+1 counters. A notable addition is Nullpriest of Oblivionimage, which I added because the 2/1 body with menace and lifelink wears counters really well, and the kicker ability to reanimate anything from our graveyard is particularly powerful in midrange decks like ours. 

 

 

POTENTIAL UPGRADES

Want to upgrade the deck with some of your rare wildcards? Although there isn't a +1/+1 counter deck that is popular in competitive play at the moment, I think with some upgrades this deck can still get you up into the mythic ranks. Here are some considerations. As always, it is generally best to start with lands.

 

LANDS

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CREATURES

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NON-CREATURES

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CONCLUSION

I hope you enjoy this deck and that it serves you well. There's a deck tech video on youtube attached to this guide and I stream on Twitch here so don't hesitate to reach out :) I'd love to hear your experience with the deck. Good luck and have fun!

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Fell
Last Updated: 14 Sep 2021
Created: 04 Sep 2021
586 364 0

Mainboard - 60 cards (23 distinct)

Creature (22)
$1.35
$6.63
$62.94
$0.48
$0.17€0.090.03
$0.20€0.110.03
$0.50
$0.30
$0.15€0.090.03
$0.50
$0.50
$0.40
$0.20€0.110.03
$1.50
Instant, Sorcery, Enchantment, Artifact (14)
$0.21€0.110.03
$0.44€0.410.03
$0.50€0.330.06
$0.25
$0.24€0.120.03
Land (24)
$0.99€0.780.03
$0.500.03
$0.800.04
$5.70

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