Hey folks, and welcome to Commander On A Budget, where we build powerful decks for around $50! This month’s article takes inspiration from a deck I played against at my LGS: it’s Heliod, the Radiant Dawn Draw-Go!

I honestly forgot about the latest Heliod shortly after it was previewed until I encountered it recently at commander night: a friend at the LGS was playing it and warned us that it was powerful, but he kept it more casual by building a Mono White version of the deck. Even with that restriction though, the deck was surprisingly powerful and unique: it wasn’t at all focused on the front side which hints at maybe an Enchantress theme, but rather the much more interesting backside which gives all your spells flash and a massive mana discount. Once flipped, the deck “helped” the rest of the table by drawing us cards, which was nice and earned the table’s favor, only for the Heliod player to utilize the huge mana discount to ramp out enormous mana cost spells and win the game.

The deck was so unique and impressive that it immediately got me thinking about how a budget version of the deck utilized its Blue side would look like. The end result doesn’t fail to disappoint! It’s another powerhouse at low budget, able to win political favor at the table by drawing people cards and “helping” deal with the archenemy, only to pull the rug under our opponents by slamming them with game-winning X spells soon after!

The game plan is simple: get Heliod, the Radiant Dawn out on the table, flip him, and then start drawing people cards. The most vulnerable part of the game is flipping Heliod: he costs 4 mana to cast and then another 3 to flip, which is a very large mana commitment, and doesn’t come with any built-in protection. To off-set this we’re running 14 ramp cards – all colorless and enter untapped so Heliod could later on cast them for free and use them as rituals if needed – and also some cheap protection, like Loran’s Escape and Negate to help Heliod stick.

Once Heliod is flipped, the fun begins! We’re going to help the table by drawing everyone cards: the more mana-efficient the better, so things like Windfall and Skyscribing are perfect. Imagine we cast Vision Skeins for just one blue mana on the end step before our turn (our opponent drew a card on their draw step so spells cost 1 less already): if three opponents each draw 2 cards that means we have an extra 6 mana discount on our spells this turn (7 total)! Then maybe we cast Prosperity X=7 for just 1 more blue mana, now we’ve got a 28 mana discount! Then for just 2 more white mana we can cast Finale of Glory for X=28 to put 112 power on the board, or maybe we spend UUUU to steal 14 creatures / planeswalkers, move to our own turn and immediately swing GG? Or maybe we do all that card drawing on our own turn so that our creatures get absurdly huge thanks to Knowledge Is Power and swing for lethal? Or heck maybe we draw our opponents a total 6+ cards, pay a single white to cast Approach of the Second Sun, draw 7 more, recast it for another single white, win the game? You see how silly this deck is?

The fact that we can do all this at instant speed is crazy. It means that we can go for the win at the absolute best time while dodging sorcery-speed interaction, and also we can always hold up interaction or protection, which this deck runs tons of.

And yes, we’re drawing our opponents tons of cards in the process too, but I bet you that nobody else is getting 10+ mana discounts on their spells like we’re doing with Heliod, so only we get to utilize all that draw effectively. It’s actually disgusting how much Heliod is ramping us, it’ll make any Green player jealous!

The deck is currently $40 on TCGplayer and 31eu on Cardmarket, but obviously shipping and stuff will raise the price significantly, so as usual I would take the base price and double it for a more accurate total.

For further upgrades I’d suggest Smothering Tithe as by far the biggest upgrade, it is essentially a second / better Heliod for the deck. I’d then pick up Teferi’s Puzzle Box and Jace’s Archivist, mana-efficient wheels are just so good. The last huge upgrade is Cyclonic Rift, one of the best cards in the format can be overloaded reliably for just one mana. Then I’d focus on making the mana base more consistent, upgrading the lands with the usual suspects like fetchlands, Hallowed Fountain, etc.

This deck is incredibly strong, but Heliod is its weak point. Your opponents must remove him quickly or else the deck is going to steal the W shortly after. Keep that in mind, and thanks for reading!