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BY BUDGET · 198 CARDS

Under $1 Cards in Commander

A Commander deck doesn't need a $500 mana base to function — the under-$1 bracket contains genuine staples that show up in competitive and casual lists alike. The ceiling here is higher than most players expect.

Mana fixing is where budget cards punch hardest. Farseek and Rampant Growth both cost under $1 and ramp on turn two in any deck running green, which is most decks worth building. Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse are colorless slots that fetch any basic — redundant, reliable, and effectively free. Exotic Orchard reads the table and usually taps for two or three colors in a multiplayer pod, making it one of the best dual-land substitutes at any price. Myriad Landscape is slower but goes up two lands at once, which matters in ramp strategies that want to hit six mana by turn four.

On the artifact side, Mind Stone and Commander's Sphere both ramp early and draw late — that flexibility is exactly what the 99 wants from a two- or three-mana slot. Llanowar Elves is a one-mana accelerant that's been a fixture in green Commander decks since the format existed; the price being under $0.30 is almost offensive for how much work it does.

The checklands — Clifftop Retreat, Sunken Hollow, Cinder Glade — enter untapped the majority of the time in two-color and three-color decks with reasonable basic counts. They're not shocklands, but they're far better than the tap-lands that fill budget lists by default. Temple of the False God is worth naming as a cautionary note: it's everywhere, but it doesn't work until you hit five lands and does nothing in the early game. It earns a slot in landfall or ramp-heavy builds; it's a trap in everything else.

Feed the Swarm is the only black permanent removal that answers enchantments in mono-black Commander, which makes it mandatory rather than optional in that color. Garruk's Uprising draws a card on entry and replaces itself every time a large creature enters — in any green deck built around creatures with four or more power, it's a consistent source of card advantage for under $0.50.

The broader point: the under-$1 tier is where the structural skeleton of a Commander deck gets built. Ramp, fixing, and draw are the categories that matter most in the format, and the cards that fill those roles here are not second-rate substitutes. Many of them are simply the correct cards for the job.

198 under $1 cards

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