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Have you ever spoken these words? If so, this article is not for you. Scram! Do you build entire decks for the cost of just one or two of the cards above? Keep reading! One of the restrictions of being a budget deckbuilder (or at least not being filthy rich) is that you can't buy all the super-powerful rares you want. But this doesn't mean you can't build strong decks. There are alternatives - affordable alternatives, which can keep your deck from looking like it came from out of a triple-Homelands draft. Ravnica offers many of these alternatives in its common and uncommon slots. Topdeck! Since you can't just go out and buy four Kokushos without pawning off your firstborn son, you will likely have difficulty getting more than one of many rares. Furthermore, if you don't buy cards online, you may be limited in multiples of even some cheap rares or older cards. Sure, you may have that single Opposition you scrounged in a trade, or a lone Bloodbond March you ripped in a booster pack, but you would really like to see it more than once every 10 games, especially when your deck is built around it. The solution lies in tutors, which are simply cards that find other cards from your library. Tutors make your decks more consistent by increasing your ability to find the card you need.
If you have a single Seshiro the Anointed and four Time of Needs, you have five times the chance of getting that card than if you only ran the one Snake. Adding in a single Sosuke and Sachi would make the tutors even better. What would you rather have in a deck: 4 Seshiro, 4 Sosuke, and 4 Sachi, or 1 Seshiro, 1 Sosuke, 1 Sachi and 3-4 Time of Need? The latter option leaves you with more open deck slots for other cards, and less chance of having a redundant Legend in your hand. Time of Need effectively acts as a wild card, fetching whichever creature is appropriate for the situation you're in. Tutors add a great deal of versatility and consistency, two important principles of deckbuilding, in exchange for a reasonably small tempo loss. "But wait," you say, "are tutors really that good?" Gifts Ungiven has spawned new decks in Type 1, Type 2, and Kamigawa Block Constructed, and continues to be a powerhouse card. All combo decks are *extremely* dependent on tutors to find their win condition as soon as possible. Without this important subset of cards, combo decks as we know them would be much too inefficient to compete in Magic, and the big three (Aggro, Control, Combo) would thus be completely transformed. Back to the original topic: What does Ravnica offer in the way of inexpensive tutors?
As you can see, cards with Transmute have a primary ability (the spell itself), as well as an inbuilt tutoring ability, which allows you to search for a card with the same converted mana cost. Transmute costs 1UU for mono-Blue cards, 1BB for mono-Black cards, and 1UB for Blue-Black cards. The following is a list of all cards with Transmute:
Thus, late game Perplexes that you draw aren't so useless, because you can Transmute it for a Vacuumelt to bounce all of your opponent's creatures. Best of all, every single card with Transmute is either common or uncommon (except for Grozoth, and face it, you probably won't be using him very often), so they won't cost you an arm and a leg. Indeed, the Heartbeat combo deck is proclaimed by many to be the best deck in the current Standard format, and without Transmute, it could not be the powerhouse that it is. (It also happens to be the cheapest competitive deck in Standard, proving that you don't need dual lands or chase rares to be competitive.)
The plan with this deck is to use Heartbeat of Spring and Early Harvest to create enough mana to kill the other player in one swoop with Maga, Traitor to Mortals or Invoke the Firemind. The Heartbeat deck features full playsets of Drift of Phantasms and Muddle the Mixture. Drifts transmute for so many cards in the deck - Heartbeat of Spring, Early Harvest, Compulsive Research, Recollect, Maga, and Invoke the Firemind - any piece of the combo and more! As an extra bonus, Weird Harvest can find Drifts. Muddles can find two cards of significance, Boomerang and Weird Harvest, but also Umezawa's Jitte, Pyroclasm, and Savage Twister in the sideboard. Of course, Muddles can also be used as a counter in order to protect your combo once you are going off, thus serving a vital dual role. One caveat of Transmute is that you must be playing with Blue and/or Black, but this downside is not quite as detrimental in Ravnica block due to its multicoloured nature, which brings me to my next point... $20 for a land?!
These bounce-lands are an excellent way of fixing your colours. For the small price of returning a land to your hand and a bit of tempo loss, you get two different colours of mana. But wait, that's not all! This, I believe, is an absolutely stellar example of card design. These lands offer something that no rare dual land does. They give you increased mana density. Simply put, I get two mana from one land. It's the greatest thing since sliced bread and fetchlands! Before you start thinking I'm crazy, I'd better explain why this "mana density" thing is so darn good. Because these lands make more mana, I can run less lands in my deck if I'm using the Karoo lands, which allows me to use more spells. Certain starting hands become a lot more attractive. For example, would you keep the following hand?
What about this one?
The second hand ensures that you will make your first three land drops even though you only have two lands! It's this property combined with dual colour production that makes these lands so valuable in limited formats where mana curves aren't perfect and the tempo loss isn't as detrimental as in constructed. If you aren't a big fan of the Karoo lands, fear not! There's even more colour fixing in Ravnica in the form of Signets. As an added benefit, Signets even accelerate your mana. That Niv-Mizzet stuck in your hand suddenly becomes much easier to cast in a three-colour deck. Even in just a two-colour deck, you can cast him a turn earlier using Izzet Signet. The Signet can also filter colourless mana, allowing you to use lands such as the Urza-lands to make some useful blue and red mana. So now that you have the ability to make coloured mana, what can you do with it? The only rare you’ll ever need. Okay, not really.
The Ravnica block is no exception with a cycle of cards spanning the whole block at the uncommon level - the Guildmages. But wait, what's so good about them?
Every single guildmage is more than playable in the average casual circle. The Selesnya Guildmage will create an army complete with Glorious Anthem (or at least Leonin Sun Standard) all on its own if left unchecked, the Dimir Guildmage will give you massive card advantage, the Gruul Guildmage will assert your combat superiority and provide its own finishing burn to the head, the Rakdos Guildmage will destroy creatures while producing kamikaze 2/1 Goblins for either quick attack or defense, and the Izzet Guildmage will Fork spells left and right for tons of fun!
Any Guildmage will surely have a large impact on the board. Your opponents will hesitate before sending their troops in if you can create blockers out of nowhere or pump up your creatures. Guildmages can win you games by the sheer strength of their abilities. I'd better stop here, but if you're a fan of the Guildmages, check out the next article written by Death_by_Beebles elaborating on this cycle from Ravnica! Hopefully I've given you some insight and sparked your creativity. With these effective alternatives for budget deckbuilding in Transmute, bounce-lands, Signets, and Guildmages, you can create new decks or modify old ones that you couldn't get to work earlier. Ravnica provides so many deck enablers so get off the computer and get cracking! You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here. Articles
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The
answer comes from House Dimir, the Blue-Black guild in the set of Ravnica. Their
signature keyworded mechanic is Transmute. 
Heartbeat
Combo. 
It's
no secret that the new dual lands are the most sought-after cards in this set.
Fetching prices easily in the double digits for a single one, they're definitely
out of the budget player's range. Thankfully, there exist common counterparts to
these bank-breaking mana producers - Ravnica Karoo lands. 
As
much as you might like to spend that 1RG on a Burning-Tree Shaman, chances are
that it's a bit too expensive. Fear not, for Wizards of the Coast has seen to it
that rares don't have a monopoly on being good cards. In fact, uncommons are my
favourite rarity - they are much easier to come by than rares, but can have the
same power level, and without the really bad garbage like One with Nothing. The
Uncommon slot is certainly no stranger to hosting powerful cards. 
