Total deck price: $119.19 for a full 60-card, tournament-caliber Pauper deck — every single card in the mainboard is a common.

Welcome to Budget Brew Wednesday. Every week we build a real, competitive deck without wrecking your wallet, and this week’s format rotation lands on Pauper — the format where every card is at common rarity, so a deck like this is basically as cheap as Magic gets while staying genuinely tournament-relevant.

Why This Deck

Dimir Faeries is currently sitting in the top five of the July 2026 Pauper metagame at roughly 5.1% metagame share. It’s a tight, controlling archetype: evasive flying creatures, a wall of counterspells, and a Monarch-powered card advantage engine that most budget decks in any format can only dream of.

The full mainboard prices out to $119.19, and one single card — Snuff Out — makes up over a third of that total on its own (4 copies at roughly $10.41 each). Swap it for a cheap bounce spell and you’re under $100 for a deck that’s beating people on Magic Online right now.

The Decklist

Creatures (18)

  • 4 Faerie Seer
  • 1 Moon-Circuit Hacker
  • 4 Augur of Bolas
  • 4 Spellstutter Sprite
  • 1 Mukotai Ambusher
  • 2 Thorn of the Black Rose
  • 2 Ninja of the Deep Hours

Spells (24)

  • 1 Sewer-veillance Cam
  • 1 Extract a Confession
  • 4 Lorien Revealed
  • 4 Brainstorm
  • 2 Dispel
  • 3 Cast Down
  • 4 Counterspell
  • 1 Suffocating Fumes
  • 4 Snuff Out

Lands (18)

  • 1 Contaminated Landscape
  • 4 Contaminated Aquifer
  • 10 Island
  • 1 Swamp
  • 2 Bojuka Bog

Total mainboard: $119.19 for 60 cards.

Strategy Guide

Early Game

Lead with your tapped lands on turns you’re not casting a spell, and get Faerie Seer or Augur of Bolas down as early as possible — both filter your draws while adding a body. Hold up Dispel or Counterspell whenever you can; Spellstutter Sprite flashes in as protection too.

Mid Game

Ninjutsu in Ninja of the Deep Hours or Mukotai Ambusher off any unblocked attacker for free value, and land Thorn of the Black Rose to steal the Monarch — that extra card every turn is the engine that wins the long game.

Late Game

Lorien Revealed refuels your hand, and Snuff Out lets you pay 4 life instead of mana for emergency removal when you’re tapped out. Keep the counterspells up and let the Monarch draws close the gap.

Upgrade Path

Every card here is a common, so upgrading doesn’t mean chasing rares — it means picking up a few more budget-friendly commons as you go: Dimir Aqueduct for smoother mana, Preordain for more filtering, Okiba-Gang Shinobi for a second ninjutsu payoff, Nihil Spellbomb for flexible graveyard hate, and Chainer’s Edict for removal that dodges hexproof.

A new Budget Brew lands every Wednesday at manariotgames.com. Follow Mana Riot Games for next week’s brew.