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The pre-constructed deck came into being during Tempest block. Since then, every base set and expansion and even a few core sets have 4 pre-constructed decks built by Wizards when each one is released. It's a tradeoff - 60 cards for the price of three boosters or a 75 card tournament pack with two rares instead of three. For the loss of that rare you get consistency - it's guaranteed that every pre-constructed deck with the same name will have exactly the same cards - that and each pre-constructed deck is fairly playable. Sure, the chances of winning a Type 2 constructed tournament with a pre-constructed deck with no modifications is pretty remote but that isn't what they're designed for. A pre-constructed deck is usually centered around a mechanic or theme from the set/sets it contains cards from. Sometimes this can be a viable deck idea for Constructed tournaments and sometimes not. For those who are working out a new game mechanic in a new set pre-constructed decks can come in pretty handy to experience how the mechanic works.

Mirrodin has 4 pre-constructed decks -

Little Bashers (White weenie equipment)
Bait and Bludgeon (Blue/Black Affinity Artifacts)
Wicked Big (Mono-Green Fatties)
Sacrificial Bam (Red/Black Sacrifice Artifacts)

To make things easy I am going to concentrate on one of these decks - Bait and Bludgeon. Affinity has proved to be an excellent Type 2 Constructed deck scoring wins all over the world in tournaments. Bait and Bludgeon is a relatively cheap way to start building an Affinity deck.
First lets look at what's in the deck:

2 Somber Hoverguard C
1 Broodstar R
2 Nim Shrieker C
2 Steel Wall C
2 Leaden Myr C
2 Myr Retriever U
2 Silver Myr C
2 Bottle Gnomes U
3 Frogmite C
1 Lodestone Myr R
3 Myr Enforcer C
2 Thirst for Knowledge U
1 Thoughtcast C
2 Assert Authority U
2 Irradiate C
2 Aether Spellbomb C
4 Talisman of Dominance U
1 Scale of Chiss-Goria C
1 Serum Tank U
1 Tooth of Chiss-Goria C
11 Island
3 Swamp
4 Seat of the Synod C
4 Vault of Whispers C

This isn't a bad deck but it needs to quad up on certain cards and dump the garbage that isn't really focused for the deck. The cheapest and easiest way to do this is to simply purchase another Bait and Bludgeon deck. While we are editing cards to use and keep we will keep no more than 4 of any non-basic land card and eliminate black cards so we can run the deck as mono-blue for starters.

Now we have these numbers of cards to deal with -

That now leaves us with 26 land and 56 spells to build a 60 card deck from. Here's what I decided to run for initial testing -

 

12 Islands
4 Vault of Whispers
4 Seat of the Synod

2 Serum Tank
4 Aether Spellbomb

4 Thirst for Knowledge
2 Thoughtcast
4 Assert Authority

2 Broodstar
4 Frogmite
4 Myr Enforcer
2 Lodestone Myr
4 Bottle Gnomes
3 Myr Retriever
3 Silver Myr

After I've tested the deck I may decide to add in a second colour, focus certain aspects of the deck (eg - add in more countermagic) or change the deck's style. As is, it's an agressive beatdown style with plenty of card draw, it wouldn't take too many cards to make the deck a Type 2 Tournament contender from here. The best part about this deck is its only cost me $40AU for both pre-constructed decks plus I have plenty of stuff left over for future trade, sale or other decks. I could take it to a tournament as is, if I wanted to, and it may do well depending on the local metagame.

Looking at how easy it was to do this, is Type 2 so expensive anymore? I hope this helps any player who is looking for ways to be competitive on a budget.

Good luck everyone!

Joe Tobin (Aytakk2)

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