Here at GarbageRollers HQ, we try hard to be an institution for the people and by the people. Our Meta Snapshot looks to get you up to speed with the competitive scene with clarity and brevity. Our New Player Guide is designed to be the best first stop for fresh players. And the first and second articles in our Cantina Decks series present sets of approachable decks that are aimed at the budget-conscious player.

But maybe not budget-conscious enough, as it turns out.

Several of our readers and watchers have asked us to dive even deeper into the waters of frugality, given that Cantina Decks still feature Rare cards with some frequency, and those prices can fluctuate a lot. We need to think even bigger…er, cheaper. What if, for the price of a fancy coffee, we could get you fine folks ready to steal games at your local store?

If it’s possible (maybe your local players are not very good? a boy can dream…) to do such a thing, we intend to find out. This article marks the beginning of our Penny Pinchers series, pairs of ultra-budget decks that you can slam into your TCGPlayer cart and get right into the action. These decks are easy to pilot, thoughtfully constructed to be well balanced, and are built using only (uh, mostly only) commons and uncommons! And they cost less than $15.

Radical stuff. So what would decks like that even look like? We’re glad you asked.

Penny Pinchin’ Cad

Buy it for $11.69 on TCGPlayer.

Underworld has a ton of great cards in their own right, and Cad Bane hopped on the scene ready to make each of them even better. Like all decks in this series, this Cad number looks to be very approachable to play- just slam out solid Underworld tech to keep your opponent’s board in check and win the trenches! In fact, the only cards here that don’t feature the Underworld trait are established staples of this color combo that will elevate your gameplan simply by virtue of being universally great.

Remember that Cad’s damage trigger can happen first after you play a card- this means your bevy of Ambush units get the benefit of knowing where your opponent will place that damage before deciding who to target. This is a potent synergy that you should be aware of. Cad triggers are the heart and soul of how this deck wins in the long run.

Upgrade Paths – At your earliest possible convenience, you should grab a playset of Maul, who fits in here like a danged Lego set and provides enviable top-end. Fennec is great in her own right, but Maul is one of the best cards in the game. Elsewhere, Underworld stalwarts Bazine and Doctor Evazan are worthy purchases to upgrade, and Cad’s ship the Xanadu Blood is a nice consideration as well. This deck has a lot of room to get even more dangerous.

Penny Pinchin’ Bo

Buy it for $9.34 on TCGPlayer.

Move over Underworld! You’re not the only tribal deck that can tango in the wilds of the Set 2 meta. Mandalorians got a ton of cool stuff in Shadows, and it turns out none of it is particularly expensive. Time to pile it all together into this very fun Bo Katan tribal deck.

A caveat- Bo herself, being a Rare leader, breaks our C/U rule from the jump. Because of that, we’re just going ahead and including Koska Reeves as well. She’s a Rare, but a really cheap one, and even running a full playset of her we still stay under $10 for our overall cost. Other Rare or Legendary Mandalorians were either too pricy or didn’t make sense with our gameplan, but she works great for our purposes.

The deck is very straightforward- Bo Katan’s ability is quietly very solid, as free damage has tons of utility in SWU. We’ve also leaned a little bit away from the upgrade subtheme of Mandos- Koska is here (and she has friends around to give her experience and shields), but we’re not running any actual upgrades. This is because doubling down on a unit can be very risky in a way that isn’t particularly new player friendly, and further, most of the best upgrades are not Common or Uncommon. The core of the deck is efficiently trading with your removal and maintaining a steady battlefield of Mandos to win out on efficiency.

Upgrade Paths- Like all decks in this color, the Hero Red rare suite is outstanding, though in this instance they do tend to dilute your ability to keep Mandos on the board. Wrecker, Poe, K2S0, Red Three, all great cards. If you have Luke Skywalker, he’s essential of course. And the Mandalorian himself and the Darksaber obviously make a ton of sense.

Card Games? In This Economy?

SWU is a special game for many reasons, but one of the best of them is this- because the bones of the game are so strong, it is possible to have a great deal of fun with the game without spending very much money at all. That’s an amazing quality for a CCG to have, and we encourage you to take advantage of that to either explore the game with minimal pressure or expand your selection of play experiences cheaply!

Happy games. May the force be with you!