Decklist here.

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Hi all,

As the title says, I'm building a Malcolm/Tana deck for $50. The plan is to combo with Malcolm and [[Glint-Horn Buccanneer]], with a Dualcaster Mage-Twinflame combo backup. The deck aims to be as lean and consistent as possible. This means not having combos like Niv Mizzet-Curiosity because (aside from Niv being difficult to cast on a 3-color budget deck) Niv is a dead card outside of the combo. I also did not run any other pirate aside from Buccanneer, [[Dire Fleet Daredevil]] and [[Siren Stormtamer]] since I do not want to durdle in the combat phase---I want to combo as fast as possible, with some protection ideally.

To help with consistency, deck has a lot of cantrips to search for combo pieces, protection, or recursion. Majority of my cantrips are instant-speed so that I'm able to dig while comboing off; as a result I'm running jank like [[Glimpse of Freedom]] but I find its instant speed escape ability to be useful. I've also included some tutors like [[Bring to Light]], [[Drift of Phantasms]], [[Shared Summons]], [[Signal the Clans]], and [[Solve the Equation]] in addition to the usual like [[Neoform]] and [[Eldritch Evolution]].

During playtesting, I'm able to cast Malcolm by Turn 2 at the earliest (unprotected). But usually I cast Malcolm by Turn 3. A common problem I've encountered was drawing too much counterspells, so I'm only running around 6-7 in the deck which I'm okay with since I'm not a control deck after all. In terms of meta, my only other friend who plays cEDH runs a budget Jace, Vryn's Prodigy-High Tide combo deck.

Improving the deck's speed is out of the question because of my budget; so I want to know if there's any way I can make the deck more consistent in terms of being able to find (and maybe recur) the main combo. It's my first time playing cEDH since 2020, so I know a lot has changed---for that I appreciate any and all help with this list.

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Thanks!