I bought Fallen Empires packs frequently when it was the current set. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

If you play a land and use the emblem to discard every turn, you can run out of cards eventually, and the 7-drops in the Momir pool (for example) mostly provide better value than, say, the 1-drops. At least that used to be the case when the decks only had lands. Now the decks have some non-land cards, and if some of them help you draw (can’t remember which cards are in there), maybe it doesn’t make as much sense to pass early.

I play historic brawl. It can be slow to get into for someone new to Arena, but here are some ideas for budget decks: https://mtgazone.com/budget-historic-brawl/. Once you’ve been playing for a while, historic brawl is the cheapest, least wildcard intensive format. That’s because it’s singleton and non-rotating. I also like the randomness that 100-card singleton provides.

I should mention, however, that it’s not as similar to edh as you might expect. For starters, it has a smaller card pool, 25 life instead of 40, and no commander damage rule. What makes a bigger difference, though, is that it’s 1v1. Effective historic brawl decks usually pack more interaction, because you can’t rely on the table to keep an opponent in check. Some people start historic brawl expecting to be able to use edh-style decks that build their position slowly or focus heavily on the commander without much protection for it. They are quickly disappointed, because those decks don’t work nearly as well in historic brawl. Control is prevalent, aggro is fairly viable, and if you want your commander on the battlefield, be sure to run things like Slip Out the Back, Tamiyo’s Safekeeping, etc.