Hey thank you so much both of you, for taking your time to go over this build with me. I appreciate how you've already honed in on what I need. I agree the MI clones are probably the direction to go if I want to actually keep this within my budget. I did however purchase Veils, Shelves and Maths last night, since I found a few good deals locally. Also it looks like the Knit Plaits clone is almost as expensive as an original Plaits model now so I might just go with Mutable on that as well. I found a marbles clone called Pachinko that's slightly cheaper than Cara. However I can't tell if it lacks any functionality that Cara has. Does anyone know?
I love the Lofi junky idea, I'm a fan of Zvex's guitar pedals and I think this is an effect that I'll get a lot of mileage with. The Milky Way also looks useful so I'll probably snag one at some point. The Stereo Mix 2 is exactly what I was after, thank you for bringing it to my attention! Also pretty stoked about the Varigate 4+ as it looks like the perfect sequencer for this build.
Here are the changes I've made including a few of the modules I've already purchased for myself:
Please feel free to share your thoughts if you have any! I am SO excited to power these up and hear what they can do!
Quick side note: I am in the US. Demand seems high over here right now? Maybe not, but I can't find a reasonably priced Mantis so I'm probably going to pickup a Behringer Eurorack Go. I'll just keep the DFAM and Neutron out of the skiff.