This is a Bant, midrange Wall tribal deck featuring Arcades, the Strategist as the Commander. Yes, Arcades Sabboth is back and he's defending the realm. The deck is designed with a low average CMC list of spells that are packed with a ton of tribal synergy, unexpectedness, and control. With 58 of our non-land cards being 3 CMC or less to cast, the survive-ability with an unlucky string of missed land drops is still very high. On top of that, I took full advantage of Bant's colors to ensure we have proper mana ramp, buffs, counters and removal in order to achieve the primary win con: overwhelm the enemy with a huge wall of walls! (get it?)
For clarity, Wall creatures and the Defender mechanic have had an errata making them one and the same. Therefore, our cards like Assault Formation and High Alert now effect both Walls and creatures with Defender as if they had both attributes. For more information, please check out the rulings at: https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Defender.
The mana base for this deck is very consistent and straight forward. Two heroes of the deck for mana ramp are Overgrown Battlement and Axebane Guardian. Either one alone does the job well, but paired with Wall of Kelp making Wall tokens, you'll have too much mana! For card draw, our Commander lets us do so whenever a creature with Wall or Defender enters the battlefield. The classics Rhystic Study and Sylvan Library are the most consistent sources of card draw in our deck.
The way this deck works is we play out our Walls and creatures with Defender to create an overwhelming board state. It may seem hypocritical of the theme, but this deck is meant to be played offensively and not defensively. The essential cards we need to protect is our Commander and any card which assigns combat damage equal to a card's toughness on the board (such as High Alert or Assault Formation). To do this, there are 10 counter spells and 5 instant-speed removal spells in the deck to provide evasive interactions. The counter spells are arguably one of the strongest components of this deck in order to survive, so use them wisely! A tip to note here about our other instants: don't be afraid to cast spells like Condemn or Swords to Plowshares on your own creatures to gain some life back. We also have ways to flicker our creatures with cards such as Ghostway in order to escape a board wipe, or play Meekstone to tax our opponents' attacks and have them open for a beating next turn. Lastly, Robe of Stars is an extremely good card to equip onto Arcades for its Astral Projection ability, allowing him to singularly phase out (like Teferi's Protection) and dodge harmful spells.
Board wipes are an essential piece of the strategy to winning. We have Wave of Reckoning and the classic Fell the Mighty to keep our board state strong while taking out almost every other opponents' board state. Speaking of board wipes, don't hesitate to cast Bar the Door to save your creatures when an or numerical value board wipe is cast! Specific cards to assist in achieving a win condition include Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive which will render your opponent(s) defenseless and Towering Titan which will come in large and give everything with Defender trample. Buffs such as Tower Defense, Bar the Door and Primal Rage should create that overwhelming power our opponents can't survive for very long, and paired up with a well-timed Glaring Spotlight will ensure player removal.
We also run three essential tutors in this deck: Mystical Tutor, Eladamri's Call, and Enlightened Tutor. Although every game will offer different situations, and you may find yourself tutoring for a counter spell or a Sylvan Library, there are some straight forward strategies involved with all three. Enlightened Tutor is best used to go find Sylvan Library or Rhystic Study so we can draw more cards. The second best piece it can find is the enchantment Champion's Helm to give Arcades hexproof. Eladamri's Call is best used to go find Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive, so that you can make everything un-blockable. Be careful not to cast her too early, as she's very prone to single target removal. The second best creature to find would be Wall of Kelp. This underestimated Wall can create 0/1 Kelp tokens, allowing you to draw a card with Arcades and also provide much needed blockers. Lastly, Mystical Tutor should go find Ghostway. This card will undoubtedly save you during a board wipe, and then allow you to draw a good amount of cards as they re-enter the battlefield.
NOTE: Tokens created by Wall of Kelp do not exist - none were ever printed and distributed. However, if you Google search "wall of kelp token", some wonderful folks in our MTG community have designed some of their own. Copy those free images into a template, print and glue it to a basic land and you'll be good to go.
As always, I really appreciate any feedback and/or suggestions you may have for the deck. Thank you and happy tapping!
