Arcades Walls and Walkers

Standard*

Silverpandaria

Creature (26)

• 4x Arcades, the Strategist
• 4x Consulate Skygate
• 4x Gleaming Barrier
• 4x Llanowar Elves
• 2x Sai, Master Thopterist
• 1x Shalai, Voice of Plenty
• 4x Suspicious Bookcase
• 1x Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle
• 2x Zahid, Djinn of the Lamp

Land (23)

• 4x Botanical Sanctum
• 4x Forest
• 2x Glacial Fortress
• 2x Hinterland Harbor
• 2x Irrigated Farmland
• 2x Island
• 2x Plains
• 2x Scattered Groves
• 3x Sunpetal Grove

Planeswalker (8)

• 2x Nissa, Steward of Elements
• 2x Nissa, Vital Force
• 2x Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
• 2x Vivien Reid

Sorcery (4)

• 4x Dusk / Dawn

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Sideboard

Instant (8)

• 2x Heroic Intervention
• 2x Naturalize
• 4x Negate

Planeswalker (3)

• 2x Gideon of the Trials
• 1x Karn, Scion of Urza

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Introduction

This is a post M19 brew based around Arcades, the Strategist aka the Defender Dragon. The deck thus has a strong defender theme, with an artifact subtheme. The game plan evolves around surronding yourself with walls waiting for an opportunity to strike back with Arcades. Meanwhile you poke the enemy with thopters and protect your walkers and keep the board clear of larger threats. The deck might not be super competative but sure feel fun in testing and I will gladly try it out. Any feedback is of course welcome! Thanks and stay safe :)

The Cards

Dragon & Walls Show

Arcades, the Strategist: Turns your walls into weapons and card draw. Also have a pretty solid body himself with evasion,vigilance and enough toughness to survive most damage-based removal.

Consulate Skygate: Wall with reach, giving it a slight advantage in some situations.

Gleaming Barrier: Wall that grants you mana upon death, probably the best wall overall, the other two only being better in corner cases.

Suspicious Bookcase: New M19 Wall with the option to occasionally push through some damage with the unblockable ability. Probably not used that much but having extra options never hurt.

Supportive Creatures Show

Llanowar Elves: Running green without some elves feels like a misstake. Helps you ramp into powerful T2 and T3 plays, and soaks some early removal.

Shalai, Voice of Plenty: The guardian angel has already proven her worth in the current standard and will continue to do so in this deck. Protects our walkers and important creatures (like Arcades). Her ability is a late game mana dump as well.

Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle: Apart from the mana elves, every single creature in the deck is historic either being legendary or being an artifact. In addition our walkers gives this fellow a multitude of ways to trigger. His own statline also makes him a valid target for Dawn.

Sai, Master Thopterist: With all our walls being artifacts we have some ways to trigger Sai, creating some bonus value out of each wall. His second ability provides some potential card draw and can protect our wall from exile, putting them in the graveyard instead where Dawn and Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle can reach them.

Zahid, Djinn of the Lamp: With walls, thopters and Karn tokens we have plenty of artifacts that could help bring out this big meanie early, even a T3 Zahid is possibly with a T1 Elf and T2 Wall.

Walkers Show

Nissa, Steward of Elements: Helps with card selection and possibly mana ramp whilst also providing a solid win condition on her own should the game prolong for long. A T2 Nissa out of the elves is a very powerful start.

Tezzeret, Artifice Master: New Tezzeret both create artifacts and take benefit from having many artifacts. His 0 ability should'nt be too hard to gain full benefit from with some walls and thopters.

Nissa, Vital Force: Nissa provides a solid way return Arcades to our hand, as he is likely to be the main target for removal. In addition to that she makes lands into beatsticks and have a very easy to rech ultimate, prodiving additional card advantage for the rest of the game.

Teferi, Hero of Dominaria: Teferi has already proven himself very powerful, it's a solid package of card draw, pseudo-removal and a game threatening ultimate, can one protect him with walls and the alike the enemy will have a hard time. Post-sideboard he also benefits great from the full playset of Negate making his +1 even better.

Vivien Reid: Vivien help dig for answers and provides removal for troublesome artifacts and enchantments, which could be helpful in a format with God-Pharaoh's Gift and Cast Out among other common cards.

Removal Show

Dusk: Boardwipe tailored for this deck. All our creatures except Arcades and Zahid survive the blast and can be brought back by the second effect. It fits perfect into the deck as all enemy creatures that do survive will have power 1 or 2 and are thus easililty stopped by our 0/4 walls.

Cast Out: For handling those hard to reach threats like planeswalkers or the alike. When not needed they are easily discarded for a card which of course is a huge bonus.

The Sideboard Show

Heroic Intervention: Protecion against boardwhipes and single target removal alike. Brought in vs. very removal-heavy decks.

Ixalan's Binding: Specialized removal for hard to catch targets.

Naturalize: Solid handling of enchantments and artifacts alike. What's not to like?

Negate: versus control and othervise creature thin decks. Playing a full set should hopefully help.

Karn, Scion of Urza: Brought in slower games where we have more time. Karn will likely draw cards most of the time but in certain situations his tokens can be of great use and be of reasonable size should the game prolong.

Dusk: The last Dusk for really creature heavy matchups.

Vivien Reid: Experimental slot for now. Vivien looks cool and maybe worth bringing in vs. decks with lots of enchanments, flyers and/or artifacts.

Top Ranked	Achieved #68 position overall 5 years ago
Date added	5 years
Last updated	5 years
Legality	This deck is not Standard legal.
Rarity (main - side)	12 - 3 Mythic Rares 22 - 2 Rares 7 - 0 Uncommons 12 - 6 Commons
Cards	61
Avg. CMC	3.68
Tokens	Construct 0/0 C, Emblem Gideon of the Trials, Emblem Nissa, Vital Force, Emblem Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, Emblem Vivien Reid, Thopter 1/1 C, Treasure