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[Budget EDH] why are there so many walls

Commander / EDH Aggro Budget Defender GWU (Bant) Tempo Theme/Gimmick Wall

Azeure

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Creature (32)

Enchantment (4)

Land (35)

Sorcery (5)

Commander (1)

Commander: Arcades, the Strategist

Instant (17)

Artifact (5)

Planeswalker (1)

Maybeboard

Creature (50)

Artifact (8)

Instant (40)

Sorcery (14)

Land (27)

Enchantment (22)

Planeswalker (4)

Archidekt Link

my first edh deck! i love bant colors! a lot of card ideas came from "Nobody has the intention of building a Wall" by K4m4r0 and their discussions on the thread! i want to keep the deck in a budget and within $100 ^^

would like to make detailed explanations here soon after i get to test my current deck with other players! im still looking for a local group to play with since i just came back since 2016 where i played a budget Assault Formation deck with the cute walls! so i was happy when i discovered Arcades, the Strategist and the edh format!

Sideboards category is currently used for cards that I just bought but not currently on-hand and the Maybeboards category is currently used as a list of cards that could be placed in the 99. The foiled cards in the Maybeboard is used to mark the cards that I currently have on-hand. Feel free to look through the list in case you see something that would work for your list!

The main combo that's possible for this deck consists of Axebane Guardian, High Alert, and Chulane, Teller of Tales. However, this is not the main goal of the deck, it's just an added bonus. This is still just a beatdown deck. The combo sequence would be as follows:

  1. Prerequisites: There should be at least five (5) defenders on the field for Axebane Guardian.
  2. Infinite Mana - Let's first generate infinite mana by tapping Axebane Guardian, to produce and three (3) generic colors. Then, we can use High Alert to untap Axebane Guardian for so there would be a surplus of one (1) mana of any color. Repeating this process provides us infinite mana of any colors that we want.
  3. Infinite Draws - Now that we have infinite mana, we can use Chulane, Teller of Tales to draw most of our deck (make sure that we don't mill ourselves to death) by tapping him and returning one of the creatures and casting it repeatedly.
  4. Win Conditions - Now that we have access to infinite draws, what we're looking for are Crashing Drawbridge to provide us haste (we can also give it haste through Lightning Greaves or Swiftfoot Boots to use its activated immediately if it's not on board yet), Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa, Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive or Suspicious Bookcase (which can be untapped with High Alert) to make our walls unblockable, otherwise we can use Primal Rage (swap with Assault Formation in the decklist depending on the pod) to give our walls trample, Assault Formation, Tower Defense, Bar the Door, and Sacred Rites to buff our walls significantly (by discarding all of the drawn cards except the counterspells) or using Akroma's Will, The Pride of Hull Clade as our biggest defender, and just enough defenders on the field to swing at everyone all at the same time for fatal damage. Funnily enough, it is also possible to use the Infinite Mana combo and then casting Nissa, Steward of Elements for a bunch of loyalty counters and then immediately use her ult.

Otherwise, we just play as usual throwing down our cute walls and slapping at everyone with our butts. Make sure that our Arcades, the Strategist is well-protected by saving our interaction and protection spells properly!

For this deck, we currently have three (3) budget tutor options: Drift of Phantasms which can tutor for 3CMC cards, Muddle the Mixture which can tutor for 2CMC, and Shield-Wall Sentinel which can tutor for any defender cards. We can enumerate our key pieces right below:

2CMC (Muddle the Mixture):

  1. Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive - wincon to make our walls unblockable.
  2. Nissa, Steward of Elements - since X is considered 0, this would become a 2CMC card which could be fetched in case we have already fetched Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive mid-game and would be a good value piece to cast creatures for free and smoothen our turns.
  3. Lightning Greaves or Swiftfoot Boots - yep. give the dragon some shoes.
  4. Assault Formation - redundancy and allows our commander to swing for 5!
  5. Wall of Shards - a large evasive flyer in case we really need to swing 8 for a win.
  6. Overgrown Battlement - a much cheaper Axebane Guardian when Tetsuko is currently unnecessary and we need mana asap.
  7. Tower Defense - largest pump spell for 2CMC if we're going for the win!
  8. Brave the Sands - if we're fighting against another go-wide deck and they're starting to become wider than us.

3CMC (Drift of Phantasms):

  1. Axebane Guardian - which is a main combo piece that can generate a lot (and perhaps infinite) amounts of mana.
  2. High Alert - during the scenarios when our commander is being bullied to death by the other players (we hate them). More redundancy and commander damage!
  3. Aura Shards, Slaughter the Strong, or Beast Within - for emergency removal and artifact/enchantment hate.
  4. Chromatic Lantern - fixes our manabase.
  5. Ghostway or Eerie Interlude - if we're digging for other answers and want to draw a lot through ETB effects (and/or preparing for a known boardwipe).

Other Creatures (Eladamri's Call):

  1. Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa - another wincon like Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive but works for Chulane, Teller of Tales and The Pride of Hull Clade.
  2. Chulane, Teller of Tales - allows us to snowball real fast! Also a key combo piece.
  3. The Pride of Hull Clade - giant beater for 15 that draws us cards!

Since I want to build this deck on a tight budget, hopefully it could stay below $100 or at least less than $150, I'm currently prioritizing the following upgrades to the deck once I can find them locally at a decent price:

  1. Dovin's Veto - a much better Negate
  2. An Offer You Can't Refuse - budget alternative to Swan Song lol.
  3. Heroic Intervention a much better and versatile protection spell. But I think I'm good with Akroma's Will that I currently have.

This deck would most likely not have any fetches or shocklands since they are extremely expensive and would significantly increase the budget for this deck.

Here are the possible card combos that could fit this deck using other cards that are not present in this decklist. Based on my research on various Arcades decks.

  1. Infinite Mana: Axebane Guardian + High Alert or Crab Umbra/Freed from the Real/Galvanic Alchemist/Pemmin's Aura with enough Defenders on board. Might prefer Freed from the Real since it can be tutored using Drift of Phantasms
  2. Infinite Mill: Infinite Mana Combo + Doorkeeper or Coral Colony
  3. Infinite Toughness: Infinite Mana Combo + Assault Formation
  4. Infinite Walls: Infinite Mana Combo + Wall of Kelp
  5. Alternative Win Condition: Infinite Mana Combo + Approach of the Second Sun + Quicksilver Wall + Arcades, the Strategist

Suggestions

Updates Add

Upgrades — Nov. 15, 2024
Edit

After assessing the price of the deck at its cheapest prints, I discovered that I still have some room before reaching my $100 cap! So I added the following upgrades for the deck. Will still need to do some tests.

Was contemplating between Triumph of the Hordes or Akroma's Will but it was extremely difficult to look for it and its much more expensive. I'll probably stick with this since it's also a card that can be used for protection in addition to a wincon. Spell Pierce would've been replaced with An Offer You Can't Refuse but I also had a hard time looking for a cheap one. I'll decide what to swap it out with once I get my hands on it to have more counterspells.

Initial Optimizations/Tuning — Nov. 7, 2024
Edit

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