Where's Wally?

I know what you’re thinking, “Walls? He must be joking”. Quite frankly, I don’t even blame you. When I first started looking into this type of deck, it was admittedly for something more casual. The more I brewed however, the more I realized how much potential it has. Fun, powerful and swingy? Sign me up! While I make no claims that this deck will win your next tournament, it does have some very strong plays and it really CAN win. Intrigued? Let me tell you about Where’s Wally?

In the early days of Magic design, walls were quite prominent in each set. Most of the time, they would offer a high defense for a relatively cheap cost, and could be used to buy a player some time. In other words - they were used to defend the life total as you looked for a win condition. Because of this, I have found the trick to making a deck based on walls is to treat it as a control deck.  The question then becomes, how do I win with a deck focused on defending?

Believe it or not, the main problem with making a deck based on walls is not finding a win condition - it has plenty of those. Both Animate Wall and Rolling Stones are white enchantments that let your walls go on the offensive. Ageless Sentinels is another option, as it need only defend a creature in order to be able to attack on its own. So where’s the problem, right?

The issue is that these win conditions do nothing on their own, and thus you create a sort of card disadvantage by having so many of them in your deck. To help get around that, I included Wall of Blossoms and Wall of Mulch. Blossoms lets you draw a card when it hits the battlefield and Mulch is exceptional when you are going to lose a Wall anyway and want to replace it. These provide the defense you expect in the deck while creating the opportunities for card advantage.

Red. I had actually considered focusing more on Red throughout the building process, but eventually decided against it. The main reason for this is because of the nature of the deck – a long and controlling-type. So why even think about focusing on more power-based cards at all? I had initially considered the potential of both Fling and Glyph of Destruction. They are incredibly strong together, and offer some very fast win conditions. I found however, that they were too situational and dependent on one another. I do believe the colour itself offers a lot of possibilities however, and encourage others to try their hand at designing their own decks around it. Happy Brewing!

Where’s Wally?

Land

4 Plateau

4 Savannah

1 Plains

1 Forest
1 Mountain

4 Wooded Foothills

4 Windswept Heath

4 Wasteland

Total: 23

Creatures

3 Sunweb

4 Wall of Blossoms

4 Wall of Mulch

2 Ageless Sentinels

4 Tinder Wall

Total: 17

Spells

4 Rolling Stones

4 Animate Wall

4 Regrowth

4 Swords to Plowshares

4 Lightning Bolt

Total: 20

Sideboard

2 Pyroclasm

4 Tormod’s Crypt

4 Orim’s Chant

4 Pyroblast

1 City of Solitude