Much Abrew: Double Bant Walkers (Historic)
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! If you've been following the channel for a while, you might remember Double Moon Walkers, a Modern deck from many years ago that looked to stick a Blood Moon to slow down the opponent, ramp into Doubling Season, and then chain together planeswalkers—which could be ultimated immediately thanks to the extra counters from Doubling Season—to win the game. The deck was a blast, and now it returns but on Magic Arena! Unfortunately, we can't play Blood Moon because it was pre-banned, but thanks to Wilds of Eldraine's Enchanted Tales, Doubling Season is now on Arena, along with a bunch of planeswalkers that we can ultimate right away with the enchantment on the battlefield! How many planeswalkers can we ultimate in a single turn in Historic with the help of Doubling Season? Is Double Moon Walkers back, minus the Blood Moons? Let's get to the video and find out on today's Much Abrew About Nothing!
Much Abrew: Double Bant Walkers
Discussion
- Record-wise, Double Bant Walkers was better than I expected. While the deck can be a bit slow against aggro, overall, we went 6-5 with the deck at Diamond on Arena, and that includes a game that I had to scoop early because of a phone call, so technically, our record is even a bit better that that!
- The idea of the deck is to, as much as possible, recreate the infamous Double Moon Walkers deck from Modern but in Historic. As I mentioned in the intro, we can't really do the Blood Moon thing, even though it's technically on Arena now thanks to Wilds of Eldraine, it was banned the very day it was spoiled. But thankfully, Doubling Season is legal. And as much as I love Blood Moon, Doubling Season is way more important to the deck.
- The deck's plan is actually pretty simple: we have Utopia Sprawl and Wolfwillow Haven to ramp into Doubling Season as quickly as possible. If you're somehow not familiar with Commander all-star Doubling Season, the five-mana enchantment essentially doubles any tokens we would make or counters we would put on permanents. This last ability can do some absurd things with planeswalkers, which is the primary focus of our deck today.
- Since a planeswalker is a permanent, if we have Doubling Season on the battlefield and play a planeswalker, it will enter the battlefield with twice as much loyalty, which allows us to ultimate every single planeswalker in our deck the turn it comes into play! While ultimating any planeswalker is powerful, what we're really hoping to do is follow up our Doubling Season with a Tamiyo, Field Researcher, which has one of the craziest ultimates in Magic: drawing us three cards and making all the spells we play from our hand free, which essentially makes Tamiyo a four-mana Omniscience plus Ancestral Recall in our deck!
- Once all of our spells are free, ideally, we'll be able to play through our entire deck, ultimate an absurd number of planeswalkers, and eventually win the game. Nissa, Who Shakes the World can ultimate to thin nearly every land from our deck in order to make sure we're drawing action and not lands. Ugin, the Spirit Dragon ultimates to draw us seven cards and put seven permanents on the battlefield, which is often enough that our opponent scoops on the spot.
- If we actually need to kill our opponent, our go-to planeswalker is Ajani, Sleeper Agent. As we draw through our deck, we'll find it, ultimate it, and play a few more planeswalkers for free to poison our opponent out of the game, which I guess means we're technically Infect Superfriends. We can also use Wrenn and Seven or Nissa, Vital Force to return permanents from our graveyard to our hand, which can lead to some really weird legend-rule loops where we play multiple Ugin, the Spirit Dragons or Nissa, Who Shakes the Worlds, use their abilities, with each copy legend-ruling away the first, return them all to our hand with Wrenn and Seven, and eventually kill our opponent with Ugin damage or a massive Nissa, Who Shakes the World land (which gets especially massive thanks to the extra counters from Doubling Season).
- Last and probably least, we have Nissa, Steward of Elements and Jace, Cunning Castaway. Nissa is solid enough, coming down early to scry and possibly ramp, and then offering another plan for finishing the game later, when we can use it to make two lands into 5/5 fliers. On the other hand, Jace is just a one-of for meme purposes. With a Doubling Season on the battlefield, it allows us to make infinite copies of Jace, Cunning Castaway, in turn giving us infinite 2/2 Illusion tokens. This is a fine way to close out the game, althoug it doesn't come up all that often in practice.
- As far as the rest of the deck, it's basically just removal to help us stay alive long enough to pull off our Doubling Season planeswalker shenanigans. As I mentioned before, if there's a drawback to Double Bant Walkers, it's that it can be slow against aggro decks. Having sweepers like Supreme Verdict and Farewell in the sideboard helps clean up a board full of creatures so we can actually get Doubling Season online and have some fun.
- So, should you play Double Bant Walkers? While I'm not sure I'd go as far as to say the deck is good, it is way more competitive than I expected. I assumed it would be an Against the Odds deck that didn't win often but would be amazing when it did, but it actually managed to post a surprisingly solid 55% win rate. If you like the idea of ultimating an absurd number of planeswalkers and winning in style, the deck a hilarious and surprisingly solid option. Just be warned that it takes roughly a million wildcards to build, which is a lot for a fun but janky deck.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
