The Casual Monster: Assault Big Butts and Formation Can't Lie
Welcome again to The Casual Monster, articles dedicated to winning with imagination-brew style decks, ignoring the Top 8 and hanging out in the Magic Online Just for Fun room. In this installment, we look at winning with the unloved vegetable at the buffet of Magic the Gathering: WALLS.
I can't remember the last time playing a wall deck in Standard was possible. I know it had a time in the past, but it has been a while. The Khans of Tarkir block has given us a few great cards for high toughness creatures like Grim Contest, but with the release of Dragons of Tarkir, we have Assault Formation. With Assault Formation your creatures deal damage with their toughness, and for a low cost, they can attack. You can even pump them up as well!
With low casting cost defenders, and even the big butt one drops like Disowned Ancestor available, I took the task of building a Wall Deck. First we need some big defenders. Wall of Frost is a great as is the formidable Monastery Flock. We are already running green so Sylvan Caryatid is an include. I prefer the removal of black to the removal of white, so Disowned Ancestor is a the go to one drop, but if you want to run Blue-Green-White instead, you can work with Yolked Ox. Grim Contest and Hero's Downfall are my go-to removal spells, but having a board wipe with upside is essential for dealing with the really aggressive token decks. Enter our new Naga Wizard buddy:
With Assault Formation making big butt walls even bigger, Profaner of the Dead will swoosh away all your opponent's creatures back to their hands and open them up for an assault by defenders. I had this deck sketched out since the spoilers were released, and once Dragons of Tarkir was released on Magic Online, I through it together. Surprisingly, it is having a good amount of success.
The mana base and Hero's Downfall are your only real expenses here. You can substitute life gain lands for fetches if needed, and Ultimate Price or Murderous Cut can hold their own instead of Hero's Downfall. One of my favorite things about this deck is the low overall casting cost and the ease of launching big attacks.
There is nothing like beating down your opponents with walls. Keeping in mind the casual intent, how would you change the deck around?
- Chris Allen - MTGO - Docman
