Building Wakka from Final Fantasy

Posted on June 12, 2025

Hello everyone! I'm Levi from The Thought Vessel, and today we're looking at another character from my favorite video game of all time - Final Fantasy X. Wakka had an incredible amount of character development and became one of my favorite characters by the time I finished my playthrough. When I saw the spoiler for Wakka, Devoted Guardian, I couldn't help myself - I just had to put a list together for this commander.

First, we'll go over the commander itself. Then, we'll compare it with others that share similar traits to explain the deck's direction. After that, we'll highlight some notable cards and go over how the deck wins, along with the full list. Let's begin!

The Commander

Wakka, Devoted Guardian is a 4/4 trampler that can give himself +1/+1 counters and wants to connect for combat damage - so he can be an absolute beast. What I like about this commander is that his abilities are all supportive, so we can build the deck from the ground up instead of being pigeonholed into making the entire focus revolve around Wakka. When he connects with combat damage, we get to blow up an artifact an opponent controls. And when a counter is placed on Wakka during the turn, every other creature we control gets a +1/+1 counter.

The Deck

When thinking about a game plan, this commander reminds me of two others: Kogla, the Titan Ape and Mikaeus, the Lunarch. Kogla clears out artifacts and enchantments, and Mikaeus helps spread +1/+1 counters across a wide board. While both are interesting to build around, Wakka lets us blend the two strategies - without restricting us to creature type or color identity.

With this deck, I want to combine a go-wide strategy with +1/+1 counters. When the window's right, Wakka can swing at opponents to pick off pesky artifacts. We want redundancy in our plans since we aren't getting massive impact from the command zone, but thankfully, the +1/+1 counter archetype has a deep card pool. Before we get to the full list, here are some notable cards.

Notable Cards

The first couple of key cards are Liquimetal Torque and Liquimetal Coating. Since Wakka can only destroy artifacts, the Liquimetal duo lets us turn any permanent into an artifact - so we can start blowing up planeswalkers, commanders, or even lands in Coating's case. That makes Wakka's ability even more devastating.

With this in mind, we're also running Kogla, the Titan Ape for some extra size and as another creature that can interact with the Liquimetal duo to help control the board while we build up our creatures.

Speaking of building, we've got the trio of Herd Baloth, Scurry Oak, and Basking Broodscale. Conventionally used as combo pieces, they can certainly do that here (which we'll cover later), but they also fit naturally into our plan of adding counters and going wide. These creatures help us flood the board with tokens while growing themselves as Wakka sticks around and hands out counters.

The Ozolith and Resourceful Defense act as "save progress" cards, storing up +1/+1 counters from creatures that die. If anything gets removed, we can just transfer the counters to another creature and keep going.

Since the deck doesn't run many flyers, Luminous Broodmoth serves as a great insurance policy against removal. The creatures return with flying, making them harder to stop. Kodama of the West Tree gives our team trample and ramps us for each modified creature that connects - a huge deal in this deck.

As for finishers, Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider is a 6/6 trampler that doubles our counters and also acts as a hate piece against other +1/+1 counter decks. Kalonian Hydra, Sovereign Okinec Ahau, Innkeeper's Talent, and Maester Seymour all help us rapidly scale up our board with +1/+1 counters.

How Are We Gonna Win?

First, let's address the elephant in the room: the infinite combo. With either Cathars' Crusade or Ivy Lane Denizen plus Herd Baloth, Scurry Oak, or Basking Broodscale, we can create an infinite army of tokens. If we've got Cathars' Crusade out, those tokens will also be infinitely huge. That's perfect when our commander has trample - we can one-shot any player at the table.

Since we're going wide, Champion of Lambholt is another all-star. Once she's big enough, we're basically unblockable. We can also finish with Akroma's Will or True Conviction to give the team double strike and lifelink - either to seal the win or gain more life than our opponents can handle.

Resourceful Defense also gives us a sneaky win condition by letting us shift stacks of counters to an unblocked creature and deliver a lethal blow. And if all else fails, we've always got good old-fashioned beats.

Potential Next Steps

This deck could use some protection pieces like Mother of Runes in the 99, not necessarily for Wakka (since the deck functions fine without him), but to keep key creatures like a monstrous Maester Seymour around longer.

While we've placed this deck around bracket three or possibly bracket four depending on your local meta, it doesn't have any game-changers in it. Adding cards like The One Ring or Smothering Tithe could easily turn up the power. And of course, there's always the classic Heliod, Sun-Crowned + Walking Ballista combo if you want to push this deck solidly into bracket four.

Wrapping Up

I'll drop my list below. I hope you enjoy it - whether as-is or as a jumping-off point for your own brew. If there's a commander you'd like me to tackle next, shoot me an email at thoughtvesselshow@gmail.com. Until next time - happy gaming!