Pauper is a format that does a really good job of resisting the title of "best deck" among its many, many viable archetypes. But if there is a problem child in the metagame, it might just be Walls Spy.

For the math-inclined out there, decksandthecity.org does an incredible job of cataloguing the adventures of the New York Pauper League. We routinely draw more than 40 players on a Tuesday night, and have events three or even four times per week, so there is a ton of data.

Elves is both the most popular deck in New York and boasts a respectable 60+% win rate. Much talked-about decks like Mono-Red Madness Burn and Mono-Blue Terror crack 50%, but what do you expect at high n? The outlier is Walls Spy at 66%, with hundreds of matches under its collective belt... Maybe this primer will give you an idea as to why.

Let's work from this version that was provided to me by my Princes of Pauper partner, Rich Bucey:

Walls Spy | Pauper | Rich Bucey

• Creatures (40)
• 1 Elves of Deep Shadow
• 2 Avenging Hunter
• 2 Gatecreeper Vine
• 2 Lotleth Giant
• 2 Mesmeric Fiend
• 2 Quirion Ranger
• 2 Troll of Khazad-dum
• 3 Masked Vandal
• 4 Balustrade Spy
• 4 Generous Ent
• 4 Overgrown Battlement
• 4 Sagu Wildling
• 4 Saruli Caretaker
• 4 Wall of Roots

• Sorceries (14)
• 2 Dread Return
• 4 Land Grant
• 4 Lead the Stampede
• 4 Winding Way

• Artifacts (2)
• 2 Lotus Petal

• Lands (4)
• 3 Forest
• 1 Swamp

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Acrorn Harvest
• 1 Avenging Hunter
• 2 Faerie Macabre
• 1 Flaring Pain
• 2 Fume Spitter
• 1 Jack-o'-Lantern
• 1 Masked Vandal
• 2 Mesmeric Fiend
• 3 Nylea's Disciple
• 1 Swamp

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Rich has become an absolute problem with Walls Spy, putting up several 3-0 nights and weekends, and most recently making Top 8 through the seven rounds of Swiss at the New York Pauper Open just this past weekend. The last time I wrote about Walls Spy, Rich had provided me with the deck to borrow, but this one has gone through a few transformations that are worth talking about.

Plan A

Plan A for Walls Spy hasn't changed.

This is a deck with very few actual Lands (typically only three Forests and one Swamp), though it does play with quite a few ways to find lands, plus a couple of cheats in Lotus Petal. You might have to mulligan more with this deck than you're used to to get the first Land, but from that point the deck runs like a well-oiled machine.

Because you have so few lands (but a really focused strategy of getting all of them out of your deck) you will often be in a position to cast Balustrade Spy on turn four, and if you were lucky enough to naturally draw your first Forest, turn three. This is problematic for your opponent.

Balustrade Spy will turn over your whole deck [which ideally has no Lands in it], including putting at least one Dread Return into your graveyard. If we're talking about a true Plan A, where the opponent has no specific graveyard hate main deck, they're probably dead. Any three Creatures (including the Balustrade Spy you just cast) can Flashback Dread Return. You can target Lotleth Giant, and that should be all she wrote.

You know how your deck has only four actual Lands in it? That makes room for about 40 Creatures; but you only need 20 in the graveyard for a lethal Lotleth Giant off the Dread Return.

Walls Spy is incredible on its face, on paper. You have this deck that can potentially win on turn four (or even turn three, with a little luck). That races the fastest draws of Elves, and potentially even Mono-Red. If a Control deck of some sort risks it a little and taps out for a Mulldrifter to get their draw going, they'll be shields down for a kill out of "nowhere" that just seems too fast for the Pauper format. If that's all Walls Spy did it would probably be good enough to play sometimes... But maybe not the monster that it's proving to be.

The Secret of Walls Spy

You see, Walls Spy has a secret...

... It's also a great mid-range deck.

All those Walls?

... They're actually pretty good at just casting things.

Take Generous Ent.

This The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth common is in the deck because it pulls a Forest out of your deck. But what if your opponent is a Tolarian Terror combo deck? Presumably they can just leave up a Counterspell for your Balustrade Spy; or maybe even more deviously, your Dread Return. But you know that. You don't want to deck yourself. What if you just start casting Generous Ents?

Generous Ent is basically Primeval Titan.

It's a 5/7.

In Pauper that means that it's bigger than a Tolarian Terror. If your goal in life is to juice your graveyard quickly to get out a one-mana 5/5 with Ward... Well, that's not big enough to get through Generous Ent. You can make three of them and the best you can do is crash one into a Generous Ent every turn and hope to aggregate enough damage while losing precious giant sea serpents.

Only Generous Ent also made a Food. Wow, that's annoying. It also has Reach, so you can't really poke the opponent to death with Insectile Aberration, either.

It's like Generous Ent was engineered in a lab to make life difficult for Terror players. Sure, you can answer it. You can tap it or bounce it or if you're Dimir, outright kill it. But it's annoying and there are 39 other potentially annoying Creatures in the Spy deck you might have to get through to win the game... And the Spy player wasn't even trying for their Plan A.

Lots of combo decks over the years have had multiple modes. The Splinter Twin deck I myself put on the map those many years ago was basically an Izzet Control deck that could "Oops, I win" on turn four. But you have to admit that Deceiver Exarch isn't the best Control Creature. The two halves of the deck were somewhat at odds with one another. Not true for Spy.

Spy proceeds the same way whether it's trying to kill you on turn four or shift into mid-range. It has to pull Lands out if it's going to try to combo you; and you can argue it doesn't even want to start casting Generous Ent if there are Lands still in the deck to have. Overgrown Battlement does good work either way, slowing down the opponent on the ground and moving Spy forward strategically.

Like, how many times can a deck with, say, 2/2 or 2/3 Flyers really bump up against a fast Sagu Wildling? Sagu Wildling is an insane combination of effects, right? A 3/3 Flying that also gains three life? It's in the deck because its Omen half finds either Forest or Swamp, but if you're in the market for a body, 3/3 Flying matches up really nicely against most of the Flying Creatures in the Pauper format. Five mana is a hurdle for most decks, but is oddly trivial for this one, which plays only four Lands. Did I mention Walls Spy is kind of a problem?

The only card that I think breaks Rich's contention that Plans A and B are more harmonious in Walls Spy than most combo decks is Avenging Hunter.

Avenging Hunter doesn't really help with Spy's Plan A. Because it costs five mana, it's actually pretty likely you've already found all your lands at the point that you can cast it. But sometimes that's not true, and once in a while Avenging Hunter will get your Land #4.

This is a true concession to mid-range. You don't really want this card against Burn. You don't want it when you're trying to race. But my goodness does it punish hapless Control decks that are just sitting there trying to keep you from comboing them out.

Just assume they can kill your giant Dragon. Whatever. They have a Skred or a Cast Down. The real problem is that you have all these Elves of Deep Shadow and Quirion Rangers and Mesmeric Fiends. Once you have The Initiative, it can be very difficult for certain opponents to ever get it from you.

The other thing about the tonnage in Plan B is that it goes back to feeding Plan A. Your opponent can usually only have seven cards. If you're casting all these Avenging Hunters and Generous Ents that they have to deal with, at some point you can just play a Mesmeric Fiend. Oh, are you out of Counterspells? Or a Masked Vandal on the Tormod's Crypt they already had in play. How many cards do you have in hand now that you've let that resolve?

Because it plays so few Lands, Spy often has more problem Creatures than the opponent can possibly answer. But if they try hard enough, that just means you have an open for a very late game Balustrade Spy.

So, we're back to Plan A.

The Most Powerful Draw Engine

All of this is made possible, of course, only because Walls Spy has the most powerful draw engines in Pauper.

Elves also plays eight copies of these cards, but Walls Spy plays half the Lands of even the leanest Elves deck, and a resolved Balustrade Spy will just kill the opponent rather than making a large Nyxborn Hydra or whatever.

At some point it's impossible for a Control deck to stop all your draw-fours and draw-fives and problematic Creatures you might draw naturally. They basically have to try to kill you. Which brings us back to, you know, Generous Ent.

Wrapping Up

I've had some personal setbacks recently that have prevented me from playing in any Pauper Leagues, or even defending my Premodern title; but when I get back into the groove of paper Pauper, you can bet that Walls Spy will be near the top of my weapons of choice!

LOVE

MIKE