You may have seen that I won an NYCIS Qualifier over the weekend with Walls Spy:

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It was a Team Trios event, and per usual I had the privilege of playing with the most consistent teammate in New York (or anywhere), Andy Levine on Premodern. Once again we were joined by Pro player Dan Sondike in the Legacy seat. Andy and I have never finished worse than second place in any Constructed Team Trios tournament in NYC, but this time we made the break to first place.

I'd say it was also the first time I'd won in the Finals, but both my teammates also won in the Finals, so that wasn't what put us over the finish line (Dan, by the way, was an absolute Greek God all day, winning countless games I would have folded much earlier).

Anyway, Walls Spy was 100% the optimal choice, though my sideboard probably wasn't the most tuned. In the main deck I made the concession of a single Avenging Hunter, which if nothing else, can help you find a basic Land, just like other giant monsters in Troll of Khazad-Dum and Generous Ent.

I've written about Walls Spy before here and here, so I won't bore you by going over the basics again. Rather I'll focus on Walls Spy's few bad matchups, in part because I beat them all at least once on the day. Understanding what makes them tick (and tick, tick, boom) can be the difference between first place and not getting out of the Swiss.

Walls Spy SWOT

I picked Walls Spy because it has the highest win rate I could find on decksandthecity.org at 63.4%. Other decks I'd considered include Madness Burn at 52.2%, Mono-Blue Terror at 49%, and my beloved Dimir Terror [the Pauper deck I used to win the NYCIS last year] at 54.6%. For contrast, Dimir Grandmas, the deck I played in my last major Pauper event has a 47.1% win rate on deckandthecity.org, driven in no small part by my own 37.5%.

Strengths

Walls Spy's greatest internal advantage is its speed. The deck can win on the third turn without using Lotus Petal. If you just naturally draw 2-3 of your Lands (or use Land Grant, which costs no mana) plus a Balustrade Spy, you can just kill an opponent who foolishly tapped out for an Ichor Wellspring on the second turn, often without tipping off that you might be able to do that.

There are countless combinations (that again require you drawing most of your Lands and one of your four-ofs); here's just one:

• Turn one: Forest, Saruli Caretaker
• Turn two: Overgrown Battlement
• Turn three: You can tap your Battlement for to search for your last land or make a Quirion Ranger or something. But assuming access to your third Land, Balustrade Spy makes for a trivially easy kill. You will, unopposed, even have the three requisite Creatures for Dread Return.

The next great Strength of this deck is its eight card draw spells. Because Walls Spy plays so many Creature cards, Winding Way will many times hit all four and Lead the Stampede sometimes all five. This gives the deck a potent Plan B even when the opponent can contain your Balustrade Spy, Dread Return, and Lotleth Giant.

Just keep making 3/3 flyers. Just keep gaining three life. Create a hard-to-block 6/5; then bring it back when they spend multiple cards to contain it. Then do it all again... All the while drawing more cards and tapping more mana than anyone else in the room. Walls Spy's Plan B keeps your hand full of cardboard and can feel relentless for the opponent.

Weaknesses

Walls Spy's specific construction implies its primary weakness: The deck's own mana base.

The mana base is exploitable (though that is more of a Threat); the opponent can just somehow Stone Rain your Swamp and you might end up essentially paralyzed.

If you "have" to go Plan B and you don't have an Overgrown Battlement (or multiple other Defenders) you might literally not be able to cast your spells. After all: There are only four physical lands in the deck.

That said, while there are only four lands, there are tons and tons of ways to look for lands. So sometimes you'll be in topdeck mode and find a Land Grant with no Forests to get with it. That's much worse than a Generous Ent in the same spot.

Opportunities

It just so happens that Walls Spy's Plan B just out-classes many opposing decks' Plans A. The favorite exmple is Mono-Blue Terror. They spend all their resources to get out a 5/5. You can just cast a Generous Ent, which is 5/7, and has a stack of other abilities. With a Quirion Ranger you can both attack and block with the same Ent. It made a Food for you, so you're probably not going to die. The bigger problem is that the Ent probably isn't alone, because it came with 3-4 other cards on a Winding Way or Lead the Stampede.

What are they going to do to Generous Ent here? Deem Inferior? I just said that your deck plays both Winding Way and Lead the Stampede. What an inferior removal spell! It just ensured your next draw spell will be even more card advantageous.

Threats

It's not all sunshine and roses for Walls Spy. Some people just want to kill you and those people tend to run this card, often in their main decks:

Nihil Spellbomb is "free" for a lot of these decks. They play Fanatical Offering and get to use it as sacrifice fodder, or it's just another cantrip with a low deck-building cost when not playing against a Reanimator strategy.

The site decksandthecity.org has Grixis Affinity and Jund at about 30%, Golgari Gardens at 0%, and a weird split for Terror decks: 92.9% (really, really good) for Mono-Blue, but 33.3% for the Dimir version. What gives for the deck with the best overall win rate?

Jund - 30%

Jund and Grixis have the same basic advantages over Walls Spy. First of all, they both have Nihil Spellbomb in the main deck. When I lost to Jund in Game 1 of the first round, he had triple Spellbomb, in fact.

They also both have Krark-Clan Shaman and a ton of Artifacts. What that means is that, especially if they pair the Shaman with Toxin Analysis, these decks can invalidate Spy's Plan B. You can't go for the combo because of Nihil Spellbomb, but they are just better at mid-ranging you because they play actual removal, whereas you just have clunky Creatures.

I got the rematch in the Finals against the same Jund player. In the second Game 1, I had a Lotus Petal in my opening hand, and ran out an Overgrown Battlement. He played a tapped Artifact Land. I immediately cycled for a basic, and then exiled his Land with Masked Vandals. In Game 3 I kept a hand with three Vandals! I don't know if Walls Spy can win a fair game, but I didn't even try.

In the eventual-winning match against Jund I held Mesmeric Fiend the whole game. Mesmeric Fiend is already a dubious card against a deck with Krark-Clan Shaman, but I wanted to make sure he didn't have Faerie Macabre the turn I went for it. Mesmeric Fiend doubled up as a body for Dread Return post-Shaman slaughter.

One other thing: Jund can point Cleansing Wildfire at your basic Swamp. While that isn't a great play, for most configurations, this play might cut you off the Black you need to cast Balustrade Spy. In Game 1, consecutive Wildfires can actually permanently manascrew you, even though they nominally give you your next Land.

Some Spy decks counteract Cleansing Wildfire by siding an additional Swamp. I have always considered those players to be coward, but my podcast co-host Rich Bucey recently convinced me that sometimes you just want a fifth Land to hard-cast your bigger spells through removal. Consider me now-sold on the fifth Land.

Golgari Gardens - 0%

I think this is just a function of a very low number of recorded matches. This matchup seems basically even to me. Both decks have powerful draw engines, but you can outright win faster.

Dimir Terror - 33.3%

I won this matchup in the second round, and then a rematch with the same opponent in the Top Four. The main difference here versus the Mono-Blue version is that you can make a quick Overgrown Battlement and Dimir can just use Snuff Out on it before you even untap, whereas Mono-Blue is kind of just stuck looking at it while you destroy them. The removal, broadly, is a big upgrade for Dimir, as they can do stuff like side in Arms of Hadar to keep you under Dread Return resources. Both decks being limited in how many Counterspells they have (four), so other ways to interact become increasingly valuable.

It should go without saying that if you're up against Mono-Blue with a Generous Ent it's probably going to kill them eventually; but Dimir can just play Cast Down and go about their day.

In my two matchups I won by combo three of the four games as he did not see a Nihil Spellbomb in either contest, despite aggressively drawing cards.

Changes to Walls Spy post-Win

I wouldn't change the main deck at this point. The one Avenging Hunter main is kind of an oddball, but it does give the deck another angle of attack. And again, it can search up a basic Land. On the other hand my sideboard kind of sucked. This is the sideboard I played:

• 1 Avenging Hunter
• 2 Faerie Macabre
• 4 Nylea's Disciple
• 4 Vitu-Ghazi Inspector
• 1 Masked Vandal
• 2 Mesmeric Fiend
• 1 Flaring Pain

I went super hard for Mono-Red with eight life gain Creatures. But Mono-Red doesn't really lose to you because you gained two more life; they beat you because you couldn't kill a Guttersnipe.

So, I'm cutting the Inspectors and thinking really hard about the Disciples.

The Inspectors are going to become 1 Jack-o'-Lantern and 1 Swamp to start; maybe a second Avenging Hunter... I'm really not a fan of playing Acorn Harvest, though. The theory on Acorn Harvest is you can flip it over and then have two bodies to pair with Spy after you've had your board killed by Krark-Clan Shaman... But you'd need six mana that turn! If you just got your board swept, where would you get the extra mana from? I'd almost just play more Jack-o'-Lanterns or Faerie Macabres, which are at least functional.

I honestly didn't realize why Rich was playing Jack previously. Basically you can just Spy combo and both Jack-o'-Lantern and Flaring Pain will be in your graveyard. So, for only one mana you will always have the necessary to overwhelm Prismatic Strands on specifically the turn you're going off. I had to cast Flaring Pain once in the tournament, but I did it the old fashioned way, by having Saruli Caretaker in play!

Even with my imperfect build, Walls Spy proved the strongest, fastest, and most powerful deck in Pauper last Saturday. But will it still be come Paupergenesis in July? Stay tuned.

LOVE

MIKE