High-toughness creatures play a crucial role in MTG, making for elite blockers and often outsizing burn spells. With this in mind, slower Midrange decks often incorporate these creatures to buy time against aggressive strategies, but it’s rare for a successful archetype to be entirely based on them.
Surprisingly, a dedicated “Big Butts” deck that instead offers an assertive game plan just top 4’d a Magic Online event, defying traditional logic!
Turning Defense into Offense
Early in the game, this deck leans on efficient, high-toughness creatures to halt opposing pressure. In the one-drop slot, Aegis Turtle and Armored Armadillo do a great job holding down the fort.
Then, at two mana, Caelorna, Coral Tyrant kicks things up a notch, hitting the board with a whopping eight toughness by itself! Even the beefiest of threats can’t attack into this Octopus, though Caelorna can’t do much on their own.
Caelorna does, however, let this deck turn the corner immediately with a few other cards. See, Caelorna’s toughness conveniently reduces the cost of Ghalta the Immovable to a mere one mana, and thanks to this Dinosaur’s final ability, you can immediately attack for a bunch of damage.
This deck can even jam Ghalta as early as turn two by pairing Aegis Turtle with either Chase Inspiration or Dive Down
Dive DownTarget creature you control gets +0/+3 and gains hexproof until end of turn. (It can't be the target of spells or abilities your opponents control.). This sets you up to attack for eight damage that turn and 12 the next, which is just enough for lethal if your creatures are unblocked.
Notably, beyond making Ghalta easier to cast, these Hexproof enablers protect your burly creatures from removal. This makes it much easier to stick Sheltered by Ghosts
Sheltered by GhostsEnchant creature you control
When this Aura enters, exile target nonland permanent an opponent controls until this Aura leaves the battlefield.
Enchanted creature gets +1/+0 and has lifelink and ward {2}. without fear of getting blown out.
Voice of Victory further helps the cause, ensuring your opponents can’t interact at all during your turn. Once Sheltered by Ghosts hits the board, all hope of your opponent ever racing you goes down the drain.
Obviously, though, there will be games where you don’t draw Ghalta, but luckily, this deck has some redundancy thanks to The Kingpin of Crime. This Villain isn’t quite as explosive as Ghalta, but it still gets the job done.
The last piece of the puzzle is getting past a sea of blockers, which Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive accomplishes by making your creatures unblockable. This makes a big difference against token makers like Lunar Convocation.
High Risk, High Reward
Standard Big Butts’s biggest asset is its consistency, making it extremely strong at punishing unprepared opponents. Any curve involving one of your high-toughness creatures and either Ghalta or The Kingpin of Crime can create unwinnable games.
Red aggro decks, like Izzet Prowess and Rakdos Lizards, have very few ways to actually get any of your big creatures off the board. As a result, you’re never at risk of getting Ghalta stranded in hand, and you can hold back Pompous Battlemage or Hired Claw with ease. This lets your creatures buy a ton of time until you find your key pieces and win.
On the other hand, this deck’s ability to close games quickly is especially important against Mono-Green Landfall. After all, your blockers won’t hold back a big Trampling Mossborn Hydra for long, but you can easily win a race by just attacking.
Unfortunately, this deck doesn’t have much recourse against opponents who can break up your synergies. One of the easiest ways to lose a game is to get your Ghalta or Kingpin stripped by Deceit out of Reanimator, and never find another copy.
To make matters worse, Dimir Reanimator’s removal suite doesn’t care about your high-toughness threats. While your Dive Down effects do help against Requiting Hex and Bitter Triumph
Bitter TriumphAs an additional cost to cast this spell, discard a card or pay 3 life.
Destroy target creature or planeswalker., they still fold to Strategic Betrayal
Strategic BetrayalTarget opponent exiles a creature they control and their graveyard. and Day of Black Sun.
In a similar vein, control decks also have access to efficient board wipes like Day of Judgment that demolish any progress you’ve made. Beating a string of Sunderflocks out of Izzet Spellementals is extremely difficult, too.
This mixed bag of strengths and weaknesses makes this Esper Big Butts deck a risky deck choice. Still, if you can dodge some of your worse matchups, you may be able to cruise through a tournament with no issue. So, if you’re interested in trying unorthodox strategies like this one, Esper Big Butts may be right up your alley.
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