Am I The Bolas? - Walls and Gates

Mike Carrozza • March 26, 2025

Opinion
Maze's End
 Illustrated by Cliff Childs

Hello, and welcome to Am I the Bolas?

This column is for all of you out there who have ever played some Magic and wondered if you were the bad guy. I'm here to take in your story with all of its nuances so I can bring some clarity to all those asking, "Am I the Bolas?"

I'm ready to hear you out and offer advice. All you have to do is email amithebolas@gmail.com with your story, a pseudonym you want to use, and of course, only include details you don't mind in the column! You might see your story below one day. You might even hear it on the podcast. Which podcast? 

THIS PODCAST!

I'm Mike Carrozza, aka Mark Carbonza, the guy who friggin' tells it like it is!

"And ya breath stinks!"

This week, when your backup plan is the bane of an LGS.

(Post edited for brevity, clarity, and then some.)

HELLO, MIKE

I always enjoy reading the Am I the Bolas? articles and wanted to submit one of my own.

My first ever and favorite Commander deck that I play, nicknamed "Walls and Gates", is helmed by Arcades, the Strategist

. I absolutely love the idea of attacking my opponents with literal Walls with low power but high toughness. This is my primary win strategy. However, being a deck where most of my creatures have defender and low power, my deck is significantly handicapped if my commander is not on the field. That is one of the reasons I include the Gate lands and Maze's End
 as a backup strategy.

Over the past few weeks, I've had people at my local game store complain about my deck because I keep winning via Maze's End

. I would like to point out that I am not playing any cards that let me play extra lands per turn, and I'm not running cards like Sylvan Scrying
 or Crop Rotation
 that would allow me to tutor for Maze's End
.

It is genuinely my deck's backup plan, and during these games I have just happened to draw Maze's End

. My main win strategy is to overwhelm my opponents with high-toughness creatures, and one of the ways I do this is by playing the card Hold the Gates
, which boosts the toughness of my creatures based on the number of Gates I control.

I would also like to point out that most of the other players at my local game store include fetch lands and shock lands in their decks, which is perfectly okay. One of the main reasons I use Gates in my deck is because it allows my mana base to keep up against my opponents while on a budget, thanks to cards such as Gond Gate

allowing other dual-color gates to enter untapped.

I frequently activate Maze's End

without meeting the win requirements in order to fetch certain Gates, such as Gond Gate
 or Baldur's Gate
, or just to not miss a land drop. Lastly, I would like to mention that I never "hide" how many Gates I currently have and always point out when I play Maze's End
 and what it does.

Am I the Bolas for playing and winning with Maze's End

?

- Caleb H.

 

HOWDY, CALEB!

Thank you for writing and asking me to weigh in on your story. As I mention every week, if folks don't write to me, there's no column, so if you, the reader, want to send me a story, whether it's your own or one from Reddit or a friend's, please send it to amithebolas@gmail.com and I'll get to it here.

I also wanted to take a moment today to say that I've received many, many submissions for the column. So many, in fact, that I'm still digging into stuff from months and months ago. I absolutely have to cherry pick submissions to avoid similar column entries. I want to let you all know how much I appreciate you. It means the world to me that you continue to send me stories about your time playing Magic. Please don't stop sending them! I wanted you to know why you probably haven't seen yours yet, for those of you waiting for your submission to make it to the CH page.

I'll be blunt: this submission made me laugh. Arcades, the Strategist

is a very popular commander for your main strategy. I think it's great that you've thought about your deck enough to include a secondary win condition that not only works, it works well! For your game AND your budget? That's a huge win. 

Let's see, how to I make this article deeper than it truly needs to be? This one could easily just be "nah, fam, you're good" and then wrap it up. However, there's a little tidbit of information that we need to address that might be worth chewing on.

You mentioned that several people at your LGS have been complaining over the last couple of weeks because of how often you win with Maze's End

. This tells me that it happens often enough to probably be something you bring up when describing the deck so that it's expected. Maybe Arcades' draw ability happens to bring it up more often than you necessarily want it to. If it comes up as often as it does and the main plan isn't really how you've been winning, maybe it's time for a little introspection regarding your deck and determining that maybe Maze's End
 is graduating to the main plan.

I'm really stretching here. 

I mean, you can't possibly find me getting upset about Maze's End

in a freaking three-color budget deck. It's like you cracked the code for the perfect deck for yourself and it's making you happy while also putting pressure on your opponents to do something about you. Sure, you're probably amassing quite the difficult board to get through, but there are ways. Maybe they have to get into the habit of running a Krenko's Buzzcrusher
 or Wasteland
 if you're someone they tend to play against a bunch.

I will say that alternate win conditions are not my thing, especially if they can happen out of nowhere. If you've got nine Gates and I don't have a way to take you out, I'm mobilizing the table to gun for you, but then we have a fun archenemy thing going that can lead to an interesting story.

Essentially, if your opponents know about Maze's End

and you've got eight Gates, they should probably be fixing to take you out of the game sooner than later. If they do that, I can't imagine that'd be much fun for you every time, but if it's how it needs to be for you to keep playing the deck as you would like to, then you'll need to decide to make peace with that or find another secondary win condition. 

Not the Bolas. 

Also, Caleb, cool deck. Thanks for writing in!

Mike Carrozza

Mike Carrozza

Mike Carrozza is a stand-up comedian from Montreal who’s done a lot of cool things like put out an album called Cherubic and worked with Tig Notaro, Kyle Kinane, and more people to brag about. He’s also been an avid EDH player who loves making silly stuff happen. @mikecarrozza on platforms