Avatar Spoilers Ramp Up with Toughest Creature Ever Printed

Last updated on November 5, 2025

The Walls of Ba Sing Se | Illustrated by Arthur Yuan

Move aside Ancient Adamantoise. Get lost Marit Lage. See ya later, uh, whatever The Pride of Hull Clade is supposed to be. There's a new high-toughness creature on the block, and it's the biggest brick wall we've ever seen in Magic. Er, stone wall, perhaps.

The Impenetrable City

Avatar: The Last Airbender fans will recognize the name “Ba Sing Se” as the Earth Kingdom capital, and Magic's bringing that to life in the form of The Walls of Ba Sing Se. Well, the wall at least, since there's also another card named Ba Sing Se representing the actual city within. They're not playing around either; this thing is a house, a 0/30 for 8 mana that makes everything else indestructible.

There's a little bit of meme energy to this card, but it's also a rock solid (hehe) addition to Commander. It's not actually the first legendary wall out there; that honor goes to Pramikon, Sky Rampart. But it is the first colorless wall commander, so for anyone who's ever dreamed of a fully colorless wall deck in Commander now has a shot. Sounds like a beautiful Bracket 1-2 deck.

There's a little bit of support in this space, too. You wouldn't be able to run most of the defender-enabling cards like High Alert and Assault Formation, but you would have Walking Bulwark and Warmonger's Chariot for animation, plus Shield-Wall Sentinel as a synergistic creature tutor. You could even go nuts with Crashing Drawbridge and Suspicious Bookcase to make all those creatures that can't attack more effective on offense.

Outside the City Walls

Armageddon | Illustration by Chris Rahn

Of course, The Walls of Ba Sing Se doesn't have to be the commander of the deck, and slots very well into existing wall and toughness-based strategies.

Wall decks are surprisingly effective at making mana, between Overgrown Battlement and Axebane Guardian, and they have great payoffs like Jaws of Defeat and Rammas Echor, Ancient Shield. They also get to repurpose some lesser-played sweepers like Fell the Mighty and Wave of Reckoning into one-sided board wipes, since most of your walls will be 0-power creatures.

There's also the Avacynian comparison here. Avacyn, Angel of Hope has been a mainstay in Commander since its inception, and the mass indestructible ability opens up some humiliating lines of play, like nuking the board with Armageddon and being the only one left with lands in play. Ba Sing Se's not impenetrable enough to survive the endtimes itself like Avacyn can, but it's still good enough to leave your opponents with nothing post-Jokulhaups while you finish up with whatever you have left over.

It's also colorless, so unlike Avacyn, it can go in any deck. Phenax, God of Deception‘s happy to see this, Arcades, the Strategist will add it to the deck, and this year's Felothar the Steadfast just got a new tool too.

All-in-all it's definitely approaching gimmick territory, but it has its applications, and should open up space for novel colorless wall decks, however competitive those may end up being. The only question now is where to go from here? Not counting the Un-Set B.F.M. (Big Furry Monster), this is the highest-toughness creature ever printed, by a wide margin. It sits comfortably above the next toughest creatures, which include:

• Marit Lage
• Ancient Adamantoise
• Dawnsire, Sunstar Dreadnought
• Charix, the Raging Isle
• Impervious Greatwurm

Two of those were printed just this year, which might make 2025 the toughest year for Magic yet. But where do you go once you've taken the leap all the way up to 30? What's next, a 50-toughness Eldrazi? 100 toughness on a diamond-encrusted Brushwagg? We could find out sooner than later; Magic's been really good about one-upping itself lately.