by Johnny Cycles, August 23rd, 2024
Want to play a fun, casual deck built against the grain of the color pie? Love drawing cards but hate ? Love but don’t want a low-to-the-ground, aggressive strategy? Looking for something to play against your friend’s new brew or with someone only just learning the game? Does the boardstate below appeal to you? Then check out this Mono White Card Draw deck featuring Mangara, the Diplomat.
14 cards in hand and Reliquary Tower on the battlefield, 3 4/4 flying Elementals, Sanctuary Warden, and Heliod as threats, and Island Sanctuary as protection. Living the dream!
The Color Pie
The color pie in Magic is central to everything about the game. According to Mark Rosewater, the color pie “is the foundation of Magic both in flavor and mechanics, and gives the game a psychological underpinning that creates a unique identity” (https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/great-white-way-revisited-2015-07-13). White, according to Rosewater, is the color of peace and harmony. It is also the color most associated with law and order.
I think most Magic players would agree with Rosewater’s definition of White and its place in the color pie. But what about how that “philosophical underpinning” manifests itself in the cards themselves? Here is where players tend to have stronger opinions and where the arguments start.
Rosewater, as it turns out, has written pretty extensively about this topic, as well. First in 2017 and then again in 2021, Rosewater provides players with a long list of associated mechanics and abilities for each color, divided into primary, secondary, and tertiary. It is really quite comprehensive and interesting, in my opinion. But what I found to be most relevant to the concept of the deck I’m highlighting here is that the color pie is not the Bible or the Koran. It is not unchangeable or immutable. “The color pie will continue to evolve and change as it’s always done,” he writes in his introduction.
Perhaps this is the fact that is at the heart of the arguments about what cards do or do not break the color pie.
For the purposes of this article, though, what it means is our deck is less breaking any part of the color pie and, instead, on the cutting edge of its evolutionary path.
White, as a color, is not associated with card draw, but that is changing. In 2017, Rosewater wrote, “White has a very narrow band of card drawing where it’s focused on having to use a specific strategy (like say having a deck full of Equipment).” Four years later, he added this: “While white is still tertiary at card drawing, we have added some new abilities for white to draw cards. The big limitation is that white tends to draw over time rather than all at once, so it has a once-per-turn limit on card drawing (multiplayer does allow white on occasion to draw multiple cards tied to how many opponents a player has),”
Thus, drawing cards is tertiary for White, but its access to this ability is increasing/widening. It was, in fact, this increase in card draw given to that first inspired me to make this deck. It felt against the color pie…at least before I read Rosewater’s articles.
However, being that it is a tertiary ability granted to White, I think the title of this article and the build-around of this deck is in the spirit of “breaking” the color pie. Further confirming this for me is that counterspell is also considered tertiary for White.
Either way, I looked up every White card that has some variation of “draw a card,” made a big pile, then whittled it down to the following thing of beauty:
Decklist – Mono White Card Draw with Mangara, the Diplomat
| Mangara, the Diplomat |
Creatures (17)
| Battle Angels of Tyr | |
| Beza, the Bounding Spring | |
| Firemane Commando | |
| Aerial Extortionist | |
| Sanctuary Warden |
Artifacts (6)
| Expedition Map | |
| Fountainport Bell | |
| Shadowspear | |
| Soul-Guide Lantern | |
| Alhammarret’s Archive |
| Norn’s Annex |
Enchantments (18)
| Curse of Silence | |
| Angelic Gift | |
| Dawn of Hope | |
| Dawn of a New Age | |
| Feather of Flight | |
| Hoofprints of the Stag | |
| Island Sanctuary | |
| Rune of Sustenance |
| Hobble | |
| Lashknife Barrier | |
| Pentarch Ward | |
| Smuggler’s Share | |
| Solitary Confinement | |
| Unquestioned Authority | |
| Words of Worship | |
| Pursuit of Knowledge | |
| Trouble in Pairs | |
| Sphere of Safety |
Instants (15)
| Bandage | |
| Festival of the Guildpact | |
| Heal | |
| Niveous Wisps | |
| Aura Blast | |
| Blessed Wine | |
| Gallantry | |
| Guided Strike | |
| Plunge into Winter | |
| Reprieve |
| Revitalize | |
| Shelter | |
| To Arms! | |
| Cease-Fire | |
| Courageous Resolve |
Sorceries (5)
| Idyllic Tutor | |
| Shatter the Sky | |
| Fumigate | |
| Hallowed Burial | |
| Austere Command |
Lands (38)
| Arch of Orazca | |
| Castle Ardenvale | |
| Hall of Heliod’s Generosity | |
| Maze of Ith | |
| Reliquary Tower | |
| Urza’s Saga | |
| War Room | |
| Plains (31) |
Deck Tech
Card Draw Not in the Deck
Before I get to our primary game plan, let’s talk about what’s not in the deck.
Drawing Cards from Equipment
We aren’t building a deck around Puresteel Paladin and equipment. Even though this is one of White’s most efficient ways to draw cards, building an equipment deck to abuse a commander like Sram, Senior Edificer feels contrary to the spirit of the deck.
We’re looking to play White cards that draw us cards, not a single White card that draws us a bunch of cards in conjunction with non-White cards that don’t, themselves, draw us cards.
Confused?
After all, we are playing Mesa Enchantress, right?
There is an enchantment-matters subtheme to our deck that I’ll discuss shortly, but for now, I’ve picked a bunch of enchantments (10) that draw cards on their own or that synergize with our plan of drawing cards. Mesa Enchantress furthers this strategy without incentivizing us to play a bunch of colorless equipment and vehicles. Nor does she lead us down a path of cheap and/or powerful auras that don’t themselves function as cantrips.
Drawing Cards from Artifacts
In a similar vein, we aren’t playing a bunch of artifacts that draw us cards. In case our reasoning isn’t obvious, it is definitely against the spirit of our deck – breaking (extending?) the color pie in Mono White – to use colorless spells to draw us cards. I’ll discuss the artifacts I have included below, but I’ve largely eschewed this would-be loophole in building a Mono White Card Draw deck full of non-White spells that draw us cards.
Graveyard Recursion
We also aren’t counting graveyard recursion as card draw. Including something like Sun Titan and Emeria, the Sky Ruin would certainly increase the power level of our deck, but I’ve left them out for now for a couple of reasons. First, I’ve already had to cut cards that actually say “draw a card.” I don’t want to water down our theme any more than I have to.
Second, these two cards are staples in most Mono White decks. As I explain here, I’d rather not play the same powerful “staples” across decks that can support them just because they make the deck better. Having a unique theme and playing unique cards to fit that theme are two of my favorite things about Commander. Playing strictly better cards that are not on-theme is not what I’m about when it comes to my casual brews.
Cycling Cards
Cycling is a mechanic given to all colors that draws a card (cantrips, really). While we could play a bunch of these cards to fill out our numbers, I once again decided it wasn’t really in the spirit of our deck to draw a card off of a mechanic like this.
Card Draw from Searching Up Lands
Finally, beginning with Land Tax in Legends, White has access to a form of card advantage that isn’t strictly drawing cards that involves thinning your deck by searching up basic lands and putting them into your hand. Over the years, Wizards has given White more and more such cards. And while we do gain cards this way, I didn’t want to go this route before first trying a deck built around cards that literally say “draw a card.”
Why this Commander?
There are several powerful commanders we could pick to helm our Mono White Card Draw deck. And, in fact, I had originally picked Heliod, Sun-Crowned for the top spot. After all, we have both an enchantment and a lifegain subtheme, both of which the White god synergizes with nicely. Furthermore, we are pretty light on creatures (17), which makes having an indestructible commander that much more appealing. But, I have a Mono White Prison deck with Heliod at the helm AND it feels contrary to our deck’s focus to choose a commander for it that doesn’t have “draw a card” somewhere in its text box. Mangara has it in TWO places!
Still, as you’ll see below, Heliod really DOES fit with our deck, even if he doesn’t himself draw us cards. Let me in the comments which you think we should play!
As of this writing, Bloomburrow has been out for a couple of weeks and, with it, a brand new mono White commander to build around. This Elemental Elk has the key text we’re looking for, but it has so much more that I really just want to build a deck around all of its modes, not just one. Thus, I’ll save Beza, the Bounding Spring for a future deck.
Primary Game Plan
Our primary game plan is to overwhelm our opponent via card advantage. We want to draw a bunch of cards and eventually out-resource our opponent. Many of our spells are unimpressive (and this is putting it kindly), so we really, really, really need to leverage our card advantage into victory.
This is where Heliod, Sun-Crowned makes more sense as a commander than Mangara, the Diplomat. Having repeatable access to an indestructible enchantment creature that can grow our team of less-than-formidable creatures into lethal threats is arguably our best win condition.
Without Heliod, Sun-Crowned to put a clock on our opponent, our next best win condition is suiting up one of our creatures with a variety of auras like Pentarch Ward, Rune of Sustenance, and Feather of Flight, all of which draw us a card of course, and grind out victory via many combat steps. This plan is fragile, but it’s what we got! We do play several protection spells, that also draw us cards, that we can use to protect our chief threat, though many are limited or over-costed.
If you haven’t pieced it together yet, ours is not a CEDH deck…
Amassing a Small Army
Our secondary win condition is to go wide via a handful of cards that can make tokens. Castle Ardenvale, Dawn of Hope, and Hoofprints of the Stag can all slowly build up a sizeable army. We can also loop Urza’s Saga with Hall of Heliod’s Generosity to make an endless number of Constructs. Both strategies are slow and unimpressive, but…that’s what we got!
Types of Card Draw
I’ve detailed the kind of card draw we are NOT playing, so what does that leave us? We play three kinds of card draw. First, simple cantrips. These are spells that do something AND draw us a card upon resolution. Second, we’re playing conditional card draw that’s dependent on our opponent. Third, we have conditional card draw dependent on us.
Cantrips
“All colors get cantrips (spells that draw you a single card),” Rosewater states. So what kind of cantrips does White get?
Most of our cantrips come attached to some form of protection. These are usually are cheapest card draw, as well as our chief way to protect our big threat or make sure it gets in damage.
Some cantrips come attached to creatures, which are usually underpowered. Almost all synergize in more than one way with what we’re trying to do. We play 27 cards in this category.
Angelic Gift – evasion will sometimes be our most effective way of closing out a game. And, since I’m starting off with an enchantment, I’ll take this moment to say cantrips like this serve three other purposes. First, they add to our devotion for Heliod, Sun-Crowned (if he’s your commander, this is more relevant, of course). Second, they have the potential to draw us an extra card if we have Mesa Enchantress out. And finally, they add to our enchantment count if we have Sphere of Safety up and running.
Aura Blast – some enchantment hate of our own.
Bandage – the first of several old and unimpressive protection spells. There will be times when that 1 damage will be highly relevant, I’m sure of it!
Blessed Wine – another unimpressive cantrip, the 1 life becomes more relevant if Heliod, Sun-Crowned is your commander. As you probably have already noticed, Heliod is a very synergistic commander for this deck as well. I’ll also note that gaining life and card draw frequently go hand-in-hand in White. I cut cards like Healing Hands and Ritual of Rejuvenation due to their high mana cost. However, I would make room for them again if Heliod was my commander.
Cease-Fire – another not-great cantrip with a high ceiling.
Courageous Resolve – 3 mana is too much for this effect without “Draw a card” in the text box, even with the second half. Still, I’m happy to have an instant-speed way to protect my big threat. The art on this card, though, is an example of how superimposing the necessary text and symbols on a piece of artwork can ruin said artwork. It’s too busy. The wraith (I’m assuming, since this is The Lord of the Rings) is mostly blocked by the card name and casting cost. The fallen soldier(s) in the foreground is barely visible. And, finally, of the two images in the middle portion, it’s the wagon wheel that is the easiest to discern. Thus, I’m left thinking Courageous Resolve is somehow connected to a wheel, rather than defending a fallen comrade from an attack.
Feather of Flight – another enchantment that grants flying, only this one has flash for some reason. Sneak block, people!
Festival of the Guildpact – worst case, we can cycle this for . Best case we surprise our opponent who’s swung out, stay alive, then attack back for lethal.
Gallantry – there’s a lot going on here that I like. The art definitely has that old-school feel to it, for better or worse. Look at that kick to the face! And, she’s supporting her attack with that other creature’s head. All while holding what looks to be a spike. The flavor text is nothing short of inspirational. Finally, it’s another sneak block…sort of. Fine, it’s a combat trick, but a good one!
Guided Strike – another combat trick that replaces itself.
Heal – teenage angst in art form… Ah, let’s be serious for a moment. It’s an early sign of Magic’s understanding of mental health…and in the 90s. They were ahead of the curve, for sure!
Hobble – an enchantment that shuts down our opponent’s best attacking creature. And that art! If this was printed today, I imagine it would also have flash.
Inspiring Overseer – our first cantrip on a stick… 3 mana for a 2/1 flier is too much, even with all that other text. Just look at Ledger Shredder, for instance, but this Angel Cleric is a common, rather than a rare. The lifegain is gravy for us, but super relevant with Heliod, Sun-Crowned at the helm instead of Mangara, the Diplomat. Can you tell that I’m unsure if I want Mangara over Heliod as my commander?
Lashknife Barrier – for an old card, I think this one is pretty good. Reducing damage by 1 will make combat a headache for our opponent (and maybe us, since math is not one of our strong suits), while also straight up nerfing some annoying cards some people (cough, my nephew, cough) have built decks to abuse.
But seriously, there are way more decks out there than this that want to abuse dealing a single point of damage to things, while some powerful and popular cards have a similar effect almost as gravy to their main purpose in decks.
Lashknife Barrier stops all of these from sniping our creatures.
Niveous Wisps – tapping a creature before combat can be game changing. Turning a creature White…not so much.
Pentarch Ward – just when I thought turning a creature White wouldn’t be relevant, we can use Niveous Wisps in conjunction with this enchantment as another combat trick.
Plunge into Winter – ooh, we get to scry, then draw! We must be in the 2020s of Magic.
Priest of Ancient Lore – a strictly worse Inspiring Overseer.
Reprieve – now we’re breaking the color pie! This is nearly a Cryptic Command!
Revitalize – more of these please! First printed in 2019, it’s a better option than Ritual of Rejuvenation.
Roving Harper – for one more point of toughness, we lose flying and the lifegain…sigh.
Rune of Sustenance – this card is great with Heliod, Sun-Crowned at the helm. Without it, it’s still way better than a lot of other cards in this section.
Shelter – another great combat trick.
Spirited Companion – it’s an enchantment creature, because…well, I don’t know why, but that means we can recur it with Hall of Heliod’s Generosity, which is pretty sweet.
To Arms! – ANOTHER combat trick…if only our creatures were more powerful, this could be a real blowout in the right spot.
Unquestioned Authority – this is arguably our best way to ensure damage gets through.
Wall of Omens – a Modern-playable card and a classic target for blink spells, this Wall is good in our deck at drawing us a card and blocking. So, in other words, we’re playing it fairly.
Conditional Card Draw – Dependent on Opponent
White has gotten more and more cards like the ones found in this section. The effect here represents the ideals behind White mentioned above. If you attack me, you must pay a price = law and order. You have more resources (cards, lands, creatures), then I get some to even the playing field = peace and harmony. Including our commander, we play 9 such cards.
Aerial Extortionist – temporary removal that should end up drawing us cards. We draw off our opponent (or us) casting their (our) commander.
Archivist of Oghma – punishing tutors and fetchlands since 2022! This card seems like one that will get reprinted, but, since it is from a uniquely flavorful set, I’d keep my eye on its price. It started out in the high $20s and has since dropped to the $5-$7 range. It may not get much cheaper.
Battle Angels of Tyr – with myriad, this is one of the best cards in this list at punishing our opponents for having more resources than us.
Beza, the Bounding Spring – as I mentioned above, I want to build a deck around this card (and those like it), but it certainly has a home in the 99.
Curse of Silence – we’ll almost always want to name our opponent’s commander with this curse.
Esper Sentinel – another Modern staple, we really want to see this in our opening 7.
Mangara, the Diplomat – keeping peace and harmony is in this Cleric’s name.
Smuggler’s Share – flavor-wise, I’m not sure law and order should apply to smuggling… This is one of two enchantments in this list that do similar things. This one is under $5. The next one, not so much.
Trouble in Pairs – yes, this is the better enchantment by far at what it (and we) does (are doing). But is it $30 more better? Yup, more better is totally grammatically correct here.
Conditional Card Draw – Dependent on Us
Our final way of drawing cards is dependent on hoops we have to jump through, not our opponent. We play 13 cards in this category.
Aerial Extortionist – You read correctly, this Bird Soldier is in both lists. We can target our own permanents to recast after ETB or combat and draw extra cards! Ignore that bit above about us playing Wall of Omens fairly! Who said we aren’t a combo deck?
Arch of Orazca – our first land that can draw us a card at instant speed, this one comes at a steep, steep cost. Still, if we’re staying alive behind Solitary Confinement and just need time to close out the game via combat, then for a card is fine, just fine.
Alhammarret’s Archive – this is the first of our exceptions to what I stated above about not relying on artifacts to build a Mono White card draw deck that breaks the color pie. And, I’ll be totally honest here: I feel nothing but glee at including this card in our deck. If you’re like me, when this card was first spoiled, you salivated at all the amazing potential and power for a wide-range of Commander decks. And, if you’re like me, you quickly realized how limited the card really is if you’re trying to take advantage of both abilities. I’ve included this mythic from Magic Origins in so many rough drafts of decks only to leave it out with a sigh each time I realize I have to cut 50 some odd cards from my pile.
But this is the deck! This is the time! Alhammarret’s Archive is perfect in our deck since we’re looking to gain life AND draw cards! Who knew a Mono White deck would be the best home for this legendary artifact? Tell me I’m wrong in the comments…
Dawn of a New Age – this one feels a bit odd in a deck with only 17 creatures, but it survives the chopping block for two reasons. First, it gains us life, which is one of our sub themes. Second, we can recur it from our graveyard with Hall of Heliod’s Generosity. Still, we don’t really want to see this enchantment in our opening 7, like ever.
Dawn of Hope – lifegain that draws us cards? That’s what we’re all about! Who cares if we durdle away, as long as we keep gaining life and drawing cards! Of course, this is one of our ways of making a small army and grinding out a win.
Firemane Commando – a recent made-for-Commander card that exemplifies Wizards’ new direction with White and card draw. Harmony and balance!
Fountainport Bell – our second artifact that draws us a card. I’m including this recently printed card for a couple of reasons. First, we are pretty low on targets for Urza’s Saga. Second, I like that we get some mana fixing alongside card draw. White has lots of ways to catch up on lands, but they are rarely attached to card draw. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m playing all of those already in this deck. This card will hopefully let us keep some otherwise risky 2-land hands.
Mesa Enchantress – we play 20 ways to trigger this Human Druid when you include our two enchantment creatures.
Mentor of the Meek – we play 10 creatures, including our commander, that can draw us a card with this in play.
Sanctuary Warden – one of our few bombs, this Angel Soldier can draw us cards by removing counters from itself or other creatures. Another powerful synergistic card with Heliod, Sun-Crowned. The more times I mention this, the more I convince myself that, other than not passing the eye test in supporting our deck’s theme, Heliod has few drawbacks in bringing all our desperate parts into a powerful whole.
Soul-Guide Lantern – our final artifact that we can use to draw a card, this one gives us both a target for Urza’s Saga and some much needed graveyard hate.
The Gaffer – this is another of those cards I think is better than it’s roughly $5 price tag. It triggers at each end step, synergizing extremely well with Food tokens (relevant for my Halfling deck) and with the little bit of instant speed lifegain we have in our deck. It can make opponents reluctant to attack us if one or more of our blockers have lifelink. And, finally, it only has a single printing in The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth Commander deck. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this card’s price creep back up over $10.
War Room – our second land that can draw us a card, this one is still expensive to activate, but a necessary evil. We need more than one way to draw cards, particularly when we have Solitary Confinement out.
That’s a total of 49 cards that draw us a card. That’s nearly half of our deck. So what precious few cards are we playing that don’t draw us cards? How did they manage to find a home in a Mono White Card Draw deck?
Well, this is where the real fun begins, as White has a surprising number of synergies with drawing cards that I did not anticipate. And thankfully, these synergies give us another angle of attack, as well as some powerful ways of staying alive.
Drawing Cards = Attacking
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but this is the only card in White with this kind of effect. It’s too slow to see play in most decks unless you’re in as well. In our Mono White deck, it’s significantly faster…and still kind of slow. Nevertheless, it does link our primary theme of drawing cards to a win condition. 4/4 flying Elementals can get the job done in the right spot.
Drawing Cards = Staying Alive Long Enough to Win
In order to execute our fragile and lengthy game plan, we need to keep our opponent from killing us.
Duh.
But seriously, since we don’t present a fast clock, game-ending combo, or super-powered finishers, we will often need to keep our opponent from killing us longer than the average deck.
Thankfully, White has access to a variety of cards that prevent us from dying quickly, assuming we can get them online in time. AND, what’s even more exciting is that several actually synergize/complement our theme of drawing cards.
Solitary Confinement is the best of the bunch. It gets around most ways of losing short of Questing Beast (and other cards that say “damage can’t be prevented”). Meanwhile, Island Sanctuary is the OG of this kind of effect, dating back to Alpha. It’s not as powerful as Solitary Confinement, particularly when flying is attached to so many creatures, unlike in the 90s. But, the upside is that Island Sanctuary gives us the option of not drawing, which means we can cast it on turn 2 and draw each turn until we need the protection it grants us.
With both of these cards, their drawback is ameliorated by all of the card advantage built into our deck. With almost half of our deck drawing us cards, we don’t really need our draw step to keep our hand full of action.
Other Card Draw Synergies
White has some other hidden gems that synergize with our game plan.
Pursuit of Knowledge – this is one of those cards that make brewing around strange and janky themes so rewarding. It’s a perfect fit in our deck, as the oracle text reads, “If you would draw a card, you may put a study counter on Pursuit of Knowledge instead.” There will be turns in the mid- to late-game where we can put three study counters on this enchantment in a single turn, then draw 7 new cards. The dream shall be realized!
Words of Worship – for a single , we can gain 5 life with each cantrip we cast if we’re losing badly. This is probably not a winning strategy, but there will be times when we have enough cards in hand but too low a life total when we’ll want to pay the as often as possible. It also synergizes with both Heliod, Sun-Crowned and Dawn of Hope. With the former out, we can use one of our draws to grow our team, while with the latter on the battlefield, we can pay a total of to gain 5 life and draw a card.
The Rest
We play some tutors (we want ways to find those key enchantments!), some sweepers (one even lets us draw a card), and a couple of value artifacts in Shadowspear and Expedition Map. As every Modern player knows, the former is a great target for Urza’s Saga, while the latter lets us find some all-important lands, like Reliquary Tower.
All said, we play four sweepers. In a deck like ours, we will definitely need to reset the board and probably more than once. We don’t play much spot removal, so we’ll be leaning hard on our lifegain and card draw to stay alive until finding a way to clear the board. Supporting this strategy are three more ways we have of hindering combat.
Sphere of Safety – with 20 enchantments, we should be able to slow down our opponents if we have this card out.
Norn’s Annex – another way of taxing our opponent’s combat.
Maze of Ith – probably needs no explanation…
Flex Spots
When I built this deck, I searched for every White card I could find that had the text, “Draw a card.” on it somewhere. Wonder how many cards I ordered (I already owned quite a few)? 109. The total order cost me about $115, by the way, which tells you how budget-friendly this deck is to build.
However, as you can see from the gallery above, even though there are plenty of cards to choose from, many are straight up unplayable garbage. False Dawn? If it didn’t cantrip, this card would be in the short list for worst of all time. Even though most weren’t this terrible, many of the cards I purchased were just too narrow in their applications beyond simply cantripping.
Cards like Armistice, meanwhile, I deemed too mana intensive for what they did, even if the effect was powerful and synergistic. I envisioned a deck that could chain together draw spells in a single turn, not invest 5 mana to net a single card.
Cards like Spiritualize were the hardest to cut. In my decision making, I prioritized 1- and 2-mana instants over all other cantrips. Ideally, these instants would serve more than one purpose, mostly as combat tricks that would allow them to double as removal. 3 mana instants had to be really, really good. Courageous Resolve and Cease-Fire were the only two I included.
Here are a few more that didn’t make the cut.
Did I make all the right decisions? Are some of the cards I chose worse than others?
Are these cards better than Bandage, Heal, and Plunge into Winter, for instance? Or should I cut from somewhere else to make room for them? I’ll let you decide and let me know in the comments.
I will say, however, that after several matches, I do think cutting a land or two is the right decision. More often than not, I’ve flooded out with all of my card drawing. The only match I’ve won so far is the one where I had a healthy balance of lands and spells in my hand. The matches I’ve lost, I’ve had 3 or more lands and little to no other action in hand.
If you’re looking to power up the deck and are willing to move away from the central theme to do so, I could see cutting some of the cantrips to make room for more bombs, hate cards, or targeted removal. With 49 cards that draw us a card, surely we can trim four or five to make room for something off-theme but powerful. Furthermore, including a card like Sun Titan is theme-adjacent, right?
I’m usually reluctant to include Starfield of Nyx in any deck playing a lot of enchantments because, well, you don’t want said enchantments to die to creature removal. That’s one of the distinct advantages of playing them to begin with. However, in this deck, with so few reliable ways to close out a game, I think finding room for this card is totally reasonable.
Ideal Hand and Game Play
We want to see at least three lands, one creature, and the rest instants or enchantments that will start our card drawing. Having one of our tutors is great, but we often won’t want to play these until the mid game when we know what we need to stabilize or pull ahead. Having a sweeper in hand is nice, as it gives us a surefire way to reset the battlefield, hopefully after we’ve committed some enchantments of our own to the board.
We want to spend the early turns making our land drops and casting cantrips to keep digging for our best support pieces and/or threats. Many of our cards are underpowered and narrow in their use. If the opportunity comes up early to cast something like Gallantry to allow even a Spirited Companion to win in combat, then do it. We want to churn through our deck as consistently and quickly as possible to find our big payoff spells.
Our two primary routes to victory from this spot will be suiting up a creature to give it evasion and protection, or hiding behind something like Solitary Confinement or Sphere of Safety until we find our threats and ways to protect them.
Weaknesses
If you’ve made it this far, then you already have a good idea what our weaknesses are. Our deck is full of overcosted, underpowered cards that cantrip, with a few powerful creatures and some medium-powered synergies. It is easy to lose quickly to an aggressive deck or to durdle and do not much of anything to slower decks and still lose.
I’ve had issues flooding out in several games, which makes me think we can go lower than normal on our land count and trust that our card draw will make up for it. There is also a real possibility that even if we get our card draw going that it won’t be enough. After all, we aren’t playing a bunch of top-tier cards. A hand full of some of the weaker spells in the game will still be weak against a lot of decks, regardless of if we have more cards than our opponent.
A snapshot of the same game above, only a few turns earlier.
Conclusion
You don’t pick up a deck like this and expect to crush your opponents. Rather, this is a casual, fun deck that won’t make you the target at the table or anger your play group with infinite combos, land destruction, or whatever else people hate in Commander. Sure, we’re hoping to draw cards based on what our opponent does and this can be annoying, but we are the opposite of an oppressive deck.
Rather, we are looking largely to live and let live while we draw cards, play some semi-powerful enchantments, and eventually get our synergies online enough to present some possibly game-ending threats. I envision this to be the deck to bring out with new players or when someone has a new deck of their own that needs testing.
As always, thanks for reading! Let me know in the comments what cards you’d include in this deck. Would you pick Heliod, Sun-Crowned over Mangara, the Diplomat? Would you cut some card draw in favor of more bombs? Have you ever built a deck built around breaking the color pie?
