INTRODUCTION

The Commander format is loved primarily because it allows us to express exactly what we love about magic. Love competition? Tune up that 1v1 list. Love Zany combos? Everything's a combo with Ghave. Love flavor? Doran treefolk tribal it is. The list goes on and on. At heart, I'm a White mage. From my first Benalish Hero to the Seraph that was the crown jewel of my early collection, white cards have defined how I play Magic.

I've always been inspired by players who built 27 commander decks, one for each color combination (5 monocolored, 10 guilds, 5 wedges, 5 shards, 1 mono-brown, 1 5-color). But for me, if the decklist doesn't have plains, I don't want to play it. Which is good for my budget too, as there's only 10 Commander color combinations where adding Plains to the deck is legal.

Over the next several articles, I'm going to be showing you one Commander decklist in each of these color combinations. Each deck will explore one theme based around something that White spells do well. We'll even get some bonus sub-themes since 10 decks isn't really enough to contain all of White magic's awesomeness. My philosophy is what I call casual competitive. I want my decks to be good, I want to at least stay competitive with any deck I happen to get matched up with on Modo. But i'm not going to spend big bucks for every Vindicate and Savannah and I don't intend to run infinite combos or lame cards like Serra Ascendant. My goal is to have fun and help my opponents have fun too.

This week, we're beginning by exploring white magic's most classic archetype - White Weenie. And we'll do it in the most purely white way possible - snow-covered plains style. This is Darien, King of Kjeldor and his Snow-Covered Soldiers.

DECKLIST

CARD SELECTIONS

So first up, let's talk about our General Darien and what he does best.

One of monowhite's biggest weaknesses is that we're highly vulnerable to board-wipes. We don't draw cards well and we want to play a bunch of small creatures. But monowhite has always loved a good army-in-a-can, and Darien is one of those. In multi-player once Darien hits the board my opponents have an incentive to direct their attacks someplace else. If we need to get ourselves some soldiers, we can always damage ourselves with cards like City of Brass and Grand Coliseum. Sure, you could add in Soul Warden and her sisters and come out even on life, but that would take us in a controlling direction and this deck is made to attack. And if they ever actually swing at you with some fearsome dragon? Cathars' Crusade + Darien is just bonkers. I take 6 damage from your monster, I crack back with a 9/9 general and 6 7/7 soldiers!

Another weakness is that White doesn't ramp mana well at all. We solve this problem by adding the quite flavorful Snow-Covered lands - Kjeldor is a land of snow and ice after all. Scrying Sheets lets us clear lands off the top of our deck and Extraplanar Lens probably results in us doubling all our mana without the opponent benefiting. Caged Sun and Gauntlet of Power provide similar sources of mana ramp while also pumping our soldier armies.

Our army of 1/1 and 2/2 soldiers aren't very good without lots of support. We have several ways to use our soldiers profitably, including Catapult Master for repeatable removal, Field Marshal and Captain of the Watch for anthem effects with a bonus, Mentor of the Meek for card draw, and Coat of Arms and Door of Destinies to enable our soldiers to get bigger than dragons.

We still need to be able to control the board, but we can do it with a bit more finesse in a deck like this. Martial Coup leaves us with the only army, Mass Calcify is pretty close to Plague Wind in our deck, and Austere Command can leave our tokens alone while wiping all the scary monsters off the board. We have spot removal like the underrated Crib Swap and the flavorful Unified Strike. We can also play hoser cards like Rest in Peace and Torpor Orb because they hurt our opponent's decks more than they hurt ours.

What would a soldier be without his gear? In this case, our equipments are utility cards that we should always have access to. I've left the standard white equipment tutors like Stoneforge Mystic out of this deck because they don't fit the tribal theme. Instead, we'll just make like a good soldier and use the tools our deck gives us. Jitte can do a ton of work, Skullclamp is huge card advantage with all our little dudes, and Sword of Fire and Ice draws us the cards we desperately want.

Monocolored decks don't have to worry about color screw, so we get to play a bit more utility lands in this deck. Windbrisk Heights still taps for white, but triggers often in an army deck and can give us a bit of card advantage. Tectonic Edge blows up someone's Cabal Coffers or Winding Canyons. Emeria, the Sky Ruin is the one of the best benefits of playing monowhite as it gives us reliable card advantage in the late game when we have less options to generate it than most decks. And don't worry, Snow-covered plains count the same as normal plains for triggering Emeria.

BUDGET

Now for the big question. . . what does it all cost? At prices as of this writing, this deck will run you about ~45 tix. That's not too bad for a deck that's guaranteed to keep getting support and stay relevant forever (we already know there will be soldiers in Theros). The deck will struggle with combo players, but you'll hold your own in both multiplayer and 1v1 commander with this deck list.

The 6 most expensive cards (Sol Ring, Sword of Fire and Ice, Umezawa's Jitte, Torpor Orb, Hero of Bladehold, and Windbrisk Heights) make up about half of that cost themselves, so you can find some budget friendly replacements for just 6 cards and be in business. If you'd like to keep the army theme but are on an even tighter budget, try cutting Darien and the Snow cards (Darien, City of Brass, Extraplanar Lens, Snow-Covered Plains, Scrying Sheets, Mouth of Ronom) and replacing with Odric as your general to save another 8 tix or so.

ACTION REPORT

I virtually sleeved up my deck and took it for a spin in the "Just for Fun" rooms. I enjoy both multi-player and 1v1 commander and today I'm bringing you 1v1 versus Sek'Kuar, Deathkeeper.

I win the draw and my opening hand reveals Sword of Fire and Ice, Conqueror's Pledge, Veteran Armorer, Return to Dust, Mouth of Ronom, Rogue's Passage, and Snow-covered Plains. Needs more white mana, but my deck has a lot of that so I keep. Sek'Kuar keeps his 7 and we're off.

Sek'Kuar starts the action with Birds of Paradise while I counter on turn 2 with Veteran Armorer. He plays a turn 2 Skullclamp without equipping and I start worrying about all the card advantage Sek'Kuar's Graveborn tokens can generate with an active Skullclamp. I play my Sword of Fire and Ice , swing for 2, and expect to see some tokens of some sort hit the battlefield. Instead, my opponent clamps his Birds, plays a forest and chooses to discard Rune-Scarred Demon not a token deck after all and suddenly I'm wishing that Return to Dust was Rest in Peace instead.

I untap for turn 4 and have no land drop so I equip my Sword and swing to draw a card. It's not a land, so I'm a bit stuck. I drop the freshly drawn Loxodon Warhammer and wonder if anyone's ever played Veteran Armorer Voltron before. My opponent doesn't respond with reanimation shenanigans, instead dropping Trading Post. This opponent is clearly the same style of player as I am! I untap, draw a not very helpful Dreamstone Hedron and equip the Warhammer to send Voltron into the red zone. My opponent is now on only 17 life and I'm starting to wonder if I can really blitz a reanimator deck.

My opponent untaps and resolves Living Death to answer that question. His Rune-Scarred Demon tutors him up a new card. I untap and Return to Dust the Skullclamp and Trading Post to shut down a potential loop of card advantage and tutoring. He spends his next turn ramping and I'm thinking I have a shot. I resolve Conqueror's Pledge and say go. He drops a very large Sylvan Primordial and eats my Sword of Fire and Ice. I untap looking for a sixth land but still can't find it. I drop an Intrepid Hero to join my Kor Soldiers and pass the turn. He kills the Hero with Flesh//Blood and plays and equips Loxodon Warhammer to his Demon. Things look bleak, but the top of my deck is kind and gives me an untapped land to let me play the big Austere Command. I wipe artifacts and big creatures and now my Kor Soldiers look mighty once more. He reanimates Rune-Scarred Demon again and plays Greater Good which I assume means he is digging for answers. I play my Caged Sun to finally end my mana problems and swing my army of now 2/2 soldiers to drop him to 20 life. Things are looking great. . .

Until my opponent untaps, plays Eternal Witness targeting Living Death, plays a Garruk Wildspeaker to rub it in, and then resolves that rebought Living Death to give him an army and me a very lonely Intrepid Hero. Of course the reanimated Sylvan Primordial blows up my Caged Sun and I'm back to limited mana land. Thankfully when things are bleak this deck always has a powerful speed bump, so I play Darien, King of Kjeldor and hope that his rattlesnake token making keeps me alive for a few more turns while I plot revenge.



This is Kjeldor!

I have board wipes and other options, I just need some time. I'm hoping Darien can dodge removal for a turn or two and give me some options. There's always the possibility that the Marshal's Anthem in my hand will turn a small amount of soldiers he creates for me into a big enough army for a surprise victory. Instead, my opponent untaps and plays Molten Primordial targeting Darien. Clearly Darien knows a winning side when he sees it and he hops onto the other side of the battlefield to swing with a huge team and defeat me.



Darien never loses. I just don't always win.

CONCLUSION

So there you have it, a tour of monowhite, some classic snow-covered shenanigans, and a look at the quintessential white tribe of small dudes: soldiers. I hope you enjoyed it and I can't wait to share all the other fun things white does best in the future.