Hi all,

Here's a fun little mono-white deck for you guys to play with if you're on a budget! I played both this and the upgraded version of the deck throughout Ixalan Standard, and with the addition of a few new toys, Rivals of Ixalan Standard should be fun!

Let's do what we usually do and break down the deck creature by creature!

CREATURES

First off, we have our lone one drop in the deck, Skyborne Duskmarcher. A solid addition to the team, Duskmarcher acts as a way to get early damage through and when necessary, pump up another one of our creatures which rarely ever happens. A 1/1 with flying isn't bad at all, and he usually gets a few damage across before he's removed.

Skymarcher Aspirant is one of the new cards from Rivals we're going to be using and abusing. It's a 2/1 for 1 which is honestly fantastic as it is in our deck, and it has the opportunity to become a 2/1 with flying once we reach the Ascend mechanic, which you always will in this deck.

One of the all-stars of the deck and one of my favorite cards from Ixalan, we have Adanto Vanguard. This card has been a work horse for me in testing so far in all of my vampire decks. Most people forget about the indestructibility and chump block, but there are times where paying that 4 life to destroy a creature and save your own is necessary.

Aviary Mechanic, our only non-vampire in the mainboard, is a great addition to an Oketra's Monument deck. So, this card seems a bit underwhelming at first and I thought so too, but the interaction here is very vital. We're not playing the expensive version of this deck with Metallic Mimic, Legion's Landing , and Angel of Invention, but we can still pump out a ton of tokens here. Mechanic is one of our biggest token creators in the deck as it can be bounced until your mana runs out with another Mechanic when you have Monument out. I've made 5-6 tokens per turn sometimes with that combination of cards.

Martyr of Dusk is another new addition from Rivals of Ixalan, and it's a great one for our deck! When Martyr of Dusk dies, it creates a 1/1 vampire with lifelink so it effectively replaces itself, which is fantastic in a go-wide aggressive deck. Doomed Traveler is quite good in most weenie decks, so this one will also be a fine addition. With monument it creates three bodies for 1 mana, giving you the 1/1 warrior, itself, and a 1/1 lifelinker when it dies.

Legion Conquistador is actually ridiculous in this deck. So, when we're empty handed, casting this card is great. With our win condition Oketra's Monument, this card is nuts. We can get the other three of this card in to our hand once he's played, and usually, you can cast more than one per turn because he's essentially a two drop with the monument out.

Mavren Fein, Dusk Apostle is pretty dope here too. He'll almost always be generating a token per turn, which is great because we can use them to chump block really well and we're always ensuring that we have something to protect us with on the following turn. Love it, good value for the price.

Paladin of the Bloodstained is honestly my favorite card in this deck. On it's own, it's okay. But with the monument out, it's a 3/1 body, generating the token with monument and the token on the ETB ability. You really can't go wrong here at all, as more often than not it's just a 3 drop. It turns into a poor man's Regal Caracal, even though the Caracal is already pretty cheap.

NON-CREATURES

The bread and butter of the deck, Oketra's Monument. This card has been sick and used to be really good in Standard with the U/W Monument decks that were so fun to pilot. However, we don't have a ton of flashy spirits or fancy fliers, we have some cheap and efficient vampires that we can use to abuse this with now. All of our vampires are white and it makes the monument super effective here, as it reduces the cost for every single one of our creatures. Value machine for sure.

Thopter Arrest has recently been added over Desert's Hold. I had originally been using Desert's Hold for various reasons, but I have since been testing with Thopter Arrest lately and found out that it works a lot better than Desert's Hold does, so we're gonna stick with it and change it up.

Ixalan's Binding is also my go-to for exiling right now over Cast Out just because I like the effect that they can't cast any more of the same spell. I've had it where The Scarab God was exiled, and then another one was cast. U/B doesn't have any efficient ways to destroy enchantments, so we want to stop them from completely playing the card.

Due to the recent price drop in Legion's Landing , we're going to play three copies of it here. When I first made the deck, the card was sitting at around $8-9, so that's really high for a deck as cheap as this one. Now that they're hovering at around $4.50-$5, I feel like it's a good cheap investment. This card is honestly amazing in this deck! It doesn't seem so great but it is a pretty decent mana sink late game, and you can bounce it with Aviary Mechanic so easily. Play it, get your token, play Aviary Mechanic and bounce it back, and play it again for another token all for just four mana total. If you get really fancy and have Oketra's Monument the bouncing is cheaper and more fun.

LANDS

The best part about a mono-colored deck... the land base. So cheap, so efficient, so effective. We're going to run as many plains as you want, in all honesty. I'm going to go with 15 for now but I've changed it around a little bit. Shefet Dunes is also a house in this deck as it pumps up our team for the kill. And finally, Scavenger Grounds makes a lone appearance here as a way to exile graveyards. Feel free to fiddle around with this as you see fit, but this is a pretty optimal mana base. Desert of the True is okay but I hate tapped lands because I feel like they come around when I don't need them, and when I need to cycle them I can't.

SIDEBOARD

Totally meta dependent, but this is what I've found to be pretty nice for the most part. Authority of the Consuls stops Ramunap Red fairly well and also shuts down the GPG haste creatures. Fragmentize destroys a ton of the legendary artifacts running around in Standard right now, as well as some other annoying artifacts. Fairgrounds Warden is always a solid card to catch someone off guard and we play two out of the side for extra exiling, along with another copy of Ixalan's Binding and two Thopter Arrest. Dusk / Dawn is a play set of our sideboard because we're going to need it to destroy midrange and any large creature decks, mainly dinosaurs and energy decks. And last but not least, Saving Grace has been a real saving grace for me against sweepers. It redirects all of the damage that your opponent is doing to creatures you control that creature instead, and thus saves you from a board wipe. It's one hell of a surprise card.

11/4/2017

The non-budget version of this deck, featuring Metallic Mimic, Legion's Landing , and Angel of Invention is doing quite well at the Pro Tour. If you're looking to jump into Standard with a budget version of a powerful deck, and upgrade for in all honesty not that much, this deck is great for you. I would highly recommend it! Check the UPGRADES section of this deck for the reason as to why they're great!