Mono White Control Featuring Mangara the Diplomat
Creatures (34)
Planeswalkers (1)
Artifacts (10)
1 Sol Ring
Instants (6)
1 Get Lost
Sideboard
Approximate Total Cost:
I built this deck as a proof of concept for Mono White Control. I've had it for a few years and have been upgrading it as new cards release, and it quickly became one of my favorite decks. A few years ago I wondered if mono white's card draw had finally improved enough to unlock the strength of white's breadth of answers and enable a solid control deck. The goal is to keep the cards coming to maintain a full or close to full hand while controlling the board state. I build my own board with weenies that either set rules that keep other strategies in check, draw cards or otherwise build my resources, or serve as direct answers. Then I maintain a relatively low profile, swinging in for chip damage whenever possible and answering only what I absolutely need to answer until I can either switch over to closing the table out with damage (using things like Elesh Norn), combo with Heliod/Walker, or cast Approach of the Second Sun twice (which is surprisingly easy to do on back to back turns). Ample wipes let me reset the board as needed, and the ability to keep a full grip lets me rebuild quickly. There's also a good deal of recursion in the deck, and all of it boils down to inevitability. Its never the most threatening deck until the end game, but its always putting some pressure on and getting life totals down while rarely running out of steam due to its many ways to restock.
I tried several commanders for this deck but settled on Mangara because he is easy to cast and draws a solid number of cards, which is what really drives this deck. You need the constant card draw to maintain a large hand, which is necessary to bounce back from wipes (including your own) more easily than your opponents. You also need that draw to see enough of the deck to ensure you have a good shot of drawing a steady stream of answers, either the top tier spot removal, the various wipes, or the many hosers that shut down or at least slow down powerful strategies. Hitting those hosers can be make or break. Being able to essentially ignore an opponent for a few turns because they have no answer for an etb or gy hoser lets you focus down a different player that's otherwise a bigger threat or for whose deck you lack plentiful answers. Mangara being such a reliable source of draw lets me cut the weaker card draw spells in white and add more answers instead while still maintaining the same rate of draw. Mangara also tends to send attackers elsewhere while he's out, because its not worth sending multiple attackers at me for chip damage if it draw me a card. Finally, he interacts with a number of cards in the deck, as surprising amount of the best creatures for this sort of deck are either humans or clerics, enabling the use of some light tribal cards, particularly Path of Ancestry, and there's also a good amount of power 2 or less matters in the deck.
