Eight-and-a-Half-Tails
Mono White Weenie but good
"You have reached a point where I simply cannot kill you. Ever." -Annoyed friend.
Introduction
Foreword
I always wanted to prove that even mono white weenies can bring a good fight to a commander game. I was experimenting with other playstyles and themes like; tribal, Voltron and lifegain. Unfortunately most of these mono white deck themes simply were not strong enough to compete in my metagame. So I tried something else where mono white is good at, especially in other formats. Weenies and protection.
History
So after all these experiments with other mono white decks I finally decided to create an Eight-and-a-Half-Tails deck. But it had to go through some iterations before I was satisfied with the results. It was very difficult to choose in what direction I wanted the deck to go to. But after multiple small and large changes to the deck, it finally works as intended.
You'll like this deck if you enjoy...
- mono white and want to see it being able to win consistently
- a deck that's different.
- opponents needing to pick up cards to read and understand and later realizing how some interactions actually work.
- playing defensive playstyles
- destroying control decks which run loads of targeted removal and want to make them rethink their deck.
- giving yourself a bit of a challenge with a slightly harder to pilot deck. With a bunch of decision making and well timed plays.
- playing with small creatures and finding synergy in them.
You won't like this deck if you enjoy...
- drawing you entire deck.
- having really explosive turns all the time and always be on top of the mountain.
- infinite combos
- giant creatures with huge power and toughness.
- not thinking about the stack and ordering of effects.
- as few decision points as possible.
- not playing white...
Recommendations
The Deck Ranking
General Attributes
- Speed - Very quick at creating boardstate, but slow at finishing games.
- Newbie friendly - The difficulty is mostly in the timing of playing cards and holding up mana for protection. Also some synergies and interactions may not be very obvious for new players.
- Commander Dependency - Eight-and-a-Half-Tails is not always required to be on the battlefield. It's mostly situational. You want it out if you really need to protect a key piece of your setup or when you need to finish a game, but can't get through opponent's defences.
- Threat before start - "Mono white sucks" is what most players think when facing one. But this deck is here to prove the opposite!
- Singleplayer mode - You have to keep up less mana to protect yourself and your permanents. This makes it easier to fill the board with threat and engines. The speed of the deck is much faster in this gamemode.
- Multiplayer mode - You have to keep up more mana compared to singleplayer (one or two more mana) if you want to protect yourself or your permanents. But since you aren't a threat most of the time you can sometimes get away with tapping out.
- Expensiveness - Mono white does not have many good options regarding ramp, card draw, and finishers. I am running some of the strongest cards mono white has to offer concerning these topics. So unfortunately this won't be your daily budget list.
Game Play Attributes
- Acceleration - Devotion is your best friend here. With cards like Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and the newly added Nyx Lotus, you can get some really big mana rocks online.
- Tutoring - There are a couple conditional tutors, some search up lands, search up a creature or an equipment. Most of them are a creature themselves.
- Board control - The deck has many tools to deal with permanents on the board. There are some very strong options to deal with large creatures, Voltron themed decks, graveyard decks, combo decks and many more.
- Spell control - Note that Eight-and-a-Half-Tails can also make spells white. This can help with protecting your stuff against targeted removal. This deck is pretty bad against counter spells though.
- Card advantage - I mean, its decent... Cards like Mentor of the Meek and Bygone Bishop are solid draw engines in a weenie archetype. But it's still mono white, so don't expect this deck is the solution to white's card draw problems.
- Offence - The deck has a lot of small utility creatures in order to control the board or find important pieces to a problem or engine. So attacking is not your strongest point. It is however pretty easy to get past the opponent's defences, but it requires some mana. And with some finishers like an anthem effect on a wide board state you are able to finish games pretty effectively.
- Defence - When you have some of your key pieces online, opponents may find it impossible to win from you, and simply scoop.
- Combo potential - As far as I know, there are no infinite loops in this deck. The deck seems pretty fair at first sight...
Strengths and Weaknesses
The Deck's Strengths
- The deck gets underestimated a lot. I have had so many games where someone just has to read my commander again in order to understand the interaction that just happened in frond of them.
- There are plenty of good, efficient answers to problems. All be it reanimation, Voltron, ramp, large creatures or control decks.
- The deck is very reliably on the defensive side. I've had plenty of situations where I had less than 0 life and was still able to survive and fight back.
- You are about to play with the first viable mono white weenie deck.
- Very strong early game, regarding fragility. It's hard for opponents to interact with the shenanigans you are doing.
- Very efficient anti meta options. If your meta is very controlling, put in a Grand Abolisher, if your meta is very aggressive, put in an extra sweeper, you name it.
The Deck's Weaknesses
- Has a hard time getting card advantage. It may happen that you don't draw your card draw engines, which may result in a much harder game for you.
- You'll have a bad time against commanders like Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite or decks with a lot of sweepers.
- Mono white weenies does not deal very well with flyers, since you don't have a lot of them yourself. You can thankfully put more flyers in the deck if you so desire.
- It might happen you don't draw your finishers, but have your opponent in a state where they can't win, but refuse to give up. This may result in an unnecessary dragged out game, which can be boring after a while.
The Deck Idea
General idea
The deck is build around a protective idea. Which means, you have to protect yourself and your permanents by using Eight-and-a-Half-Tails together with cards like Circle of Protection: White or Gideon of the Trials. With such a setup, opponents find it hard to kill you if you have the mana for it.
So the next thing we need is a large amounts of mana. White's ability to ramp gets underestimated a lot in my opinion. You have some very good tools to get more lands out that one each turn. These are my favorite ramping cards you can run in mono white:
Now that we are setup with plenty of mana and some protection cards we are good to go to the mid/late game. The deck is not very good at dealing with 3v1's. It prefers to lean back, keep its win condition in its hand and wait for one player to lose the game. You are probably not the one being attacked or disrupted, since it requires a lot of effort for the opponents.
You can speed up the four player game with some politics. To help with shutting down the most threatening player on the table, you can make a creature an opponent controls white. This can encourage players to attack if you have cards like Crusade or Gauntlet of Power out. A card I like to mention which really shines in these political situations is Spurnmage Advocate. It can destroy an attacking creature, the creature isn't required to be attacking you, and you can return 2 cards form the weakest player's graveyard to their hand. You make some friends this way, and together you try to shut down the strongest opponent.
Then, when a player is out of the game and everyone is on shaky life totals, it's time to play out your bombs you've been holding up. Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite is probably the best example for this. But you can also kill players the slow way. With cards like Sword of War and Peace. Slowly draining opponents and giving you a more likable life total. Also, it gives protection from red and white.
Decklist
Mono White Weenie
Approximate Total Cost:
Card Choices
1. Ramp/Land Drops
8.5 Tails requires a ton of mana to protect you from everything your opponents can throw at you in a single turn. Cards that let you play or have more lands are preferred as the unwritten rule in commander is, to not mess with player's lands. But some artifacts are simply to good not to play.
Ramp/Land Drops
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- Dowsing Dagger - A very powerful equipment which becomes a land that produces three mana when in transforms. It is very easy to transform because you have your commander out on turn two or three and on turn four you play and equip this and swing into an opponent.
- Gauntlet of Power - Extremely powerful tool to double your mana and it pumps your team. Can also be used as a political tool. Gauntlet of Power may attract a lot of attention towards opponents, but you can protect it with your commander, so its not that big of a deal.
- Knight of the White Orchid - Okay, I have to admit. This is my favorite ramp card in white. It is so efficient when you are not first. Turn three play the Knight, get out a third land untapped play your land for turn, and play something else. It just feels great.
- Land Tax - Considerably the most broken card in white. Supplies you all the lands you'll ever need in a commander game and filters out the lands in your deck to draw more powerful cards than lands.
- Legion's Landing - A very underplayed card which makes a lifelinking weenie and later transforms into a land which also produces a token at instant speed. It is very common you leave three to four mana open to protect your permanents, but didn't need to use it. So you can make a token instead.
- Nyx Lotus - You may have already noticed... We play a lot of white cards, with a lot of symbols in their costs. I've had so many games where Nyx Lotus is able to produce ridiculous amounts of mana.
- Solemn Simulacrum Cartographer's Hawk - Upgraded Solemn with the new Cartographer's Hawk. Which looks like the already great Knight of the White Orchid.
- Sword of the Animist - Looks like Dowsing Dagger but can put more work in the long run. Dowsing Dagger gives more mana at once, SotA gives more over time.
- Weathered Wayfarer - Very good card for searching the lands you need. You'll probably look for a Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx first, than a Terrain Generator to put out the extra lands Weathered Wayfarer supplies.
White is not the greatest at drawing cards. So you need to look at less obvious ways to get card advantage. Recursion is one of them, so that's why I put it in this list.
Cardadvantage/Recursion
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- Bishop of Rebirth - A bit of a pet card, but still good. Pretty much 25% of the deck are creatures with converted mana cost 3 or less. It's also not too difficult to attack with this, since you can protect it from big boy blockers.
- Bygone Bishop - Another Bishop that gives card advantage. Like I said 25% of the deck is a weenie, so no problem triggering this.
- Endless Atlas - Good card to draw you some cards in a mono coloured deck. Like I said before, when you kept some mana open to protect your stuff, but didn't needed it in the end, you just draw a card with this and be happy about it.
- Kytheon, Hero of Akros Ranger-Captain of Eos - Kytheon used to be in the deck because I had this deck be a Gideon tribal deck before, but since it now doesn't serve that purpose anymore, I swapped it with the Ranger-Captain of Eos.
- Militia Bugler - Pretty good fit if you do some simple calculations. You have a 99 card deck, look at the top four cards of the library. 25 cards out of the 100 are smaller or equal to two power. Which is one out of four. So technically you should find at least one card with this trigger. Which is card advantage to me. Also decent body. This is however the first card I would cut in this list, because sometimes you just miss and feel bad.
- Mentor of the Meek - This is probably the best card draw engine in the deck. Without it, the deck wouldn't be as good.
- Palace Jailer - Monarch is a great addition to a commander game in my opinion, I wish I could run more of it, but this would do. You can protect yourself from losing the monarch pretty well and retake it too without a problem. Oh and also it's exiles a creature
- Ranger of Eos - I have eight very solid one drops in the deck, with each a different purpose. You can search up a Mother of Runes for protection or a Giant Killer for removal or a Serra Ascendant for aggro.
- Recruiter of the Guard - Can search up like 25% of deck. Yeah it's pretty good.
- Sun Titan - Probably the best recursion tool in here.
- Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle - Teshar does a good amount of work sometimes. We have enough historic spells to make him work. A handful of artifacts, a couple of legendary creatures and three planeswalkers. (excluding Kytheon)
- Thalia's Lancers - Most of the important cards are legendary. So this is pretty much an auto include. You can get each planeswalker with this, Nyx Lotus, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant, or Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
White is awesome at protecting things. This is also the section where most of the synergy in the deck comes together.
Protection/Hatebears
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- Archon of Absolution - Solid defensive card. In my opinion even better than Ghostly Prison in this deck. It requires one less mana for the opponent to attack you, but they need to pay too if they want to attack a planeswalker you control. The protection from white really helps with protecting itself and flyers is something this deck struggles at, so it's very welcome.
- Aven Mindcensor Painter's Servant - Upgraded the bird with a Scarecrow. I probably should have just slided it in right from the start... I think It will create many fun and interesting interactions in future games.
- Circle of Protection: White - Has very good synergy with Eight-and-a-Half-Tails. With the mana, not a single creature is able to deal damage to you.
- Crackdown - Very good against big beafy creatures. And even better if those creatures also have hexproof. Because our commander can't really answer hexproof creatures so we need tools like this.
- Earnest Fellowship - This card is an absolute power house. It opens up an entirely new game with awesome synergies and great board control.
Every creature you control has protection from white and every time someone tries to answer something from you, it suddenly becomes white and unlegal as a target because of our commander.
This card makes attacking and blocking so easy. Make every creature white an opponent controls and attack his face. But you have to watch out when blocking. You have to block the creature first, then before damage make it white. Otherwise you won't be able to block it because it also gets protection form its colours with Earnest Fellowship.
There is another nasty thing you can do is against a Voltron deck. You can make the equipped or enchanted creature white, and then make the equipment's or aura's white too. They will then all fall off the creature.
The last thing I want to mention is the interaction with damage dealing boardwipes like Blasphemous Act. Make the spell white, and it won't be dealing any damage to your creatures.
- Gideon of the Trials - Another all star. You just ultimate the guy and protect it as long as you can with you commander. Yes, you heard it right. Planeswalkers can have protection from white, and white creatures and spells can't kill it. So you will never lose the game as long as you have the mana. I would recommend playing it only when you're close to dead. It will sets a marker on you with this out. Players are going to team up on you to shut Gideon down.
- Giver of Runes - Card that look like Eight-and-a-Half-Tails but doesn't require a bunch of mana.
- Linvala, Keeper of Silence - One of the best hatebears in commander. It's very good in my meta with commanders that have activated abilities written all over the place.
- Mother of Runes - Basically the same as Giver of Runes.
- Planar Guide - One of the best anti boardwipe protection spell in the deck. It can also remove tokens of opponents, or trigger your ETB's from Ranger of Eos or Mentor of the Meek once again.
- Remorseful Cleric - Weenie with an ability to remove a graveyard. It is necessary if you have graveyard decks in your metagame. Not to mention it is also a flyer.
- Rune of Protection: White - Basically the same as Circle of Protection: White
- Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant - Unintended mistake for commander works pretty well in protecting your creatures, who would have guessed?
- Selfless Spirit - Another very good anti boardwipe weenie, also with flying.
- Spurnmage Advocate - Fun political card, which messes up so many attacks.
- Story Circle - Almost the same as Rune of Protection: White or Circle of Protection: White but a more. I've had situation where I didn't choose white. So keep that in mind.
- Thalia, Heretic Cathar - Creates a bit of tempo. Good when on the offence and on the defensive side. Also pretty nasty when getting flickered by Planar Guide at an opponents end step. It gives you a free attack onto each opponent.
- Unbreakable Formation - This helps a lot against board wipes. It protects your team, to then punish your opponents for it. It can also be used as a pump spell in your main phase to finish off games.
- Worship - A very annoying card to deal with for opponent. Sometimes they just scoop because they can't destroy it or a creature you control.
The Swords that at least give protection from white is really worth it to run in here. Some creatures like your commander for example get a bunch of hate after a while when people realise how hard it is to deal with your shenanigans. A sword gives you the option to leave up less mana than before in order to protect your commander or your threat. I've put in some equipment tutors which are also weenies to be able to search for these equipment's.
Swords & Equipment Synergies
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- Relic Seeker - Good card to find the equipment you need. You don't always have to go for a protection sword. You can also get a ramping sword (Sword of the Animist) or a Dowsing Dagger. It's not that difficult to get the renowned trigger. If opponents have blockers you just give it protection with your commander.
- Stoneforge Mystic - Better than Relic Seeker, but much more expensive. Can be cut if you don't have to money for it.
- Sword of Light and Shadow - A sword that gives you some cardadvantage and life.
- Sword of Truth and Justice - A sword that makes your creatures bigger. Sometimes it will proliferate a planeswalker you have or put an extra counter on creatures when you have Mikaeus, the Lunarch out.
- Sword of War and Peace - A sword that can deal massive amounts of life swings when against the right decks.
One of white's greatest strengths is removal. There are many viable options for it, all with their own benefits.
Sweepers & Removal
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- Bounty Agent - A weenie with option to kill a problematic legendary.
- Dusk // Dawn - A decently one sided board wipe and recursion effect. Very strong in lategame situations
- Giant Killer - An underplayed card that deserves more attention in white decks. Easy to tutor up, it kills a thing and taps down a big creature when needed. You probably have the mana for it, so why not go for it?
- Glare of Heresy - Basically a Vindicate that exiles instead of destroys.
- Heliod's Intervention - A very strong new white card with the option to destroy every enchantment and artifact opponent control or gain you a bunch of life out of nowhere. The lifegain effect have messed up so many game ending attacks for opponents. It's pretty good.
- Mass Calcify - Good one sided board wipe which can also be used with a political aspect. Maybe make some friends and not blow up someone's commander.
- Ravnica at War - A card I'm experimenting with. Looks like a solid one sided board wipe but maybe a bit too specific.
It's something white struggles in. Winning the game. Either you get a tribal deck to finish a game or Voltron. But weenies... It's another story. We have to be patient and slowly developing a board. Then when the anthem effects hit, attack.
Win conditions
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- Benalish Marshal - Good card to pump you team, in creature form with three converter mana cost. So this is handy in bringing back from the graveyard with Sun Titan or Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle. Not to mention it adds three white devotion to your devotion cards.
- Crusade - Anthem effect with some political aspect to it.
- Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite - Best anthem effect in white. Period. This wins games.
- Elspeth, Sun's Champion - Flexible card with multiple uses. This might also be a deck where you want to ult it in order to win a game. And remember to give it protection with your commander if players want to kill her!
- Gideon, Ally of Zendikar - Anthem effect on an emblem is hard to argue with. You might get away with first +1 it and a turn later -4 it for the emblem. It depends if you have enough mana to protect it with 8.5 Tails.
- Heliod, Sun-Crowned - Great attacker and blocker, since you have the devotion for it. Pretty much always. It also gives you some life back when you feel like it.
- Mikaeus, the Lunarch - Really good in reliably pumping your weenies.
- Reverent Hoplite - This card is probably my favorite finisher. The most tokens I made with this is 17. With the Benalish Marshal out, they were all 2/2's so that game ended very quickly.
- Serra Ascendant - Insanely unfair body for its cost. But it's just too good for this deck to not run.
I'm not running that many nonbasic lands. 8.5 Tails requires which restricts us in running too many colorless lands. Currently I'm running five (including Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx) and I'm thinking about going back to four. Since it screwed me once.
Lands
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- Castle Ardenvale - Good manasync when you didn't use the leftover mana to protect your permanents.
- Emeria, the Sky Ruin - Amazing land in recurring threats like Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite or Reverent Hoplite and many more creatures.
- Forbidding Watchtower - Decent land in blocking creatures, may be rather unexpecting to other players.
- Labyrinth of Skophos - Good version of Maze of Ith. It's very common you have enough mana left to use its ability. Can also be used in politics.
- Mobilized District - Very good creature land, with a couple of legendary creatures and planeswalkers in the deck.
- Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx - Probably the best land in the deck. It easily makes enough mana to play out your hand and still leave mana open for protection.
- Secluded Steppe - What can I say, I like cycle lands... When drawing this in late game, just toss it away for something else. Just feels like a nice addition.
- Terrain Generator - Very good land when running cards like Land Tax and Weathered Wayfarer.
Change Log
Kytheon, Hero of Akros // Gideon, Battle-Forged --> Ranger-Captain of Eos
Aven Mindcensor --> Painter's Servant
Solemn Simulacrum --> Cartographer's Hawk
