Mangara The Diplomat Superfriends

[pokken]

Mangara, the Diplomat - Superfriends and Monowhite Monarch Control

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Because this decklist is going to change a lot for a while I am just going to use a deckbox link. Mangara's the boss.

https://deckbox.org/sets/2845393


Sooo, by now most people know how much I hate superfriends as an archetype. But the white planeswalkers are just so bad, and they're mostly about pumping creatures and making blockers, so I don't feel bad at all about using Ajani, Caller of the Pride to give Mangara, the Diplomat doublestrike.

I built this deck because some good friends of mine were going to be moving to the neighborhood, and one of them is a brand new player, so I tried to make something pretty slow and casual that can be powerful but doesn't go super fast.

I really like the combination of planeswalkers with Mangara, the Diplomat and planeswalkers, combined with the monarch cards. We've got walkers who need to be attacked to keep in check, we've got Mangara, the Diplomat as a solid blocker, and monarch cards that force people to attack me to steal the monarch token, combined with tons of control spells and Maze of Ith / Kor Haven to help blunt attacks, and cards like Archon of Coronation which fog any attack that does steal the monarchy.

This deck is purposefully slow and not super rampy, but it should really consistently hit its land drops and have the potential to answer almost anything.

I've purposefully eschewed a lot of sweepers and stax elements which are typical of most superfriends builds, both just as a matter of avoiding constant resets (so no Ugin, the Spirit Dragon) and also to keep from being too annoying. My thinking is I should be able to have answers for alpha strikes, which are the usual weakness of decks that try to play without sweepers with pseudo-sweepers like Angel of the Dire Hour, Settle the Wreckage and Comeuppance.

Hopefully this deck is fun to play against and doesn't present insanely complicated turns -just activate one or two crappy walkers, be ready to block, and draw some cards in the command zone. I'd like it to be a fun deck to learn against where people get to cast all their spells and are encouraged to swing away.

Also worth noting that outside of lands I tried to put almost no tutors in there to minimize shuffling time, so no Enlightened Tutor and Search for Glory.

Issue Log

There is a huge glut at 4 on the curve. I think this is probably just a thing I have to deal with because of so many of the walkers I want to run being 4 CMC.

Karn, the Great Creator is probably just not a good card and I should cut it.

I'm really not sure if the Brought Back / Cosmic Intervention + white plains cards are good enough to sustain mana development. I guess we'll see. (* But boy Ancient Tomb looks good with a lifelink commander)

[umtiger]

You're doing nothing to fill up your graveyard.

But would you ever change that and include Triumphant return from commander legends?

[pokken]

Triumphant return

Triumphant Reckoning - yeah that's a good card for sure. Sadly there aren't really that many ways to fill up the bin in mono-white. Maybe Enduring Renewal type stuff?

One nice thing I guess is that planeswalkers put themselves in the bin, and people will likely kill my enchantments/artifacts/walkers as a matter of gameplay.

It's a reasonable thing to think about as a top end play. Chances are good there'll be 4-5 hits in the bin given the deck is probably gonna play sloggy games.

[Ruiner]

Have you considered or played Endless Horizons? I run that in my Bruna, the Fading Light deck since it also is a little higher on the mana curve and it has been fairly helpful in making sure I hit land drops. People rarely see it as a threat so it tends to stick around. I usually pull 8-10 Plains out when I play it (leaving some in the deck just in case it would be destroyed).

[pokken]

I do love me some endless horizons but I don't think it should be necessary with the ca I expect mangara to provide along with the metric crapload of plains shenanigans I have. could be it does belong but I wanna see how all the new crap pans out in this plodding deck.

Things like cartographer hawk and verge rangers and what not.

[pokken]

I finally got to play this deck a couple times. Few things I noticed:

* I kinda missed Ugin, sigh. I might have to add him. When I popped arena rector I could only get Karn.
* The deck is really good at deterring attackers! Mazes, Mangara, removal, Settle the Wreckage etc. I kinda want one more effect like settle, but I regularly had one in hand
* The mana is a little rough, but it's neat how the deck just gets to keep casting 4-drops every turn. I think I might like a couple actual ramp spells.
* Stoic Farmer is absolutely dope in this deck. IT saved me from a turn 3 missed land drop and let me recover to win the game.
* Mangara, the Diplomat is a frigging house in modern EDH! I drew probably 10 cards a game on her ability.
* Sword of Truth and Justice and in general proliferate effects were as good as I figured.
* Ajani, Caller of the Pride was actually pretty good! I put a ton of pressure bashing someone with double striking bros due to the slow pace of the game.


Pretty excited about this new card from the new set too:

So, I need to do a little poking about mana, maybe suck it up and play a couple mana rocks or something to smooth it out. But otherwise the deck did what I wanted, which was:

1) Operate well against medium-high power level decks without being too powerful
2) Present a surface that's annoying enough to attack, while most planeswalkers are fairly unassuming threats

Pretty happy with the deck, and it played fast due to the walkers not being quite as decision-heavy as the blue/red/black walkers.

[pokken]

Man, tons of really nice new cards I like from these sets, not sure which will make it for sure. I think map and semester's end are the most probable, with Nils pretty close behind - protecting your walkers and dishing out some fun diplomacy. Fairly sure I want to run Scholarship Sponsor as another one that's fairly political and helps me catch up from land deficits and also really makes activating Emeria easy peasy a lot of the time.

• semester's end
• promise of loyalty
• archaeomancer's map
• nils, discipline enforcer
• promise of loyalty
• scholarship sponsor
• devastating mastery
• strict proctor

[pokken]

I made a small round of changes that mostly involve supporting stuff like Scorched Ruins and Lotus Vale - so added crucible, and the three lotus lands.

I am going to definitely add Archaeomancer's Map and Scholarship Sponsor, and probably some of the other new stuff. I really like Promise of Loyalty.

Also, I'm giving some thought to trimming the planeswalker package quite a bit because frankly most of them are garbage. The ones I've liked so far:

• Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
• Gideon Jura
• Elspeth, Sun's Champion
• Karn Liberated
• Ugin, the Ineffable
• Karn, Scion of Urza
• Ajani, Strength of the pride
• Ajani, Caller of the Pride

Overall I do like them but I feel like I need another color to get enough good walkers, so debating about playing the three mana planeswalker tutors instead of some of the worse ones. It feels almost too easy but I can see a blink package forming in my minds' eye unfortunately

By *FAR* the best part of this deck so far has been Mangara, the Diplomat's steady stream of card advantage and light life gain, with the second being the high level of instant interaction (including maze) and the third being the plains ramp package. Outside of big Karn, and totally potato games, most of the walkers have been medium at best.

[ISBPathfinder]

I am very interested to hear how your Lotus Vale / Scorched Ruins play out. I found that in mono white they can clash a little with Emeria, the Sky Ruin in that I often found myself sacing basics when possible. Some of the new play from behind land count stuff might be very helpful though. I am very interested to hear more when you get some testing in.

In my rather limited testing of the cards I found that I liked them a bit more in decks that had more priority in ramping than they did in getting an active Emeria. I really only tested them in a single deck so far though and said deck was a reanimator creature deck.

[pokken]

I am very interested to hear how your Lotus Vale / Scorched Ruins play out. I found that in mono white they can clash a little with Emeria, the Sky Ruin in that I often found myself sacing basics when possible. Some of the new play from behind land count stuff might be very helpful though. I am very interested to hear more when you get some testing in.

In my rather limited testing of the cards I found that I liked them a bit more in decks that had more priority in ramping than they did in getting an active Emeria. I really only tested them in a single deck so far though and said deck was a reanimator creature deck.

Yeah, Emeria is really a secondary gameplan for this deck which wants to get to the point of casting top end walker + maintaining interaction. That's one of the reasons I'm trying it out is to see if I can do stuff like...sac a bunch of lands then Archaeomancer's Map / Scholarship Sponsor my way back to the sweet spot of 12 mana or so, pretty early in the game.

Most of my creatures kinda suck so they're fairly low priority to emeria.

One of the reasons I'm considering adding a mild blink theme though I've resisted it is that blinking Knight of the White Orchid is a really powerful thing to do in this deck (and also the cartographer/solemn ofc) and I could add Boreas Charger for more shenanigans.

If it all works out I might go ahead and add Karoo and Kjeldoran Outpost I guess

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small blink/reuse etb theme ideas

• eldrazi displacer
• ephemerate
• semester's end
• eerie interlude
• faith's reward
• glorious protector

Though of course still noodling on all that.

[ISBPathfinder]

Sounds good, looking forward to hearing how that goes for you. Don't forget that they made Guildless Commons if you do go down the Karoo plan. Its not better than Karoo but its another one if you are going that far already.