What are your favourite mono-white and mono-blue generals?

[BaronCappuccino]

The only mono blue deck I've ever built is Baral, Chief of Compliance which I built as a Polymorph deck, and wasn't too excited with. What I'd want in a mono blue deck is sea monster tribal with krakens, octopi, whales and leviathan - and I almost made one helmed by Thassa, God of the Sea. but never bought in, and if I did so again, would probably helm by Thryx, the Sudden Storm and make a Timmy card tribal deck.

The only mono white deck I've ever built is Kemba, Kha Regent and there wasn't an original idea to be found therein. I've been tempted by Sephara, Sky's Blade, but the desire to do so was quenched by my Rakdos demons list which is effectively the evil variant of what I would've done with Sephara. My ongoing quest is to satiate my inner spike with timmy cards.

[folding_music]

I reckon that if you ever wanna see exciting mono-colour decks we all have to accept a lower-power environment, where people can put aside the tuned stuff and just play their favourite clunky cards. When you build for power all that gets replaced and you're basically a competitive player in a format that's better maintained by peace treaty; not a competitive player as in striving for the best, but a competitive player as opposed to a cooperative one. A lot of the self-professed 75% decks are see are composed of nothing but staples and everyone in the card-of-the-day thread assesses cards based on whether they're the best in their field.

Would love to have a conversation about the extent to which casual EDH has been pulled out of orbit by data.

[BaronCappuccino]

The same data that allows you to pick the best cards allows you to make sure you don't, so I'm okay with it. I don't think it pulled EDH out of orbit, but rather pulled it into orbit faster than it would have naturally. The end game of almost every game is a solved state, and the only difference efficient data collecting makes is on the speed a game gets there. Before EDHRec, and even with it, my primary source of card selection is Gatherer, because I like to examine broad categories that fit a goal, and even with only that capacity, I could determine the most optimal choices available. If anything, EDHRec casualizes the card selection more than it makes it competitive, because it incorporates thoughtless card selection into every commander's list rather than looking to the rarer thoughtful decks alone.

[pokken]

I reckon that if you ever wanna see exciting mono-colour decks we all have to accept a lower-power environment, where people can put aside the tuned stuff and just play their favourite clunky cards. When you build for power all that gets replaced and you're basically a competitive player in a format that's better maintained by peace treaty; not a competitive player as in striving for the best, but a competitive player as opposed to a cooperative one. A lot of the self-professed 75% decks are see are composed of nothing but staples and everyone in the card-of-the-day thread assesses cards based on whether they're the best in their field.

Would love to have a conversation about the extent to which casual EDH has been pulled out of orbit by data.

Start the thread

I do think that all the data we have has brought the floor up because it's gotten people aware of the rules of deck construction that make a deck run smoothly. Everyone runs some card draw/selection, ramp, fixing, and people tend to play fewer high curve spells unless they have the mana to support them.

But on the flipside I think the tools are getting there to, like the good baron said, understand if your deck is too strong for your meta. So I think long term the data is going to make people far more intentional about the experiences they craft.

That said though, I also see the other side which is that a lot of the art of things gets sucked out when it gets homogenized. Some examples that spring to mind:

* Early video games, compare Legend of Zelda without a guide as an experience to playing a modern RPG where everything is built on what came before and tends to be super balanced and such

* Led Zeppelin to Nickelback

[NZB2323]

I don't have any mono colored decks, but if I had to build a mono white deck and a mono blue deck, I'd build Sram, Senior edificer and Empress Galina.

[lvg]

Every now and then I get the urge to (re)build Barrin, Master Wizard. Barrin gives you repeatable answer to creatures from your command zone, which is actually quite strong. I usually end up going a bit to heavy on the sacrifice value plan but he is a really solid commander without having a ton of support.

[toctheyounger]

There's also Unesh Sphinx Storm. I'll admit I've never seen the deck, but with a name like that it's got to be pretty cool.

@JqlGirl has a list somewhere for that I believe? I remember it looking like a lot of fun.

[ISBPathfinder]

Thanks for those who have thrown my name about a bit. If I were to make my own recommendations right now I would probably suggest:

Bruna, the Fading Light - She is very robust at coming back from answers. Its a solid battlecruiser commander who continues to have relivance late into games. She tends to play better towards the angles that the social contract tend to ask people not to do which is MLD and combo but I guess in some regards she is kind of a prison effect in that the melded commander is kind of oppressive and I tend to play with some level of Moat / Tabernacle.

Sai, Master Thopterist - There are just so many 0-2 mana bubles that cantrip out there. I REALLY love my Sai deck but its maybe a touch more competitive than I generally want it to be. When you run into people interacting with your board I think Sai is fine. When you get into goldfishing decks my own list can with some consistency kill a table of 4 by turn six. I think there is a lot of angles where opponents can interact but holy cow it can just be pure gasoline if someone isn't disrupting you.

[Ulka]

My favorite Mono- Blue Commander is Blind Seer. The fact color hate exists makes the deck work and it lets me run sword of X and Y and make things unblockable which is a blast. Plus the addition of Painter's Servant Makes the deck hum a whole new tune.

My favorite mono-white commander is Zeburi, Golden Feather - its literally griffins tribal and the idea to to pump the griffins to dragon sizes and beat face. Its kinda weak but if underestimated it runs away with the game.

[JqlGirl]

There's also Unesh Sphinx Storm. I'll admit I've never seen the deck, but with a name like that it's got to be pretty cool.

JqlGirl has a list somewhere for that I believe? I remember it looking like a lot of fun.

Here you go:
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/uneshs-sphinx-storm/

[OCPunisher]

My favorite Mono- Blue Commander is Blind Seer. The fact color hate exists makes the deck work and it lets me run sword of X and Y and make things unblockable which is a blast. Plus the addition of Painter's Servant Makes the deck hum a whole new tune.

This might be the single greatest post I've ever seen on this forum. Wacky old card, mono-blue, wears swords...I must try it!

[3drinks]

I always loved Thalia, Guardian of Thraben because I could play white weenie like the days of yore with a simple game plan - hit five lands and resolve armageddon/ravages of war. You're locked under no lands with a sphere effect, and my little savannah lions variants are getting in there and clocking you.

[WolfWhoWanders]

* Led Zeppelin to Nickelback

I hear Nickelback is still touring despite Corona virus. I guess no more than 5 people show up to a concert anyway so they never break side limit on gatherings. Happy isolation everyone, hope you're staying sane

[WolfWhoWanders]

Uh, @pokken didn't write that touring comment I did. Not sure what happened. Sorry if you like Nickelback

[WolfWhoWanders]

On a more related note, I've had fun with Tetsuko weenies and Hakim, Loreweaver decks. Taniwha was fun too, but really wants you to lean into "degeneracy" like casting sunder on upkeep when lands are phased out in order to keep up. I think you could pull off a similar sea monster fatties deck with Nezahal, primal tide. He's 7 mana, but is pretty resilient so long as you can maintain handsize. You could throw a worldslayer in there in case you need to get hard. White is a little tougher to make dynamic, because...because the card pool isn't as dynamically strong? You've got greater polarization between good and bad cards. That being said, 8.5 tails was pretty fun for me and can be built a couple different ways. Maybe tossing in some of the more fair alternate win cards could help. Yomiji does seem kinda fun in his own way too. I've recently tried the new heliod in a non combo shell and it does well. Nothing super exciting, but fairly consistent and not at all weak. I've kept it around as a loaner deck for a few friends who don't collect but want to play every now and then. I can't be handing off my convoluted jank piles to someone who doesn't know what they're trying to do.

[Cyberium]

Celestial Kirin

No land-D allowed sadly. Not my rules, theirs. Same reason I can't run that Kamigawa winter orb thing. I'm all for it but the group says no.

Oh no, I didn't suggest Kirin out of its LD potential, but for its abilities to pin-point and destroy. If you set up your deck to exclude 4cc spirit/arcane, you can utilize white support cards like Enduring Renewal to great effect, or Karmic Guide that'd destroy THEN immediately bring back the creature of your choice. White also has cards like Profound Journey and Emeria Shepherd that could brought stuff back more than once. White has plenty of spells to deal with other stuff for your Kirin to reign.

[bobthefunny]

I love monocolour in EDH due to its natural building restrictions, but I'm stuck on blue and on white. Blue its hard to make an interesting deck, and white its hard to make a strong deck due to the card disadvantage.

I'm wondering what are the most interesting, coolest most effective and just outright favourite mono-white and mono-blue decks the community here either own or have played against? Gimmie some ideas!

I disagree that White necessarily has to be any weaker than other colors. Yes, White has some disadvantages... it also has some very serious advantages: Chief among them the best removal suite across all colors, both single and mass removal. White also has incredible resilience and recursion. White is also actually the second-best land ramp color (though mostly because no one other than green really has much that gets lands).

I think that White's weaknesses are overstated by the echo chamber online. Yes, they exist, but they don't necessarily need to be debilitating, and it certainly isn't to the extremes that is often bandied about. Especially not today. There are extremely powerful cheap artifacts that actively reward playing mono-colored decks, and can help patch up ramp and draw slots.

I'm currently running Linden, Steadfast Queen as my Mono-W Commander, and suffice to say she's more of the support for the deck, than the other way around. There are several interesting and varied effects in White commanders, as well as White's capabilities, which leads to several build paths:

• Aggro. White weenie is a thing. While aggro can be harder to make work in Commander, White is no slouch at it. You have several powerful early cards, such as Hero of Bladehold which can provide a savage beating in the early game, but still synergize with powerful cards later on. Cathars' Crusade is another well-known staple of adding serious power to beat down decks later on, as does Archangel of Thune. Almost any commander can work here, but I've seen decks that range from Oketra to Jazal Goldmane.
• Voltron: White has the best tutoring and recursion for equipment. Yes, white has much more equipment support than red. Given that a fair number of equipment can offset some of white's limitations, you can even add a base package into almost and deck and be happy. Almost anyone can voltron, but Isamaru, Konda, and the big white dino can be interesting.
• Very commonly, you will see Enchantress type decks based in white. While you don't get green's card draw off of enchantresses, white has the most tutoring, recursion, and support/synergy for enchantments across all colors. I previously ran a Heliod, God of the Sun deck which had a fair few tricks.
• Artifact Centric decks. Aside from some nice commanders that straight up have the historic synergy with artifacts, white still has the best artifact recursion engines, best eggs support, and certainly remains high up there on artifact tutoring (though blue easily pulls ahead on the tutoring). Artifacts also fix up some of whites deficiencies, so that's a plus too. Teshar, Ancestors' Apostle is the current go to here, but again, several could work.
• Blink Decks. Blink effects everywhere.
• Control Decks. White has the most instant speed interaction of any color, unless it comes to spells on the stack, although even there white can have a few tricks. From instant speed Resurection, to removal, to blink effects, to combat tricks, and even fog effects, white has a surprising arsenal to use on opponents' turns. Add into this the mass removal, heavy recursion, and hate bears - and you can have a fairly beefy control shell.
• Combo. Aside from guide/lark things, there's also some things with new Heliod, Teshar, and some others. I can't speak as much on this, as I typically don't run combo.

Obviously, those can be mixed and matched to varying degrees as well. White has a lot of options, and a lot of staying power.

===

My current amusement, is that I think it would be rather amusing to build a "mono-white" Kenrith the Returned King. It's obviously a bit cheaty, but seems hilarious and fun.

[Outcryqq]

I have a Thassa, God of the Sea sea monster deck that's fun. My buddy runs a Dorien deck that's pretty fun to play against.

[Segrus]

On a more related note, I've had fun with Tetsuko weenies and Hakim, Loreweaver decks.

Tetsuko weenies is fun. I'm still getting the hang of getting the deck to function really well, but I think it could be that I need to rebalance my card draw and counter spells. My build isn't too competitive so Sharding Sphinx often ends up becoming a win condition for me. For a Blue aggro deck Tetsuko has a lot of possibility.

[WolfWhoWanders]

On a more related note, I've had fun with Tetsuko weenies and Hakim, Loreweaver decks.

Tetsuko weenies is fun. I'm still getting the hang of getting the deck to function really well, but I think it could be that I need to rebalance my card draw and counter spells. My build isn't too competitive so Sharding Sphinx often ends up becoming a win condition for me. For a Blue aggro deck Tetsuko has a lot of possibility.

Yeah it's pretty weak to board wipes and can get outclassed quickly by some decks, I tried to use as many creatures with coastal piracy effects as I could and keep filling my hand with cheap control. The tribal rogue spells were fantastic, and I probably could've thrown in a time warp or something for extra oomph. Some sort of wrath protection would've helped. If only eldrazi monument wasn't an anthem... Mightstone was neat though, and if I still had the deck lazotep plating for sure. There was another great card I meant to mention but my brain just farted. Oh well

[WolfWhoWanders]

@Segrus
Oh yeah, it was spiny starfish. So, not super good but super fun. Love that card

[Segrus]

Oh yeah, it was spiny starfish. So, not super good but super fun. Love that card

Agreed on Spiny Starfish. I think it's still included in the deck, although I recently rebuilt it (last week) so I don't recall right now the entire decklist. And I built mine with the same sort of premise--get in all the creatures which can draw cards from attacking, and then hopefully use that to draw into new counter spells and such. Multiple wrath effects are a problem though. Mist-Syndicate Naga was the one I always wanted to draw into since it so rapidly gets out of hand. I also really liked ciphering Stolen Identity onto something that can't be blocked.

[Gwathnar]

For white - Balan, Wandering Knight. A great Voltron Commander that can easily equip whatever equipment you have on the field. Plus once she has double strike she's able to easily knock an opponent out. I've found (at least in my meta) that white's stax effects are great for leveling the playing field against opponents.
My list: https://archidekt.com/decks/232187#Bala ... ing_Knight

For mono blue, Braid, Conjour Adapt

[Mimicvat]

Built a first draft of Bruna, but can only really goldfish or 1v1 it because of lockdown stuff. It seems *really* solid for a mono-white deck so far. Going long and aiming for land drops means you sometimes don't do heaps early game, but will slowly snowball up into a solid board. Except for the attempt where I drew nothing but lands (...) I've consistently had a good set up by turn five or six in all of the goldfishing so far. Yeah thats not killing the whole table or whatever but thats not what I'm out to do!

I'm definitely starting to see the idea behind this deck. Build up for the late game, but use white's potent wraths and removal to help set back the even rampier decks (UGx etc) and then take over with individually powerful cards.

I'm quite interested in the value 'packages' you can build for white. They don't even need to be that good, I just like setting this type of stuff up.

• Adarkar Valkyrie, a fat creature and altar of dementia to get mills every turn cycle. Adarkar fits well with the wraths too.
• Or mill sun titan, play Dawnbreak Reclaimer, recur sun titan who recurs something else. Sun Titan is value? Who would have thought
• Things like Dawn of Hope and Skullclamp, are there any other really good sources of tokens or payoffs people can recommend?
• Stoneforge Mystic/Stonehewer Giant/Steelshaper's Gift and great equipment, particularly the clamp but also some of the powerhouse stuff like Argentum Armor or the swords. Normally I dislike tutors but Skullclamp is so nuts sometimes.
• The combination of Weathered Wayfarer, Gift of Estates, Land Tax (and other "less lands" effects) with the lands that sac your own lands is very potent and a great source of advantage.
• Scroll rack plus fetchlands to cycle away a bad hand, and the fetchlands help ensure Sun Titan always has a target. Any other similar effects?

I'm sure none of these are new or revolutionary to anyone here, but many of them are to me as someone who isn't super on to what white is capable of. Wondering what packages like this people like to run particularly in mono-white. Seeing how many different set ups I can stick in and which ones synergize together is way more appealing to me than focusing on one or on tutors to make one set up really strong and efficient. Problem is I don't know white all that well, certainly there will be gaps in my knowledge of the most useful cards.

For blue I'm mostly looking at blue Braids or Sai at the moment. Braids really, really needs ways to get around being last to play the effect - I remember facing against it often and killing her just before her turn, otherwise she'd drop out an Eldrazi. I'm pretty wary of blue artifact decks as they've always been really dull for me (red artifacts for life!) but Sai can do the "hit a player, draw a card" thing pretty well with all the thopters which is hugely appealing

[ISBPathfinder]

@Mimicvat I have had a lot of success with Monarch in Bruna as well. You are often rather hard to attack profitably so its like spinning up this Phyrexian Arena that draws sooner and can't be removed once its started. Palace Jailer is amazing but I have also gone deeper and run almost all of the monarch cards myself. Even if someone does manage to steal monarch from you, it probably was hard to do so for them and you can probably steal it back fairly easy. The other amazing thing about it is that it lives through all of the wraths and such so you can slow opponents down while your draw continues on. Palace Jailer is also tutorable from Recruiter of the Guard which is nifty and they curve decently.