Mangara, the Diplomat Pillow Fort (EDH / Commander)

A lot of people think of Mangara as a good addition to the 99, but in my guess, this card is one of the best mono-white Commanders out there!

The factor with Mangara, the Diplomat is something that mono-white has trouble at in EDH: card-draw. Essentially, the first triggered ability will happen no matter what in every normal commander game, but the second ability is most interesting for this kind of deck. Essentially, the goal of this deck is to play out politics (the player and not the deck makes the game), which adds to the flavor of Mangara being a Diplomat and secondly build up; staying as neutral (again, something of the flavor) as possibly during this process. At some point, the enemies will notice that it will be too late to do something against you if they don't act, but they never will see it coming, because the implications in between the enchantments and creatures will be growing more complicated over time, so that the opponents will have to waste a lot of ressources, jump over a lot of hoops to stop you on your tracks, if they are even able to. There are three main themes in the deck: a) taxing your opponents. This will draw their attention and hinder them in every aspect possibly, ideal for them to attack you and drawing some cards out of Mangara. b) Tokens...there are some enchantments and creatures that will give you the benefits of creating an army of blockers that will strengthen your defensive capabilities, ideal for overrunning 1 of the players eventually and wining the game c) is the politics aspect: cards like Axis of Mortality, Orzhov Advokist, Akroan Horse, Duelist's Heritage, Open the Vaults, Second Sunrise and Sudden Disappearance will allow you to strike deals with players, so that they take someone for you out. Due to the passive build up with this deck, you can largely go unnoticed, but between the three strategies you will to plan out carefully: taxing is good, but will eventually make the opponents be less inclined to do politics. Building tokens as defensive body is ok, but you have to think that at some point, you will not go unnoticed and loose your "neutrality" status.

So, it is a fun deck to play with, takes a lot of strategy and planing, is not in itself super poweful but extreme thought to beat. The survivability of this deck is excellent, it stands a chance in most games and even with decks at a higher power-level (at least in my playgroup). Fair warnings: Due to the neutrality (speaking of higher tier decks), it does not fare good against decks that are essentially trying to combo off. It is specially good against agressive, control and mid-range decks. Second thing: This deck makes every game longer, a lot longer if someone does not try to combo off. Be avare that you might stretch games by 1 hour or more due to it's nature!

Last note: I win a lot of games with this deck, largely because players tend to underestimate the capabilites of it. This happens even if they know your deck, largely because your neutrality/passivenes and the difficult assesment of when the "point of no return" happens.