God-Eternal Oketra White Weenie (EDH / Commander)

A little disclaimer, this will be somewhat in depth, so tldr message at the bottom and there isn't a budget per se, but this list is made of cards i already owned aside from a few cheap cards, so there are some cards that I would like to include(Sword of Feast and Famine, Teferi's Protection, Mana Crypt, etc.) but i dont have them, or I have one but i'm using it in another deck. If you have one, or any card that you'd want to put in for that matter then by all means do so so. This list still has a few rough edges, so I encourage anyone who sees this list to use this as a base for their own deck, although copying it card for card is fine and flattering too :)

The idea of this deck is to push Oketra's ability to make tokens to the limit. A creature's value changes drastically when you staple a 4/4 zombie to it, favoring lower cmc creatures. This makes a white weenie strategy, in my opinion, the optimal way to build the new Oketra. However, white weenie is weird and has several caveats when seen in edh, so let's go over what's funky in this deck

Since all the raw stats are coming from Oketra herself we don't have to play the cards white weenie usually uses for pure damage (like Isamaru or porcelain legionnaire) although you could if you wanted to. In this build, however, we'll be focusing on good utility creatures, creatures that can be played multiple times, and creatures that can be cast for 0 mana. Another couple of issues that will be addressed are white's notorious lack of ramp and card draw as well as this deck's worst enemy: summoning sickness.

Let's start with the ramp. The deck features several of the commonly played rocks (sol ring, mind stone, worn powerstone, etc), but also has some newer technology like smothering tithe and boreas charger. Anyone who plays smothering tithe knows it usually nets 3+ treasure every round of the table and boreas charger is a newish card from the latest commander set that has some neat synergies that i will get into later. Granted, all together it's a little worse than what other colors have access to but it will be good enough most of the time. After all, the curve of this deck is so low that we don't need as much mana as the average deck.

Card draw is usually the hardest part about making a white deck in EDH. However, this deck is well positioned to run a lot of white's best sources of card draw and some decent colorless ones as well. Mentor of the meek and bygone bishop are great card draw engines even compared to what other colors have. White also has some ok creatures that replace themselves like wall of omens or ranger of eos that come into play with a 4/4 buddy. There are also some unique colorless options that i like a lot in this deck. Endless Atlas is a good card, but i haven't seen much play from it since it requires a mono(or mostly mono) colored deck to work. Culling dais is a neat one that works rather well in this deck as the typical play pattern of this deck usually ends up with several small creatures leftover that don't do much. This gives them some more value and allows us to Skullclamp bigger creatures, but i think my favorite idea for this deck is Ghirapur Orrery. This card is both ramp and card draw although it applies to everyone. The trick with Ghirapur Orrery is playing it in a deck that can take advantage of the second ability better than the average deck and fortunately this deck is very good at emptying its hand especially with an extra land drop every turn. Another neat thing about it is that it buys some goodwill from the other players.

As i said earlier this deck is trying to push Oketra's zombie making ability and the most efficient way to do that manawise is to play as many 0 mana creatures as possible. In fact this list contains every possible 0 drop creature. Ornithopter, Memnite, Phyrexian Walker, and Shield Sphere are true 0 drops and there are several creatures that cost X. In case it hasn't clicked yet creatures with just X or XX as their casting cost can be cast for 0 mana and with Oketra that makes a 0 mana 4/4. Granted most of these are good enough to cast like regular creatures and not be cute with 0 mana 4/4s. Although Phyrexian Marauder is just bad and 99% of the time you will just hold it until oketra is in play and cast it for 0. Which brings up a very important play pattern to bring up. You will want to sandbag a lot of your creatures until Oketra hits the board. Getting a free 4/4 is much better than not. This isn't always true though as some creatures are important enough to get their thing going asap(like Weathered Wayfarer or Mikaeus the Lunarch). Which creature to hold and which creature to play and when is still something i'm learning with this deck which is part of the fun. It'd be quite boring if the puzzle came pre-solved! But in general, most of the good draw creatures (Alms Collector when appropriate, mentor, and bishop) will want to get their thing going asap and the utility creatures will have their time when it's most optimal to play them. Figuring out if it's before or after playing Oketra is the hard part.

Speaking of utility creatures, white has some really good ones, some of the best even, and this is the part of the deck that i feel like has the most dependency on your playgroup's meta. Utility creatures will typically have a lasting effect on the board or sacrifice themselves for a oneshot effect. Some creatures in this deck that fall into that category are Mother of Runes, Containment Priest, and Remorseful Cleric. Again this is very customizable and is very dependent on what your group is playing and how much they hate hatebears.

The part of the deck that gets the most oomph from Oketra are the creatures you can play multiple times in a turn. These creatures are Kor Skyfisher, Dust Elemental, Whitemane Lion, Stonecloaker, and Emancipation Angel and these creatures are key. All of these creatures are the most efficient ways per capita to flood the board with 4/4s by bouncing themselves when they come into play with the added benefit that most of them also trigger mentor and/or bishop. Dust Elemental can also pick up 0 drop creatures along with itself to double dip on cards like Memnite and Ornithopter, and Stonecloaker is a very potent graveyard hate card that some white decks play just for that reason alone. Like I alluded to earlier they can also trigger Boreas Charger for some ramp. There are other creatures that do this but aren't as mana efficient (Ancestral Statue) or can't bounce themselves (Jeskai Barricade, Aviary Mechanic) and these cards are ok and in a lower budget deck they'd be fine includes.

Now for the real challenge of a deck like this. Mana and card draw in a white deck is tough, but the real challenge a white weenie deck faces in a game of commander is summoning sickness. Think about it; you get Oketra out, play 3-4 creatures, get a bunch of tokens, you're poised to deal some real damage to someone, and then the next player casts Blasphemous Act or Damnation :( The only solutions are to either play cards that make sure your board is untouched by board wipes, be able to rebuild your board quickly, or don't give your opponents an opportunity to board wipe before you can attack. White has some really good options for anti board wipe but most of it, aside from Teferi's Protection, give indestructible, which only helps against ~1/2 of the board wipes that I come up against. So I personally only have one card that gives my board indestructible(Selfless Spirit) although this is another part of the deck that is dependant on your playgroup's meta. If most of the board wipes you encounter are Wrath of God, Blasphemous Act, Ezuri's Predation, etc. then cards I didn't include like Rootborn Defenses or Unbreakable Formation are fantastic. Side note, Eldrazi Monument is usually a good card for a deck like this, although the play pattern for Oketra is a little awkward for monument because you don't want to play it before Oketra because you will have few expendable creatures, but it is hard to fit a 5 mana ask after playing Oketra, so it ends up not working out too well, although a build not as focused on Oketra could probably make it work.

I prefer to get my opponents by not even giving them a chance to blow up all those cards I worked so hard for or to make it easy to rebuild and weather through the storms. There are 2 or 3 cards in the deck that allow "sneak attacks" and they are Akroma's Memorial, Vedalken Orrery, and Enlightened Tutor can get either. The memorial is straight forward, as it gives all your creatures haste and some other sweet keywords and the best orrery in the deck allows you to play your all your creatures at instant speed usually right before your turn begins, so that their summoning sickness wears off. Something I will probably test later on is Odric with lightning greaves and some creatures that have haste(although that is scarce in mono white). The cards that allow you to rebuild quickly are, admittedly, not the best way to solve this problem, but they have the added benefit of being able to let you to continue to spam creatures once you run out. Dust Elemental, as i said earlier, can pick up cheap creatures repeatedly, he also has flash, so when they boardwipie he can pick up all the important pieces. A neat, old card that does something similar is scapegoat. While not being repeatable, it has the low cost of one white mana and bounces as many creatures as you want. Another thing worth mentioning is that when Oketra(and the other WAR Gods) perish they give you the option to either put them in the command zone when you are low on card draw, or tucked near the top of the library when you are a little pinched for mana.

As promised, tldr
Mana ramp is decent: slightly worse than the average deck but you dont need as much mana except on explosive turns, so it kinda works.
Card draw is also decent; about as good as the average deck. Mentor of the Meek and Bygone Bishop are great. Culling Dais and Ghirapur Orrery are neat.
Creatures that cost 0 mana are decent because you can sandbag them until you get Oketra and immediately get some 4/4s
Creatures that are cheap and affect the game are really great. Not only do they have the most variance among Oketra decks due to playgroup metas but most of them are also the hardest to judge when the right time to play them is.
Creatures that bounce themselves are where most of your mana will go in the mid to lategame. They ensure that you can keep a steady stream of zombies going and if they aren't stopped you will usually win.
Summoning sickness sucks super salty sacks. The ways to get around it are haste(and psuedohaste), anti boardwipes, or the ability to rebuild quickly. Memorial and orrery helps with haste(and psuedohaste), Selfless Spirit is there for anti boardwipes, and Scapegoat and Dust Elemental for rebuilding.

gg thanks for reading :)