Fix mono white in EDH

[jlutzxinc]

The effect of "Encroach of the Forests" looks pretty good...until you run into Toski, Bearer of Secrets (a Squirrel), Moritte of the Frost or the newly-spoiled Orvar, the All-Form (Changelings), or even worse, Morophon, the Boundless Changeling Tribal (all of your opponent's Creatures can't be blocked by your Walls)!  The name needs work to sound less Green.  You could use mono-White Enchantment removal to get the End Step effect WITHOUT the Upkeep effect, but that would only be doable once and would be a huge waste of removal IMO.

I kind of like the look of several other effects, but Nara, Inspired Leader is still my favorite from this thread so far.

[TrueNeutralPaladin]

So... Decklists for the Commander precons have been revealed... and with all (or almost all) of the set having been previewed... The situation seems to be that instead of bringing more draw effects to white, Kaldheim will be giving white some rather poor options for ramp:

[[Stoic Farmer]]
[[Colossal Plow]]
[[Raiders' Karve]]

Disappointing but not terribly surprising.

[stuffnsuch]

Okay, so here's my thoughts on mono-white.  First, WotC is pretty consistent lately printing cards that address (though don't fix) white's card draw and ramp issues.  The last few sets have had at least some things that help, even when they aren't always as powerful as what green gets.  WotC is assuredly making an effort to find how to fit ramp and draw into white while staying true to the pie.

That being said, I don't think players are being as fair to white in some respects.  White cards are often very cheap to cast and do a lot on a lower curve.  No ramp is fine if you can win off half the mana.  Card advantage can come in many forms as well.  White may not draw a lot of cards, but it's still number one in token production.  I've put far more bodies on the board than my opponents with far fewer cards, and that's really worth noting.  Also many white spells can be two (or three or four or more) for ones.  Being able to remove your opponents card advantage through board wipes and such gives you a chance to stay in the game.  Sure, we all want to play huge spells and draw half our deck, but white doesn't always fall behind just because it can't do that.  White can be competitive if you build it to maximize it's strengths and strip your opponents of theirs.

Finally, life gain is being increasingly more weaponized.  I think that WotC has been trying to make the life gain strategy have more consistent ways to finish a game.  It might not be there yet, but it's definitely in the works.  Hopefully, white will be able to dominate through one of it's few remaining true strengths, since life gain has been notoriously underpowered in the format since its inception.

[TrueNeutralPaladin]

I don't think ramp is the problem. All colors can ramp via artifacts. Draw (or card advantage) is the problem. Ramp gets key cards out early but loses value on subsequent turns as you miss land drops due to lack of draw.

If not for Land Tax and Enlightened Tutor (to fetch Land Tax) to set up land drops, I don't know if I'd run 1-mana ramp in a mono-white deck. And it's currently about $70 for that pair of cards. Add in Tithe and Sensei's Divining Top to further stabilize land drops and we're up to $170 just for the beginnings of a decent package that allows white to use ramp effectively.

WotC should either print good draw effects for white or reprint those mentioned staples into the ground (removing Tithe from the Reserved List).

Or give us actually good new cards - something like a sorcery for two white mana that pulls three basic plains to hand (unconditionally, without the usual "you're behind" clause). Not ramp, but it'd be solid card advantage and set up land drops.

How about white being the color of efficiently bringing lands to hand but having to play them fairly, one per turn? That'd satisfy me well enough.

Re: tokens - Green is the king of tokens, I think. Multiple doubling effects (compared to one in white) and many good token generators. And Izzet is actually pretty good at it, too - Brudiclad, Locust God, dragon tokens, copy effects, etc. White has some nice effects - Crested Sunmare, Resplendent Angel, etc - but I don't think it's strong enough to be the clear choice for token strategies unless we're talking Selesnya.

Of course, if white gets a token tripling enchantment as part of the possible cycle began with [[Nyxbloom Ancient]] and [[Fiery Emancipation]]... That could change things, provided it's actually playable and doesn't cost 7+ mana to cast.

But I find that pretty unlikely. Remember the 6-mana mythic cycle exclusive to Game Night 2019? Except the white card was 7-mana, because... "screw you, that's why" apparently.

https://scryfall.com/sets/gn2

[MekLeN]

mono-white has an incredibly competitive card pool particularly in EDH, someone can build a deck using just a flavor of what's available and can completely shut down and dominate games.

either you're not giving these cards the support they need (scepter + silence??) or maybe you're not giving it enough of a chance.

I've seen my groups 'ol whitie' a friend plays that is a tank at the table, never losing Hitpoints, always has creatures in play, responds all game long to every little thing people try to slip past it.

when you've found a "seasoning" from white that does the miracle work, you'll find it fits into any deck any commander any meta.

however if you're not willing to invest the effort or just don't have the interest, there are other colors that can give you a "play it and let it win" experience aka autopilot

[Slyvester12]

So you get slapped around by a white deck and suddenly white doesn't have any problems in EDH? That's a pretty poor argument. Can you post a list for the "old whitie" deck?

[anjinsan]

I actually kinda like monowhite. I'd rather play it than monored, anyway.

White has a heck of a lot of good stuff going for it, actually. It's just that two things it doesn't have going for it are ramp and card draw, both very important in EDH. In fairness, WotC are (or claim to be, at least) aware of this and are looking for ways to fix it. They deliberate haven't been giving red pure draw recently but exile-and-play, so they're probably looking for some kind of "thematic" version for white too. White does actually have a lot of graveyard recursion which provides card advantage, but it's hard to really build around (especially when you have no self-mill, etc).

White also just looks sad on its own when you consider the other colours. It's got some *great* token cards, landfall cards, etc, but those strategies are just so much better with green. Likewise a graveyard theme calls for black, you've got a lot of defensive/controlly pieces but almost all counterspells are blue, etc.

Of course, the game isn't designed around EDH. The differences in the rules there skew the balance - in particular the higher starting life makes a lot of white's lifegain stuff kinda eh. Apart from those "if you have 40+" cards, which are actually too good.

In fact, I don't have that big of a problem with white itself in general, but the power level of EDH really hurts it. Look at Kaldheim - white gets a bunch of actually pretty cool cards like Halvar which feel totally fair... but almost nothing there is *interesting*. Compare with that black demon dude who lets you foretell every card, for example - that opens up a lot of new strategies, whereas the best white gets is "oh you're *not* suffering big card disadvantage for once!". Arguably, this is more about the other colours getting too many overpowered/degenerate things than white's fault... white does have some of these too, to be fair, but they're all un-fun (mass land destruction, indestructibility, etc).

[MSB]

Even Mark Rosewater admitted some time ago that he's slowly changing his mind about card draw in white. 'Card draw is too essential mechanic in EDh' or something like that.
But white must draw in it's flavour, either conditional, or it mas have a 'balancing factor'.

That's why I'm so MAD everytime I look at the new Tales of the Ancestors:'Each player with fewer cards in hand than the player with the most cards in hand draws cards equal to the difference.'
That is TOTALLY white flavour. But the card is blue. Nobody would play this BLUE card, since blue has the best one-sided draw. Why did they do this?!

[titanium]

What we need is Commander Legends: White with 400 cards that are at least decent

[TrueNeutralPaladin]

What we need is Commander Legends: White with 400 cards that are at least decent

Lol. Indeed.

I'm quite curious what Commander Collection White will contain. Optimistically, the list could be:

Command Tower (White Theme)
Sol Ring (White Theme)
Enlightened Tutor
Land Tax
Ravages of War
Anointed Procession
Teferi's Protection

and perhaps Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker if WotC wants a legendary card in the set?

Or a printing of Smothering Tithe with non-Orzhov flavor? Something along the lines of:

"The excesses of your greed shall be smothered by your contribution to the less fortunate."

It's a stretch, I know, but the original flavor was more Orzhov than mono-white... It probably should have been called Luxury Tax or Wealth Tax or something to that effect - something more generally appropriate outside of Ravnica.

I'd also want the new version of Anointed Procession to have non-Bolas flavor.

[Leonixious]

I have to say, I have been a Mono-White Fan for as long as I can remember, and I've been playing for going on almost 24 years. I will concede that White does have some weaknesses in the ramp and draw departments, without the help of artifacts/lands of course, and is yet to be a cEDH color. But White is probably one of the strongest when it comes to passive, and sometimes active, board control. Plus the support to back it up via creatures/indestructible. Yes, White can be built as an aggro color, but it truly shines when built to control.

I have three Mono-White decks, that when I any of them out, I get unanimous groans from the table:
- Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite (Stax)
- Darien, King of Kjeldor (Self Pain, Combat Control, Tokens)
- Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant (Pillowfort, Passive/Active Damage Reduction, Lifegain)

Ill end with, I don't think that White needs to be fixed. On that same note, nor is it currently all that weak. I think that if Mono-White got a lot more Draw and Ramp, it would very quickly become one of the top colors in magic. I think WotC might understand this, actively or subconsciously, and don't want to break the color.

[WizardSpartan]

That's the overarching problem. White's strength comes with control (and especially hatebears). Historically, rather than giving white ways to draw cards/ramp, WotC has just given white ways to stop others from drawing cards/ramping. In EDH, though, Spirit of the Labyrinth or Rule of Law effects draw a lot of hate because taking away the Sultai player's ability to pass gas and draw half of their deck is just "unfair". (/s)

[Morganator 2.0]

I will concede that White does have some weaknesses in the ramp and draw departments, without the help of artifacts/lands of course, and is yet to be a cEDH color.

There is a white cEDH deck: Heliod, Sun-Crowned. It's a disruptive deck that plays stax effects in the early game to stop others from winning, before it wins with Heliod and Walking Ballista. I'm told that Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle is also a good combo deck, but I've never seen one win a game before. I also know that people have experimented with Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero and Sram, Senior Edificer, but those largely went nowhere.

White does have a lot of strong stax and disruptive abilities, but those decks only work well when either green or blue is thrown in, because those colors have the card draw and mana ramp that white needs. Those colors help to break parity on stax effects, so Armageddon hurts you less than everyone else, instead of equally. It's exactly this reason why commanders like Brago, King Eternal and Selvala, Explorer Returned do so well.

[Leonixious]

I understand that Stax, or other game lengthening effects, is considered "unfair" or against the Social Contracts a lot of people have. But here's the way I look at it, replace your normal ramp slots with efficient rocks/Smothering Tithe, and you should be golden. And slowing down/preventing other players from doing as much each turn buys you turns. This is a very powerful thing, same as Cyclonic Rift a Table where you have been trailing or your opponents have been going off faster, it buys you turns. Which is an incredibly undervalued tactic.

Not saying anyone on this forum is like this, but going by Social Contracts, which a lot of Mono-White's Strengths primarily fall under, isn't a reason to say White needs to be Fixed. It works, just a lot of people don't like it when it does. And what I was also trying to point out is that with all of the very powerful cards at Mono-Whites disposal, imagine how much the color could become broken with "Fixes" like more consistent, nonrestrictive, ramp and draw. It would be the same kind of broken as giving Mono-Green the kind of Board Control as White has, or Mono-Blue for that matter...

[WWolfe]

I think you misunderstand what people are wanting. They're not wanting unrestricted draw and ramp because that's not what white does. White has recently gotten Keeper of the Accord & Verge Rangers which do what white has done in the past for ramp...if an opponent has more lands, you can get lands (Land Tax, Weathered Wayfarer, Gift of Estates). The problem is white just lacks in both ramp AND draw whereas the other colors are much better at one or both. Being the least efficient at both really hurts the color.

As for saying white would be broken if it was "fixed", I can honestly say I have never heard anyone else say that so I give you mad props for having an opinion and sticking to it regardless of how popular or unpopular it may be.