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8.5% Tax Rate

Commander / EDH* Mono-White

Ilvaldus

Creature (36)

Instant (10)

Land (37)

Enchantment (6)

Commander (1)

Commander: Eight-and-a-Half-Tails

Artifact (7)

Sorcery (2)

Planeswalker (1)

This is an Eight-And-A-Half-Tails Death and Taxes deck. The focus is to force your opponent to play the neutral game by disabling most of their means of comboing off, and then proceed to win the game via attrition and smart plays. Playing cards like Spirit of the Labyrinth, Ethersworn Canonist, and Aven Mindcensor can help prevent your opponent from trying to find an answer to deal with your board as you begin to push the initiative on applying pressure with a swarm of 2 powered and 3 powered creatures.

This is not a Stax deck, but it does run Stax-y effects. You're not trying to establish a lock, but rather limit your opponent's actions while you apply pressure to them and force them to make bad plays/trades as they attempt to not die to you stacking cumulative damage. Your deck relies heavily on ETB effects, which is the reason why creatures like Hushbringer and Hushwing Gryff are not in this deck. You can recur your ETBs with Journey to Nowhere, Long Road Home, or Ghostway, which can also help certain key creatures of yours escape a nasty board wipe or Cyclonic rift. With Containment Priest out, you can use Journey to Nowhere, Long Road Home, and Angel of Condemnation to get rid of creatures on your opponent's battlefield. Your blink and bounce effects can also allow you to do tricks with Hokori Dust Drinker, which is probably the Stax-iest card in the deck, and help secure a strong win on the board.

This is a White deck that focuses on incremental card advantage and recursion. As such, you run both Sword of Light and Shadow and Fire and Ice and Umezawa's Jitte. Not running Stony Silence nor Null Rod is a gambit this deck is making, but you do have Aura of Silence and Deafening Silence to try and mitigate your opponents from going crazy with their artifacts. Use your equipments to assist you in winning combat. With Sword of Feast and Famine, you can use this alongside with your commander to make sure you'll have mana available to protect your permanents from any threats your opponents may try to pull.

There's a decent amount of ramp in this deck as you want to amass more lands so that you can use them to support Eight-and-a-Half-Tails's ability. I've incorporated this type of ramp mostly on creatures so that you're rewarded for playing threats as you're accumulating resources.

There are two endgame cards to this deck. One is forcing a game with Hokori, Dustdrinker and you dominating with blink or bounce effects (like Dust Elemental). The other is casting Ugin, and using any mana you generate from Sword of Feast and Famine or Smothering Tithes to turn your opponents' lands White, and then exiling all of them.

Your deck and commander are very versatile and responsive, and this deck requires you make careful study of what they can do. Player trip up sometimes, not realizing that when they cast All Is Dust, you can use Eight-and-a-Half-Tails to turn their colorless permanents White and have them sacrifice them. When your opponent casts, Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, and targets your permanents, you can turn Ulamog on the stack white, and give your permanents protection from White. When your opponent uses Sword of Truth and Justice or Sword of Light and Shadow to attack you, you can turn the equipment White and it falls off of the creature. With Earnest Fellowship out, you can turn Skullclamp into a White permanent and it won't be able to equip onto any White creatures your opponent has (like the 1/1 White spirits from Kykar). You can use Geier Reach Sanitarium and Spirit of the Labyrinth to loot on your opponent's turn and force that player to discard a card, and if you have Smothering Tithe out, you can up to 2 treasure tokens from the other two players. Angel of Sanctions' embalm effect is an activated ability, so you're able to activate it and still be able to cast a spell through Rule of Law. If your opponent gets you in a Lavinia Knowledge Pool lock, for example, and has your Angel of Sanctions on the Knowledge Pool, you can cast a spell to get Angel out of the pool, have it get countered by Lavinia, and then embalm it on your turn getting rid of either Lavinia or Knowledge Pool (if you choose to get rid of Lavinia, you can shut your opponent out of the game by casting Rule of Law). Again, be smart about your lines of plays and force your opponent into a corner. This isn't a combo deck or a heavy Stax deck. This is just you playing Death and Taxes.

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Date added 6 years
Last updated 4 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

13 - 0 Mythic Rares

35 - 0 Rares

19 - 0 Uncommons

3 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 2.83
Tokens Angel of Sanctions 3/4 W, On an Adventure, The Monarch, Treasure, Warrior 1/1 W w/ Vigilance
Folders Neat Decks, Mono White EDH
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