Hello TappedOut! Today I am showcasing a Mono White Equipment Deck! While I am very much interested in advice and suggestions, I ask that please you read the explanation of this deck below before criticizing certain aspects of it. There was a lot of deck theory that went into making this deck what it is, and despite its meager appearance, it's actually incredibly competitive. So as to not prattle on too long, here's how it works:
The style of the deck is a little bit a mix of combo-meets-voltron. Your main win condition is to get a creature(s) on board that can stand up against the best of them and wreak havoc.
The first thing you may notice however is that there are only 16 creatures! Before you get your Armadillo Cloaks in a bunch, take note of how many tutors this deck has. With 4 copies of Steelshaper's Gift, 4 Relic Seeker, and 4 Flagstones of Trokair, you're sure to thin the deck regularly, bringing you much closer to your much-needed creatures.
That's not even taking into account the metric crap-ton of draw power you can get from Puresteel Paladin and Sword of Fire and Ice.
Secondly, the inclusion of Brave the Sands allows for all your creatures to not only act as both attackers and blockers, but count as 2 blockers, meaning that your opponent will have to literally think twice if they really want to attack into your 2/2 with Deathtouch to lose two of their creatures, or even attack at all into your undamagable, unblockable wall if it has protection from their deck's colors.
Lastly, if you do lose any of your creatures, Sword of Light and Shadow lets you retrieve any of your fallen comrades and add them back to your hand, keeping your supply of creatures well-stocked.
Of course, that is assuming that your opponent can even kill your creatures.
Pretty much the primary objective of this deck is getting Leonin Shikari and Swiftfoot Boots onto the Battlefield. Once you do, your entire board in essence has Hexproof and Haste, since you can pay 0 to equip as many times as necessary during the stack to make those abilities work in your favor. This strategy makes the board especially potent once you have the other Equipment (especially the Swords) out, thus giving your entire board flexibility to become anything on a moment's notice. This is where Puresteel Paladin or having two copies of Auriok Steelshaper really shines. With either of those above creatures, your board can go from a minor nuisance to exceptionally deadly. Which leads us right into our next topic: Metalcraft.
While Affinity may be popular, Metalcraft is an easily-overlooked and widely-underestimated ability, and seeing as Artifacts are (obviously) a huge part of this deck, I opted to capitalize on this aspect by trying to get 3 artifacts on board as soon as possibly to ensure that the Metalcraft condition is always met.
The first and most logical way to make this happen was by including 4 copies of Darksteel Citadel, thus giving you a free artifact as a land drop. The second step was to have plenty of low-drop artifacts, so there's 2 copies of Mox Opal (which I'm considering bumping up to 3, as it can be used as a makeshift Lotus Petal in a pinch if needed), Spidersilk Net, Basilisk Collar, Swiftfoot Boots (remember that this deck has 8 Equipment Tutors), and lastly, 4 copies of Aether Vial.
While both Aether Vial and Mox Opal help with Mana management, ramp, and fixing, Aether Vial achieves two other goals:
Firstly, it makes getting your creatures on board a breeze, as you are no longer relying solely on casting them, and can instead use that much-needed mana toward casting your Equipment and their Equip costs. This keeps the your creatures safe from counters, while keeping your mana open for casting your Equipment, or using your Equip abilities, or casting your Instants and/or Sorceries. A bonus to this is that ALL your creatures are have a CMC of 2, so Aether Vial becomes very useful in pushing them out very quickly.
Secondly, while the ramping is both necessary and useful, the real power of Aether Vial is that it lets you flash in your creatures.
Being able to put a creature out during your opponent's end step is already a great advantage, but being able to immediately put out an extra blocker or get an unexpected Leonin Shikari to then equip and protect something at instant speed can completely take your opponent by surprise and make them lose out on significant card advantage.
I probably sound like a n00b explaining the benefits of the infamously potent Aether Vial, so I'll move on.
The point of this is that, with all the low-drop artifacts, achieving Metalcraft early in the game (sometimes even turn 1) is very do-able. This is important, as it allows for you to ramp with Mox Opal, and turns your otherwise lackluster copies of Dispatch into Path to Exile without a drawback.
Now, that isn't to say that Dispatch without Metalcraft is useless either. In fact, it can be a very useful key to making your Relic Seeker deal combat damage and thus getting Renown and netting you a +1 in the form of an Equipment, which can be an extremely valuable combo piece. Additionally, you can stall an otherwise problematic creature from wreaking havoc on you for one turn.
But most of all, Metalcraft is an essential component of Puresteel Paladin. With it, you no longer have to waste mana on making your creatures stronger and can instead focus solely on manipulating the board state as you see fit. As mentioned above, this is where Leonin Shikari comes in, allowing for any one of your creatures to gain the powerful abilities and buffs of any of your other equipment at instant speed.
For a while, I wrestled between playing Always Watching and Brave the Sands, with both having their merits in the deck. Ultimately I landed on Brave the Sands as it costs 1 mana less, and the ability to turn one of your creatures into two or more blockers becomes especially daunting once your creatures don't care about combat.
I've gotten a few questions about Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx as well and all I can say is that it is deceptively good. For one, this deck is mono white which means that with just a few permanents, your devotion can really add up, thus allowing you to ramp. In fact, your ramp from Aether Vial can actually feed into your ramp for Nykthos. By tapping Vial to put out the 2 CMC Puresteel Paladin, you not only spare yourself 2 mana, but you now have two extra white mana symbols on board, meaning that if you didn't 3 or more on board before, you almost certainly do now, allowing for Nykthos to generate extra mana. But second and less obvious is that Nykthos can actually filter your colorless mana from Darksteel Citadel or Cavern of Souls and make it white mana to use to cast Dispatch, Steelshaper's Gift, Brave the Sands, and even Godsend with.
Lastly, though I mentioned Flagstones of Trokair above, it's exceptionally important, as this deck really only needs mana in the beginning, and it's incredibly useful to be able to pull them straight from the deck at no detriment to you.
I'm sure there's more I have to say about this deck, but it's escaping me right now and when I remember, I'll add it later.
If I could add anything to the deck, it would be 4 copies of either Mana Tithe or Silence, though I really have no clue what I'd remove to make room for them. Additionally, I've toyed with the idea of playing Etched Champion or Indomitable Archangel to up the creature count and diversity, but in my playtesting, they haven't been particularly useful.
Finally, I have considered playing Token generators like Secure the Wastes, Brimaz, King of Oreskos, and Kemba, Kha Regent, but in all of those instances, Etched Champion + Brave the Sands seemed far more useful.
In any case, please feel free to comment and offer your opinions and suggestions! Anything to bump this deck up from casual play to an actual tier-level deck would be much appreciated!
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