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Heliod Midrange

Commander / EDH* Combo Control Midrange Mono-White Stax

thehalubi

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Lands (33)

Tutors (10)

Protection (1)

Card Advantage (12)

STAX (12)

Threats (6)

Mass Removal (3)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Heliod, Sun-Crowned

Ramp (12)

Recursion (6)

Spot Removal (4)

Maybeboard

Other (10)

Big WiP

Buckle up, it's going to be a long one.

This is a Heliod primer, but I will include some theory on building mono-white in general. Mono-white has long had a reputation of being the weakest color combination in EDH/Commander. All mono-white has currently is a lower power ceiling, with misconceptions coming from the very low power floor. Luckily this doesn't prevent mono-white from playing at high-powered tables (or even at competitive tables for that matter).

This is a very messy primer until I figure out what to cut down on. However everything is in accordions so it should be easy to skip to the relevant parts of the primer, and to skip over parts that are irrelevant to the reader.

The most necessary parts to read in order to get a good idea of the deck are:

  • General Gameplan
  • Card Selection
  • How to Win
  • Play Patterns and Mulligans

That said, I hope you enjoy and learn something.

How good is the deck really?

It's pretty good but won't win against highly optimized fish piles unless you get lucky. The deck can also function on a pretty tight budget at more casual tables, this list is just one version of many that happens to be mostly optimized because my meta is very cutthroat. Practice with the deck makes perfect, and the deck definitely gets wins because people don't respect some of the things mono-white does better than any other color.

Why aren't you just running the competitive list?

I don't particularly enjoy competitive at the moment due to fish, and I like playing slower and grindier games against different decks in my meta.

This deck began as an idea I had many years ago of a mono-white deck that wanted to abuse Emeria, The Sky Ruin. The first commander of the deck was Lieutenant Kirtar as it was the first creature I found that could repeatedly generate value off of Emeria. This was not good and I soon switched to Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite instead. While she was a decent finisher she was merely a good card at the helm of a mediocre deck.

One day a friend pointed out that Yosei, the Morning Star is a card and it all clicked together. I slowly developed and refined the deck over the course of three or so years during which I mostly played that deck. Unfortunately, I came to realise that Yosei and perhaps similar commanders with potential struggle from one dichotomy; speed versus resilience. In an effort to modernise Yosei, it lost its resilience to slower decks and got outgrinded if it got stopped.

While I will explain this dichotomy in more detail later, suffice to say I feel this deck strikes a balance between speed and resilience.

Pros:

  • High skill ceiling: It is rewarding to learn the deck. Unlike many Blue/Green/x color decks that vomit value all over the board and win without much though, winning is a very conscious decision for this deck. If you play well you win a lot of the time.
  • You get to be a special mono-white playing snowflake.

Cons

  • Mono white: despite mono-white being stronger than the average player thinks, it still has many issues.
  • High skill floor: it is easy to throw away wins with the deck. You have to play most turns correctly to string together a win.
  • Engines are slower and mostly worse: making the most out of the engines available takes time, and sometimes you feel bad that other decks get to play real Magic cards.

Why Heliod?

Heliod is difficult to remove, has a clean and clear win condition in Walking Ballista, and can start turning your smaller creatures into large beaters.

What exactly is a card:Heliod, Sun|Heliod? While it's pretty obvious what he literally does, the effect on the board and game he has is less so. Breaking this legendary down will help me explain why the deck is built how it is, and how we play towards him.

The casting cost

CMC 3 is really cheap to a cast, and easy to replay if it does somehow get removed.

The typeline

God

This does not matter, and I don't even know how you could make it matter in a meaningful way outside of playing a Cavern of Souls.

The text box and stats

Indestructible

As long as your devotion to white is less than five, Heliod isn’t a creature.

Whenever you gain life, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature or enchantment you control.

: Another target creature gains lifelink until end of turn.

5/5

There's a lot to unpack here. First off, being indestructible and not being a creature most of the time makes Heliod impervious to almost every form of removal, and some colours are almost entirely unable to deal with him. The combination of his third and fourth lines of text mean that you can stay at a healthy life total while also growing your own creatures to be more threatening, as well as winning the game off of Walking Ballista.

The plan of the deck is to slow the game down to where you can assemble. The deck goes fairly tall so the lategame is generally secured assuming everyone else has to play at a slow pace as well.

The order you want to do things in is most of the time: 1. Ramp 3. Card Advantage 4. Play threats

This applies to just about any well-built deck. Don't feel too bad about mulliganing a slow hand, there's a free mulligan; abuse it.

- Knight of the White Orchid: - Mind Stone: taps for mana immediately and can replace itself before casting a nuke - Darksteel Ingot: questionable ramp that doesn't die to a nuke. - Skyclave Relic: the above but better. - Hedron Archive: the above except it can draw you cards for the cost of tapping for less. - Smothering Tithe: generally this is at least a Thran Dynamo that works a bit slowly. However people like to draw cards and this quickly generates an absurd amount of mana.

Mono-white gets joked about by most EDH players because it has little ways of just drawing cards. This does not mean that card advantage is unavailable to the color.

  • Land Tax: partner in crime with ScRack. Gets you three lands a turn, usually activates two or three times depending on the table. If you have to go for the Emeria plan it is wise not to search for three plains each time if you have to discard to hand size since you might be left with less plains in your deck and field than what is needed to activate Emeria. You can also search for none if you don't want a Plains in hand but want to shuffle the deck.
  • Sensei's Divining Top: While this isn't strictly speaking card advantage, this filters so much chaff off the top of your deck that it might as well be. Pairs well with Land Tax or any other search effect.
  • Skullclamp: One of the biggest mistakes to see print, this turns any redundant creature into two cards for the low cost of mana.
  • Tithe: Gets you two Plains for one mana. Can get Mistveil Plains. Shuffles the deck. It's exactly what it says it is.
  • Mask of Memory: While it isn't quite Skullclamp, seeing two extra cards a turn is great. Dumping cards isn't insanely good in this deck either (compared to something like a card:Karador, Ghost Chieftai|Karador deck) but there are enough ways to recur or make use of the discard that it isn't much of a negative to discard a card.
  • Scroll Rack: Gets rid of cards you don't need and gets you new cards. How you use your shuffle effects with this is important. Keep in mind what is on top as you sometimes want to draw some of the cards you put on top of the deck, so you have to play in a way where you do not shuffle those cards back into the deck.
  • Smuggler's Copter:
  • Mangara, the Diplomat: Better the more opponents cast things at sorcery speed, one of the better white cards printed in a long time. Likely goes in every mono-white deck. That said playing around it is fairly easy for other colors so don't expect it to draw a card each turn.
  • Ugin, the Ineffable:

Building mono-white properly means building with tutors in mind. You want to use as many as you reasonably can because the lack of card draw means that finding cards you need is difficult without some other method. It is worth including slightly questionable cards in mono-white if you can tutor them with something (Overwhelming Splendor is an example of this, it's a threat you can dump into play with Academy Rector).

  • Enlightened Tutor: Grabs combo pieces most of the time. It is preferable to hold onto it so that you can search for artifacts as there is no other way in the deck to search for artifacts.
  • Expedition Map: The above but only get one activation, and is harder to recur.
  • Weathered Wayfarer: One of the reasons we play so many utility lands, this is a Swiss army knife. You can usually get two activations in so you have to think far ahead what you're going to get. A safe bet is Emeria if you know it's not going to get destroyed.
  • Open the Armory: gets Gift of Immortality, Lunarch Mantle, Skullclamp, or Mask of Memory
  • Idyllic Tutor: Gets any enchantment but what you gets highly depends on the boardstate. Keep in mind it can fetch Eidolon and Heliod
  • Ranger-Captain of Eos: the only target is Weathered Wayfarer. That said Wayfarer is good enough to tutor for. The sacrifice effect can prevent someone from comboing, and doesn't need a sacrifice outlet to abuse with Emeria.
  • Recruiter of the Guard: If you have this early getting Arena Rector is almost always right in the early game as it is one of the fastest ways of dumping a large threat onto the field. Nonetheless this is one of the better toolbox tutors in the deck.
  • Academy Rector: Gets any enchantment, but onto the field. It's just waiting for the day that a good high cost white enchantment gets printed.
  • Citanul Flute: Newest mainstay of the deck, the card can grind the game to a halt or look for infinites on its own given enough time. While it isnt cheap to cast, there is enough ramp in the deck to make it possible. Currently one of cards I search for most often with Enlightened Tutor.
  • Grand Abolisher: this lets you combo off or tutor safely on your turn. Tutorable.

Mana Accelerants

Metalcraft

  • Inventors' Fair: while not giving metalcraft, it needs it to be able to go get some of the best cards in the deck, not super important to have active as there's enough ways to get Walking Ballista through other means, but having it in the deck as an option to tutor artifacts is useful. Also gains life to make your board +1/+1 bigger each turn if active.

Fun with Crucible

Sacrifice Outlet

  • High Market: Sacrifices a creature for the cost of one mana. Necessary because of the death triggers of the commander, rectors and so on.

Mandatory

  • Plains: Yeah. I mean we'd play none of these if Emeria weren't a card and cards didn't have in their casting costs. Unfortunately both of those statements are true, so we play the minimum required. The minimum is in flux with the rest of the list. The more ways you have to search for Plains the less you have to play, but it hovers around 12-16 total, not including Mistveil Plains

  • Mistveil Plains: It's pretty much free to include as you can choose to tutor it or not tutor it (if you know a Blood Moon/Back to Basics is coming. Mostly relevant for putting combo pieces back into the deck if they are answered.

Other

  • Ondu Inversion  : Planar Cleansing is sick, and there's not much reason not to run this.

  • Emeria's Call  : There's basically no opportunity cost to playing this card, and sometimes you can just kill the table with it. It's happened twice now. Somehow they just don't get answered and the angels close out the game. I think it's stupid but it makes sense that the times when you do actually cast it it's good, since you and others are probably low on resources and you have nothing better to do.

This is an overview of how you can end the game.

The main plan

card:Heliod, Sun-Crowned + Walking Ballista kills the opponents for .

  1. Cast Heliod ()
  2. Cast Ballista for = ()
  3. Give Ballista lifelink with Heliod ()
  4. Remove a counter from Ballista to deal one damage to any target
  5. Ballista gets a counter thanks to Heliod

Repeat steps 4 and 5 until your opponents are dead.

This costs a total of if you have cast Heliod a turn earlier.

There's many ways to search for Ballista, making this a reliable win condition. It's also difficult to interact with since you can cast if for more than =, as well as being able to give it lifelink again with Heliod for in response to removal.

Free Big Ugin Wins

Generally this means you resolved an early Arena Rector and with a way to make it die. Grabbing Big Ugin usually drains a lot of resources from the table as rarely does anyone have direct removal for it, or just straight up gets to -10 which ends the game (in a very slow and drawn out manner).

Grind out

Why the deck is currently built slower, so that it can feasibly grind out long games. Also the most difficult play line to navigate as it can take a while to win.

This involves some combination of activating Heliod to grow your creatures, having an active Emeria, and casting a nuke or two.

WIP

Here are some sample opening hands and whether I would keep/mulligan, and how I would play the hand out.

Generally you are looking for a good balance of lands, ramp, and a way to get new cards into hand.

These are cards that are being tested and cards I want to fit in the deck once I find cuts for them.

  • WIP

Unordered. These are mostly not in the deck so that I have a couple flex slots to play around with in so that I can test new cards. These will not necessarily stay in, but are more likely to make the deck than cards in the "cards I need to test" section.

WIP

I want to work on a general mono-white primer eventually, going over the strategies and commanders I've seen work at a variety of tables. That will include some of the content in here, but likely be several times longer than this primer here.

There's a number of ways to build Heliod and mono-white in general, but here's some other ways you can build it.

WIP

WIP

I will perhaps make a couple of budget lists if there is interest.

Here's a bunch of Heliod lists I didn't make.

These cards should be in the deck, but due to a weakness or two, being boring, or just because I want space to play pet cards they do not fit in currently.

  • Path to Exile: it's just a good card, if something underperforms this is going in.
  • Rest in Peace: the best graveyard hate available, I don't run because it prevents some recursion in the deck.
  • Silence: I mostly think a one turn kill switch isn't worth it in decks that can't replace the card (which is exactly in mono-white). It's better the more cutthroat your list is because it can both prevent someone else's combo and protect yours.
  • Council's Judgment: a 2 or 3-for-1 whenever it resolves.
  • Steelshaper's Gift: another way to get Skullclamp or Mask.
  • Darksteel Mutation: deactivates commanders while leaving them on the field.
  • Hope of Ghirapur: another tutorable way to protect your turn or prevent someone else's turn from being more than a regulation amount of fun. Only affects one player though.

These cards should NOT be in the deck, but due to being pet cards or fun make the cut. Unlike cards on the chopping block these cards have been tested and generally found to be suboptimal, but my heart refuses to let me take them out. These cards

These are separated into two categories: cards that could be played but I cut, and cards that are awful and shouldn't be played.

Most of these cards are cards that are not bad but I'd consider only after cards in the waitlist. Play these if you want, they are ok. These cards are generally geared towards more casual play.

  • Gift of Estates/Oreskos Explorer: Most Tithe effects are somewhat sketchy. You want them but not too many because somehow later in the game you're going to have the most lands in play. These are worse ones, but is still fine if you can reliably have the least lands.
  • Conqueror's Galleon  : You can activate this pretty fast but it locks you into casting Yosei the next turn, and tapping Yosei so that you're all out of blockers, meaning a lot of your life can go. It's a fairly reasonable card though
  • Planar Birth: can win the game straight up with aggressively dumping Plains into the yard with Land Tax. OK if you're ruining someone's game with Dust Bowl. Problem is there's no way to reliably have this card in your hand by the time that happens.
  • Mind's Eye: costs a lot of mana upfront, making it hard to pair it with anything. Just play Mazemind Tome instead.
  • Coercive Portal: both things are things we want, but it's not super consistent. Not terrible though.
  • Mindslaver: Costs a boatload of mana but does generally eliminate a player.
  • Endless Atlas: If your manabase is heavier on basics then it's good, it's difficult to have it consistently work in this list.
Cards I've found to be, as the kids say, not good.

  • Mana Tithe: Force Spike is pretty much unplayable and so is this. You'll get one freebie with it and then everyone will know to play around it form then on out.
  • Ghirapur Orrery: the deck doesn't actually go heckbent very much and giving opponents ramp isn't a great idea.
  • Inventors' Fair: metalcraft is very difficult to achieve.
  • Ichor Wellspring/Wall of Omens/low cost cyclers: Just play a good card instead of playing a card that gets you closer to another one. These were played back when white had few real magic cards that you were desperately trying to find, but now you can play enough cards to fill out a deck and not feel bad about it.
  • Fall of the Thran: tested as a tutorable Armageddon, but it was never relevant that it was tutorable and was just stuck in hand most of the time.
  • Eldrazi Displacer: not enough things to flicker on our side, flickering opponents stuff isn't a great idea.
  • Council's Judgment: it would be good if EDH players were reasonable. That said a lot of the time if there's someone inexperienced at the table this will just remove one or two completely irrelevant cards and cause you to lose.

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Casual

93% Competitive

Revision 3 See all

(4 years ago)

-1 Alseid of Life's Bounty maybe
+1 Brought Back main
+1 Court of Grace main
+1 Darksteel Citadel main
+1 Dowsing Dagger  Flip main
+1 Endless Atlas maybe
+1 Faith's Reward maybe
+1 Idyllic Tutor main
+1 Kabira Takedown  Flip main
+1 Keeper of the Accord main
+1 Knight of the White Orchid main
+1 Oblation maybe
+1 Oblivion Stone maybe
+1 Play of the Game maybe
+1 Prismatic Vista main
+1 Sejiri Shelter  Flip main
+1 Soul-Guide Lantern maybe
+1 Steelshaper's Gift maybe
+1 Stoneforge Mystic maybe
+1 Sword of the Animist main
and 22 other change(s)
Date added 4 years
Last updated 4 years
Legality

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

10 - 0 Mythic Rares

50 - 0 Rares

23 - 0 Uncommons

4 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.21
Tokens Angel 4/4 W, Angel Warrior 4/4 W, Copy Clone, Elephant 3-3 G, Enchantment Cleric 2/1 W, Illusion */* U, Plant 0/2 G, Soldier 1/1 W, Spirit 1/1 W, Spirit 2/2 C, Monarch Emblem, Treasure
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