My attempt to make a decent mono-white list. I was really inspired by the new art for
Mangara of Corondor
. He's always been a commander that I wanted to build, but the obvious challenges in building him have always pushed me away. I've finally decided to take up the challenge.
Winning the Game
The main goal of this deck is to combo off and kill opponents through infinite damage or infinite mill. There are a total of six potential combo pieces in the deck:
Sun Titan
,
Fiend Hunter
,
Karmic Guide
,
Reveillark
,
Blasting Station
, and
Altar of Dementia
.
The good thing about the creatures in this combo package are that they are useful outside of the combo.
Fiend Hunter
is some nice temporary spot-removal,
Reveillark
and
Karmic Guide
can both help get creatures from the yard, and their ETB abilities synergize really well with all of the blink effects.
Sun Titan
is the value king.
The artifacts in this combo are less widely useful, unfortunately. However, they're only occupying two spots in the deck, so it isn't that much of a bother. Funnily enough,
Altar of Dementia
can be really useful for setting up the combo if you have a good number of creatures out already and you have one of the recursion pieces of the combo in your hand.
There are a few ways to perform this combo. All of these methods lead to infinite damage or infinite mill for your opponents, depending on which sac outlet you are using.
-
Reveillark
+
Karmic Guide
+
Altar of Dementia
/
Blasting Station
-
Reveillark
+
Fiend Hunter
+
Altar of Dementia
/
Blasting Station
-
Karmic Guide
+
Fiend Hunter
+
Altar of Dementia
/
Blasting Station
-
Sun Titan
+
Fiend Hunter
+
Altar of Dementia
/
Blasting Station
Another handy thing about this combo package is that so many of the cards are interchangeable. If you lose your
Sun Titan
, you can still just use another combination of creatures to pull off the win.
The difficulty with this combo and this deck as a whole is that it is difficult to find your combo pieces. We can use
Inventors' Fair
or
Enlightened Tutor
to find the altar or the blasting station, but other than that, we'll have to dig for them.
Card Advantage
Card advantage is key for this deck. Given that the deck is mono-white, options are pretty limited. I decided to lean into monarch effects to help generate card advantage, along with a few more typical mono-white choices like
Endless Atlas
,
Alms Collector
,
Mind's Eye
, and
Mangara, the Diplomat
.
Archon of Coronation
,
Palace Jailer
,
Protector of the Crown
, and
Staunch Throneguard
all give us the monarch on entering the battlefield, which synergizes nicely with the rest of our deck. It's pretty easy to hold on to the monarch or just blink a creature and get it back before the end of our turn, so you can usually draw at least two cards a turn.
A lot of the draw effects in the deck are mana intensive. All of the creatures that give us the monarch cost at least four mana, and effects like
Endless Atlas
and
Bag of Holding
require a mana investment each turn to use. That being said, you can dig through the deck pretty quickly if you have just a few of these effects out and a decent amount of mana. This begs the question: how will we get that much mana in mono-white?
Mana Advantage
This deck is surprisingly good at ramping. There are a ton of efficient mana rocks that cost two or less, but this deck really shines in getting out extra lands by blinking and recurring creatures. It's pretty easy to blink
Solemn Simulacrum
or
Kor Cartographer
a few times in one turn in this deck, which can really help keep up with other decks. There are a few ways to recur
Burnished Hart
as well, which can add up very quickly.
If there is a green player who is aggressively ramping in the pod,
Boreas Charger
can really provide a lot of value.
Knight of the White Orchid
is good in similar situations.
Flicker Effects and Mangara Shenanigan's
So, we know how to win with the deck, and how it accrues card and mana advantage. But what does it do while digging for the combo?
Outside of finding the combo and winning, the main focus of this deck is to control the board with
Mangara of Corondor
. To do this, we'll have to get around him trying to exile himself any time we activate him. Thankfully, because he does not exile himself as part of the cost to activate his ability, we can respond to the activation by blinking Mangara, and he won't be exiled when his own exile trigger resolves. There are loads of instant-speed flicker effects in the deck to help take advantage of Mangara:
Cloudshift
,
Flicker of Fate
and
Justiciar's Portal
, to name a few.
Mangara can be brutal for your opponents, exiling their best permanent each turn. This effect can be devastating, since it completely removes its target from the game and is able to get rid of any permanent at instant speed. However, there are a few potential and certain downsides. First, you'll want to be somewhat frugal in how you use Mangara's ability. You'll want to remove major threats ONLY for the most part until you have enough advantage that you can start being more aggressive. Coming for people's necks early is a good way to put a target on your back. Another big disadvantage of the deck is that it has little other interaction outside of Mangara. It's very important to be able to keep him out so that you can protect yourself while looking for combo pieces.
Other Considerations
There are a few other cards in the deck that work to synergize with certain themes in the deck.
Ghostly Prison
is there to help keep the monarch, and hopefully take some of the heat off the deck.
Court Street Denizen
and
Panharmonicon
work well with blink effects.
Glaring Spotlight
and
Thousand-Year Elixir
both help Mangara do his thing.
There are also a few non-basic lands that help draw cards, blink Mangara, or make opponent's permanents targetable again.
