Captain, My Captain: Good Guys Always Wear…

Looking over this deck, you can see that I put heavy thought into it before unveiling it to the community. Each card, again, has a purpose. That’s why I spent weeks putting this together; this being the semi-final copy. (Remember, nothing is ever set in stone when it comes to a deck you are trying to perfect.)

One of my biggest pet peeves is being land screwed or flooded. One luxury of playing a mono coloured deck is going light on the lands (depending on your curve, of course). Thirty to forty is still nice, but since you don’t have to even the mana flow to match the costs, thirty-five should be more than enough. You to work it out so that you have just enough lands and just enough fetch. In White, you have a few, but not enough. Luckily, Land Tax is now available online (which I really, REALLY need to buy and add to this deck). Coupled with Reliquary Tower (which is fast becoming one of the top staple cards to have in EDH), it get ridiculous fast if you’re last in line on lands in play. Gift of Estates, Tithe, and Endless Horizons are all cards you can use to help regulate the land flow in your deck. You have to be extremely careful with Endless Horizons, however. Some opponents will be respectful of your mana, but there are some who aren’t and will Disenchant it in one way or another and leave you without the necessary land to play spells. On the flip side, you can use this to exile all those Plains late game to improve your draws.

Land selection can be easy and tough. Of course you use basic lands, those are the necessity of every deck, EDH or not. Choosing which non basic ones to use can better tough. In my deck I chose, Emeria, Reliquary Tower, Stalking Stones (my new staple), Kjeldoran Outpost to name a few. Man lands are really nice in EDH. If you have no creatures you can always turn the Stones in one and swing. Equip something to it and run over your opponents. Forbidding Watchtower would be an awesome addition to this deck.

Artifacts are another way to produce mana, land fetch, or even double your mana. Doubling Cube, Extraplanar Lens, Gauntlet of Power, Gilded Lotus, Mana Crypt, and many more are a major plus for the deck. In a mono coloured deck, the mana producing artifacts will only produce the colour of your commander. You can tap for another colour but it will show up as colourless.

Life gain is another White feature that can be extremely helpful, but remember: it wont protect you from Commander damage. You can have 2,995 life and still die to 21 damage done by someone’s Commander. Eternity Vessel is a great card in this format, especially if you get ganged up on. Get it down when you have a high life total, otherwise it’s not nearly as effective. Beacon of Immortality, Loxodon Warhammer, and other cards will help you achieve the right amount of life in this deck. An opponent can try to get your life down but thanks to Landfall, you can have your life back to 2,995 with the drop of one land. Children of Korlis is great if playing against a lifeloss deck, which is becoming popular now in EDH. An easier win, as I like to call them.

Another great yet annoying fun thing about White is protections. You have mass combat damage prevention like Holy Day, Dawn Charm, and the likes, as well as straight colour prevention like the CoPs: Circle of Protections. How fun are those in singleton!? As you can see I run all of the major colours in my deck. CoPs offer protection when you don’t have creatures out and are out of gas and/or answers. When playing them you should always have enough mana to protect yourself. If not, you might get a fast, sloppy target painted on your forehead for that brief moment of vulnerability (especially if they don’t have anyway to deal with the Circles).

Evasion

ChrisKool: “Horsemanship is like cheating…”
Horsemanship….pure sickness. A lot of people think this ability is broken. I don’t. Introduced and ultimately tossed aside in one set, Three Kingdoms, horsemanship is like flying first class. I love to abuse the ability as much as I can. Unless your opponent(s) are packing some horsemanship as well, you’ll be beating unimpeded all game long. And, thankfully, since it was a Three Kingdoms ability, it’s quite rare to find many players using this as a primary Aggro strategy. This being said, usually when I sit at a table with this deck or any other deck with this ability, I am usually picked on or the first to go. My favourite thing to do is set out a Reliquary Tower and hook up an Empyrial Plate onto Liu Bei and watch people get nervous. This is where the enchantment Indestructibility comes into play. Lightning Greaves or any other equipment that requires you to damage an opponent is sick with Horsemanship. Equipment like Sword of Fire and Ice or Sword of Light and Shadow is ridiculously great with the “broken” ability. With SoFI attached to Liu Bei, Zhang Fei, or Guan Yu you pretty much will have steady draws and a shock to boot each turn. Your opponents will do everything in their power to dispatch the incredibly strong creature.

Shhhh!

Silence is great to cast on the turn that you decide to enchant and equip Liu Bei and swing. They really can’t do too much but sit there and take it like a man…or woman…or whatever. Now to me, Silence is a better choice than Orims Chant to have in this deck- Silence is a global effect and Chant just targets a single player.

Dudes

Creature selection is very important. I gave this a lot of thought for this build since it’s the means of victory. I wanted an “army” for Liu Bei. I could easily make this into a tribal soldier deck and watch it run crazy. With the synergy that tribal creatures have, the horsemanship ability can get out of control fast. With creatures like Daru Warchief, Ballyrush Banneret, and Field Marshal, Liu Bei can get a very nice boost and make his attack more deadly. As with any tribe, however, it can paint a bullseye on you.

Creatures like Exalted Angel, and Warrior Angel are extremely helpful in this deck. Although life totals matter much less in EDH than other formats where you start on the traditional 20 life, it is nice to be sitting pretty at 595 while your opponents are at 40 or less. But, again, it’ll make you a big target. Kongming, Sleeping Dragon is a very nice addition to any White deck: Crusade on legs!

Recursion

Creature control is nice to have in a White deck too. The newest in the recursion mechanic is Emeria, the Sky Ruin, a land that triggers to bring creatures back when you control seven or more Plains. I recommend using this when running a lot of creatures. You could even let your commander go to the graveyard to escape paying the extra two each time its cast. However you’d have to be extremely careful of graveyard hate. Anyone with a sound mind playing graveyard removal will go after your commander sitting pretty in your graveyard waiting to be resurrected on your upkeep. If you cannot wait til then, I recommend using Breath of Life or False Defeat immediately after your commander is dealt with, so that way you don’t have to worry about someone removing your valiant leader from the game.

Enchantments

You may have noticed the Mesa Enchantress I have in this deck. With the small amount of enchantments that I have in this deck, the draw that she offers is really nice. Especially since White doesn’t have much draw to offer. Each enchantment has a purpose, whether its to make a creature an indestructible, life gaining beast or to protect you from every colour. Another must for any White deck is Crusade. Sure it can help out your opponents, but it also gives you a huge edge. Serras Blessing is a great card for this deck. Vigilance is nice in any deck that bolsters a lot of men, really. Not having to tap to attack and always having a blocker (the right one) can make it a real uphill battle for your opponents. Armored Ascension, the White Blanchwood Armor is superb in any White deck. As one of my new favourite White cards, its extremely brutal on any creature with horsemanship. One thing I have noticed growing in EDH, is land destruction decks. LD, as its called, can be an effective method of control in any format. Although a lot of people do not like it, and choose not to use it, some people have learned the effectiveness it harbours. Sacred Ground and Crucible of Worlds can thwart land destruction.

Removal

Exile…beautiful mechanic. It allows you to deal with indestructible creatures and bothersome permanents when mass removal just can’t cut it. So when an opponent lays down that Darksteel Colossus all you have to do is play Path to Exile and own it! Even the card Exile (the mechanic’s namesake) works well. I have to say that I love, love, love, love, LOVE when I can Condemn a player’s commander. Nothing gets someone’s blood boiling like putting a commander on a the bottom of their deck. Smite is a real nice card if you have a smaller creature that is blocking something bigger. As long as it doesn’t have shroud and not indestructible you can Smite just about anything. And don’t forget Otherworldly Journey: a great combat trick both aggressively and defensively.

The instants and sorceries I used all have one thing in common: Control. Condemn, Exile, Reprisal, Celestial Purge, all deal with creatures. Need mass removal? Wrath of God, Winds of Rath, Righteous Fury, and others will take care of those pesky critters en masse. One instant that I have fallen in love with is Debt of Loyalty. No one expects White to have a “theft” spell, kinda like expecting the Spanish Inquisition. It’s fun to play on any creature that can benefit you, IE: a creature that aid you in drawing or fetching lands and such.

Although, I am semi satisfied with this deck, its pretty solid. Solid Aggro, solid Control, however there are few things that I would love to replace. Hopefully I can figure out the mana issues so it can run much more smoothly than it has been. Have any ideas? Feel free to comments on here or you can hit me up on Magic. To see this deck in action, check out the new upcoming EDH video where ChrisKool, so many trolls, and a friend of mine duke it out with three very different decks! It should be up sometime midweek! Til next time EDH fans! Check out my next article where I take you through my thought process of creating the perfect mono Black deck for EDH. Yes, I will be using Xiahou Dun, The One-Eyed to lead my army.

Signing Out,
Kaya