I'm not an overly competitive Magic player, especially in Commander. I don't have encyclopedic knowledge of 25+ years' worth of cards, rules, mechanics, interactions and combos. Commander is the format I play 99% of the time and I play it for fun, to have some laughs and pass the time with good people. So, believe me when I say that I do not consider myself some sort of master brewer or a cEDH player hiding in plain sight.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I'd somehow managed to turn my dumb pet meme deck into something actually quite competent.

via GIPHY

I wrote about this deck in my very first article here on CoolStuffInc in March, which now feels like 78 years ago. I chose Daxos, Blessed by the Sun as my commander because I think he's a dreamboat.

That wasn't a joke, even if the deck was.

I truly never anticipated this deck turning into one that could actually hang in games with people who are much, much, much better brewers than I am. And yet that's exactly what's happened. This deck has won games, plural. And when it doesn't it's frequently because it got hated off the table after gaining a few dozen life in the first handful of turns.

Uh...yay! And also...whoops.

Let's try to figure out what went right (wrong?) here.

In With the New

Mono-White has definitely gotten some very nice new toys over the past few Standard sets and supplemental products. Quite a few of them immediately found themselves a spot in the 99 for good old Hot Daxos.

Oh, yeah. That's the good stuff.

It feels almost like these cards were designed expressly for my stupid deck. Luminous Broodmoth is maybe the best thing that could ever happen to a deck that wants to vomit creatures onto the board, but gets a little glass cannon-esque when those creatures get wiped away. The Broodmoth helps ensure that my board state can survive a sweeper and, potentially, end up ahead when all is said and done. It's also an immediate target for removal the moment it resolves; that stinks, but it's also deflected attention away from other threats long enough for me to make big plays. It also pairs very, very well with its Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths setmate, The Ozolith, to keep all those hard earned counters from going to waste.

Concurrently with Ikoria we got Commander 2020 and Hot Daxos got himself some Verge Rangers. Since a copy of Land Tax remains a bit out of my price range I'll take absolutely anything that helps with Mono-White's often bleak ramp situation. I don't think Verge Rangers has proved to be quite the powerhouse that some may have expected during spoiler season, it's a wonderful utility card for any White deck that's struggling to keep up with the Blues and Greens of the world. As a creature it's obviously more vulnerable to removal than an enchantment or artifact, but if it can last long enough to get you even one land, it's worth it.

And now we arrive at Core Set 2021, the most pleasant surprise for Commander players of any set in recent memory. It has bestowed upon us one card that more or less belongs in any deck that runs White, and one that's a bit narrower in application but one million percent perfect in Hot Daxos - Mangara, the Diplomat and Speaker of the Heavens.

Mangara is arguably a bigger bomb for Mono-White Commander decks than Smothering Tithe. Tithe has earned its place in the pantheon but I can't tell you how many times I've made a nice stockpile of Tithe treasures and had absolutely nothing to do with them, especially because the curve on Hot Daxos is quite low to the ground and has only gotten lower in the past few months. This is a deck that can very easily empty its opening hand by turn four or five and go into topdeck mode.

Instead of giving us mana, Mangara gives us cards and in my experience, Mono-White decks can use the cards more than the mana. (That's also why I finally acquired a Well of Lost Dreams for this deck.) Even if Mangara's first ability never amounts to much of anything, the second one is guaranteed to bring you value in a format where big turns are more the rule than the exception. Assuredly he'll be an immediate target, but much like Luminous Broodmoth, if he can survive a spin around the table, he'll have paid back his investment and then some.

And then there's Speaker of the Heavens. This dude is tailor-made for a lifegain deck. As a 1-drop we can get him out very early, and more often than not I'll be well above my starting life total in fairly short order. If Anointed Procession should happen to be in play once we get the Speaker rolling, things can get out of hand pretty quickly.

New but Not

It's not just brand new cards that have made this deck significantly better in the past few months. We also have some spicy additions that are new to Hot Daxos but definitely not new to Magic or Commander:

Let's dispense with the elephant - er, the fox - in the room. In my original article about this deck I included Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant in a group of cards - including Aetherflux Reservoir and Felidar Sovereign - that I intentionally left out of the deck. I still don't have even the slightest interest in weaponizing my life total with Aetherflux Reservoir or going for the far too easy dunk with Felidar Sovereign (and others like it). But after pulling a foil Rune-Tail from a Mystery Booster, I gave it a second look. It protects my creatures which is eminently useful, but it doesn't put a shield up around me, which keeps it fair in my estimation. I haven't had the chance to cast it very often, but when I have it hasn't been a game-breaker, so it stays. For now.

Speaking of Mystery Boosters, I have them to thank for Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and Alhammarret's Archive. These were both cards I would have liked in the deck from the get go but were a bit on the pricey side. Pulling them from my Boosties took care of that pretty nicely. Boon Reflection was, of course, not in Mystery Boosters, but I stumbled across one and windmill slammed it into the deck.

He's Heating Up

So how do all of these new additions make Hot Daxos better? In my experience, this is a case of going all in on synergy and being rewarded.

It astonishes me how often synergy is undervalued in Commander deck brewing. Sure, I think it's nice to make sure every deck has a good amount of card draw and removal and board wipes and so on. But I look at it this way - if I take out five cards that synergize very well with my commander just because "it feels like I need more removal and board wipes", the reality is that the board wipes and the removal spells may keep from dying but won't win me the game. This is a matter of personal preference and a topic I intend to explore another time, but suffice to say that when I'm making cuts during the brewing process, the tie almost always goes to synergy.

And boy do we ever have synergy here. In recent weeks, I've routinely been getting numerous creatures onto the battlefield early, gaining multiple points of life each time (Soul Warden, Soul's Attendant, Ajani's Welcome, Suture Priest) generating value in the form of counters (Heliod, Sun-Crowned) or combat advantage (Odric, Lunarch Marshal) and rocketing up to 60 or 70 life before my opponents realize what's happened.

To be sure, "good stuff" decks are absolutely a thing in Commander, and very often they work quite well. This isn't that. We're here to gain life and run away with the game. That's it. And all the upgrades I've made since March have made it much easier for this deck to do that.

Hot Daxos | Commander | Dave Kosin

• Commander (1)
• 1 Daxos, Blessed by the Sun

• Creatures (25)
• 1 Ajani's Pridemate
• 1 Anointer Priest
• 1 Burnished Hart
• 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
• 1 Heliod, Sun-Crowned
• 1 Knight of the White Orchid
• 1 Knight-Captain of Eos
• 1 Linden, the Steadfast Queen
• 1 Luminous Broodmoth
• 1 Mangara, the Diplomat
• 1 Mentor of the Meek
• 1 Mother of Runes
• 1 Odric, Lunarch Marshal
• 1 Regna, the Redeemer
• 1 Reverent Hoplite
• 1 Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant
• 1 Serra Avatar
• 1 Soul Warden
• 1 Soul's Attendant
• 1 Speaker of the Heavens
• 1 Springjack Shepherd
• 1 Sun Titan
• 1 Suture Priest
• 1 Verge Rangers
• 1 Victory's Envoy

• Instants (6)
• 1 Call the Coppercoats
• 1 Comeuppance
• 1 Entrapment Maneuver
• 1 Flawless Maneuver
• 1 Mana Tithe
• 1 Swords to Plowshares

• Sorceries (6)
• 1 Decree of Justice
• 1 Finale of Glory
• 1 Hour of Reckoning
• 1 Mass Calcify
• 1 Righteous Confluence
• 1 Storm Herd

• Enchantments (16)
• 1 Ajani's Welcome
• 1 Angelic Chorus
• 1 Anointed Procession
• 1 Aura of Silence
• 1 Authority of the Consuls
• 1 Banishing Light
• 1 Boon Reflection
• 1 Cartouche of Solidarity
• 1 Cradle of Vitality
• 1 Dawn of Hope
• 1 Dictate of Heliod
• 1 Ghostly Prison
• 1 Militia's Pride
• 1 Path of Bravery
• 1 Smothering Tithe
• 1 True Conviction

• Artifacts (12)
• 1 Alhammarret's Archive
• 1 Caged Sun
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Trading Post
• 1 Wanderer's Twig
• 1 Well of Lost Dreams
• 1 Bontu's Monument
• 1 Nyx Lotus
• 1 Oketra's Monument
• 1 The Ozolith
• 1 Throne of the God-Pharaoh

• Lands (35)
• 32 Plains
• 1 Blighted Steppe
• 1 New Benalia
• 1 Secluded Steppe

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And there we have it. Hot Daxos started as a meme and, in many ways, remains a meme. But somehow, someway, I bumbled myself into a pretty darn good deck. That's feeling never gets old.

Dave is a Commander player currently residing in Reno, NV. When he's not badly misplaying his decks, he works as a personal trainer. You can bother him on Twitter and check out his Twitch channel.