Readers!

Last week, I decided to build a deck that epitomizes what I like about mono-Green in Commander and luckily this week we can do the same for White. As a 75% builder, I don't exactly love stax builds because they can really annoy people, paint a target on your back, and I think they disproportionately harm more casual decks, which is the opposite of our aim with 75% building. However, there are certain classes of cards within the stax ethos that are very good, fair and aren't that annoying. If you'll remember back to our 8 simple rules, our goal is to prevent people from doing specific things but not prevent them from doing anything at all. Blowing up all of their lands with an Armageddon isn't a very 75% approach, but playing a Winter Orb is a little closer and playing an Orb of Dreams is just right. Most often, the best kinds of "stax" cards from a 75% deck are the ones that make opponents make choices. They can play spells, but Mana Web is going to force them to play them all at once. They can generate infinite tokens if they want, but they're all going to come into play tapped, which gives the rest of us a chance to respond. We don't want to be a deck that just has a hard time losing, we also want to win, and I think Theros Beyond Death gave us a White commander who can do just that.

Gaining a ton of life helps us not lose, but buffing our creatures up a ton gives us a way to win easier. We'll be hard to swing at because of our high life total and able to hurt them a lot on the crackback with fat creatures. Also, it's worth noting that Heliod can put counters on Enchantments as well, in case you wanted to run Luminarch Ascension, something I very much want to do. We're going to be a fairly formidable deck by the time we're done and we're also going to showcase the White stax cards we run in a 75% build. With a few infinite combos, an explosive win condition and a lot of value, this deck is going to epitomize everything we love about Mono-White.

The first way we want to limit what our opponents do is by slowing them down. Players who spend more money on their mana bases can develop faster than players who are using guildgates and Keyrunes but if we can limit the amount of spells they can play in a turn, they'll have to make tough choices and they'll be more in line with the rest of the table. Some spells I like for this approach are Eidolon of Rhetoric, Ethersworn Canonist, and Rule of Law. Players can still play spells but the player farthest ahead will have to make tough choices and they'll develop as slowly as they would have with a worse start.

Another way we can hurt our opponents is by denying them access to their cards right away. By making their permanents come into play tapped, we can deprive them of blockers, slow down their mana development and essentially make everything take a turn longer. Kismet is a slam dunk inclusion in this deck, but you might want to take a look at Authority of the Consuls and Blind Obedience, also. Having multiple ways to gain life while also hindering their development can only help us pull farther ahead.

Authority of the Consuls reminds me to use cards like Suture Priest as well, which gains us life when we play creatures and makes them lose life when they do, which are both outcomes we want. We'll want quite a few Soul Warden effects since we want lots of life gain triggers and cards like Pentavus go infinite with Heliod and a sac outlet like Ashnod's Altar. Being able to gain infinite life and infinite colorless mana means we can just Aetherflux Reservoir everyone out of the game if we draw the necessary cards, and slowing our opponents down gives us time to draw the combo pieces we need. The more ways we can gain life, the more we can load up cards like Hangarback Walker and Walking Ballista to try and win the game.

Finally, cards like Damping Sphere are perfect for a deck like this. Damping Sphere will really inconvenience the player who cracks an Explorer's Map to get Cabal Coffers but shouldn't bother casual players nearly as much, which is perfect. Another card that hurts the player farthest ahead is Mana Web. Players who are more casual and may be struggling to keep up can usually just play all of their spells main phase, but the player trying to stay ahead will want to keep mana up for countermagic and removal and if you can force them to either stop playing spells on their own turn or on other players' turns, you can really cramp their style. You're not preventing them from doing anything at all but you are making them make hard choices, which is what you want to be doing in a build like this.

All of those cards don't take up so much room in the deck that we can't focus on winning the game ourselves, especially with cards like Authority of the Consuls and Blind Obedience doing double duty. What would this deck look like?

Stax On, Stax Off | Commander | Jason Alt

• Creatures (30)
• 1 Alms Collector
• 1 Alseid of Life's Bounty
• 1 Aven Mindcensor
• 1 Cataclysmic Gearhulk
• 1 Containment Priest
• 1 Crystalline Crawler
• 1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
• 1 Ethersworn Canonist
• 1 Giver of Runes
• 1 Grand Abolisher
• 1 Hangarback Walker
• 1 Hushbringer
• 1 Hushwing Gryff
• 1 Leonin Arbiter
• 1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
• 1 Mother of Runes
• 1 Pentavus
• 1 Phyrexian Revoker
• 1 Ranger of Eos
• 1 Ranger-Captain of Eos
• 1 Scrapyard Recombiner
• 1 Soul Warden
• 1 Spirit of the Labyrinth
• 1 Suture Priest
• 1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
• 1 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
• 1 Triskelavus
• 1 Vryn Wingmare
• 1 Walking Ballista
• 1 Weathered Wayfarer

• Instants (7)
• 1 Angel's Grace
• 1 Disenchant
• 1 Generous Gift
• 1 Mandate of Peace
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Unexpectedly Absent

• Sorceries (2)
• 1 Evangelize
• 1 Winds of Abandon

• Enchantments (12)
• 1 Ashes of the Abhorrent
• 1 Aura of Silence
• 1 Authority of the Consuls
• 1 Blind Obedience
• 1 Dawn of Hope
• 1 Deafening Silence
• 1 Grasp of Fate
• 1 Kismet
• 1 Land Tax
• 1 Luminarch Ascension
• 1 Rule of Law
• 1 Smothering Tithe

• Artifacts (13)
• 1 Aetherflux Reservoir
• 1 Animation Module
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Ashnod's Altar
• 1 Damping Sphere
• 1 Grafdigger's Cage
• 1 Helm of Possession
• 1 Mana Web
• 1 Mask of Memory
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Thorn of Amethyst

• Lands (35)
• 24 Plains
• 1 Arid Mesa
• 1 Buried Ruin
• 1 Cavern of Souls
• 1 Flooded Strand
• 1 Inventors' Fair
• 1 Marsh Flats
• 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1 Scavenger Grounds
• 1 Strip Mine
• 1 Wasteland
• 1 Windswept Heath

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This deck looks like a lot of fun. Not only can we slow the opponents down, we can have explosive turns and win out of nowhere. I'm going to talk about a few of the interactions because I'm really happy with the synergy here.

First of all, there is a construct subtheme because stock lists run Scrapyard Recombiner. When I looked into what Constructs there are, I found a lot of good cards to add to the deck. Crystalline Crawler can act as a mana battery, turning lifegain triggers into stored mana. Cataclysmic Gearhulk can stop someone who got too far ahead. Pentavus and Triskelavus are our combo pieces, and Hangarback Walker and Walking Ballista do in a pinch. We can tutor for any number of these creatures, depending on which one we need if we get the Recombiner, and I like narrow tutors that work as toolbox cards rather than second copies of important stuff.

With a card like Soul Warden, we can gain a life whenever we put a creature into play, we can use Heliod's Trigger to put a counter on a creature like Pentavus and then remove that counter to put a token into play, giving us a life and putting a counter back on Pentavus. We can go infinite this way if we can sac the tokens for mana on Ashnod's Altar. It's a 3 card combo but one of the "pieces" is our commander so it's really a 2 card combo. I'm fine with combos like this that are a little clunky and use cards that are otherwise still fine in the deck. You're going to run Triskelavus regardless and being able to win out of nowhere is just a bonus. If you want to be less staxy, you can add Anointed Procession and Divine Visitation and other cards that make your token strategy better. I added Dawn of Hope, mostly as a way to draw cards, but it fits into this scheme as well. Anointed Procession makes combos that don't go infinite much better, and Divine Visitation makes all of your token producers very potent.

If you want to be a more straightforward attacking deck, there are a lot of angels that have lifelink and powerful abilities. Dumping a bunch of counters on a buff angel can soon get out of control and make your life total too high for them to effectively kill you. You can run Test of Endurance since I love that entire cycle of cards and you can run equipment that gives your creatures double strike.

You may want a few more sac outlets. I'm running a few because while cards like Hushbringer are quite good early, you'll want to make sure Soul Warden can trigger which means you may end up having to sac Hushbringer to Helm of Possession or Ashnod's Altar to make your own deck work better. Phyrexian Altar is a good one, as is High Market. If you find you need more, there are quite a few good ones you can run without disrupting the deck at all.

With creatures able to use +1/+1 counters for more than just attacking, Heliod is an engine for value that also forces you to gain a ton of life, something that helps you become much harder to kill. Really pore over the list and find the synergistic interactions as well as some spicy cards I don't often run such as Evangelize and Suture Priest.

That does it for me, everyone! Join me next week where I'll talk about a different thing that's separate from this one. Until next time!