Before we begin, let me just say that for the purposes of grinding for packs (and Play-In Points!) in best-of-one Standard, Mono-White has been almost comically good for me. Like really, really good and consistent out the gate.

Here's the deck:

Mono-White | DSK Standard | Michael Flores

• Creatures (10)
• 1 Loran of the Third Path
• 2 Enduring Innocence
• 3 Sanguine Evangelist
• 4 Beza, the Bounding Spring

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 2 Archangel Elspeth

• Instants (7)
• 3 Soul Partition
• 4 Get Lost

• Sorceries (8)
• 4 Lay Down Arms
• 4 Sunfall

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Caretaker's Talent

• Artifacts (4)
• 4 Carrot Cake

• Lands (25)
• 14 Plains
• 1 Mirrex
• 2 Sunken Citadel
• 4 Demolition Field
• 4 Fountainport

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You may remember I wrote about a similar deck for Bloomburrow Standard. This one performs substantially better across the board. Part of that is contextual (matchups becoming more predictable and exploitable), but part of that is the construction of the deck itself, and the benefits it brings to bear.

First off is a shift in removal.

The lone Loran of the Third Path provides some valuable resistance to one of the most dangerous cards for this kind of a strategy: Urabrask's Forge. Of course you can also answer Urabrask's Forge with another new addition: Soul Partition. At least for a little while. You know how I feel about Soul Partition! But in Duskmourn Standard, Soul Partition most importantly provides some additional instant speed removal for Red-based aggro decks.

While the card doesn't answer anything permanently - especially given the most troublesome targets tend to cost a single Red mana - Soul Partition does exile them. That means that the "death" triggers on Heartfire Hero and Cacophony Scamp won't fire when you take them out... Spectacularly important in the face of Burn Together or just a stack of pump spells going into the Scamp's post-damage proliferate option.

• -4 Elegant Parlor
• +4 Demolition Field

Demolition Field "kind of" does a similar thing to Elegant Parlor. It does in fact thin your deck a little. It doesn't do the same thing as Elegant Parlor, but Demolition Field does offer a bit of filtering.

More important is its ability to combat other Fountainport and / or Mirrex decks. Any deck that relies so heavily on Lay Down Arms and Sunfall for defense - up to the full eight in this build - is going to be potentially vulnerable to opposing creature lands. So Demolition Field is a welcome bit of tuning. I think the difference between this version and a quasi-mirror where the opponent has Elegant Parlor is going to be a blowout over time. While a land for a land looks like a simple one-for-one, the ability to build advantages with your Fountainport while the opponent looks at the nice basic Plains you gave them will be overwhelming over many games.

Perhaps the biggest upgrade is Enduring Innocence.

This new card from Duskmourn: House of Horror is like playing six copies of Caretaker's Talent. Though there are a couple of tactical and strategic wrinkles you should be aware of.

Tactical - I actually try to get my Enduring Innocence killed in combat as quickly as possible. First of all, I get a little lifelink (which is of course welcome). But if it gets destroyed by damage, Enduring Innocence suddenly becomes "safe". You can feel free to follow up with your Sunfall and keep the Innocence (albeit in enchantment form).

Strategic - One play pattern that comes up quite a bit is when you reach Level 3 on Caretaker's Talent, your Enduring Innocence all of a sudden will become a far less impressive draw engine. Which may or may not matter if you're slamming the opponent for 12 lifelink or whatever. But just make sure you're aware of this.

The underlying thesis of this deck, especially in Best-of-One, is that matchups tend to be predictable, and that Caretaker's Talent will often be the most powerful thing happening on either side of the battlefield. Again, my own performance with this deck has been almost comically impressive!

... Which isn't to say you never lose. Following are...

Four Ways I've Lost With Mono-White Control

1. The Opponent Goes First With Two Copies of Leyline of Resonance

The first time this happened to me I thought I would be fine. I had a couple of lands (including a basic Plains) and the matching White instants.

But the opponent's first buff was actually Witch's Mark. That was annoying. I killed the offending first turn Monastery Swiftspear... but the opponent drew a ton first. Adding insult to injury, the Swiftspear could only wear one Role, so I took random damage along the way. Their next play involved Might of the Meek. All of a sudden the opponent just had inevitability, along with a full grip.

Decks like this perform in part because they have automatic card advantage. Either they're getting two-for-one on a buff spell or they're shaving value off of creatures that only get played because of their "death" triggers. You don't care over much about the life you give up with Lay Down Arms, but you really care that Lay Down Arms turns off Heartfire Hero.

If the opponent can use Leyline of Resonance just as a hyper-efficient card drawing engine, you'll run out of virtual two-for-ones before they run out of threats. And it takes exactly one threat to kill you.

2. Sneaky Jace, the Perfected Mind

One of the worst ways to lose is against a deck that is also competing with Caretaker's Talent. You stick and move, jab and trade. The game appears to be all about Mirrex management and meting how much you can commit before getting blown out by an opposing Temporary Lockdown.

You're careful - super careful - about your library. Card advantage is nice. Having Caretaker's Talent advantage helps you angle better on the battlefield. You hit your land drops... But either player can deuce the board with a Sunfall at basically any time, so you have to stay mindful.

Sometimes the opponent is a Horned Loch-Whale deck. That's really a fun interplay of resources on the battlefield! How much can you take? How do you plan to deal with the resolved Whale? Eighteen is not twenty.

But then they go and spoil it by having one copy of Jace, the Perfected Mind. It shows up, I dunno, turn twenty-seven or so. Boo! They don't even have to kill you with it. A fifteen-card swing at basically any point will decide the game because at some point you don't get to decline Caretaker's Talent draws.

Now all the Caretaker's Talent and Whale and creature removal interplay seems like it didn't matter. Actually, it all really didn't matter. All war is deception and they got you. Feels bad, though; because you thought the game was about something else, and for decks so ponderous, probably quite a few turns.

3. Strategic Jace, the Perfected Mind

Decks that are actually about Jace, the Perfected Mind are another matter entirely.

You are never really in the game against a deck that has four copies of Jace and is actually just playing for the Counterspell-Jace game plan. The Mono-White deck is to a degree a metagame deck. It's cohesive and powerful, but it feasts largely on the fact that it can kill Red creatures opportunistically. If the opponent is aimed at another segment of the metagame - slow decks, reanimator decks say - well... That includes you.

Even a deck that is focused primarily on competing with the fast decks in the format will be behind against a four Jace deck. And they have upwards of 10 Counterspells! Mono-White has no such insurance policy. You tend to never be in these games.

4. Getting Decked by Ancient Cornucopia

Standard is a great format. It's been great for literally years! But one of the unattractive features of the current shape of Standard from my perspective is simply that Farewell has rotated.

Farewell was a great card that was often a one-of in White control decks. It was super expensive so you couldn't play too many copies. That meant it didn't show up every game... But just the possibility of Farewell kept people honest. In fact, I would often leave my Farewell in against Red aggro decks when I sided out all my Sunfalls, so I'd have better coverage against a potential range of sideboard cards. But in the post-Farewell Standard, a big mana deck can lay out all four copies of Ancient Cornucopia and there is nothing most decks can do about that, other than end the game.

And ending the game can be difficult if the opponent is gaining 4+ life with every single spell! It's kind of worse when the opponent is actually gaining life during combat by killing attackers.

This deck is actually pretty good at grinding out opponents with big spells and big card draw. You don't auto-lose to Valgavoth or anything, because who cares about lifelink? And Sunfall doesn't care about Ward. Atraxa is still Atraxa, but you might be surprised at how well the Caretaker's Talent grind can keep up with brief - if blinding - bursts of card advantage.

Often the plan is for you to deck them.

This might seem hard to conceptualize, especially if the opponent is drawing ten cards at a time... But the reality is that some of these decks have relatively few ways to actually win, even if those ways are gigantic and lifelinking. You can actually manage them with 4 Sunfall and - in a long enough grinding game - 4 Lay Down Arms.

The problem is that Ancient Cornucopia versions can pick and choose from every spell of every color when making their deck design decisions. And that includes sweepers! The last time this happened to me I was surprised to be up against a solo Deadly Cover Up. That meant that the opponent could not only severely impact my ability to win through damage... But also bring me three or more cards closer to decking, myself.

Standard is a great format. You can play any number of different Monastery Swiftspear decks. Rite of the Moth is opening up completely new avenues for deploying threats. If four mana is too expensive a reanimation tool for you, can I interest you in a Squirming Emergence?

Standard is a great format. You can play for speed, control, flexibility... Or you can just draw tons and tons of creature removal with your token draw engine. Mono-White is an exceptional deck (at least given what other people are playing). It never gets color screwed, but man can it creature-screw an opponent who needs to balance beaters and buffs.

Try it!

LOVE

MIKE