MTG Salvation

Hi all! I finally decided to work on a list for a commander that has always interested me: Darien, King of Kjeldor. I've enjoyed token strategies in the past but I've never played mono-W before, so I thought I'd branch out. The problem is, I just can't get my list down to 100 cards. Hopefully the unbiased eyes of strangers on the internet can do a better job cutting cards. At this point, I'm not looking for suggestions for cards to add, just things to cut. Note that I haven't actually added lands to the list yet, but I'm thinking of running 37, meaning I need to cut 6 cards at this point.

You need to dramatically lower your CMC, the average is 3.7 (and that's not counting all your equip costs (11 equip costs, averaging 2.3 per equip)and counting your X cost spells as X=1, which you'd almost never want to do), and White has little in the area of card draw and ramp (although I do see you added frequently used cards to help in this regard). Your sorceries alone cost nearly 6 mana on average, with only ONE of them costing less than 5. Your creatures cost 4.1 mana on average. And, you've only got Sol Ring, Marble Diamond, and Mind Stone as mana rocks, in addition to Caged Sun and Pearl Medallion (which is useless for 65 cards in your deck, as they are not white or have no colorless in their cost).

Unless you're playing in an extremely casual meta or against newbies or low budget decks, expect to never do anything but play one spell per turn while your opponents run roughshod, unless you're fortunate enough to get Caged Sun out and on the board without quickly being blown up. I run a Darien deck and he's a lot of fun, and I don't say this to be insulting, but I think you'll be miserable playing this deck, doing very little on each of your turns because of the double whammy of no mana/high cost cards clogging your hand.

Quote from JDviant »

Benalish Commander always ends up being too slow for my liking. I either draw him early and can;t suspend him for a good value, or draw him too late when his suspend is a lot less useful. He does benefit from being cast if you already have a bunch of creatures, but in my better decks he never makes the final cut.

Militia's Pride only activates when non-tokens attack, and a lot of your creature cards aren't that aggressive. Don't think you'll be getting the best value.

Hmm, I've liked Benalish Commander in the little bit of testing I've done but it's been very minimal (the testing), so I'm not totally sure. I actually had that realization about Militia's Pride already and cut it from my list, I just hadn't updated the main post yet

Quote from SonofaBith »

You need to dramatically lower your CMC, the average is 3.7 (and that's not counting all your equip costs (11 equip costs, averaging 2.3 per equip)and counting your X cost spells as X=1, which you'd almost never want to do), and White has little in the area of card draw and ramp (although I do see you added frequently used cards to help in this regard). Your sorceries alone cost nearly 6 mana on average, with only ONE of them costing less than 5. Your creatures cost 4.1 mana on average. And, you've only got Sol Ring, Marble Diamond, and Mind Stone as mana rocks, in addition to Caged Sun and Pearl Medallion (which is useless for 65 cards in your deck, as they are not white or have no colorless in their cost).

Unless you're playing in an extremely casual meta or against newbies or low budget decks, expect to never do anything but play one spell per turn while your opponents run roughshod, unless you're fortunate enough to get Caged Sun out and on the board without quickly being blown up. I run a Darien deck and he's a lot of fun, and I don't say this to be insulting, but I think you'll be miserable playing this deck, doing very little on each of your turns because of the double whammy of no mana/high cost cards clogging your hand.

I think you make some good points and you don't come off as insulting at all. My meta is very variable but I think you're right that this deck is quite slow as is. For one, I think I can cut down on my big sorceries, either by replacing them with cheaper board wipes, or getting rid of them altogether. Do you have your Darien list online anywhere?

You aren't imagining things. Final Judgment was on the list, but I cut it and some other high cost cards in response to SonofaBith's suggestion about mana curve.

My deck was originally much more soldier-centric, and it's still pretty high in soldiers, but they've been scaled back some.

There are 16 Plains in the stack pictured.