MTG Salvation

New good commons in EMA
peregrine drake: 2 card combo with ghostly flicker. Only draw back: hard to tutor for :/
night's whisper: Better than sign in blood (typically, because of the better cost)
Cephalid sage: comparable to mulldrifter when you got threshold
Desperate ravings: efficent card draw
Elephant guide: voltron
Carbonize (cheapish exile removal in red)
Rally the peasants overrun effect

Others:
Humble
Warden of evos isle
Stupefying touch
Orcish oriflamme - only card to be banned and then reprinted as common, that I know of.
Prowling pangolin
Dragon egg cant see what to use it for but it is interesting
Wildfire emissary
Avarax
Sylvan might
Elvish vanguard
Yavimaya enchantress
Emperor crocodile

Night's whisper is a pretty big deal as it's literally 100% auto-include for any deck with black. That's really the only card downshifted to common that's very impactful for this format, though.

There are a few cards newly downshifted to uncommon from rare that are interesting commanders:

mesa enchantress: arrest everything!

sprite noble: flying tribal. Not super powerful, summoning sickness on the power boost really sucks, but it's easy and fun to build, and blue is never bad

havoc demon: well this sure is a thing! definitely game-warping, not as much as crypt rats I think, but board control and a win condition from the command zone is whoa.

mindless automaton: lol?

Now that Mesa Enchantress is uncommon, doesn't this give White a huge boost in terms of playability in PDH? It now has a cheap, reliable source of card advantage, provided you play lots of enchantments (shouldn't be too hard).

Quote from Upkeep »

Now that Mesa Enchantress is uncommon, doesn't this give White a huge boost in terms of playability in PDH? It now has a cheap, reliable source of card advantage, provided you play lots of enchantments (shouldn't be too hard).

I agree, it is probably the best CA for mono white since rebels, and enchantments are less limiting than rebels plus you don't have to tap or pay a tax for the CA. Cards that are extra good with Mesa Enchantress:

• Brilliant Halo
  
• Cage of Hands
  
• Cessation
  
• Conviction
  
• Forced Worship
  
• Gossamer Chains
  
• Shackles

+ the Angelic Renewal + Auramancer/Custodi Squire combo. Add a sac engine to draw your deck!

A simple deck to build - disable dudes with impunity while drawing cards, making all your land drops like a boss and playing big beats to finish. Flagbearers should be good here too.

Yeah, I put up a list for her like an hour after I made that post. EDIT: HERE IT IS!! It's actually super fun and I built a paper version.

I'd put a direct link to it but tappedout appears to be broken at the moment ¯\_(QwQ)_/¯

If you build her, I definitely recommend a suite of stave off effects.

The only thing that kind of sucks is it's basically impossible to win the game without ethereal armor or empyrial armor lol. There are 2 tutors and ~4 recursion pieces for those in mono white.

Quote from metalevolence »

Yeah, I put up a list for her like an hour after I made that post. EDIT: HERE IT IS!! It's actually super fun and I built a paper version.

I'd put a direct link to it but tappedout appears to be broken at the moment ¯\_(QwQ)_/¯

If you build her, I definitely recommend a suite of stave off effects.

The only thing that kind of sucks is it's basically impossible to win the game without ethereal armor or empyrial armor lol. There are 2 tutors and ~4 recursion pieces for those in mono white.

I think you should run all the good colorless fatties as win cons besides armors. You're also missing Custodi Squire.

I think there's lots to be said for the runes of protection. They always draw you a card whether your commander is in play or not, and they are sometimes game winning. You can safely cut your 5 worst auras for them I think.

With the card draw you have, I'm positive 35 lands + 5 rocks will be quite sufficient. Actually, Cenn's Enlistment is probably very solid as yet another win con for that matter. Put those lands to good use. Anyway, Eldrazi Devastator, Ulamog's Crusher and Ruin Processor can take the place of 3 land IMO. I think you're missing a few mono white gems too like Celestial Flare and Holy Light.

In multiplayer, custodi squire basically lets the player to your left choose what card you return, doesn't it? You pick the best card, second player picks the worst card, then every player after that also votes for whatever the second player decided was the worst card.

I think I'd make room for griffin dreamfinder first in this deck. I don't think custodi squire would ever be able to recur ethereal armor, for instance

I went for auramancer, monk idealist (EMA common!) and mine excavation first, because they are cheap and I think none of the creatures' bodies really matter in this deck

Good catch on Squire - I had a 1v1 situation in mind but it is not very good in multiplayer for sure. I made my own list:



Mostly the changes I've already proposed. As for the protection suite, I think whispersilk cloak is a must. I also diversified with a few blink effects. I cut some of the less interesting 2 cmc mana rocks for a few alternatives I think are stronger (including Walking Atlas which will be a beast in this deck I think). I think this deck wants huge creatures and/or evasion so you can put the armor auras on something that will strike home rather than just having them chump your commander. I also think Dawnglare Invoker and Cenn's Enlistment are decent back-up win cons. Waddjathink?

I'm also working on my own list, with a Rebel package to fetch Bound in Silence and other removal. I know I won't draw the card if it's put onto the battlefield, but sometimes I'll just draw it or be able to attach it to a Hexproof creature.

I'm also playing with Dawnglare Invoker for now. I think it's a solid card.

Why no Desert or Quicksand?

With the General out, Lucent Liminid is a Kavu Climber. That doesn't seem good enough to me.

I'm also running the Runes of Protection, but I cut White and Blue for now.

Why no Desert or Quicksand?

An oversight. They should be in there.

With the General out, Lucent Liminid is a Kavu Climber. That doesn't seem good enough to me.

Kavu Climber lacks flying. I think creatures with evasion that can come with CA are good for putting armors and equipment on. Carrier Pigeons are probably too bad. Custodi Squire in multiplayer probably is too. Also, it occured to me that Guardian of the Guildpact can't wear the armors so... We have rather few win cons.

I'm also working on my own list, with a Rebel package to fetch Bound in Silence and other removal. I know I won't draw the card if it's put onto the battlefield, but sometimes I'll just draw it or be able to attach it to a Hexproof creature.

Could be good I guess. I suppose you're running the 3 2cmc searches that find 3 cmc rebels + a handful or targets, so that's like 7-8 slots? Is the package good enough to spare that amount of room, considering searching for BiS won't trigger the general?

Fanatical Devotion is a card I think should be in. Another way to protect commander or armor wearers, plus it's an infinite draw combo with Angelic Renewal and a recursion dude. Thraben Sentry is another evasive fatty that could be considered I guess. With rebels, mass pump effects get better too, but I feel this directions pulls greatly from the enchantment focus of the deck.

I think you're right about cutting U and W runes. We might even want the red CoP, considering how popular X-finishers are, and how little this deck interacts with them otherwise.

What about good stuff staples like Dawn Charm? Seems like all functions are useful. Also, Relic of Progenitus? More white reanimation like Breath of Life? Mistmoon Griffin could be good at least.

I personally like to build things more toward extremes; in this case, that means tons of cheap enchantments to trigger the enchantress's ability a silly amount of times c:

It seems like you guys prefer to diversify (dilute?) your decks a bit more, which I don't think is necessarily better or worse. It's consistency and power vs. flexibility and resilience. I'd personally prefer to stuff in more cheap, questionable enchantments like detainment spell and burden of guilt than slot in random bodies and equipments. (It is good to have at least a few random bodies around to protect from edict effects, though, and sometimes to chump block. That's why I run kor sanctifiers over something like fate forgotten)

The more creatures you run, the more the value of many cards changes, like fanatical devotion.

I don't think custodi squire is "bad," it's still a 3/3 fier and +1 card, and it's possible to use politics to get a better card.

I actually don't like desert and quicksand here, I don't think the tiny upside is worth not producing white mana. I guess if you don't run rocks that's less likely to come up, but still. It seems very rare to me that you would actually use the abilities on these.

I do think an "optimized" mesa enchantress list would run relic of progenitus and/or tormod's crypt

Well my philosophy is this: Don't run cards that are only good with your commander. There are many quite passable enchantments (auras mostly) that you could run in a PDH deck, especially a mono-white one. Then there are those, like Opal Gargoyle and Brilliant Halo, that probably has no place even in mono-white PDH, unless your general is Mesa Enchantress. They still work though, even if she's not in play. Then there are enchantments that are simply so bad (like Detainment Spell) that their only contribution is essentially cycling. They are much like a worse Secluded Steppe or Drifting Meadow (because those at least have the versatility of tapping for mana when needed), and that's when your commander is on-line! If she isn't, they are just useless cardboard.

So instead of running those, I suggest running good cards with a use, even if they are not enchantments. Like tutors, a draw engine is only powerful if you can actually draw into scary stuff. If you can do that WHILE disabling opposing fatties, gaining life and pumping your dudes, then you're getting somewhere. If all you can do is draw into more arrest effects that draw into more arrest effects, then the deck is pretty easy to defeat even when it manages to do its thing.

I think probably around 33% of the deck should be enchantments. Rather than filling it up with enchantments with negligible effects, I'd try to get an engine on-line (like Shackles) before I run out of enchantments. That will have a much greater impact on the game than the difference between running 30 or 40 enchantments.

Detainment spell isn't THAT bad lol. It's narrow, but at an investment of 1 mana and 0 cards I'm fine with that. Commanders with activated abilities (guildmages) are fairly popular. It forces you to spend 4 mana blinking your own mistmeadow witch (I get to draw whether it resolves or not)

This deck is an extremely commander-centric one, that's why I run so many cheap instants that protect her and I usually wait until I can leave up mana to cast her with said backup

OK, that's fair, but there's quite a lot of redundancy among disabling enchantments already. This would be my order of priority:
1) Journey to Nowhere, Oblivion Ring, Isolation Zone: Best commander killers regardless of commander type
2) Cage of Hands, Forced Worship, Shackles: Must-runs anyway because they are CA engines (along with Conviction), but it's nice that they also disable fatties.
3) Recumbent Bliss, Faith's Fetters: Staples in any mono-white list and some bi- or tri-color decks too.
4) Arrest and Gelid Shackles are still good, not too narrow alternatives if you feel you need more ability disabling at this point.
5) At this level of utility, one can consider cards like Detainment Spell.

I just think that even if we're only paying 1 mana and we have the commander out, we can STILL get a sweeter deal than Detainment Spell. Also, the exact number of enchantments matters little. Let's compare 30% vs 40% enchantments.

Opening 7: Roughly 2 (30%) vs 3 (40%) enchantments in starting hand. So you play your commander and draw a few more cards...
First 20 cards: 6 (30%) vs 8 (40%) enchantments have gone by. Assuming 75% drew cards off of the commander (there will be duds), you're 1 card ahead if you're running 10% more enchantments, in the first 20 cards.

I don't think that's worth cramming in questionable auras for. The fact is, you'll never run enough enchantments to get any sort of self supporting system in mono-white. Your best bet is to find an engine piece - then you can draw 2 cards/turn or more, depending on mana available. We have 4 such pieces, 2 tutors and if we're kind to ourselves, Angelic Renewal may count too. I'm not sure if the "return on death" auras like Cessation are worth it. PDH contains so few sweepers that it's hard to imagine getting much use from them over "normal" auras without the return clause.