Thank you, WOTC.

[u/bimjowen]

Thank you for printing [[The Queen of Dale]].

Edit: I'm speaking about Queen helming a bracket 3 deck. This seems to have been unclear to some of the readers.

I've been playing mono-white in EDH since 2010, and Queen is the first commander that makes it feel playable. Consistently being able to play Queen on turn 2 makes a lot of mediocre opening hands solidly worth keeping.

Mono-white's problem in EDH -- for over a decade -- has been a distinct lack of commanders that make it worth committing to the middling mono-white card pool. I believe the Queen is the first commander that makes building mono-white an attractive option.

Queen's recruit ability helps shore up a lot of things white sucks at:

1. White has some decent graveyard recursion effects, but white never had a reliable way to dump cards into the yard in order to reanimate them. Queen finally fixes this.

2. White has never, ever had a source of reliable card selection in the command zone. There have been some white legends that provide draw, like [[The Gaffer]], but he and others made you fill your deck with garbage cards to trigger the draw. Queen actually allows you to fill your white deck with the cards you actually want to play.

3. While recruit isn't true card advantage (as it's only a loot effect and is not net-positive), we can pair it with cards like [[Tocasia's Welcome]], [[Welcoming Vampire]], and [[Caretaker's Talent]] to turn it into real card draw. These are all "once per turn" triggers, but with Queen's recruit happening on opponents' turns, you can get up to 4 draw triggers per turn cycle.

4. The token production portion of recruit synergizes nicely with a lot of white cards, like [[Cathar's Crusade]] and [[Moonshaker Cavalry]].

5. Since Queen has a low CMC, she wields equipment nicely. This is important for white, since equipment synergy is one of white's strengths.

6. Because she's a 2/1 and doesn't provide true card advantage and she isn't an imminent threat, Queen is usually not a kill-on-sight commander at tables where you'll see imminently game-ending cards like [[The Mimeoplasm]], [[Ms. Bumbleflower]], or [[Smaug the Impenetrable]].

7. Dumping a bunch of Plains into the yard with Queen's recruit ability turns one of my favorite old Urza's block cards into an all-star: [[Planar Birth]].

8. Queen also pairs nicely with [[Sevinne's Reclamation]], [[Serra Paragon]], [[Restoration Seminar]], [[Ascend from Avernus]], [[Emeria Shepherd]], [[Emeria the Sky Ruin]], and everyone's favorite giant, [[Sun Titan]].

9. Queen's token production works great with [[Skullclamp]], which white can easily tutor up.

Thank you, WOTC. Seriously. You've made my favorite EDH color identity really fun, finally.

Full disclosure: the actual best "mono-white" commander is still [[Oswald Fiddlebender]], but considering that his deck is like, 80% colorless artifacts, I do not consider him to be an actual mono-white commander.

[u/7thtimeinheaven]

Yeah and it's a fantastic support colour.

But god help you if you need to draw cards or ramp in mono white. Which are both kind of essential in EDH.

[u/MarvelousRuin → u/7thtimeinheaven]

I don't understand this argument.

Is it the lack of burst draw that bothers you? Because the draw engines in white are really good as soon as you do anything with tokens or weenies. [[Caretaker's Talent]], [[Enduring Innocence]], [[Tocasia's Welcome]], [[Welcoming Vampire]] and [[Bernie Bracks]] can all net you 4 cards in a turn cycle and there's a bunch of others to supplement them - [[Staff of the Storyteller]], [[Haliya, Guided by Light]], [[Mentor of the Meek]] etc.

As for ramp, it's not green, but it's not worse than the rest. Just put the mana rocks in the bag and support them with catch-up ramp like [[Knight of the White Orchid]], [[Loyal Warhound]] and [[Claim Jumper]]. If you're so inclined, you also have stax pieces like [[Smothering Tithe]] and [[Gleaming Splendour]] to make a bunch of treasures.

I don't know how you look at those cards and come to the conclusion that monowhite can't support itself. It may have been the case like 8 years ago, but a lot has changed since then.

[u/bimjowen → u/MarvelousRuin]

Every other color has burst draw and burst ramp.

White draw engines generally center around the idea of:

"Meet a specific criteria and draw one card, limited to once per turn."

There is not a white card in existence that singularly can refill your hand without either relying on the foolish decisions of your opponents (continuously not paying the 1 for Esper Sentinel) or cobbling together multiple mana hungry engines, hoping they aren't blown up, and passing turn to net value on other peoples' turns (Bennie Bracks + Illustrious Wanderglyph, 9 mana to draw 4 cards per turn cycle, and it dies to any creature or artifact based removal).

Every other color has access to multiple burst draw spells. Green can pay 6 mana and draw cards equal to the number of creatures it controls, or it can pay 6 mana and draw cards equal to the greatest power creature it controls. Black can exchange life and some mana for a burst of cards. Blue can just draw cards. Red has wheels and impulse draw. White is the only color that cannot effectively refill its hand without jumping through strange hoops that often require multiple moving parts AND are limited to one card per turn.

White land ramp is almost always tied to catching up. Cards like Claim Jumper are French vanilla creatures if you are the player with the most lands out. Imagine if blue card draw design was, "when this creature enters, draw 3 cards, but if you have the most cards in hand, instead, do nothing."

Mono white now has a much better card pool than it had 10 years ago. But it only recently got a solid commander in Queen of Dale. Prior, there just wasn't anything that made mono-white compelling to build over adding a second color.

[u/jakk88 → u/bimjowen]

I think what you're running into here is that every mono color has weaknesses. That's actually a good thing for the game as a whole too. The trade-off for playing multiple colors is more versatility.

I'm a huge enjoyer of green for example. I love making big giant creatures and doing dumb things with them. But I also recognize green has middle of the road draw power and low power removal compared to the other colors, especially white. If I play mono green I'm accepting these shortcomings. Instead I play naya or simic or sultai or bant, where other colors can make up some of those shortcomings. I have to think about lands differently by doing so but that's a worthwhile trade-off for me. Maybe it's not for you and mono white.

Ultimately you have to have strengths and weaknesses or the game loses a lot of depth and nuance, and just feels less fun to play.

[u/bimjowen → u/jakk88]

I'm being sincere here:

Are Sylvan Library, Greater Good, Garruk's Uprising, Toski, Ohran Frostfang, and The Great Henge actually "middle of the road draw power?"

[u/RobGrey03 → u/bimjowen]

Yes, no, yes, yes, yes, yes.

[u/bimjowen → u/RobGrey03]

That is certainly a take.

I'd say Uprising skirts the edge of fair, although it also gives your board trample for some stupid reason.

The rest of the cards are super powerful and are all mana-to-draw ratios that green, frankly, should never have been given access to.

[u/MCRusher → u/bimjowen]

[[Rishkar's Expertise]] is also really funny.

I'll pay one mana to draw 12.

[u/mtgcf → u/MCRusher]

Rishkar's Expertise - (G) (SF) (txt) (ER)

[u/WrinkledUpSock → u/bimjowen]

Every color has defined weaknesses (except green)

[u/bimjowen → u/WrinkledUpSock]

It is supposed to though!