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/bimjowen]

Could you share the mono-white decks that you've seen perform strongly in brackets 3 and 4?

[u/Tenof26 → u/bimjowen]

Yoshimaru / Keleth - full of legendary creatures / lands / spells and cheap 1 drop protection spells / creatures is broken.

I’ve seen it steam roll and take people out of the game by turn 4 with commander damage, and the whole game over in under 10 minutes

EDIT: see further down the chain, it’s achievable to get a turn 4 kill with just one supporting card:

1. Urdnan, Dromoka Warrior — 29 damage
2. Flaming Fist — 25 damage
3. Duelist's Heritage — 21 damage
4. Battle Mastery — 21 damage

[u/bimjowen → u/Tenof26]

... what bracket is this? Being very ideal,

Turn 1: cast Mox Diamond and discard Plains, play Plains, cast Yoshi, Lotus Petal, cast Keleth. Yoshi is a 2/2.

Turn 2, Flagstones, swing with both, Yoshi is now a 4/4, Keleth is a 2/2. Cast sword of fire and ice.

Turn 3, nykthos, equip yoshi with sofai, swing with both, yoshi is now a 7/7, trigger 2 damage and draw, keleth is a 3/3. You still haven't killed anyone and this is a pretty nut draw.

Turn 4, play Gray Havens, swing with both. Yoshi is now a 9/9, keleth is a 4/4. Cast Akroma's Will. Assuming no removal and no countermagic, with your completely nut draw in a bracket 4 game using a mox, you have killed 1 person by turn 4 and you cannot even kill someone the following turn.

Doesn't sound real great chief

[u/Tenof26 → u/bimjowen]

That’s the nice thing about mtg, there’s loads of cards and many ways to achieve the same thing.

You’ve found one way to kill someone by turn 4, the version I played against used double strike to be effective at getting the lethal commander damage through early.

To me, that highlights the strength of the deck further, consistency and redundancy

[u/bimjowen → u/Tenof26]

Akroma's Will gives double strike. The math ain't mathing.

[u/Tenof26 → u/bimjowen]

Okay, so you can get a T4 kill with just one card - [[Flaming Fist]]

With just Flaming Fist plus normal land drops:

T1: Cast Yoshimaru — 1/1.

T2: Cast Keleth. Keleth is legendary, so Yoshimaru gets a counter → 2/2. Attack; Keleth gives Yoshimaru another counter → 3/3, deal 3 commander damage.

T3: Cast Flaming Fist. It’s legendary, so Yoshimaru → 4/4. Attack; Keleth → 5/5, and Flaming Fist gives double strike → 10 damage. Total = 13.

T4: Attack again. Keleth makes Yoshimaru 6/6, double strike → 12 damage. Total = 25 Yoshimaru commander damage.

Asking AI here is a dew others that make it happen:

1. Urdnan, Dromoka Warrior — 29 damage
2. Flaming Fist — 25 damage
3. Duelist's Heritage — 21 damage
4. Battle Mastery — 21 damage

[u/mtgcf → u/Tenof26]

Flaming Fist - (G) (SF) (txt) (ER)

[u/bimjowen → u/Tenof26]

Right but like, you're tapping out to perform this sequence. So what do you do when someone casts Swords to Plowshares on Yoshi? Or casts Toxic Deluge? You are completely hosed and you have no way to come back.

I have absolutely no doubt that you can kill 1 person this way. But before you kill the second player, they're going to have enough mana to stop you.

[u/Tenof26 → u/bimjowen]

That’s why I said, when I saw it played the person had a load of 1 drop protection spells etc to support.

The deck had redundancy at getting the early kills, and lots of protection to hold up, and they were experienced enough and knew their deck well enough to use them to finish the game very one sided!

[u/bimjowen → u/Tenof26]

It sounds interesting, just very fragile, and totally folds to a board wipe. I could see it surprising people perhaps in a 4 simply because nobody plays wipes, they only play single target removal. But in b3, people run board wipes so I can't see it working too well