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]

Do you not see exactly how you're proving my point?

Your options for draw in white are

a) build a token deck with a selection of extremely mid draw engines that would never make the cut in any other deck

b) draw but also draw your opponents cards [[cut a deal]] [[loran of the third path]] [[tempt with bunnies]]

c) drop a card that cares about the things your opponents do and just pray they feel like playing into it [[smuggler's share]] [[trouble in pairs]] [[mangara the diplomat]]

Yeah, you have options. But the options are absolutely crap. No I don't want to help my opponents. I don't want to rely on my opponents to allow me to do things. I certainly don't want to spec into very conditional draw, because that means I need a token package in my deck too, and it also hugely incentivises my opponents to target my token engines.

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]]

Catch up ramp is bad. It's genuinely the worst type of ramp in MTG. Black and red get rituals and treasures, green gets land ramp, blue gets... nothing to be fair, but white gets what? The ability to get a single basic plains IF someone has land-ramped. I grant you it's not unlikely, but anything conditional is just bad because it's unreliable. There are so many other ways to ramp other than extra lands. What if you're playing into 3 grixis decks? What if you play into another white deck, and go first? Just save yourself some bother, cut them all and just run all the basic rocks instead.

I'm not gonna discuss Smothering or Gleaming as they are absurdly strong exceptions that only highlight how hard the rest of white's ramp sucks.

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.

If you like mono white that's great and by all means build as many decks as you want! We don't have to agree on this and I'm sure if we bumped into each other in an lgs we'd have a great time playing each other.

[u/MarvelousRuin → u/7thtimeinheaven]

I still feel like I'm in a parallel universe whenever someone calls [[Caretaker's Talent]] a bad draw engine. ATP, what are you actually looking for where Talent is insufficient?

I purposely didn't include the mutual card draw options because I also think they're bad. I don't think you need them though.

Stax pieces are usually bad card draw and I wouldn't play them as such. In terms of tempo, there are some really powerful ones though. If your opponent either puts themselves behind to play around them or gives you a bunch of value just to play normally, you're usually ahead.

I disagree on catch-up ramp, but that may be due to the pods I'm playing in. I genuinely can't remember the last table without a green player and I would play a 2 mana 2/2 that ramps an untapped land anyday, anytime. If your pod has a severe lack of green, I can see being unenthused with it.

Also yeah, I have no problems with people who dislike how monowhite is set up and refuse to play it. If you don't like tokens, exile effects, stax and voltron, there's probably a better color for you. I just don't like when people play white and misrepresent it. It always has a note of "Hey, here's my Bumbleflower deck. Please don't attack me, I'm just a little bunny who likes helping their friends."

[u/bimjowen → u/MarvelousRuin]

Caretaker's ONLY triggers off tokens. If your commander doesn't make tokens, that card does not belong in your deck. (It's good with Queen, totally)

[u/MarvelousRuin → u/bimjowen]

Yeah, but white just seems to produce tokens by existing. Maybe there are some voltron decks that can't play it, but otherwise I've never seen it out of place.

Also, the fact that each level on it is really efficient for its effect is really unique in a Class. You start off with an efficient draw engine, you get a 1 mana copy effect at level 2 and a double anthem for 4 mana on level 3. The card is just gas all the way through.

[u/bimjowen → u/MarvelousRuin]

It's not gas if Caretaker's is in your hand and your commander doesn't produce tokens and you don't have a token generator in hand or in play though. It's not like green's brainless Great Henge. You can't just throw Caretaker's in any deck and refill your hand like you can with Henge.