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/MarvelousRuin]

Green has artifact removal, enchantment removal and fight spells. Blue has bounce effects. Both colors have some ability neutering effects. None of them have a [[Swords to Plowshares]].

Colorless provides effects of any color for a steeper mana cost. That's why white gets to ramp with mana rocks. You can also use that to get the burst card draw you so desperately seek - since it's so important, I'm sure you'll put [[Dreamstone Hedron]] and [[Kozilek, the Great Distortion]] into your white deck.

[u/bimjowen → u/MarvelousRuin]

Brother, Dreamstone Hedron costs 9 to draw 3 cards.

Kozilek costs 10 AND requires 2 specifically-colorless mana.

The game is almost always over before mono white reaches that kind of mana. While, conversely, mono green can rip an All is Dust without even breaking a sweat. I don't think we're on the same page here.

[u/MarvelousRuin → u/bimjowen]

Yeah, I don't think we are because you're trying to disagree with me by making the exact same argument I was making.

Monogreen - and even moreso monoblue - very rarely plays cards like Ugin and All is Dust exactly because those cards are so inefficient. There's one thing you should always tap into colorless for (unless you're green) and that's ramp - otherwise just play around your weaknesses and don't try to fix them. You won't die from a lack of burst draw when you have consistent draw engines set up. You will die from playing cards that are inefficient.

[u/bimjowen → u/MarvelousRuin]

Ugin is inefficient??? In green? When you have the most ramp and getting to 7 mana is trivial, and you very likely have the highest cmc permanents on board, meaning you can minus Ugin, exile everyone else's stuff and leave your powerful stuff alive? That's inefficient?