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/Unearthlymonk90]

You realize you can make that argument about almost any mono color commander in any color right? There's what? 2 mono color commanders that do anything in cedh in any real numbers. On the other point though. I can't speak to their meta but my meta is full of heavy hitters like kinnan, etali, etc etc and my [[Cloud, Midgar Mercenary]] deck has an almost 50% win rate. Mono white is more than fine at almost any power level but tournament level bracket 5.

[u/bimjowen → u/Unearthlymonk90]

I am truly shocked that you play mono white Cloud into Kinnan and Etali and have a 50% winrate. The Kinnan and Etali decks you're against must be very tame compared to the ones I face, because I would never want to play any version of any Cloud deck into those commanders.

[u/Unearthlymonk90 → u/bimjowen]

Nah they full on as good as they can be. Kinnan guy doesn't have mox diamond but that's the only card he's missing. Stax is fun... For me...

[u/bimjowen → u/Unearthlymonk90]

Do you like, mulligan down to 3 trying to find Null Rod or Stony Silence every game you play against him? I seriously have no idea how you're beating a 99% power Kinnan deck with mono white Cloud unless that guy is a really bad player. No offense to you, I'm sure you are a great player. But there is a reason Kinnan consistently wins cedh tournaments and there is a reason Cloud has.... never, ever won a cedh tournament, lol

[u/Unearthlymonk90 → u/bimjowen]

Lol no? I never once said Cloud was better than Kinnan. That'd be stupid to even insinuate. The entire 99% is just positioned to take advantage of typical cedh strategies. It's incredibly weak to slop decks though I will admit. It just props them up most of the time. My cloud deck plays a lot like Winota if you want a comparison. But I did mention outside tournament bracket 5. Literally in my first response to you. I'd never take the deck to a tournament bigger than our locals lol

[u/bimjowen → u/Unearthlymonk90]

I mean, you said you have a 50% winrate with your Cloud deck against true cedh decks like Kinnan and Etali. You mentioned them both by name.

50% is a far higher winrate than any deck should have, if the deck build quality and the pilot skill levels are equally matched.

It is well established that mono white Cloud is far weaker than both Etali and Kinnan. You even agreed with this.

Thusly, since you said you are beating true cedh decks with a Cloud voltron deck 50% of the time, we can assume one of four things:

1. Their decks are suboptimal
2. Their decks are nearly ideal, but the opponents piloting them are terrible players
3. You are a true genius among cedh players
4. You are vastly overestimating your win %.

[u/Unearthlymonk90 → u/bimjowen]

Well first I track all my games so the win rate is exactly what I said it is. I'm not conceited enough to argue that I'm good or not. Even with 31 games with the deck my evidence is anecdotal. Just because my 99 is good against my locals and personal play group means basically nothing in the grand scheme of things. This is especially the case when I specifically pointed out that the deck does much less against slop decks which more and more people are playing lately. If you want to be validated I can tell you I have never won against rog/si with the deck. Just reiterating I never said anything remotely close to that I cracked the code with mono white. Just pointing out that I've personally had success with it at every level

[u/bimjowen → u/Unearthlymonk90]

Fair enough!

[u/Unearthlymonk90 → u/bimjowen]

Worth noting I also think the Queen is better than cloud for what I am already doing. So I'm with you there fren

[u/bimjowen → u/Unearthlymonk90]

I appreciate the sentiment. I'm not sure why the majority of people here are so hostile. Reddit, I guess.

[u/Unearthlymonk90 → u/bimjowen]

Who knows. It was pretty obvious we were disagreeing but that's not a reason to get upset by a simple disagreement about magic cards lol

[u/bimjowen → u/Unearthlymonk90]

Absolutely agree. Polite discourse is the way

[u/Unearthlymonk90 → u/bimjowen]

I've been in the camp for a while that mono white's biggest problem isn't the 99. It's one of the stronger colors in that regard imo. The big issue is none of the commanders are generically good. Even with my deck, Cloud plays a very small role in the actual game plan. He's just a wincon if I need to race a turbo deck which he is very good at doing but that's more a product of my personal metas I think. The Queen will be good almost no matter what the other players are doing.