Mono-White Aggro Deck Guide (Alchemy)
The Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Set Championship took place last weekend. For the Alchemy portion of the split-format event, most of my team decided to play Mono-White Aggro. The archetype turned out to be more popular than we thought, with White decks barely beating public enemy number one Naya Runes to become the most-played deck of the tournament.
I finished the Alchemy portion with a 5-2 record. I was pretty satisfied with my choice, even though it ended up being not as strong as some of the breakout decks in the tournament.
Today, I’m going to write a guide on the version of the Mono-White deck that we played. Even though it didn’t dominate the tournament, I think the deck has a lot going for it, and it has the potential to remain a top contender moving forward.
There are also some unique characteristics to this particular Mono-White deck that make it play out differently than other White Aggro decks from Magic’s history. You should pay close attention to these distinctions if you want to try the deck out, and I hope I can help you learn them with this guide.
Here’s the list we played:
//Creatures (31):
4 Archon of Emeria
3 A-Luminarch Aspirant
4 Skyclave Apparition
2 Elite Spellbinder
1 Brutal Cathar
1 Fleeting Spirit
4 Hopeful Initiate
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Inquisitor Captain
4 Sigardian Evangel
//Planeswalkers (2):
2 The Wandering Emperor
//Non-creature Spells (2):
2 Portable Hole
//Lands (4):
1 Cave of the Frost Dragon
3 Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire
4 A-Faceless Haven
17 Snow-Covered Plains
//Sideboard:
2 Elite Spellbinder
1 Guardian of Faith
2 Portable Hole
2 Adeline, Resplendent Cathar
1 Brutal Cathar
3 Fleeting Spirit
2 Valorous Stance
1 Ao, the Dawn Sky
1 The Wandering Emperor
You can find an Arena importable version here.
The key to understanding this version of Mono-White is that, while it is still a proactive and assertive, it’s not an “aggro” deck like classic Mono-White lists. It’s more of a midrange deck.
Historically speaking, Mono-White has always thrived on having access to good one and two-drops. This version of the deck doesn’t play out the same way, so this is a preconceived notion about the archetype that you need to get rid of if you’re picking it up for the first time. If I had to compare how this deck plays to another archetype, I would say that it resembles Green-based midrange decks much more than it resembles older White aggro decks.
Here are a couple of examples illustrating these distinctions. First, let’s look at this opening hand, on the play against Naya Runes:
With most Mono-White decks, this hand would be bad — it has nothing to do on Turns 1 and 2 and even your Turn 3 plays are reactive instead of proactive. Normally, the goal is to have a board presence by the time you play your Skyclave Apparition, so that you can remove their blocker and get in for some damage. With this version of the deck, however, this hand is not only not bad, it’s actively good. You simply don’t need to get on board early or get chip damage in. When you win the game, you will win overwhelmingly.
Second, look at the card Sigardian Evangel. With any previous version of Mono-White, you’d automatically play this card on Turn 2 if you had no other two-drops to play. With this version, you’ll still often play it, but it’s conceivable that it’s better to wait to cast it until you can get some value later in the game.
In general, this deck doesn’t need to win the game as soon as possible - you can and will win long games, even against control decks.
Once you internalize that you’re actually playing Mono-White Midrange, you should have a much smoother play experience.
Tips and Tricks
If you have Fleeting Spirit and Sigardian Evangel, you can set a stop on your End Step and discard the last copy of Evangel to Spirit’s ability to exile it. Since the Beginning of the Next End Step had already passed by the time you activated the ability, the Spirit will stay exiled throughout your opponent’s turn as well. It protects your 3/1 from sorcery-speed removal and most sweepers for free, since that Evangel you discarded was going away no matter what.
You can put a counter on your opponent’s creatures with The Wandering Emperor’s +1 ability, which might be relevant if you need to kill something with Valorous Stance (such as Halana and Alena, Partners).
You can “bluff attack” very easily with this deck, because both Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire and The Wandering Emperor can punish blockers. A lot of the time, the Emperor is the threat and Eiganjo is your failsafe if they call your bluff. For example, if it’s your Turn 4 and you attack a 3/1 into a 4/4, there’s almost no chance your opponent is going to block, unless they actually want you to cast your planeswalker in this spot.
Hopeful Initiate removes counters from any creature you control, not just itself. You can find the most beneficial mix of counters to remove, and it works very well with Luminarch Aspirant.
Remember that Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and the sideboard copies of Adeline, Resplendent Cathar make Eiganjo cheaper.
Always be mindful of the number of creatures in your deck in post-sideboard games to make sure your Inquisitor Captain’s ability doesn’t fizzle. Captain counts creatures in your hand, deck, and graveyard, but not in play or in exile. In Game 1 it’s almost never going to come up as you have a ton of creatures, but some sideboard plans might have you go down to 24 or 25 creatures. In these spots, you have to be careful about it, especially if they’ve used removal that exiles or if you’ve activated Fleeting Spirit. There’s no worse feeling than playing a Captain expecting to get value and getting a lonely 3/3 instead. If you find yourself short on creatures, try to trade more so that the ones in play go to the graveyard.
Sigardian Evangel generates extra bodies for Captain. Each Evangel is at least 1 more creature for your count, since one of them always ends up discarded. It could even be more if the extra copies get sent to the graveyard normally.
Sigardian Evangel taps any permanent, not just creatures. This can come in handy if you’re trying to play around something like The Wandering Emperor. If they only have four lands, you can play the Evangel before combat, tap one, and force them to play the Emperor if they have it. This exposes their planeswalker and gives you better information for your attacks.
You can use Sigardian Evangel to tap an opposing creature so that you can then exile it with The Wandering Emperor.
Card Choices
A lot of the cards in the deck are standard, but some of our additions are a bit outside the box.
When I started testing for Alchemy, the consensus was that Luminarch Aspirant had not survived the nerfs — most people called it “effectively banned”.
If you’re trying to attack, then it did get much worse. Instead of attacking for 3, 4 and 5, it attacks for 2, 3 and 4, and a lot of the time a creature can’t attack because it doesn’t have the counter, so the nerf ends up costing eight or so damage in a game. That’s huge, and if we were only interested in attacking, we would not be playing the card.
However, you must remember that this is not a traditional aggro deck, it’s a midrange deck. We want to attack, but we’re also just happy to grow our battlefield presence. If you’re not attacking with the creature you modify, then Luminarch Aspirant’s nerf doesn’t even apply — the ability is as effective as ever on defence.
Luminarch Aspirant does some very important things for your deck. First, it has excellent synergy with Hopeful Initiate. Not only can you use it to spread out counters that you can turn into Disenchants; you can also grow another creature so you can trigger Initiate’s Training ability every combat.
Second, it allows you to hit important power/toughness breakpoints in creature mirrors. In Alchemy, creatures are very small as a general rule — a 3/3 will often be the biggest creature on the battlefield. This means that being able to upgrade your Thalias into 3/2 First Strikers, your 2/2s into 3/3s, and your 3/3s into 4/4s is extremely relevant. A 4/4 Vigilance will likely dominate a board, especially because it’s so hard to double-block against this deck, thanks to Eiganjo and Emperor existing.
Every White moving forward will play at least one Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire, and some will have two. Our list is unique in that we played three copies of the card. I strongly believe this is the right number, even though you’ll sometimes draw a second copy and have to use one as a Lotus Petal.
This deck features a fair number of four-mana spells and mana sinks, so I think you want 25 lands, and once you’ve committed to playing more mana sources, the second and third copies of Eiganjo rarely hurt you because you are more likely to want to use them as spells anyway.
Some people only played two copies of Sigardian Evangel in their decks and I believe this is 100% wrong. This is the best two-drop in the deck and it plays multiple roles — curve filler, beater, letting you win through convoluted board states, adding more material to the board, even increasing the creature count of your graveyard for Captain. I’d play eight if I could.
Common Matchups
Naya Runes
Naya Runes is a very good matchup for us. We have four Archon of Emeria, which is very hard for them to beat. We also have Thalia and a bunch of removal spells. Even Hopeful Initiate can be a game-winner if you also draw Luminarch Aspirant. Most functional hands will beat good Naya hands — you’ll only lose when you have a bad hand and they have a great one.
Post sideboard not much changes, except you’re even more protected against their fast, busted starts which is often how you lose. Sigardian Evangel is not bad in the matchup (it’s just not great or needed) but if you have one fewer card than I do you can leave it in.
White Aggro Mirror
The mirror is about board position — very rarely does someone one player get rushed into attacking. It’s important to use Aspirant and Emperor to reach certain power/toughness breakpoints, like a 4/4 Captain, so that you win combat. Since the games often go long, fliers can be important to break through a stalemate.
Sideboarding here can vary a lot depending on the opponent’s list. Against some versions, you might need Portable Hole because they have four Aspirants and a bunch of other cheap creatures, or four Holes of their own. Versus others, however, it might not be good at all. Thalia is a very good blocker, and if you put a counter on it it becomes a good attacker too, but I might keep zero in the deck post-board if they don’t play Emperor in their deck since at that point the ability might handicap me too much.
Archon doesn’t look great here, but it’s not as bad as you might think because of how important Flying can be to closing out the game. If you need to keep some in, it’s not a disaster for you.
Orzhov Dungeon
I hadn’t played against the Dungeon deck at all before the tournament, so I’m not exactly sure how the matchup goes, but I think it’s slightly unfavorable, though I did beat it when I played it in the tournament.
I feel like you’re doing a lot of the same things early on, and then the Dungeon effects eventually add up to something relevant. On the other hand, our mana is much better, and Archon is a good card against them because it locks down their lands and delays their development for a turn.
This sideboard guide is experimental, because I haven’t played the matchup that much. Just like the mirror, you should try to be flexible depending on what their list is. Portable Hole isn’t good versus most Orzhov decks but it might be useful against the one you happen to be playing against. Thalia is reasonable at blocking Triumphant Adventurer, but is not that strong otherwise. I prefer having a three-power attacker because they have a lot of 3/3 blockers. On the other hand, Fleeting Spirit is weak against the 1/1 token they get from venturing into the dungeon, so it’s possible you don’t want it.
One problematic card on their end is Liesa, Forgotten Archangel. Some people play two, so my teammates liked keeping Valorous Stance in as an answer. However, the card is extremely bad against everything else in their deck, so I preferred simply not having Liesa answers (outside of The Wandering Emperor) and trying to combat it proactively with Spellbinder and Archon. I think that you need to position yourself as the aggressor in this matchup and therefore can’t afford such a situational and reactive card.
UW Control
Control decks are generally good matchups for Mono-White even though we’re not particularly teched out for them, because they’re so clunky and we have Thalia, Archon, and Spellbinder to tax them. This is mostly a reflection of UW decks not being very strong in my opinion, so they will struggle to beat any sort of disruption and pressure, no matter how feeble.
Valorous Stance can be good or bad depending on their list. If they have no targets and their sweepers are Divine Purge and Farewell, then feel free to cut all of them. If they have a bunch of Lier, Drowned Disciple and their sweeper is Doomskar, you might want both copies. In the dark I would probably bring in zero.
Mardu Midrange
This is another matchup that I didn’t test before that tournament and that I think is slightly unfavorable for us. The problem here is that their late-game is better than ours. They have Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and planeswalkers that generate a lot of value, so you have to be aggressive, but your deck is not the most well-equipped to do that.
Thalia, Archon and Spellbinder are all quite good against them though, so you can definitely win matches against Mardu.
It might seem weird to keep Archon in against a deck that’s definitely not trying to double-spell you, but Flying is great versus them and their entire manabase is made up of non-basic lands, so it can sometimes be a Time Walk, especially on the play.
I think Thalia is actively good in this matchup, in contrast to how I think it’s poor against Orzhov. It stops both Wedding Announcement and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker from being played on curve. In fact, a lot of the time if they are on the play and they attack with Adventurer, you should not block with Thalia, because if you don’t then they likely won’t have a Turn 3 play.
White Aggro Post-Champs
Moving forward, I think White Aggro can still be good, but deckbuilders will need to deprioritize beating Runes a little. For example, at the tournament, we decided to play two Portable Hole maindeck because it was the best removal against them, even though we knew it was going to be worse versus almost everything else. Nowadays, I would just play Circle of Confinement. It’s much better versus the other White-based decks (Mono White, Mardu, and Orzhov).
Here are the changes I would make:
-2 Portable Hole, +2 Circle of Confinement
Having additional answers to Nadaar, Selfless Paladin can come in handy given that the Orzhov deck won the tournament. I would still keep the two Portable Holes in the sideboard, though, as they can be very good versus Rakdos decks.
-2 Archon of Emeria, +2 Elite Spellbinder
Archon isn’t bad against some of these multicolored decks, but Spellbinder is usually better. It’s also way better in the mirror.
-1 Fleeting Spirit, +1 Luminarch Aspirant
Luminarch is very good in any sort of midrange mirror, and the control decks underperformed at the Set Championship, so you need Fleeting Spirit less. I’d move the Spirit to the sideboard and replace the Guardian of Faith with the fourth copy.
This is the list I would play moving forward (click here for an importable list):
//Creatures (31):
2 Archon of Emeria
4 A-Luminarch Aspirant
4 Skyclave Apparition
4 Elite Spellbinder
1 Brutal Cathar
4 Hopeful Initiate
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Inquisitor Captain
4 Sigardian Evangel
//Planeswalkers (2):
2 The Wandering Emperor
//Non-creature Spells (2):
2 Circle of Confinement
//Lands (25):
1 Cave of the Frost Dragon
3 Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire
4 A-Faceless Haven
17 Snow-Covered Plains
//Sideboard:
2 Archon of Emeria
2 Portable Hole
2 Adeline, Resplendent Cathar
1 Brutal Cathar
4 Fleeting Spirit
2 Valorous Stance
1 Ao, the Dawn Sky
1 The Wandering Emperor
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- PV