[Primer] Helming the Host of Heaven *Update*

Commander / EDH Angels Counters Flying Lifegain Lifelink Midrange Mono-White Primer Soul Sisters Tokens

Guerric

Creature (36)

• 1x Angel of Jubilation
• 1x Angel of Vitality
• 1x Angelic Curator
• 1x Angelic Field Marshal
• 1x Angelic Page
• 1x Angelic Skirmisher
• 1x Angelic Sleuth
• 1x Archangel of Thune
• 1x Archangel of Tithes
• 1x Battle Angels of Tyr
• 1x Bishop of Wings
• 1x Breathkeeper Seraph
• 1x Bruna, the Fading Light  ^{Flip  Meld}
• 1x Crashing Drawbridge
• 1x Emeria Shepherd *f-pre*
• 1x Gisela, the Broken Blade  ^Meld
• 1x Guardian of Faith
• 1x Herald of War
• 1x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
• 1x Lyra Dawnbringer
• 1x Mangara, the Diplomat
• 1x Resplendent Angel
• 1x Righteous Valkyrie *f-pre*
• 1x Sanctuary Warden *f-pre*
• 1x Segovian Angel
• 1x Sephara, Sky's Blade
• 1x Serra Avenger
• 1x Serra Paragon *f-pre*
• 1x Sigarda's Vanguard
• 1x Soul Warden
• 1x Soul's Attendant
• 1x Starnheim Aspirant
• 1x Steel Seraph
• 1x Thraben Watcher
• 1x Valkyrie Harbinger
• 1x Youthful Valkyrie

Land (35)

• 1x Bonders' Enclave
• 1x Emergence Zone
• 1x Emeria, Shattered Skyclave  ^Flip
• 1x Emeria, the Sky Ruin
• 1x Kabira Plateau  ^Flip
• 1x Mutavault
• 1x Myriad Landscape
• 1x Ondu Skyruins  ^Flip
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 22x Plains
• 1x Scavenger Grounds
• 1x Seraph Sanctuary
• 1x War Room
• 1x Windbrisk Heights

Instant (6)

• 1x Cosmic Intervention
• 1x Generous Gift
• 1x Lapse of Certainty
• 1x Oblation
• 1x Path to Exile
• 1x Swords to Plowshares

Enchantment (5)

• 1x Angelic Accord
• 1x Folk Hero
• 1x Smuggler's Share
• 1x Thorough Investigation
• 1x Together Forever

Sorcery (3)

• 1x Search for Glory
• 1x Steelshaper's Gift
• 1x Winds of Abandon

Commander (1)

Artifact (14)

• 1x Dowsing Dagger  ^Flip
• 1x Eye of Vecna
• 1x Herald's Horn
• 1x Mask of Memory
• 1x Pearl Medallion
• 1x Pyre of Heroes
• 1x Rogue's Gloves
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Sword of Hearth and Home *f-pre*
• 1x Sword of the Animist
• 1x The Book of Exalted Deeds
• 1x Tome of Legends
• 1x Vanquisher's Banner
• 1x Well of Lost Dreams

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Maybeboard

Sorcery (4)

• 1x Armageddon
• 1x Damning Verdict
• 1x Mass Calcify
• 1x Ondu Inversion  ^Flip

Instant (2)

• 1x Brave the Elements
• 1x Kabira Takedown  ^Flip

Creature (3)

• 1x Avacyn, Angel of Hope
• 1x Breathkeeper Seraph
• 1x Inspiring Overseer

Land (1)

• 1x Emeria, Shattered Skyclave  ^Flip

Enchantment (2)

• 1x Land Tax
• 1x Luminarch Ascension

Artifact (1)

• 1x Pyre of Heroes

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Welcome to my Giada, Font of Hope Primer! I have been playing magic for some times and have written extensive primers for many of my commander decks. Most of the time I've waited till several years of playing to write these to get them right, but this time I'm starting shortly after release! I am hoping to create a bit of a community of Giada and Angels players in commander who can work on this deck and tribe together and to create a knowledge base. As I know there will be a renewed interest in playing both Giada and the tribe now I am hoping to kick things off now and get the best minds in the community working on it. This leads to two qualifiers on this primer that wouldn't apply in the same way to my other decks.

Firstly, this primer is based upon how I think this deck will play and how I am planning for it to work, but I have only just started playing it! This means that I will be revising it in real-time as I devote most of my play time to playing the deck over the next couple of months. As such I will be as open to suggestions as ever, and will run a large maybeboard as I test different cards and how they work in play. I am a pretty competent deck-builder and I think that a good amount of my initial design will hold true, but there are always hidden synergies that you find, and cards which seem like they will be great which will fall flat. I also will not be including a section for cards I am not playing for now, as I want to keep an open mind until testing proves otherwise. Please suggest any cards you like, and weigh in with as many comments as you have to get the conversation going! For those who provide especially good help I will add into the acknowledgements section as well!

Secondly, please upvote, add to the deck to a folder, comment, suggest cards, and link this deck anywhere you can! This isn't just affirmation of the work I am doing- it will help draw other players who are interested in playing angels to a great resource. Your comments and suggestions and that of those drawn to the deck by upvotes and such will help build a community! Those things being said, without further ado, let's get to the primer!

The Source (Understanding Giada and her Abilities) *Updated 11/18/2022"

In order to understand how to properly build and play Giada, we need to examine her cost, stats, and abilities. We'll start with her cmc and her second ability first, as these will tell us some key deckbuilding and play elements that will drive our play. We will then look at her power, toughness, and her first ability, which will give us additional instruction.

To begin with, Giada costs {1}{W}, and we can tap her for a {W} which we can spend to cast Angel spells. The Angel piece (combined with the fact that she is an angel and both of her abilities care about angels) points us towards a tribal approach, and her second ability and cmc point us to her being a 2cmc ramp card. This has implications for both lines of play and how we think about ramp and other support pieces in this deck. We will pretty much want to cast Giada turn two every game, making the 2cmc ramp pieces that are great for two and three cmc commanders less ideal in Giada. That doesn't mean we can't play them since we can sometimes play one and a 2cmc angel on turn three, but on turn four we will usually be either ramping out a 4cmc or less angel or playing a ramp or draw card like Herald's Horn or Starnheim Aspirant. We'll also be happy to play one drops where they are relevant to our strategy as they will play with the deck's quick style. The fact that Giada is a ramp piece for angels also means that we are more than happy to play a few more expensive (and impactful) angels since we will always be one mana ahead.

Giada's first ability is probably what is the most striking piece of her design, however, and adds even more direction to how we will be building her, but it can be confusing and bears some dissecting. It states that if another (non-Giada) angel would enter the battlefield, that it will enter with a number of +1/+1 counters equal to the number of angels we already control. While this ability effects how creatures enter the battlefield it is not an ETB ability itself, but an anthem which applies a replacement effect to how angels specifically ETB. This means it does not use the stack and cannot be interacted with Stifle type effects. Each angel will enter with at least one counter since we will presumably always control Giada, and the number of counters will grow as does our angelic host! This means several things. To begin with, weenie angels are fine and even ideal here, because even a Segovian Angel could be a major threat if a few angels are already out. Getting said angels out quickly then pushes us more towards cheap, efficient angels that can help us build a strong board state. Giada is a weenie angel herself, which all the more points us in this direction, and it is easy to imagine, for example, ramping out Angelic Page and Youthful Valkyrie on turn three after having cast Giada turn two. That being said, the tribe is populated with several big and powerful angels and we don't want to neglect those either, but we'll mostly play angels that cost between one and five mana, allowing us to play almost any angel in our deck or even multiple angels consistently by turn four. Since these angels enter with the counters, however, they will often be quite large, and as such staple weenie white draw cards like Mentor of the Meek and Welcoming Vampire would be less good in this deck, forcing us to look to other cards or themes to give us a good drawn engine to sustain our engine and to avoid running out of gas.

This leads us to our second point, which leads us a bit away from looking at Giada in particular and looking at angels in particular as a tribe. In order to understand angels better, we'll pick another famous one to examine here and give us some direction in the form of Baneslayer Angel.

When we look at Baneslayer Angel we see many of the qualities that are iconic to angels over the course of magic's history. She is a 5/5, and most classic angels in mtg's history are 4/4 or above, she flies as all angels do, and she has a host of keywork abilities that are iconic to white creatures. In Baneslayer's case these are First Strike, Protection, and Lifelink. Lifelink is a particularly relevant ability here because there are many key angels from magic's history that grant the ability and there is some synergy around it within the tribe. More importantly, there are several great cards that draw off of Lifelink such as Sigarda's Splendor, and these can fill in for the lack of weenie draw cards that are good in other white decks. Lifegain is also nice because while we will have good blockers much of the time, this gives us an extra layer of defense so that we can spend more time using our large evasive creatures to chew away our opponents' life totals. Given these realities, as we select cards for the deck, we'll favor lifegain synergy cards as well as trying to do the normal tribal thing of favoring angels that anthem the tribe and have other relevant keywork abilities such as vigilance. Our gameplan for Giada angels will be to generate an army of ever large angels to honestly smite our opponents to death in the air while we protect our life total with lifegain.

Giada's Place in the Heavens (How Giada compares to other Angel Commanders)

Oftentimes when approaching a new deck archetype or tribe, there are multiple approaches that one can take, and it is useful to see the place a particular commander sits in in relation to that archetype or tribe. There are at least four strong elf tribal commanders, and a good number of solid enchantress commanders, so one might look at Ezuri, Renegade Leader or Tuvasa the Sunlit in relationship to the archetype or tribal meta.

The thing about angels, however, is that they have been criminally under-supported by WOTC as they have been supporting tribes in the format. There are no angel tribal commanders that crack 1,000 decks on EDHRec, and that is saying something for one of magic's most iconic tribes!

Certainly many iconic commanders such as Gisela, Blade of Goldnight and Aurelia, the Warleader have been played this way, but there isn't anything about them that pushes us to building angels specifically other than being angels themselves. Avacyn, Angel of Hope is similarly iconic, but really plays best as a board wipe tribal deck rather than an angels tribal one. Kaalia of the Vast is one of the better options, but she isn't an angel herself and doesn't favor angels over demons or dragons, and the most powerful and natural ways of building her involve all three. Some have played Maelstrom Archangel as a deck, but that requires a rule zero discussion that could be vetoed by any given play group. The only truly angels commander out there till now has been Lyra Dawnbringer, but while powerful she is a bit vanilla, not giving us any real direction to build our deck other than maybe an emphasis on lifegain. She's also five mana and can be Counterspell bait, making the play experience potentially undesirable.

All this is to say that I think it is clear that Giada, Font of Hope will be the go to angels commander going forward. She comes down early every game, and pushes us towards ramping out angels and towards going wide with cast angels and angel tokens that can become huge threats via her +1/+1 counter subtheme. We'll play Lyra and other iconic mono-white angels in the 99 where we will get great use out of them, but in Giada we have an engine! Her place in the heavens is clear, there can be no other!

Why Play Giada?

You Might Enjoy Giada if-

• You love angels!
• You like tribal decks
• You enjoy lifegain and Soul Sisters strategies
• You like battlecruisers that you don't want to pay lots of mana for
• You are ready to embrace the challenges of playing mono-white
• You want to cast your commander really early every single game

You Might Not Enjoy Giada if-

• You hate goody two-shoes creatures like angels
• You hate tribal decks
• You enjoy countering spells as much as possible
• You love dirty combos
• You dislike turning things sideways and smashing face
• You prefer tricky decks
• You despise playing mono-white

The First Light of Dawn (Early Game Guide) *Updated 11/18/2022"

Our gameplan for the early turns is fairly simple. Regardless of anything else, we will want to play Giada on turn two every game and build from there, which guides our decisions around our opening hand. We'll ideally want to start the game with three lands, a card draw piece, and some angels or support pieces that we can cast early, with 4cmc or less being the ideal since we can cast those turn three. We'll take the ramp if we can get it, but we already have some ramp in the form of Giada, so it's less critical here than card draw, which will make sure that we are able to sustain our engine into the game. We can risk two lands in some cases if we feel confident that we'll be to three by turn three, and can take four as well as long as we have some ability to get our engine going. We love to have one drops, and it is nice to have some lifegain synergy piece as well since that will be a part of our early tasks. As such the presence of one of the soul sisters (Soul Warden and Soul's Attendant is almost a reason to keep the hand on its own!

Once we've kept a hand we'll play a one drop if we have it and then Giada, Font of Hope on turn two. Turn three then would involve playing either a ramp or draw piece or getting out some angels to start building the army! From there we'll just do what seems best given our hand and the state of the board, but we want to try to strike a balance between several tasks. As mentioned before, getting a draw engine that can sustain us over the game will be critical. We also need to get some sort of lifegain engine going, since this can draw us cards, pad our life total, and set us up for other shenanigans that we'll discuss in the next section. As usual we'll also want to ramp, put some other support pieces in place as well such as Crashing Drawbridge if we have it to give our creatures haste.

Since one of the more important things we can do at this point in the game is to establish a draw engine, it will be important to understand how we draw cards in this deck. A major way is via our lifegain engine. Well of Lost Dreams and Sigarda's Splendor can draw us an extra card each turn off of lifegain. A second way is via clue tokens. Thorough Investigation will net us clue tokens we can redeem for cards on a later turn, and can also draw more cards or grant other goodies like treasure tokens on future turns via the venture into the dungeon mechanic. Angelic Sleuth can console us with more of these tokens if our angels die, and can be a great way to fill our hand if we somehow lose our board state to a board wipe. Herald's Horn will allow us to draw angels from the top of our library while also serving as a premium ramp piece for our angels, allowing us to more easily play multiple angels in a turn. It will be a happy turn when we get this early! Mangara, the Diplomat is also a great piece that will net us quite a few cards over the game, while maybe even occasionally being able to help us with lifegain. Smuggler's Share will similarly draw us some cards and get us some treasure, though I don't care for the fact that it is thematically off for an angels deck. We can also draw cards via equipment that will draw each turn, which is why we absolutely love Mask of Memory and Rogue's Gloves. Since all of our creatures have evasion we can draw every turn, and we're playing Steelshaper's Gift in part to be able to grab one of these turn one. We can even draw off of Oblation if we target one of our own unneeded permanents in a pinch. We're also playing the best of the white cycling lands just in case we get flooded. We also have War Room and Bonders' Enclave in case we get desperate.

Our ramp package is more conventional, but is worth a few words. Our best pieces are as always Sword of Hearth and Home, Sword of the Animist, and Dowsing Dagger   as these give us lands, but they are even better here due to the fact that almost every creature in the deck flies! Starnheim Aspirant and Herald of War can provide massive discounts to our angel spells, and the former is even better when Giada puts the counters right on him as he enters the battlefield! And of course, there's good ol' Sol Ring and Myriad Landscape to help out as well.

One last note. While our lifegain card draw pieces described above, lifelinking creatures, and the soul sisters are good for getting an early lifegain engine going, we would be remiss if we didn't shine a light on the powerhouse lifegain pieces of Bishop of Wings and Righteous Valkyrie. These cards are true powerhouses that will get us far ahead in the game if our opponents don't deal with them!

Assembling the Host (Mid-Game Guide) Updated 12/1/2022"

Once our key engines are in play, it's time to start building an army of angels! The midgame is all about building and protecting this army as much as possible, while also beginning to attack and chip away at our opponents' life totals, and removing any threats that might emerge.

While we'll obviously be casting any and all angels in this phase, there is one engine in particular which we will try to assemble if we can, which is a lifegain fueled angel-token generating machine. We are playing four cards, namely Resplendent Angel, Valkyrie Harbinger, Angelic Accord, and card:Book of Exalted Deeds that generate large angel tokens on our each end step if we gain a certain amount of life. Ideally we'll put one of these in place and use large lifelinking creatures like Steel Seraph or other lifegain mechanics to start building our army for free (in terms of mana anyway). Giada doesn't specify anything about non-token angels, so our tokens will come in nice and large!

We'll also try to get some angel lords on the board as well. The most powerful and impactful of these are card:Lyra Dawmbringer who will give all of our angels the all powerful lifelink ability, and Angelic Skirmisher, who can do this as well as either First Strike or Vigilance as suits us. Beyond this card:Angelic Field Marshall gives them all vigilance for ultimate flexibility, and Thraben Watcher can do this as well as give them a +1/+1 aura. It is worth mentioning that many of our best angel lords can be tutored with Search for Glory, which is just an all-star tutor in most white decks and a deeply underrated card.

Our opponents at this phase will also likely to get nervous, and to ponder putting us in our place with a board wipe, leading us to employ some measures to protect our board from tampering! Sephara, Sky's Blade is a super powerful piece here, and we can usually cast her for {W} by tapping four other angels. At that point our whole board will be indestructible except for Sephara herself, which should give us room to move. Cosmic Intervention won't save our angels from destruction, but it can bring them all back on our end step! What's more interesting with this card is that when they return the rulings on the card state that each card has its own individual ETB event. This means that we can return Giada first, and then put new counters on our returning angels as we see fit! Guardian of Faith will save our creatures and there counters from anything, including the much vaunted Cyclonic Rift or other blue board wipes, and is a worthy inclusion. Of course, we can also just bounce the board wipe back to the opponent's hand with Lapse of Certainty as well. They may try again the following turn, but we'll have bought ourselves a turn and they'll have wasted theirs! Just be careful though, because Lapse of Certainty can also be used to stop our opponents from winning with a combo, so use it wisely! Finally, we are also playing Together Forever. This seemingly innocuous little piece is great in this deck because pretty much all of our pieces have counters, and it goes down for two, allowing us to put some additional counters on whatever pieces we want, including Giada. If these creatures die, we can put them back in our hand for the low cost of {1}. While we'll still have to recast them, this prevents us from getting blown out with any empty hand if we play right, since we can just recast the pieces. It is also a way to save and recast Giada without commander tax, and is pretty great for saving valuable permanents that we'll never mind re-casting, such as Sephara, Sky's Blade and Bruna, the Fading Light  . I've seen people wipe the board just to get rid of Sephara and have done that myself, but that strategy will fail here since she'll save our board and then we can just recast her for one.

The other thing we'll do here is to simply use white's premium removal pieces to hold our opponents down and keep them from threatening us. As can be expected we are packing the uber-efficient Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares, which can occasionally provide some added utility if used on our own creatures that might otherwise be wiped or destroyed. Oblation is versatile removal that ignores the graveyard which similarly can also be used on our own stuff in a pinch to draw a couple of cards. Generous Gift is the answer to everything, and Lapse of Certainty is the temporary answer to everything. Scavenger Grounds is our answer to graveyards. Darksteel Mutation can sideline pesky combo commanders. Winds of Abandon is great here particularly for its modal nature. We'll often be happy to cast it for its regular cost to remove a single creature. That being said, it is an incredibly powerful, one sided board wipe if we play it for its overload cost correctly. Just be careful, you'll ramp your opponents a lot, and control decks with full grips can often times pull ahead in this scenario, as long as they play basic lands that is, if not they'll get nothing! Just make sure you can either win or quickly after you exile all your opponents' stuff or can put them so far back that you don't need to worry about the ramp. Linvala, Keeper of Silence shuts down all of your opponents' creatures' activated abilities, including mana dorks. Angel of Jubilation shuts down annoying sacrifice and lifepay shenanigans. Angel of Condemnation is one of the flexible powerhouses of this deck. On the one hand, it can be temporary removal that we can use to keep our opponents from using their best creature during their turns, or can exert it to stop them from using it at all while Angel of Condemnation is on the battlefield. There are all sorts of fun synergies by using it on our own stuff, however. We can blink an early angel with a single counter to have it return with more counters. We can blink Sigarda's Vanguard to give our cratures doublestrike again or to untap a blocker. We can blink any creature to get more lifegain or other such benefit. We can also use it to save out pieces from removal or board wipes. The utility is just fabulous here!

One other key point here is that we have a lot of powerful recursion angels that can recover our key pieces if we lose them. Bruna, the Fading Light   can return a permanent once only if we cast her, which we're likely to do. Emeria, The Sky Ruin, Emeria Shepherd, and Serra Paragon can recure pieces once per turn for no real cost, which will make it hard for our opponents to keep up with if not dealt with. All of these things help us to really pull ahead in the game.

Banishing the Darkness (End-Game Guide) Updated 12/1/2022

Oftentimes when writing a primer the end-game is the most complicated part as I explain complicated combos and lines of play. Thankfully here its pretty straightforward. This is a midrange aggressive deck that is going to win by attacking with large flyers. At the end of the day, we are going to hit our opponents for lethal, and a large part of winning will be attributed to our success in defending our board state via measures mentioned in the previous section and keeping our opponents down with the removal and interaction described therein.

That being said, aggro decks of any kind in commander often win via "nasty surprises" that mess up our opponents' math, allowing us to kill them when they thought they might live to fight another day. Token-based aggro decks, for instance, often win with "pump" cards that turn 1/1s into serious threats out of nowhere like Mirror Entity, Jazal Goldmane, and, for tribal decks, Coat of Arms and Shared Animosity. This strategy is less effective with Giada since our creatures are already big and threatening, keeping our opponents from being caught off guard.

Another key thing that can often throw off our opponents is haste, which Josh Lee Kwai from The Command Zone podcast once called the most underrated mechanic in commander. White isn't a great color for haste, but we get it with Crashing Drawbridge, which can allow a major threat to hit and make an impact the turn we cast it. Once again, the unexpected is a powerful win con in a deck like this, and even an innocuous little non-threatening creature like drawbridge can make an impact. Similar to this, we also have Emergence Zone for similar reasons. If we think we have lethal but don't want to have to worry about making it another turn around the table, we can just hold up our mana and flash everything out on the end step before our turn, taking our opponents by surprise.

Another way we surprose our opponents is with Starnheim Unleashed. This card is great, as if we foretell it even on the low end we're getting two 4/4 angels for 5 mana, and for nine mana we've added four. These angels get counters since Giada doesn't discriminate between tokens, making it very easy to get lethal power on board in a single turn. This is especially potent if we have haste on board or we cast it with Emergence Zone, but even if we know that we have a piece to defend that board state we'll probably win.

One final nasty surprise here is a particularly fun one, and that is melding Gisela, the Broken Blade   with Bruna, the Fading Light   and turning her into Brisela, Voice of Nightmares    . This won't outright win the game, but it will shut down almost all of your opponents' counterspells and targeted removal, and will dish out massive damage. The great thing about this is even if Gisela is dead and in the graveyard Bruna can bring her back for the final meld.

That being said, while all of these lines of play can throw your opponents off and help you get through, none are strictly necessary. The key is to get a good board state and keep it until you win!

Potential Recruits (Cards I am Considering Playing) Update

Note: I'll keep longer list than normal here, and will add cards frequently when good suggestions are made. I also will not keep a list of rejected cards, since I want to keep an open mind as consensus around the best ways to play Giada form.

1) Avacyn, Angel of Hope

This card absolutely belongs in an angels tribal deck yet, and this one is no exception! Big flyers are board-wipe bait, and with Avacyn we can rest easy. The only reason she is not in is that I haven't bought it yet because she is expensive. I sell off stuff for store credit periodically and get magic money for birthdays and such, so one day she will definitely go in!

2) Archangel of Tithes

This is another great angel with good abilities. I'm not sure she's strictly necessary since deterring blockers isn't a huge deal when your deck is full of flyers, and I'm not sure I'll need the mini Ghostly Prison effect, but she is on the list. I think the biggest upside to her is that she shuts off infinite attack step and attacker combos like Godo/Helm and many others because the tax keeps them from working. Sometimes these corner cases is the difference between a win and a loss.The only reason I haven't tried her is because she's not cheap, and I'm not ready to invest in her quite yet, but likely will.

3) Esper Sentinel

This is a great one-mana draw piece. We don't have a lot of synergy with it since we don't have a lot of ways to put counters on it, and competitive opponents will pay the tax. It is also worth noting that it only triggers on the first non-creature spell each turn, so it's not Rhystic Study by any means. Still, it will likely draw some cards over the course of the game, is super efficient, is a one drop (which this deck loves), and even if it only draws a single card the cmc is probably worth it, and in most cases it will draw a few. It definitely belongs in the deck, but I haven't pulled the trigger yet because of cost.

4) Armageddon

This is a controversial card, and some of you might overlook it for just that reason, or because you know the social contract in your meta will punish you. Still, I think personally that it's a fair card in a mono-white EDH deck, and that it is probably correct to play it here. This deck is very fast, but blue and green already have such an advantage in ramp and draw that they can outvalue white if given time. Our main goal is to kill those players first, but often times if we can just reset those other advantages we can win. Because of our curve we can always rebuild our mana base fast, and we'll often start out with the best board state. This card helps hold our opponents down till we can finish the job. It also has an appropriate theme to an angel deck, and combos brutally with Cosmic Intervention if we really want to put them back. I more than understand if people don't want to play it on principle, and I may or may not myself, but I am thinking it is the correct play.

5) Serra Ascendant

He's not an angel, but the turn one flying life-linker is real and can power our life-gain engines. It's a must remove, but it will rarely be efficient to do so. I'm not sure about it though, and the price is also real, but I have my eye on it.

6) Victory's Herald

Lifelink aura is one of the best things you can do in this deck, so why not another way? The main objections to this so far relate to raising the cmc too much for another six drop and what to cut for it, as well as the fact that unlike Lyra Dawnbringer and Angelic Skirmisher it has to survive a turn around the table before we use it, but it's a good option.

7) Angelic Arbiter

One of the more experienced and active Giada players on Reddit has recommended this card, and I do have to concede that it could be a strong entry into the deck, with the ability to slow down our opponents a ton. I am thinking about it, though I do find that usually most players aren't in much of a position to make good attacks against me and it is high cmc, so I'm undecided.

8) Luminarch Ascension Update

I'm not quite sure why this missed the first draft, because it comes down so early and easily allows us to place tokens in a burst. Of course, it could get blown up before it does anything, but it seems like one of the few angel token generators besides the life-gain based ones that could be really good here. If I were to put it in, it would probably replace Starnheim Unleashed since it is a mana sink that's a bit in the hail mary category of cards.

9) Pyre of Heroes + Breathkeeper Seraph NEW

This combo is well established in the Giada community. Pyre is a great tribal tutor that allows us to sac an angel to bring an angel from our library onto the battlefield, and Breathkeeper Seraph makes it a tutoring draw engine, since we will always get whatever we sacrificed back on our end step. We can even sac the Seraph to tutor out Sephara, Sky's Blade, which is definitely the ceiling of this combo! That being said, I have a lot of experience with Pyre of Heroes, and on its own it is nowhere near as good here as it is in toolbox decks where it is overpowering. There are definitely cases where we will be happy to trade a three drop for Linvala, Keeper of Silence or Angel of Jubilation (even though the latter turns Pyre off). And if we have out a recursion piece we may not even feel the sacrifice too much. That being said, I am unsure whether trading one angel for another will be as good here as elsewhere. With Breathkeeper Seraph we do have a piece that can protect our best creatures including our commander, and we certainly would love it in tandem with Sephara, Sky's Blade. While six drop angels function as five drops in this deck due to Giada, we still want to be careful not to have too many pieces at this high of a cmc. It is also worth mentioning something about tutoring here. Combos like this are strongest when we have tutors for them. Changing Steelshaper's Gift for Enlightened Tutor can get us the Pyre, but the only way to tutor Breathkeeper Seraph in white is with the Pyre itself, which requires a five drop to sac to get us there. All this means is that this combo won't happen as often as we'd like it to, so if we include it we need to consider the pieces worth it on their own. With all of that said, I am very seriously considering this combo and would be curious to hear the experiences of those who have tested it.

Honorable Discharges (or, Cards I am considering cutting)

This section is currently empty as I've recently updated the deck, but will be modified in the future based upon my experiences with the current list.

Some Personal Notes on this Deck

This deck, more than any other, is a bit of a magic homecoming for me. The first magic cards I ever bought were back in 2005 as part of a 9th edition mono-white starter deck called "Army of Justice." I loved the bright art and white borders which, while they never looked good on other cards, looked great on the white ones! The deck had a far sunnier feel aesthetically than the dark art that has characterized most magic cards. On the rare occasion I could convince my wife to play with me casually after we got married she would only play that deck, because she found the art on most other magic cards to be dark and generally unappealing, which made her not want to play the game. More than the art however, I loved the white playstyle, with keyword mechanics like vigilance, first strike, and life link, its anthems, and its disruptive strategies like tapping and untapping my opponents' stuff. I of course loved the focus on angels, who could take to the skies and fly over my opponents' heads to win victories. It was this deck that really hooked me into the game.

When I returned to magic after a long hiatus and quickly took to commander as my format of choice, building a mono-white deck was at the top of my priority list. I purchased the 2014 "Forged in Stone" precon and built a token deck around Nahiri, the Lithomancer. The deck was capable of powerful plays and I had some memorable games, but overall I was dissatisfied with what were mono-white's now well-documented deficiencies in the format. Protecting a board state was much more difficult back then, and board wipes were more ubiquitous in the format than they are now. The worst part was the abysmal card draw, and it was too easy to get blown out with no gas in the tank to rebuild. Sadly I scrapped the deck to make the Teysa, Orzhov Scion deck that I still play today and resolved to give white another try once wizards addressed the problems. I also had hoped to build an angels deck, but there wasn't much to like there either.

With this deck I feel like the time has finally come. Giada is a fabulous commander who wonderfully supports the tribe and shores up white's weakness. More importantly, white has come a long way. It still may be the worst color, but it is much better. We now have lots of ways to draw cards from things white already wants to do, like gaining life or making tokens. There are many ways to protect a board state from wipes via either indestructability or temporary exile. I built a Mardu aggro deck recently that I expected to be super casual and yet is surprisingly strong! In honor of the original "Army of Justice" deck that got me into magic the basic plains in this deck are all white bordered lands from that original deck, and I try to play some of those older, white bordered white cards where I can! I'm happy to have returned to where I started, and look forward to many more amazing games with this deck!

Acknowledgements

Special thanks goes to dragonstryke58 and Neotrup, who helped me initially to understand how some of the nuances of Giada's ability works with various cards in the deck. This was important to the primer, and impacted both that and the overall deck design. Thanks also to KBK7101, AbyssalChampion, Kingtalk, Fortheboys, user:Seshiro-of-the-orochi, Massacar, and king-saproling, and Perilous_Percival for all of the useful suggestions so far! Thanks also to Kingtalk and Vessiliana for sharing their lists with me, as there were some helpful cards that I missed. Thanks also to kirbysan, for all the helpful suggestions and gameplay data, which have been really awesome! Finally, thanks to everyone who has upvoted, commented, added to the folder, or otherwise supported this primer so far! It was a real treat to be the top rated deck on tappedout, and that is thanks to the support of fabulous people like all of you!

Top Ranked	Achieved #1 position overall 3 years ago
Date added	3 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	15 - 0 Mythic Rares 40 - 0 Rares 19 - 0 Uncommons 4 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.26
Tokens	Angel 3/3 W, Angel 4/4 W, Angel 4/4 W w/ Vigilance, Angel Warrior 4/4 W, Citizen 1/1 GW, Clue, Copy Clone, Dungeon: Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Dungeon: Lost Mine of Phandelver, Dungeon: Tomb of Annihilation, Elephant 3-3 G, Foretell, Goblin 1/1 R, Plant 0/2 G, Skeleton 1/1 B, Spirit 1/1 W, The Atropal, Treasure
Folders	May Use, Fun Builds, Stolen EDH, Interesante EDH decks, Commander, definitely, Flavorful, Primers, Mono white EDH, Commander