“If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion,
and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”
—Abigail Adams, on Lin Sivvi stealing wins after being underestimated
Ramp
Monowhite has never been great at ramping. We've always had Knight of the White Orchid, Weathered Wayfarer and Land Tax, which help us ramp and turn on Emeria, The Sky Ruin. But in recent years we've picked up value engines like Smothering Tithe, Verge Rangers, Boreas Charger, Keeper of the Accord, and Archaeomancer's Map. Verge Rangers is a special tool for our deck, given our ability to easily shuffle the library to put a new card on top. Because monowhite ramp typically requires opponents to have more lands in play than us, Karoo,Guildless Commons, and to a lesser extent Lotus Field ramp us twice over by reducing our land count to enable white's ramp requirements. In addition to these cards, this deck includes Sol Ring and also Sword of Feast and Famine, which we can reliably trigger with our shadow and flying rebels. Lastly, we run several dual-faced cards that can function as either spells or lands: while they aren't the best spells in the game, they give us flexibility to decide whether we need the extra mana or the extra spells. This deck really wants to hit its land drops to facilitate its various rebel tutoring creatures and ultimately to pump up Mirror Entity for the final lethal swing.
Card Advantage
Monowhite is also a weak color in terms of card draw: one of the underestimated strengths of Lin Sivvi is that she functions as a card advantage engine if left unchecked. Esper Sentinel and Alms Collector let us catch up slightly, and our hatebear package is designed to slow opponents down to our level. Palace Jailer acts as removal, and even if we lose the monarch title, evasive rebels like Zealot il-Vec let us quickly steal it back while our defensive rebels discourage attackers from stealing it in the first place. I also play Stonehewer Giant as a poor man's Stoneforge Mystic but with the benefit of a larger body and being a repeatable equipment tutor. Finally, if you can resolve Elspeth, Sun's Champion, every ability on that card is relevant to our deck's plan, and our defensive rebel package can keep her alive a long time. While my current decklist does not include it, Teferi's Puzzle Box can help us cycle through our deck (since Lin Sivvi tutors rebels into play instead of casting them and shuffles our deck regularly) to find our powerful non-rebel cards, while forcing our opponents to play out their combos and powerful creatures before they're fully ready. It works really well with cards like Land Tax to draw extra plains which then get swapped for actual cards or Alms Collector to lock down opponents while drawing us still more cards. However, the downside is the box cycles opponents through their decks quickly too unless you have a relevant hatebear in play, and since they probably have better spells than our monowhite deck, I've dropped this card to avoid unwittingly helping out my opponents.
Hatebears
Monowhite decks often include hatebears to drag opponents down to monowhite's level, but since Lin Sivvi is a card advantage engine that doesn't care about drawing cards or casting spells, she greatly benefits from hatebears that target those two means of acceleration in particular. Rule of Law, Eidolon of Rhetoric, and Archon of Emeria restrict everyone to casting only one card per turn, but since we typically will only cast one card per turn and spend the rest of our mana on Lin Sivvi activations anyways, this restriction hurts our opponents while not impacting us much. Similarly, Spirit of the Labyrinth and Alms Collector restrict card draw engines without hindering our card advantage engine at all. To combat graveyard decks without shutting off our own recursion abilities, we play Angel of Finality and Mimic Vat. Reidane, God of the Worthy
/Valkmira, Protector's Shield deserves special mention, as she's an spellslinger hatebear on one side while her flipped side protects us and our permanents: both sides of this card have done heavy lifting for this deck. Aura of Silence functions as a hatebear but is also included for targeted removal. Finally, Drannith Magistrate is a great card for shutting down opponents' commanders and cast-from-graveyard cards, and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite does double duty as an anti-token hatebear and makes our own creatures more lethal. While there are more hatebears this deck could run, the purpose of these cards are to slow the game down to our level, not to lock people out entirely. I used to run Aven Mindcensor and Linvala, Keeper of Silence but dropped them because, while they may hinder opponents, they are backbreaking to Lin Sivvi if an opponent to steals them from us.
Token Producers
Our most common win condition of Mirror Entity can come out of nowhere on the previous opponent's end step, so this deck loves cards that can produce tokens at instant speed. Secure the Wastes and White Sun's Zenith are the best token producers we have, but Decree of Justice does a mediocre imitation when it's cycled. We can also generate tokens at sorcery speed via Entreat the Angels, Elspeth, Sun's Champion, and the first ability for Decree of Justice, but this requires us to wait an extra turn before winning. Luminarch Ascension is a wincon on its own as well, and while it is slightly "win more", we can easily flip Hanweir Militia Captain
/Westvale Cult Leader which if unchecked puts us in a dominant position. However, we don't run Anointed Procession, as we aren't focused on tokens and can just as easily win via ordinary rebels and value creatures without the target Anointed Procession puts on us. Also, because our primary way of pumping our tokens up for lethal involves changing their base power/toughness via Mirror Entity, the 4/4 bodies of angel tokens are less relevant for us, which makes both the first ability of Decree of Justice less relevant for us and is another reason why this deck does not include cards like Divine Visitation.
Graveyard Recursion
Sun Titan, Emeria, The Sky Ruin, Luminous Broodmoth, Mistveil Plains, Mimic Vat, and the second ability on Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero all help you grind out long-term advantage by playing around with the cards in your graveyard. This deck used to include Ramosian Revivalist in order to more quickly and cheaply bring rebels back into play from the graveyard, but given the cost of its ability, I found Lin Sivvi's ability roughly equivalent as-is and mostly sufficient on its own and so no longer include that card.
Board Wipes
As a monowhite deck filled with fairly weak creatures, we benefit from a lot of one-sided board wipes. Citywide Bust, Council's Judgment, Dusk / Dawn, Elspeth, Sun's Champion, and Ravnica at War will generally kill our opponents' creatures while leaving our alone. Our other sorcery-speed spells are either board wipes or dual-sided land cards that were included to give us extra choices at a low cost.