Mono-White is terrible. That's the story you hear in every EDH circle. Unless you are rocking Stax/Tax, Voltron or Heliod combo, don't even bother. Well I say nay! Why can't I sit at any given table with my stack if white cards and not be just as threatening and meaningful at the table as anyone else! I can, that's what! But I don't want to build Voltron or Combo, and I hate Stax, so what do we build that can go toe to toe with the average Joe? Simple, we cheat.
Sephara, Sky's Blade is a 7/7 Flying, Lifelink behemoth of an Angel if you have the 4WWW available to cast her. The payoff seems nice; good stats for the cost and relevant evasion, not to mention she ALSO makes your other flying creatures Indestructible! Spicy! But seven mana is a lot and we are mono-white and "can't ramp". How do we get enough mana to cast her? I already told you, we're cheating! Sephara also says that if you can tap 4 untapped flying creatures, you can drop her cost from 4WWW to a single white mana. Just W. Boom! This means we can run a critical mass of cheap flying creatures and get our Commander out and swinging as early as turn 3 with a good enough draw!
So now we just need to take the available creatures and make sure we aren't simply filling the deck with chaff. Sure, they would work, but why not make our 1 and 2 CMC creatures pull more than just their own weight? Ornithopter gets a pass simply because its free. Creatures with Vigilance are also coveted here due to being able to attack and then tap for Sephara, not to mention Indestructible and Vigilance makes for a great way to clog up any attackers heading your way without sacrificing offensive pressure. This means we like Segovian Angel, Hovermyr, and Courier Hawk, even though they are rather unimpressive otherwise. But wait, we can do better, why not have actual threats in our early drops? Serra Ascendant can hit the field as a whopping 6/6 Flier with Lifelink for only "W"! A few turns swinging with this is sure to put you on someone's watch list! Hope of Ghirapur can make for a nice way to answer someone going off too quickly for a turn, or even lock the player most likely to answer your big plays. Tomik can help answer your opponents graveyard shenanigans, as can Remorseful Cleric and Tomik also protects your lands from targeted hate!
Okay, so we have a solid early game, so what. What happens when we dump our hand, play Sephara and she gets countered or killed. Now what do we do, Mr. Mono-White-Can-Handle-Themselves? Well we can draw cards and refuel ourselves for glory! Firstly, Scyscanner and Thaumaturge's Familiar can help us draw or manipulate draws. Sandstone Oracle can give us a large boost in hand size once it lands, and we even have the likes of Bygone Bishop to give us Clue's we can cash in at our convenience for more value. Also, we have access to the likes of Endless Atlus to get a little help here and there. More desperate times could have us cashing in our Commander's Sphere or our Mind Stone for cards and we could even try to be friendly with Truce. But this isn't a lot, I know, so let me tell you how we gain card advantage in Mono-White; Recycle. That's right, we're going green (figuratively) and will be reusing our dusty old assets. Think of it like remodeling your house; tired of seeing your couch sitting next to that wall or think some new curtains will liven up the place? Same here, except less pushing furniture during Spring Break and more cards like Sun Titan to bring back our broken artifacts for another use, or some of our smaller value creatures. Karmic Guide can restore life to any of our long dead creatures, and Emeria Shepherd can do whatever she wants bringing anything she likes, save our lands, to our hand or to play depending on whether we dropped a Plains or not this turn.
Alright so we have our little value pieces set up, but what else do we have? Well we are a go wide deck, so let's go wider. Tokens are plentiful and especially useful once we drop a few token makers and a couple of Lords. Emeria Angel gifts us a Bird token with each land drop we make. Spectral Procesaion gives us a set of triplets for our cause. Thioter Assembly is an army in a can and if set up right can single handedly meet the requirements for casting Sephara cheaply, tbough admittedly not as quickly as we'd like. Benevolent Offering not only acts as a political tool but sets us up with tokens and a nice life padding. But these last three are the big ones: Spirit Bonds asks us for an extra W for each creature we cast but rewards us with a flying 1/1 if we comply, turning each nontoxic creature that comes into play into a 2 for 1 special. This can QUICKLY fill our board to lethal levels if we have enough creatures in hand to cast, or have access to enough flicker effects. Entreat the Angels can vomit Angels into play all at once and is especially good if it is the first card you draw in a single turn, preferably your own. And if Angels are what you are looking for,, Luminarch Ascension can flood the board with 4/4 flying Angels for days if we have 1W to spend per Angel. Granted, we do have to spend four of our turns without suffering life loss but this shouldn't be an issue. You're more likely to lose this to removal.
Speaking of Removal, we both need to be armed with it and be ready for it. Selfless Spirit can help double up on our Commander's Indestructible powers for our team and we can always go ghost with Teferi's Protection if things get too hairy. We also have Mandate of Peace, because White Fog is funny and can even interrupt some potential shenanigans, though it is limited to Combat Casting timing restrictions. Now for our removal. Seal of Clensing and Aura of Silence can help rid the field of nasty artifacts and enchantments, but more importantly, they deter them from ever being played, which is far more valuable. They are also recurrence with some aforementioned cards. Generous Gift, Unexpectedly Absent and Return to Dust all remove problematic cards from the board as well with the former two not being picky as to what they can choose and the latter again hitting artifacts and enchantments. Karmic Justice is similar to Aura and Seal, in that it deters our opponents from going ham on our permanents. It can potentially blow up anything and so I think it makes for a great inclusion. And lastly, we have good ol board wipes. Sometimes, we gotta glass the planet and start over. Wrath of God is classic and clean, while Austere Command is flexible enough to potentially leave us as unscathed as possible. I also really like Dusk//Dawn here as, yes it will kill Sephara, but it acts as a powerful recursion piece in our graveyard late game. And finally, Divine Intervention is just silly. Cast Divine Intervention, target Sephara, profit. And it has flashback for a repeated use at another time.
So now we execute our game strategy. We have two win conditions. Firstly, damage. We want to swing in early and often. Turn your creatures sideways, leave up mana for reaction and repeat. Even better if you can get Angel of Jubilation, Gideon the Oathsworn or Serra the Benevolent to help inflate the power of your winged furies. And we even have a viable combat trick in Rally of Wings. And Sephara damage adds up quickly, making for a nice potential Commander Kill on a player. Our second way of winning is Approach of the Second Sun. Yes, it is very telling, but even if our opponents are scrambling to stop the God Pharaoh from returning to devastate our home plane, they are using resources they could have used otherwise to further their gameplan or thwart ours. Meaning that we either win with it, or we force our opponents to stop us.
This isn't a finely tuned deck, mostly just because I work two jobs and I am lazy, but Sephara comes packing heat. She is very reliable and consistent and is not to be slept on. And it won't beat a powerful CEDH combo deck that is firing the Nos on turn 2 (yet), but there is still much to gain from sliding up into a pod of unsuspecting players and laying claim to the skies.
Enjoy the view, whilst looking down of everything.
