[Primer] I'm Darien you to hit me!

Commander / EDH Lifegain Mono-White Primer Tokens

Dumannios

Creature (25)

• 1x Adeline, Resplendent Cathar
• 1x Archangel of Thune
• 1x Auriok Champion
• 1x Avacyn, Angel of Hope
• 1x Bastion Protector
• 1x Bennie Bracks, Zoologist
• 1x Daxos, Blessed by the Sun
• 1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
• 1x Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines
• 1x Esper Sentinel
• 1x Guardian of Faith
• 1x Healer of the Pride
• 1x Hero of Bladehold
• 1x Keeper of the Accord
• 1x Mangara, the Diplomat
• 1x Mentor of the Meek
• 1x Mirror Entity
• 1x Mondrak, Glory Dominus
• 1x Myrel, Shield of Argive
• 1x Rumor Gatherer
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Soul Warden
• 1x Soul's Attendant
• 1x Suture Priest
• 1x Weathered Wayfarer

Enchantment (10)

• 1x Ajani's Welcome
• 1x Anointed Procession
• 1x Cathars' Crusade
• 1x Divine Visitation
• 1x Fanatical Devotion
• 1x Land Tax
• 1x Rest in Peace
• 1x Shielded by Faith
• 1x Smothering Tithe
• 1x Tocasia's Welcome

Land (36)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Beacon
• 1x Emeria, the Sky Ruin
• 1x Grand Coliseum
• 1x Hall of Heliod's Generosity
• 1x Kor Haven
• 1x Myriad Landscape
• 1x Nomad Stadium
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 20x Plains
• 1x Strip Mine
• 1x Tarnished Citadel
• 1x Thespian's Stage
• 1x Urza's Saga
• 1x Vesuva
• 1x War Room

Instant (10)

• 1x Blood of the Martyr
• 1x Call the Coppercoats
• 1x Crush Contraband
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Entrapment Maneuver
• 1x Flawless Maneuver
• 1x Heliod's Intervention
• 1x Path to Exile
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Teferi's Protection

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Elspeth, Sun's Champion

Commander (1)

Artifact (14)

• 1x Ankh of Mishra
• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Archaeomancer's Map
• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Coat of Arms
• 1x Commander's Plate
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Pearl Medallion
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Sword of Feast and Famine
• 1x Sword of Fire and Ice
• 1x Throne of the God-Pharaoh
• 1x Wand of the Worldsoul

Sorcery (3)

• 1x Austere Command
• 1x Farewell
• 1x Finale of Glory

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Darien, King of Kjeldor - A primer to a unique mono white commander

A little bit about the deck

Darien, King of Kjeldor started out for me as a budget commander and the second deck I ever built. And he just ended up as one of my favorite commanders (Though he's probably my favorite). Because of this I've re-made the deck from its original Soldier/human-only tribal entirely and tried to make it more synergistic around Life gain, Counters, Anthems and Tokens.

How strong is this deck?

I really dislike using power levels on a scale to 10. Because of the hoops you have to jump through, how fast the deck comes online can fluctuate wildly. And doing so at a lower power or precon table might just end up stomping. So rather than putting a power level on the deck with a number, consider this when sitting down at the table:

• The deck runs fast mana and tutors
• There are no infintes in the deck (But will include infinite combos further down the primer for those that want them)
• The earliest I've known this deck to win is by turn 8
• Plenty of offensive and defensive interactions

Due to the fast mana from Mana Crypt, Ancient Tomb and tutors, your games will wildly vary from 'Fair magic' to turn 3 Darien, so it's best to set the expectations at the table.

How does it work?

As is apparent from Darien, King of Kjeldor, he's a bit of a strange commander to have, since you want to take damage constantly to get value out of him. It can be a bit tricky to get the tokens going because your opponents will avoid attacking you. This because unless they can kill you in one swing, or are willing to attack to give you the commander damage, they will give you so many tokens! With that said. I will elaborate a bit on the key cards of the deck in four sections.

1. Hit yourself
2. Gain life
3. Get some more tokens while you are at it!
4. Finish them!

I will also discuss some infinite combos as well as cards that I think are very good but didn't make it in this version of the deck and a good video with budget options should you prefer a more budget build.

1. Hit yourself

As said in the section above, people will be reluctant to hit you once Darien is on the field unless they can straight up kill you. For this reason, we will give them a hand and beat ourselves up.

• City of Brass
• Tarnished Citadel
• Ancient Tomb
• Grand Coliseum
• Nomad Stadium
• Mana Crypt
• Sword of Fire and Ice
• Ankh of Mishra

We run a nice package of lands that deal damage to us whenever we tap them so we will just make soldier tokens by casting spells and generating mana. This also synergises really well with the "Draw a card if you created a token this turn" style card draw effects white has gotten recently, as you can basically draw 4 cards per turn cycle like this.

Also, how cool is it that normally you'd pray not to take damage from Mana Crypt, but in this deck you pray to the lords of chaos that you lose that coin flip and get three free tokens out of it?

That actually reminds me of an VERY IMPORTANT rule about how Darien works that might come up.

Darien's text reads: "Whenever you're dealt damage". Important to know and understand here is that: * Damage causes loss of life * Loss of life is not damage

This means that effects that cause you to lose life like for example: paying 3 life ward costs of a creature when you're trying to remove it, Cracking a fetch land, etc do not provide you with tokens as you lose the life rather than take damage. Read the cards carefully. If the word damage is mentioned, you will be making a token. Otherwise, you likely will not.

2. Gain life

So, we decided that slapping ourselves repeatedly to make tokens was a good idea. You know what's an even better idea? Instantly getting that life back. That's right. it's soul sister time!

• Soul Warden
• Soul's Attendant
• Auriok Champion
• Daxos, Blessed by the Sun
• Suture Priest
• Healer of the Pride
• Ajani's Welcome

This part is pretty straightforward. Take damage > Make tokens equal to the damage > ETB lifegain triggers > Regain life you lost.

These effects stack, so if you get multiple of these life gain effects out, have anything that doubles triggers or have a token doubler out you are gaining even more life than you are paying.

3. More tokens!

To reinforce our token package, we're running some token generators to complement our strategy, since Darien will not always be on the field. And there's also a couple of token doublers to increase our value.

• Adeline, Resplendent Cathar
• Hero of Bladehold
• Myrel, Shield of Argive

These are all very solid and are able to build a board state really fast as long as you can swing your creatures somewhere safely. There's of course protection in the deck to ensure you can get through if your opponents have blockers.

Some other token generators include Call the Coppercoats, Finale of Glory and an (in my opinion) underplayed removal spell Entrapment Maneuver. There's many occasions where my opponents were playing it safe and swung at me with just one creature, only to have to sacrifice that creature and die to the resulting tokens on the crackback. Blood of the Martyr is also a hilariously obscure card and turns an opponent's attack or Blasphemous Act into your victory.

And to top it off, there's two token doublers in the deck that work with these and Darien (And even with Smothering Tithe if you're lucky enough).

• Anointed Procession
• Mondrak, Glory Dominus

4. Finish them!

Once we've amassed a respectable boardstate or are ready to do so, it's time to take out our opponents. There's some very telegraphed ways that this can happen, or we can take them out by surprise.

Deal with it!

• Cathars' Crusade
• Divine Visitation
• Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
• Archangel of Thune

I know many people aren't fond of the math involved in tracking this card, but Cathars' Crusade is an absolute monster in this deck. With just a few mana taps or tokens created, the entire table will be on the clock as they are about to be absolutely demolished by a ton of buffed up soldiers. Archangel of Thune Is pretty much a second Cathars' Crusade thanks to all the lifegain in the deck. Divine Visitation will turn any soldier token you would create into a 4/4 angel. At the speed you can generate tokens, that will go fast. Though once again, your opponents will very much see this coming. And then there's good old Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite to pump your creatures and weaken/kill those of your opponent.

Game over

• Coat of Arms
• Mirror Entity
• Throne of the God-Pharaoh

Coat of Arms is a classic, and devastating in go wide tribal decks. This deck is no exception. Though if your playgroup meta consists of a lot of tribal decks, you may want to steer clear of this card.

Mirror Entity is simple and straightforward. As long as you have enough mana you can pump up your entire board and swing for lethal damage.

Throne of the God-Pharaoh can come as quite a surprise for your opponents when life totals are getting low. Just play it in your second main phase after your creatures have attacked or have been used to convoke for some table-wide surprise damage.

Combos

For those of you that like infinite combos, I don't have any in this deck as my playgroup prefers to play without. But of course there are some combos for the combo enjoyers among you!

1. Blasting Station, together with any of the Soul Sister effects like Soul's attendand and Darien will generate infinite ETB and infinite lifegain triggers. While this effect doesn't do anything for you on it's own, you might be able to strike a deal with an aristocrats player to shoot down an arch enemy with their Blood Artist. Probably not the best play since they're gaining life as well, but it's just an example.

2. If you add Mondrak, Glory Dominus or Anointed Procession to the combo mentioned above, you will get infinite soldiers and infinite life.

3. If you add Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines or and additional Soul Sister effect, you will get infinite life.

4. Dingus Staff paired with any Soul sister effect, Darien and either Ashnod's Altar or Phyrexian Altar will also net you infinite mana and infinite soldiers. Or if you

5. If you want yet another infinite, the all time super exciting and on-theme Heliod, Sun-Crowned + Walking Ballista or Triskelion combo is an option. You can either gun down your opponents and finish it then and there. Or you can stare them down with an infinitely increasing army of soldiers as you machine gun yourself in the face.

I'm on a quest for jank!

Alright, there's definitely a possibility for jank in the deck at the cost of some power and consistency, but if it works, it's absolutely amazing! All of the jank suggestions below work together with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.

But isn't Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth a black land? Why can you put it in the deck?

Rule 903.4: The Commander variant uses color identity to determine what cards can be in a deck with a certain commander. The color identity of a card is the color or colors of any mana symbols in that card's mana cost or rules text, plus any colors defined by its characteristic-defining abilities (see rule 604.3) or color indicator (see rule 204).

Urborg is a land, so it is colorless. And since it has no mana symbol on it, it can go into to the deck.

1. Karma, when paired with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth just blasts the table while you (hopefully) have Darien out and keep gaining the life back from the tokens entering. If you can sit on this a turn, everyone will be wrecked. I've even had a game where I played this combination near the end and I just watched my opponents die one by one in their upkeep. Absolutely glorious!

2. Angry Mob! Though not entirely in line with what the deck wants to do, Throwing down a 12/12 trample (On your turn) for 4 mana sounds like value to me. And it only gets stronger as the game goes on.

3. If you don't want to get invited back to the table, include Kormus Bell and cast it together with Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite.

Notable cards that have been cut over time

Since the deck has been around for a while, it has seen a lot of changes. Some cuts were easy as cards were just not that fitting for the deck, others just had to go to make way for similar but more powerful versions. Or some cards just did not work out the way the way I thought. Below a couple of cards that are no longer in the deck, and my experience with them should you decide to include them in the deck.

• Storm Herd - This card has gotten me quite some laughs actually. With the amount of life this decks gains sometimes it's not uncommon to make 30 tokens with this and then gain 30 life because of those tokens entering. Sadly it's 10 mana, which is just simply too slow for the pods I play in. If my playgroup was more casual and the deck itself was lower powered I'd still run this.

• Aetherflux Reservoir - I was kind of dissapointed just how little this card did in the deck. Since usually you will only cast about 2 spells per turn in this deck, there isn't really a lot of benefit from the lifegain you get from this card. And getting to 50 life with this card out also proved to be too much of a challenge since it puts quite a target on your back. Great card. Just not in this deck with the mana costs as it is unfortunately.

• Well of Lost Dreams - Definitely a nice card for this deck. Over the years, white has gotten some really nice card draw toys however that made me cut this card.

• Monologue Tax - Talk about an overhyped card. When this came out everyone was shouting off the rooftops that the second Smothering Tithe had arrived. Man was this card a let-down. This card needs to trigger 4 times just to get mana it costs back. Sure, it lets you cast bigger spells early, but it is still way too slow and often times it would take 3 full turns before it actually had paid back the price. Not worth a slot nor its pricetag.

• Settle the Wreckage - White had some trouble keeping up with the rest of the board mana wise. This card was an attempt to remedy that a bit by using it on my own attacking tokens to ramp. Unfortunately it was way too unreliable, and using it on my opponents just felt like giving them the game. Thankfully Keeper of the Accord and Archaeomancer's Map have since been released.

• Jade Monolith - This card looks like it was made to be put in a Darien deck. Sadly, it never really seemed to do anything in all the games that I played with it, it just kind of functioned as a stax piece where noone would attack with creatures until either the Monolith or Darien got removed.

• Oketra's Monument - Casting creatures at a discound and making tokens?? Sounds really really good! Unfortunately, over time I started playing less and less creatures in this deck and this card just really didn't do as much as I wanted. Since the discount and token effect is only for creature spells, it was cut.

• Intrepid Hero - Honestly, I don't recall why exactly this one got cut. Other than having to sit on it for a turn it was a very solid removal piece for big threats and slowed down my opponents until they could find an answer. But it may have gone in favor of the new catch up ramp or card draw white received.

• Victory's Herald - Originally, this was cut just because I wanted to lower the CMC of my deck. Nothing wrong with this card other than having to wait a turn and giving your opponents time to deal with it. But this honestly feels like a budget Akroma's Will when you intent to use it as a finisher. Maybe I'm a bit generous in that thought, because Akroma's Will is bonkers.

• Mass Calcify - Very cool "On sided" boardwipe. Except, not always. 7 mana for a boardwipe that may not get rid of the reason why you want to cast a boardwipe... Sadly dissapointed too often. Might be good depending on your meta. But I personally prefer versatile boardwipes.

• Fell the Mighty - Honestly, still a big fan of this boardwipe. The only reason this one got cut is because I had too many wipes in the deck and I preferred keeping Austere Command and Farewell for their flexibility over this

Budget options?

The deck is really pricey because over time I just kept tweaking and optimizing it as much as I could. Don't let that dissuade you. The deck can perfectly work on a budget."The Commander's Quarters" on YouTube did a great video on Darien. It's a bit outdated since there are many new toys that mono white has gotten, (Oh my god card draw!!! T_T) but I would still recommend checking it out as it is a great base to start building your budget deck from:

Final thoughts

If you made it this far into the explanation I'd like to thank you for reading this, and I'm hoping I peaked your curiosity for Darien. I wholeheartedly recommend trying him out! If you have any questions about the deck or about a Darien deck of your own that you are building feel free to ask and I'll answer to the best of my ability.

Top Ranked	Achieved #63 position overall 2 years ago Achieved #44 position in Commander / EDH 2 years ago Achieved #3 position in Commander / EDH Lifegain 2 years ago Achieved #3 position in Commander / EDH Mono-White 2 years ago
Date added	4 years
Last updated	10 months
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	19 - 0 Mythic Rares 41 - 0 Rares 16 - 0 Uncommons 4 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.09
Tokens	Angel 4/4 W, Angel 4/4 W w/ Vigilance, Construct 0/0 C, Emblem Elspeth, Sun's Champion, Human 1/1 W, Human Soldier 1/1 W, Soldier 1/1 C, Soldier 1/1 W, Soldier 2/2 W, Treasure
Folders	Commander Decks (Dumannios), Ideas, Stolen Decks, Mono White, Commander, AAwesome decks