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Yosei, a Good Mono-White EDH Deck [PRIMER]

Commander / EDH Combo Control Mono-White Stax

thehalubi

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Lands (31)

Card Advantage (9)

Spot Removal (4)

Protection (1)

STAX (16)

Tutors (11)

Recursion (5)

Sacrifice Outlets (1)

Commander (1)

Commander: Yosei, the Morning Star

Ramp (13)

Threats (8)

Maybeboard

Other (1)

Primer still very messy, as is the decklist.

Buckle up, it's going to be a long one.

This is largely a primer on Yosei, but I will include some theory on building mono-white in general. Mono-white has long had a reputation of being the weakest color combination in EDH/Commander. All mono-white has currently is a lower power ceiling, with misconceptions coming from the very low power floor. Luckily this doesn't prevent mono-white from playing at high-powered tables (or even cEDH for that matter).

This deck has good game against strong decks such as: Muldrotha value piles that generate endless resources, Kykar stax/combo that lock you out and does Timetwister loops, Chulane toolbox/combo that get endless draws and lots of reuse out of their cards, and so on; good and established decks that haven't yet been cranked all the way up to 11 by their player. Needless to say this deck probably won't win much against decks that have gone off the deep end (although I have yet to sit at a cEDH table with the deck so I wouldn't know).

This is a very messy primer until I figure out what to cut down on. However everything is in accordions so it should be easy to skip to the relevant parts of the primer, and to skip over parts that are irrelevant to the reader.

The most necessary parts to read in order to get a good idea of the deck are:

  • General Gameplan
  • Card Selection
  • How to Win
  • Play Patterns and Mulligans

That said I hope you enjoy.

How good is the deck really?

It's pretty good but won't win against highly optimized fish piles unless you get lucky. The deck can also function on a pretty tight budget at more casual tables, this list is just one version of many that happens to be mostly optimized because my meta is very cutthroat. Practice with the deck makes perfect, and the deck definitely gets wins because people don't respect some of the things mono-white does better than any other color.

This deck began as an idea I had many years ago of a mono-white deck that wanted to abuse Emeria, The Sky Ruin. The first commander of the deck was Lieutenant Kirtar as it was the first creature I found that could repeatedly generate value off of Emeria. This was not good and I soon switched to Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite instead. While she was a decent finisher she was merely a good card at the helm of a mediocre deck.

One day a friend pointed out that Yosei, the Morning Star is a card and it all clicked together. I slowly developed and refined the deck into its first iteration (now retired and defunct) which leveraged mass removal as card advantage in mono-white and looked to have multiple Emeria active on the field at once with assistance from Vesuva+Thespian's Stage. The issue with this deck was that when the deck played against one high power deck and two decks that crumble to the first mass removal, the game was unwinnable as mass removal is too slow to stop one high-power player by itself as there was a large political element to the deck where you would let other players do a lot of the interaction of the stack, so that they would expend resources and your mass removal would punish them further. The deck had very little mana acceleration as they synergized poorly with cards like Planar Cleansing, and was not low enough to the ground with small creatures to make use of the best engine available to mono-white in Skullclamp.

Out of frustration of losing 1v1+2 games and a realization that I should just play all the good cards instead, the current iteration of the deck was born.

Pros:

  • High skill ceiling: It is rewarding to learn the deck. Unlike many Blue/Green/x color decks that vomit value all over the board and win without much though, winning is a very conscious decision for this deck. If you play well you win a lot of the time.
  • You get to be a special mono-white playing snowflake.
  • OG Kamigawa foils look beautiful.

Cons

  • Mono white: despite mono-white being stronger than the average player thinks, it still has many issues.
  • High skill floor: it is easy to throw away wins with the deck. You have to play most turns correctly to string together a win.
  • Engines are slower and mostly worse: making the most out of the engines available takes time, and sometimes you feel bad that other decks get to play real Magic cards.

Why Yosei?

Yosei is positioned as one of the better control oriented mono-white commanders. The only other ones I would personally consider for helming a control deck would be Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite or Djeru, With Eyes Open. He protects your life total, slows the game down, and is a win condition in the command zone. Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite/Djeru, With Eyes Open are just good cards I would play, but lack combo potential. This is why the best mono-white decks (Heliod, Teshar, Sram) are the best, because their commander is either a combo piece or an insane value generator.

Why not anything else, like Teshar/Heliod/Lin Sivvi/Sram?

No reason but shut up.

What exactly is a Yosei? While it's pretty obvious what he literally does, the effect on the board and game he has is less so. Breaking this legendary down will help me explain why the deck is built how it is, and how we play towards him.

The casting cost

A CMC of 6 means that this will be in a slower deck. White commanders can work at higher CMC but the decks need to be built differently. CMC 6+ generally means that the deck will mostly need to function without the commander, although the deck can use the commanders to win the game as well.

The typeline

Spirit Dragon

This does not matter, unless you want to play Dragon's Hoard.

The text box and stats

Flying

When Yosei, the Morning Star is put into a graveyard from play, target player skips his or her next untap step. Tap up to five target permanents that player controls.

5/5

A combination of his stats, flying, and his ability mostly mean that Yosei usually functions as a Blazing Archon. Your life total is protected from chip damage as well as larger damage unless it has enough trample to one-shot you. Surprisingly, people don't want to skip their next turn.

His second ability results in late gamestates where it is easy to keep at least one player locked out of the game, if not multiple. It is also possible to combine two other cards in order to prevent each opponent from untapping again.

Altogether Yosei is perfectly suited to a slowwe fun police deck, with engines geared towards winning the game later rather than sooner, as well as having a combo finish that is fairly easily tutored.

The plan of the deck is to slow the game down to where you can outgrind people with your value engines. The deck goes fairly tall so the lategame is generally secured assuming everyone else has to play at a slow pace as well.

The order you want to do things in is most of the time: 1. Ramp 2. STAX 3. Card Advantage 4. Play threats

That said a good opening hand should include card advantage, stax, and ramp. The deck is relatively top-heavy for what it could/should be sometimes it's best to look for more card advantage or ramp so that the stax pieces don't also make you unable to play the game. This applies to every stax deck, but especially this one as the commander does not provide any card or board advantage on its own.

  • Chrome Mox: sacrifice a card in hand for a mox. Every optimized deck plays these for a reason.
  • Mox Diamond: the above.
  • Mox Opal: not always immediately active but it's another way to get more mana.
  • Mana Crypt: the best acceleration available in the format. costs and accelerates you mana.
  • Sol Ring: worse than Mana Crypt but not by much. Second best acceleration available in the format. You know why it's good.
  • Mana Vault: the deck has a fairly high curve so having a Dark Ritual in the deck helps cast spells.
  • Coldsteel Heart: 2cmc rocks are not that readily available and this taps for .
  • Marble Diamond: the above.
  • Mind Stone: taps for mana immediately and can replace itself
  • Worn Powerstone: high curve means larger mana rocks.
  • Thran Dynamo: the above.
  • Hedron Archive: the above except it can draw you cards for the cost of tapping for less.
  • Smothering Tithe: generally this is at least a Thran Dynamo that works a bit slowly. However people like to draw cards and this quickly generates an absurd amount of mana.

Mono-white gets joked about by most EDH players because it has little ways of just drawing cards. This does not mean that card advantage is unavailable to the color.

  • Land Tax: partner in crime with ScRack. Gets you three lands a turn, usually activates two or three times depending on the table. If you have to go for the Emeria plan it is wise not to search for three plains each time if you have to discard to hand size since you might be left with less plains in your deck and field than what is needed to activate Emeria. You can also search for none if you don't want a Plains in hand but want to shuffle the deck.
  • Sensei's Divining Top: While this isn't strictly speaking card advantage, this filters so much chaff off the top of your deck that it might as well be. Pairs well with Land Tax or any other search effect.
  • Skullclamp: One of the biggest mistakes to see print, this turns any redundant creature into two cards for the low cost of mana.
  • Tithe: Gets you two Plains for one mana. Can get Mistveil Plains. Shuffles the deck. It's exactly what it says it is.
  • Mask of Memory: While it isn't quite Skullclamp, seeing two extra cards a turn is great. Dumping cards isn't insanely good in this deck either (compared to something like a card:Karador, Ghost Chieftai|Karador deck) but there are enough ways to recur or make use of the discard that it isn't much of a negative to discard a card.
  • Scroll Rack: Gets rid of cards you don't need and gets you new cards. How you use your shuffle effects with this is important. Keep in mind what is on top as you sometimes want to draw some of the cards you put on top of the deck, so you have to play in a way where you do not shuffle those cards back into the deck.
  • Smuggler's Copter:
  • Mangara, the Diplomat: Better the more opponents cast things at sorcery speed, one of the better white cards printed in a long time. Likely goes in every mono-white deck. That said playing around it is fairly easy for other colors so don't expect it to draw a card each turn.
  • Ugin, the Ineffable:

Building mono-white properly means building with tutors in mind. You want to use as many as you reasonably can because the lack of card draw means that finding cards you need is difficult without some other method. It is worth including slightly questionable cards in mono-white if you can tutor them with something (Martyr's Cry is an example of this, it's a sacrifice outlet that can be gotten with enchantment tutors).

  • Enlightened Tutor: Grabs combo pieces most of the time. It is preferable to hold onto it so that you can search for artifacts as there is no other way in the deck to search for artifacts.
  • Expedition Map: The above but only get one activation, and is harder to recur.
  • Weathered Wayfarer: One of the reasons we play so many utility lands, this is a Swiss army knife. You can usually get two activations in so you have to think far ahead what you're going to get. A safe bet is Emeria if you know it's not going to get destroyed.
  • Open the Armory: gets Gift of Immortality, Lunarch Mantle, Skullclamp, or Mask of Memory
  • Heliod's Pilgrim: gets combo pieces; Gift of Immortality/Lunarch Mantle.
  • Idyllic Tutor: Gets any enchantment but what you gets highly depends on the boardstate. Keep in mind it can fetch Eidolon and Heliod
  • Ranger-Captain of Eos: the only target is Weathered Wayfarer. That said Wayfarer is good enough to tutor for. The sacrifice effect can prevent someone from comboing, and doesn't need a sacrifice outlet to abuse with Emeria.
  • Recruiter of the Guard: If you have this early getting Arena Rector is almost always right in the early game as it is one of the fastest ways of dumping a large threat onto the field. Nonetheless this is one of the better toolbox tutors in the deck.
  • Academy Rector: Gets any enchantment, but onto the field. It's just waiting for the day that a good high cost white enchantment gets printed.
  • Citanul Flute: Newest mainstay of the deck, the card can grind the game to a halt or look for infinites on its own given enough time. While it isnt cheap to cast, there is enough ramp in the deck to make it possible. Currently one of cards I search for most often with Enlightened Tutor.
  • Grand Abolisher: this lets you combo off or tutor safely on your turn. Tutorable.
  • Lapse of Certainty: stops something for one turn, even if they can draw the card you put back on top they are usually out of mana to cast it again.

Necessary to activate Yosei as well as every other death trigger in the deck.

  • Lunarch Mantle: You may ask what a bulk common from one of the worst sets in recent memory is doing in the deck, and the answer is that it is the only sacrifice outlet available that is tutorable by Aura tutors in mono-white. Prior to this Blasting Station was the sacrifice outlet of choice as it had limited utility in pinging utility creatures and could kill the table with Sun Titan, but it was far too difficult to access reliably.

Mana Accelerants

Metalcraft

Fun with Crucible

Sacrifice Outlets

  • High Market: Sacrifices a creature for the cost of one mana. Necessary because of the death triggers of the commander, rectors and so on.

  • Miren, the Moaning Well: Worse than High Market but does end up gaining quite a lot of life over the course of a game.

Mandatory

  • Plains: Yeah. I mean we'd play none of these if Emeria weren't a card and cards didn't have in their casting costs. Unfortunately both of those statements are true, so we play the minimum required. The minimum is in flux with the rest of the list. The more ways you have to search for Plains the less you have to play, but it hovers around 12-16 total, not including Mistveil Plains

  • Mistveil Plains: This used to do more things when you could cast Yosei, sacrifice him, then put him on the bottom of the deck from the graveyard, replacing the put with putting him back in the command zone. Now that death triggers can happen without commanders going to the graveyard happens less, I don't know what this card really does. That said it's pretty much free to include as you can choose to tutor it or not tutor it (if you know a Blood Moon/Back to Basics is coming.

Other

  • Ondu Inversion  : Planar Cleansing is pretty ok so having access to one at not too much opportunity cost seems ok. Still testing.

  • Emeria's Call  : There's basically no opportunity cost to playing this card, but if I never cast the spell side it's getting cut.

This is just an overview of how you end the game. Once you make it to the lategame.

Gift of Immortality combos

This card has far more utility than just winning the game, that said it can win the game on the spot.

Gift of Immortality + Yosei, the Morning Star +Lunarch Mantle/other sacrifice outlets

Cast Gift on Yosei, sacrifice him to a sacrifice outlet. Target the next turn-order player with his ability. Yosei comes back. End step Gift comes back attached to Yosei. Next player takes their turn, doesn't untap. Whenever is a good time (except in the end phase), tap down the next turn-order player's permanents by sacrificing Yosei again. He comes back and so does Gift in the end phase. Repeat ad nauseam. You get to play Magic and the opponents don't.

Planeswalkers

Generally this means you resolved an early Arena Rector and with a way to make it die. Grabbing Big Ugin usually drains a lot of resources from the table, or just straight up gets to -10 which ends the game (in a very slow and drawn out manner). Elspeth gets to ultimate fairly frequently as well even if she doesn't come down early as she protects herself quite well, although she is the second Planeswalker of choice after Big Ugin.

Here are some sample opening hands and whether I would keep/mulligan, and how I would play the hand out.

Generally you are looking for a good balance of lands, ramp, stax, and some way to get new cards into hand.

These are cards that are being tested and cards I want to fit in the deck once I find cuts for them.

Unordered. These are mostly not in the deck so that I have a couple flex slots to play around with in so that I can test new cards. These will not necessarily stay in, but are more likely to make the deck than cards in the "cards I need to test" section.

I want to work on a general mono-white primer eventually, going over the strategies and commanders I've seen work at a variety of tables. That will include some of the content in here, but likely be several times longer than this primer here.

It's easier to remake the whole deck as a more budget version.

I will perhaps make a couple of budget lists if there is interest.

These cards should be in the deck, but due to a weakness or two, being boring, or just because I want space to play pet cards they do not fit in currently.

  • Path to Exile: giving an opponent extra mana while they are tight on mana due to taxing effects often ends up being detrimental. That said it is still the second best option for removing a creature for just at instant speed.
  • Fellwar Stone: mostly better than Coldsteel Heart/Marble Diamond
  • Arcane Signet: definitely better than Coldsteel Heart/Marble Diamond
  • Rest in Peace: the best graveyard hate available, I don't run because it prevents Yosei, the Morning Star which is currently such a small part of the deck that it doesn't warrant not running it. This applies to most other graveyard hate.
  • Silence: I mostly think a one turn kill switch isn't worth it in decks that can't replace the card (which is exactly in mono-white) but someone could make a good argument for why it should be in the deck.
  • Council's Judgment: a 2 or 3-for-1 whenever it resolves.
  • Steelshaper's Gift: another way to get Skullclamp or Mask.
  • Darksteel Mutation: deactivates commanders while leaving them on the field.
  • Hope of Ghirapur: another tutorable way to protect your turn or prevent someone else's turn from being more than a regulation amount of fun. Only affects one player though.

These cards should NOT be in the deck, but due to being pet cards or fun make the cut. Unlike cards on the chopping block these cards have been tested and generally found to be suboptimal, but my heart refuses to let me take them out. These cards

These are separated into two categories: cards that could be played but I cut, and cards that are awful and shouldn't be played.

Most of these cards are cards that are not bad but I'd consider only after cards in the waitlist. Play these if you want, they are ok. These cards are generally geared towards more casual play.

  • Gift of Estates/Oreskos Explorer: Most Tithe effects are somewhat sketchy. You want them but not too many because somehow later in the game you're going to have the most lands in play. These are worse ones, but is still fine if you can reliably have the least lands.
  • Conqueror's Galleon  : You can activate this pretty fast but it locks you into casting Yosei the next turn, and tapping Yosei so that you're all out of blockers, meaning a lot of your life can go. It's a fairly reasonable card though
  • Planar Birth: can win the game straight up with aggressively dumping Plains into the yard with Land Tax. OK if you're ruining someone's game with Dust Bowl. Problem is there's no way to reliably have this card in your hand by the time that happens.
  • Mind's Eye: costs a lot of mana upfront, making it hard to pair it with anything.
  • Coercive Portal: both things are things we want, but it's not super consistent. Not terrible though.
  • Knight of the White Orchid: This version of the deck cannot reliably cast a spell on turn 2 or even 3. If you play more Plains this is fine enough.
  • Mindslaver: Costs a boatload of mana but does generally eliminate a player.
Cards I've found to be, as the kids say, not good.

  • Mana Tithe: Force Spike is pretty much unplayable and so is this. You'll get one freebie with it and then everyone will know to play around it form then on out.
  • Ghirapur Orrery: the deck doesn't actually go heckbent very much and giving opponents ramp wasn't a great idea.
  • Inventors' Fair: metalcraft is very difficult to achieve.
  • Ichor Wellspring/Wall of Omens/low cost cyclers: Just play a good card instead of playing a card that gets you closer to another one. These were played back when white had few real magic cards that you were desperately trying to find, but now you can play enough cards to fill out a deck and not feel bad about it.
  • Fall of the Thran: tested as a tutorable Armageddon, but it was never relevant that it was tutorable and was just stuck in hand most of the time.
  • Eldrazi Displacer: not enough things to flicker on our side, flickering opponents stuff isn't a great idea.

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Revision 9 See all

(5 years ago)

+1 Ranger of Eos main
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