Mono White Ramp/Draw
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on March 12, 2021, 1:23 a.m. by enpc
I see this topic come up every few months, so I thought I would create a sticky'd thread about it since there is a lot of repeat in the coversations.
What're your opinons of mono white? do you think it's in a healthy place right now? do you think it needs more ramp? how would you go about adding ramp to white so that it's still white?
What about card draw? What're your thoughts on the current card draw capabilities that white possesses? is it in a happy place or does it need more?
I'd love to keep the conversation going here to try and preserve as much context as possible. So tell me (and everyone) what you think!
plakjekaas says... #3
Mono white is fine as is. There's plenty of ramp in mono white, it's probably the second best color at fetching lands out of your library with cards like Knight of the White Orchid, Boreas Charger, Keeper of the Accord and such. Oh and Smothering Tithe of course.
Card advantage comes in less obvious ways, but there's plenty to be found. From flickering Thraben Inspector to fetching lands out of your deck with Land Tax, Gift of Estates or Tithe, to using small creatures with Mentor of the Meek, Bygone Bishop, Ranger of Eos and Recruiter of the Guard, to recurring creatures and/or small permanents with Sun Titan, Resurrection, Bruna, the Fading Light  Meld, to equipment with Sram, Senior Edificer and Puresteel Paladin. And don't forget that Wrath of God is also card advantage if you use it well. There's also more obscure stuff, like using lifegain + Dawn of Hope, or Martyr's Cry on your own board of tokens, or Armistice, Pursuit of Knowledge, Inheritance for slightly overpriced sources of repeatable carddraw.
There will always be a slight imbalance in the colors, there will always be one that needs to work a little harder than the others for the same results. There's plenty of colorless cards to support any deck and make it playable nowadays, and I personally wouldn't like it much if white would be homogenised with the other colors to stop the masses from complaining. We have been doing so for years, it's pretty much a meme at this point. I know people who complain about it without ever having tried to play a mono white deck. Wizards could colorshift all the good green carddraw cards to white the upcoming year and that probably wouldn't fix it, and make the game a lot less varied and interesting in the process.
I embrace the adversity and challenges that come with mono white commander deckbuilding.
Your mileage may vary.
March 12, 2021 5:25 a.m.
griffstick says... #4
I like where they are going with ramp. Verge Rangers and Brought Back and a few other good cards we have gotten recently have been what I think white needs for ramp. I always thought that mono white ramp could look like this
March 12, 2021 10:10 a.m.
edengstrom1 says... #5
I think that mono-white can ramp just fine. In fact, Smothering Tithe is one of the best ramp cards out there and can get out of hand quickly if it's not removed. It will rely on artifacts like blue and red do, but I don't think it is much worse than some of the other colors.
It is the worst at drawing cards and it isn't really that close. Even red has a plethora of Outpost Siege , Faithless Looting and Wheel of Fortune effects that it can use for card advantage or selection. However, it does seem like they are trying to give white more options, and I assume that we will see more cards coming in the next year or so.
White does have great removal/interaction though, so that's something.
March 12, 2021 11:21 a.m.
Omniscience_is_life says... #6
can ramp... provided everyone else is. All the "catch-up" cards like Cartographer's Hawk , Boreas Charger , etc. only work when your opponents are putting extra lands into play--so if you're playing against non- decks or just by happenstance play in a game where rocks are the way, well. You're up a creek.
I would say there's a difference between having good cards in a certain subrequirement of the game and meeting that requirement. Smothering Tithe is busted as all hell, but you move down the list of the next best "White" ramp cards and they're all colorless.
Which brings me to my next point... just because has access to Mind Stone et al. doesn't mean that it's good at ramping. It's exactly average at ramping at that point, and it doesn't go much farther than that.
Now. Card draw. White isn't very good at it. The distinction to make here isn't whether or not there are cards in that say the actual words "draw a card" on them--rather if those cards are playable or not. Thraben Inspector sits at a solid 1% of decks according to edhrec (all stats following are from the same source), Land Tax is doing well at 9%, but is certainly limited as far as draw goes. Tithe is--and to be fair it's expensive, but that's part of the issue--in 1%. Mentor of the Meek is in 9% again. I would feel comfortable positing that that one is the best singular piece of card draw in the color, so it makes sense. Bygone Bishop & Ranger of Eos =1%. Recruiter of the Guard is faring well at 5%. Sun Titan rests its weary head at almost 20%, although it may be more fair to place that card in the recursion category (yes, a form of card advantage, but it doesn't put more cards into your hand). Resurrection died a while ago. 0%. Bruna, the Fading Light  Flip and Sram, Senior Edificer are commanders so their stats are represented differently. Not sure about them. Puresteel Paladin , 3%. Relying on an archetype that's innately underpowered and focus-requiring to draw cards isn't the best, either. I'm not looking at Wrath of God because you're silly if you say that's ever going to be put into your "card draw/advantage" pile while building a deck. Dawn of Hope =4%. Martyr's Cry , 0%. Same with Armistice . Pursuit of Knowledge as well. Lastly, Inheritance --yep, 0%.
March 12, 2021 1:27 p.m.
The trick to fetching in white is to sac lands before the check hits the stack
Example: crack a
Evolving Wilds
and while its on the stack activate
Weathered Wayfarer
But for ramp white really excels in returning artifacts of 3 cmc or less to the battlefield, so you can abuse cards like
Wayfarer's Bauble
The same is true for card vantage
March 12, 2021 3:58 p.m. Edited.
King_marchesa says... #9
I think that you could easily make a balanced white card that says
Bounty of the Fields {w}{w}{2}
You draw 3 cards. Each opponent gains 2 life.
This is basically whites’ harmonize. I think that white also has the potential to ramp.
Idk what to call this card {w}{2}
Search your library for a basic land card and put it onto the battlefield tapped. If a plains was tapped to cast this spell, search you library for an additional basic land card and put it into your hand.
March 13, 2021 7:58 a.m.
King_marchesa says... #10
Tithe needs a reprint really badly. Is it on the reserved list?
March 13, 2021 8 a.m.
I respectfully disagree
I think if a card serves a function way outside the normal of a color it should be limited and hard to get
Instant speed tutoring upto two lands for one mana, is off balance even for green.
March 13, 2021 8:11 a.m.
If woc took all this advice and started printing mono white spells that tutor lands to battlefield, what would happen to green?
also if white was given the priority for ramp and draw, boros decks would be dam near unstoppable and even bodyslam the best simic decks
March 13, 2021 8:22 a.m.
plakjekaas says... #13
Omniscience_is_life and are those percentages of mono white decks? Or all possible decks running white? Because nobody who's allowed to play Read the Bones will consider a Martyr's Cry for their card draw. It's a lot easier to play with statistics than it is to play magic.
I did explain how I thought white is the underdog, the colour that needs to work a little harder for the same results, because the color is better suited for 1v1, and low played % can mean several things. Not only that the card is bad, it could also mean people don't want to work harder. It could mean the cards are less available, or unknown.
Plus, white is uniquely equipped to make sure it's opponents have more lands in play, with Path to Exile , Winds of Abandon , Karoo , Guildless Commons , Oath of Lieges etc.
King_marchesa I'm afraid Tithe is a reserved list card, yes. Gift of Estates is close though.
But if you're advocating a white Harmonize and Cultivate , do you really want to play white? Or do you actually want to play Simic, without the image of evil and overpoweredness that has accompanied these colors recently? Because if you don't want to play equipment (which has gotten a massive power boost with Commander Legends and even broke onto cEDH as an archetype because of it), or weenies, or lifegain, why do you want to play white? And if you'd rather play Cultivate or Harmonize but in white! but don't lose access to Wrath of God , Sun Titan and Swords to Plowshares , why not play selesnya? The color system works on colors both exploiting and complementing each others' strengths and weaknesses, and not every color is meant to do everything. If you want to Cultivate , play green, it's ok to play green.
Colorshifting with a white twist just to give the color access to the same staples that the other colors have, is not a solution that would fix white. It would make white just feel like the other colors, pushing out the actual interesting white cards to make room for green "light" gameplay.
March 13, 2021 2:05 p.m.
Omniscience_is_life says... #14
plakjekaas they are percentages of all decks. But the very fact that no one would play any White draw spells if they didn't have to is a pretty good signifier that the color is struggling.
Read the Bones is in 12% of all decks, btw.
People shouldn't have to work harder, because that means you're playing poorer. Scathe Zombies is worse than Walking Corpse for the very reason that you have to "work harder" (pay more mana) to cast it.
The thing with those cards you mentioned that disrupt the land equilibrium is, from the top:
-
Path to Exile is not going to a smart cast in the early game most of the time, unless you're in cEDH (in which case you're not going to be playing Cartographer's Hawk )--so it doesn't really put you behind in lands in the time when you actually need to be ramping. Same with Winds of Abandon , if not more so.
-
Karoo is steadily falling out of favor in EDH, due to the vices of it entering tapped and making you vulnerable to being two-for-one'd with a Ghost Quarter or other.
-
Guildless Commons is colorless. Nothing uniquely White about that one.
-
Oath of Lieges is designed specifically as to have no one player be at a land disadvantage during their turn. Unless you flash in a Stoic Farmer with a Vedalken Orrery then you're going to have a hard time making that combo work.
And the issue with all those cards is there's an innate issue with giving lands to your opponent. The reason you're trying to ramp in the first place is that having lands in play is a powerful thing, especially when you have more than your opponent.
March 13, 2021 3:03 p.m.
plakjekaas says... #15
And if you want more lands in play than your opponents, you play green. It's a concession of the color. Red, black and blue also don't put extra lands in play, save for silly things like Dreamscape Artist .
I'm not against helping white, but just copying the other colors is not the way. I wish they made a Mangara, the Diplomat -like card that gives you a treasure whenever an opponent had a second land enter the battlefield this turn, punishing fetch lands and green ramp. You know, a white way to deal with it, punishing players for trying to get ahead, like Rule of Law and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben do. You could even give it a fun play-on-words name related to Land Tax . Price it right, so it won't ruin modern/legacy though.
March 13, 2021 4:51 p.m.
griffstick says... #16
That's last point you made is exactly what white should be doing more of. Smothering Tithe is the example of everything else white could do to match what other colors are doing. Every color has a way of drawing cards and ramping better than white does. So much so that it's nearly non existent. Even wotc acknowledges that every color needs ramp and card draw. Going forward white needs those problems to be addressed because its falling far behind.
March 13, 2021 8:08 p.m.
Kor Cartographer
ramps lands
Inheritance
card draw is semi cheap: 1 mana to put down but a bit expensive cost to draw a card (3 mana per dying creature).
May 6, 2021 4:41 p.m.
Coward_Token says... #20
I think baseline EDH rock ramp is fine for white, drawing is another matter.
Alms Collector exists and is worth mentioning
Some custom cards I've made on the topic Show
May 22, 2021 7:52 a.m.
Coward_Token says... #21
I'd also like to see more efficient card-neutral/advantage removal like Grasp of Fate and Dismantling Wave
May 22, 2021 8:31 a.m.
Personally I think mono white is by far the weakest color in edh, and the gap is only growing with the great new Boros commanders we've had out recently and some good mono-red options as well. I say this as a white player who has tried many times to make a mono white commander deck that I like, only to be always disappointed and to take it apart.
The problem is not really ramp imo. White actually has more ramp than most other non-green colors with cards like Kor Cartographer and Boreas Charger , and, as others have said, they can use the same mana rocks and Sword of the Animist style cards that other colors use.
I don't think the problem is really overall direction either. One thing they have done in recent sets with cards like Cosmic Intervention , Semester's End , Unbreakable Formation , and Teferi's Protection giving white more ways to protect a board state at instant speed, which it often needs in commander. Its always had the best removal, and it also has recursion and some great new lifegain synergies with one great new commander in Heliod, Sun-Crowned .
The problem is absolutely and overwhelmingly an abyssmal lack of card draw. The only helps to this in recent years have been Sram, Senior Edificer and Mangara, the Diplomat , but these are few and far between. Recenty Ari Nieh, the new guy representing white on the council of colors was on Tolarian Community College, and he expressed some of the prior thinking on card draw in white that has led to these problems. In short, an example of what they thought card draw was is God-Eternal Oketra . While a great card, Oketra clearly doesn't draw cards, but they reasoned that the fact that it produces big tokens was basically the same thing. The fact that developers whose job is to make this game actually thought that just shows how far away they are from understanding our format. Apparently Mark Rosewater has had a change of heart recently, and hence why we have Mangara, but there's a long way to go. Every other color can draw cards on its own without support of another color if need be, but its real tough in white.
May 25, 2021 8:34 a.m.
I just wanted to add one more point which I think others have made here in part, namely, that playing mono-white effectively in commander essentially sits behind a paywall. Since good cards for doing basic things like ramping and draw are so few and re-printed so seldom, one is essentially required to invest in pricey staples such as Smothering Tithe , Land Tax , Archaeomancer's Map , Extraplanar Lens , Enlightened Tutor , etc. This kind of creates a class system where anyone can afford to play degenerate decks in green on a budget, but mono-white players pay through the nose to play what are still frequently second rate decks. This is one thing the luminaries at WoTC really need to get through their heads, since it actually goes against some of the values they claim to care about. And as others have said, as has been seen recently with Boros, if you actually print good mono-white commanders that people want to play, people will play mono-white.
May 26, 2021 3:14 p.m.
Coward_Token says... #24
Friends don't stop friends from proxying (well, at least not at the kitchen table)
May 26, 2021 3:20 p.m.
plakjekaas says... #25
It's pretty much the other way around though. Because white is hyped up as "the worst color in commander ever", when good white cards come along, there's such a huge run on them that they become expensive, not the other way around. Archaeomancer's Map is a rare in commander 2021, there is no reason at all for that to be more expensive than, say, Reinterpret . And when there's no green ramp player at your table, the map is about as good as Gift of Estates , because players won't have more land in play than you do, to generate extra land drops.
May 27, 2021 12:56 a.m.
golgarigirl says... #26
I would argue Archaeomancer's Map is miles better than Gift of Estates . There are few instant/sorcery synergies in white. Outside the potential to keep dropping lands in the right situation, Map is also an artifact that sits on the board. There are so many artifact synergies in white that often times it ends up being card draw (Trading Post), more ramp (if you recur it, KCI it, or even just use it toward Affinity) or even reanimation (Teshar) in many of the decks that run it. Similar for staples like Land Tax in the right build, though Tax is just efficient, and a monster when it comes to deck thinning...if white can't draw more cards, it might as well make sure the cards it does draw count.
The cards wouldn't be expensive if they weren't effective pieces for many decks, and clearly they are. A card has to be useful before people want it. White has the staple 'paywall' because there are ineffective substitutes for the staples we often think of.
June 10, 2021 12:57 a.m.
WillofForce says... #27
You can also blink Archaeomancer's Map for more value unlike Land Tax or Gift of Estates .
June 14, 2021 9:01 a.m.
plakjekaas says... #28
The point wasn't that Gift of Estates was in any way better than Archaeomancer's Map , I just tried to say the Map isn't 30$ vs 0.50$ better than the Gift, for how well the "put a land into play"-clause on it plays out in actual games.
June 14, 2021 9:47 a.m.
But there can only be one!!! But omg as a turn 1 play.... with all the rockers in my play group he could easily draw me 5 cards by turn 2
July 14, 2021 3:53 p.m. Edited.
I do think Esper Sentinel is moving in the right direction, we just need more of this type of effect, and it already needs to be reprinted because like anything that draws cards in white, it is pricey in real-world money. When I spend money on my decks, it never feels good to do it on ramp and draw, those should be the cheap cards so that we can spend money on fun ones! I do think taxing card draw is a great way to go for white though. Taxes has always been true to color, and Rhystic Study is really off-color by today's standards.
July 20, 2021 2:58 p.m.
I think white doesn't need to find a way to copy every other color with more ramp and draw. Colors need to be able to balance each other out, and rather than allow white to do the same thing, I think white should stick to its flavor of being the color that forces people to play "fair" magic.
To that end, I think Balance should be unbanned and we need more cards like it. Force that green-white deck that's been drawing its whole deck and putting down 4 lands per turn to be back on the same page as everyone else. I also think they need to expand this. Maybe a white enchantment that says something like "If a land would enter the battlefield, and it wasn't the first land that player played from their hand this turn, exile it instead" and one that say "Players can't draw more than one card per turn" Make these effects universal so decks containing white can't abuse cards like Collective Voyage or wheel effects.
August 18, 2021 1:21 p.m.
I just have to chime in to thank wizards for the excellent gift Welcoming Vampire, who is the most welcome card printed for white this past year (other than Esper Sentinel). I am grabbing several copies now before the price spikes. Give us more of this, and re-print Smothering Tithe and Land Tax already.
Sword of Hearth and Home also gets an honorable mention as a white enabler, though we need the draw more than the ramp so Welcoming Vampire wins for me.
February 18, 2022 11:22 p.m. Edited.
I look at removal as being severely under rated in the current meta. In commander, getting stuff, or your entire board, to be indestructible is kind of a common occurrence.
White has bar none the best way to deal with resolved threats on the board which are indestructible.
Blue being blue, it has the best way to deal with threats overall. It's not quite as good at white for dealing with stuff that's already on the battlefield, but its ability to deal with threats before they hit the board compensates for that. It can also bounce stuff and then counter it
Black has almost as good removal, but since it relies on destroying, not exiling, it isn't as good. It does have a way to deal with indestructible, though, since it has ways to stack -1/-1s on stuff and with green has good access to wither and infect. It also has ways to make people sac stuff.
Green basically just has infect and wither as a way to deal with indestructible creatures which problematic, and a couple effects or spells that can exile artifacts and enchants, so it does have options.
Red doesn't have enchantment removal. Red also 2 ways to deal with indestructible creatures - Chaos Warp and Burn from Within. For artifacts it can do a little better, but once they're indestructible they have like, Goblin Welder and Scrap Mastery and thats about it.
The lack of removal is a big deal. White has ways to respond to a kaalia player dropping avacyn turn 3. The red player likely does not unless they have a chaos warp in hand or just started the game with all their ramp in their hand and have burn within, or try to steal it for a turn and and sac it. The prevailing thought on that is that "red is stronger there because it should be able to win before threats like that hit the field and if it can't then the person playing mono-red is playing mono-red wrong", which isn't really a reasonable way of looking at magic in commander. Modern, sure, but commander, with 40 hp pools and usually multiple players.The blue player can return them to the players hand, since it wasn't cast, or turn it into a frog that does nothing. The black player can try to stack -1s on it, or get the player to sac it. The green player's best course of action is having a big blocker with reach. The white player can path it, stp it, condemn it, or, next turn, darksteel mutation it, or something similar.
I think the main issue with white is that it is a more "Defensive" color, with its removal, board wipes, and stuff like that. However, it lacks ways to actually close out games besides combat and some jank. blue objectively just has the best removal in the game. Blue also has stuff that wins games pretty well. Blue tends to be more defensive and slow, but it's very capable of defending its wincons from anything, and stalling long enough to satisfy those wincons. Even if you have removal and they don't have counters, they can bounce it to their hand and then keep it in their hand for a little until they feel safe to put it out again. White, not so much. It is built more defensively, but it can't actually do the defensive things as well as blue, and doesn't have enough offensive power to make up for it. Green and black are kind of similar in this respect. Black is more in the middle, with green more on the "offense" side of the spectrum. Black has the ability to be defensive and reactive with removal and stuff, but it can also be aggressive and make you discard your threats, or sometimes sac anything you try to remove to at least get some value out of it. Bla. Green can just make bigger threats. If it wants to play safely/defensively for some reason, it can just make big blockers and work on ramping into something absurd, like one of the monster hydras, and use instants like phytoburst and titanic growth to try to protect its stuff from removal. Red has very few defensive options. It can use damage spells on problem monsters, sometimes hit problem artifacts, and it can board wipe almost as well as black and white, but it it the most aggro color. It has very few defensive options relative to the other colors. It does have "disruption", like blood moon, but its outright defenses are few and far between. It is more focused on just going hard, not caring how much damage it takes, it will just win before that damage matters. They say "the only life you can't lose is the last life" is more a black saying, but i think of it as part of red too.
March 14, 2022 3:48 p.m.
I meant to write more, but i accidentally hit post instead of preview.
To conclude and answer your question, i don't think white needs more ramp. With the rock focused ramp common in magic, i think it's generally in a fine place, no worse of than red in that respect. Red does get rituals, but that's kind of a niche case. I've honestly never seen someone use the red ritual spells in edh outside of one storm deck, which was blue/red, not mono-red. It does struggle with draw. It has cantrips and stuff that has a recurring effect when other stuff enters under your control, but thats a little slow. Cantrips are on par with "rummaging/looting". They don't actually generate card advantage. They help with card selection, but they're not as good at card advantage. Red can get impulse draw that makes it a little better. Green gets it off creatures, and it's kind of more reliable if you can keep it out for a turn cycle. Black has skeleton scry, and blue is the card draw color(and the artifact color, and the flying color, and the "do weird shit that messes with your opponents" color, and the control color, and the counterspell color). So white has arguably the 2nd best removal after blue and the 2nd best creature spam after red. It's ramp being bad is severely overblown. In mono colors in general, you don't really need that much colored ramp. You can run basics to deal with 99% of your colored mana needs and just run colorless rocks to handle the rest. You can do that in red too, and black. I don't know much about blue ramp, and green has no shortage of ramp. No point getting color specific ramp, really. In multicolored stuff, i think colored ramp is a lot more important, but in general for mono-colored, colorless ramp is more than sufficient. The real drawback to mono-white is lack of good draw and good commanders, it seems, or something that it can be the best at that is also something it can use to win the game. White doesn't really have that. Blue is the best at card draw and counterspells, which don't win the game on their own, but which are straigtforward to use in order to enable victory. You draw into wincons, and use counterspells to defend them. White has exile effects and boardwipes. You can't really use path or wrath to defend your wincons, you can only use them to stop other people's.
March 14, 2022 4:14 p.m.
While white can use a bit more help in the carddraw department I don't understand why people consider white to be bad at ramping. Especially nowadays. In addition to running mana rocks and ramp equipment like Sword of the Animist and Sword of Hearth and Home, white has access to 2 strategies that ramp through lands.
The first one is through a less lands matter ramp package. You can now have ramp cards such as Archaeomancer's Map and Keeper of the Accord and complement those with lands that set you back on land count while not setting you back on mana, like Lotus Field, Guildless Commons and Urza's Saga. Add Weathered Wayfarer to get those lands more often, and include lands that synergize with them, like Flagstones of Trokair and Thespian's Stage. It also makes Path to Exile a little bit better ;).
Another land ramp route you can take is through land recursion cards, such as Brought Back, Sevinne's Reclamation and Second Sunrise to rebuy fetches, although you need to run quite al lot of fetches for that to work.
Both those strategies are white ramping through lands. To my knowledge, black, blue and red cannot do that (apart from some exceptions maybe like Orvar, the All-Form).
March 20, 2022 2:42 p.m. Edited.
Beebles I would agree that I think you are right about ramp in white. It is indeed the second best ramp color after green, and has always had access to cards like Kor Cartographer that ramp in a traditional way and land fetches that keep you from missing your drops like Land Tax. That being said, green is way, way ahead of the rest of the world due to the social contract where land destruction is bad but mana rock destruction is fine, but white certainly isn't and has never been any worse than any other mono-color besides green.
Card draw has been atrocious however. It's made a lot od progress in recent years due to Ari Nieh taking over for white on the council of colors from the previous holder and with Mark Rosewater repenting of his wrong views on white card draw. Previously they thought that a great example of white card draw was God-Eternal Oketra, because, you know, a zombie token is basically a card. I'm not joking about this, watch The Professor's interview with Ari Nieh on Tolarian Community College, that actually what Maro and the guild thought. Of course, we know that in commander tokens aren't even close to cards. It was an example of sixty-card magic driven thinking ruining a color's performance in commander. Thankfully welcoming cards like Welcoming Vampire are moving us forward, and hopefully we'll see more like this in the coming years!
March 21, 2022 9:02 a.m.
Yeah. I also hope we see more cards like welcoming vampire. Or that they find additional ways for white to draw.
As for green being too good at ramp and the social contract preventing MLD, I would love Wizards to print white versions of Natural Balance or similar (without getting into Global Ruin or Balancing Act territory). I think that card is a pretty good way to keep land ramp decks check while not totally wrecking games. I also liked Strict Proctor as a fair way to punish landfall decks without completely stopping them. Tectonic Hellion was an underwhelming attempt, but if they would staple such effects on cards that people will run for other reasons, we might start to get some more useful tools.
March 21, 2022 4:01 p.m.
Coward_Token says... #43
I'd like to see more white mana sinks which doesn't require it to actually draw anything.
Classes are basically three cards in one, with reference to their levels; leveling them up is a form of virtual card advantage (if they were designed for Alchemy you'd probably have stuff like Ranger Class straight up being a bear with "When ~ ETB, conjure Ranger Class Level Two into your hand."). Could make the new ones flavored as "course" classes rather than RPG classes.
More efficient Mobilization-style token makers in mono-white so that you can spend mana on getting a bunch of tokens, have them inevetibly get wrath'd, then just rebuild with the same kind of tokens whithout actually having to cast something, unlike your opponents; that's card advantage. Might be too pushed by how about this? Rallying Grafstone
Also unrelated but maybe more Fall of the Thran-style MLD that only returns basics? Enchroaches on red's Blood Moon territory, but I think multicolor decks have it too easy in EDH.
May 23, 2022 4:20 p.m.
JaredMatthewsArtwork says... #44
I think 2 ways of ramping that green really doesn't need and could be shifted over are enchantments and buddy ramp. Enchantments are pretty self-explanatory and I'm sure many of people have made that case. There's also the draft commons that tap and also tap another untapped creature to make a mana. White's all about swarming and unity so that makes perfect sense. It wouldn't be amazing ramp but I think it's an easy place to start that for sure wouldn't be too crazy
May 27, 2022 7:22 p.m.
Max_Hammer says... #45
The thing about white is that it doesn't need to draw and it doesn't need to ramp. White sucks complete ass at both of those things, but it's not meant to do that.
It's meant to Armageddon instead of ramping. White is the color of stax and group hug. Why does it matter that I only have one land if you do too?
I wish they'd lean either more into that or find another way to ramp White, possibly through enchantments. I've always thought that enchanting lands like with Wild Growth was a thing white could totally do. Plus, maybe it's like a sacred ground sorta thing, as far as flavor goes. Idunno, WotC, make it work.
griffstick says... #2
It's kinda in line with mono blue in ramp. As they both relay on artifact for ramp and its card draw is still below acceptable. It has its card draw in the form of weak strategies like play small creatures or gain life or play equipment. Mono whit has one good card draw card, that card is Mesa Enchantress . This card in a enchantment deck is like Beast Whisperer in a creature deck. Sadly though that's the only mono white card that draws this well. Theres others that support enchantments and draw well but they care about aura enchantments instead. Mangara, the Diplomat is a good direction for mono card draw because it doesn't make you build a deck a certain way to draw cards. You simply play it and it will draw you cards. Better than a Howling Mine . And speaking of Howling Mine , mono white could definitely have symmetrical card draw. Isn't mono white all about Balance anyway?
March 12, 2021 1:59 a.m. Edited.