Commander Overview
Bennie Bracks is here to create some tokens and create some Mayhem, and more importantly, do it on a budget! Being mono-white is a true blessing for this deck, as it keeps the price low and the fun high! While we aren’t able to include some of the best token cards, there are still amazing cards we are packing on a budget, like Divine Visitation and Cathars’ Crusade. Bennie is a card draw machine for us as well, which is especially good because mono-white is not particularly good at drawing cards. While Bennie isnt a commander that will immedialty impact the game it is very nice to have a commander who provides utility and supports the overall gameplan, one of the biggest weaknesses of mono-white is the lack of card draw, combining that with a very budget friendly price tag an you have an awesome deck for someone who’s just getting started or someone who wants to keep the price tag low.
Commander Matchmaking System
The average current preconstructed deck.
- No Mass Land Denial
- No Chaining Extra Turns
- No 2-Card Infinite Combos
- No Game Changers
- Few Tutors
How to Play the Deck
How we play this deck is extremely straightforward. We are a token deck in every sense of the word. Our main game plan is to get out as many tokens as we can, use some huge finishers like Adeline, Resplendent Cathar, and combine that with some buffs like Cathars’ Crusade. Swinging is the name of our game, and since we have so many creatures, we often want to be quite aggressive; we truly don’t care if our tokens die, and we even have some payoffs if they do, like Suki, Courageous Rescuer. The most important thing about playing this deck is committing our commander super early, which is easy to do since they have convoke, while we rarely attack with them, having the card draw from Bennie is extremely helpful. This is a straightforward deck to play and can be piloted by a novice or a expert.
Phases of the Game
Early Game: In the early game, we typically focus on hitting our land drops, getting our tokens out, and thus getting Bennie out as soon as we can. Bennie is typically your number one priority in the early game. Other than that, there isn’t much going on here. If there is an aggressive deck, we can easily chump block with some of our early tokens.
Mid-Game: By the mid game we typically want to be more aggressive and start attacking, we dont really wait for amazingg combat opportunites to open, we typically attack whenever someone is open, this typically will change if we can commit some buffs to the battlefield like Intangible Virtue or Dictate of Heliod with these on the field we can be very aggressive. Keeping our life total kind of high here is always good, so chump blocking is still advised.
Late-Game: The late-game is when we finish off opponents, it can be very easy depending on what we have on the field if we can resolve a card like Hour of Reckoning we can kill opponents quite quickly, but even if we dont we can utilize cards like Court of Grace and Divine Visitation to create an army of 4/4 flying angels and make our otherwise unimpressive forces into huge attackers. Sheer numbers are typically on our side at this point, too, as we often have a very full board.
Card Breakdowns
Theme of the deck/Synergy’s
This is quite obvious, but the central theme of our deck is tokens! That is our proper name of the game and pretty much every one of our cards in the deck cares about tokens like Prava of the Steel Legion which makes our creature tokens quite challenging to deal with in combat, combine that with the many other buffs like Dictate of Heliod and Intangible Virtue and we have some huge tokens that can go crazy.
We have other creatures that have strong synergies, like Harmonious Archon, which is not only a good creature/token producer but can help us if we don’t have any other buffs. Archon has saved me quite a few times in many games. One of my favorite token-themed cards in the deck is Twilight Drover, which can get out of hand so quickly that we are typically quite aggressive, especially with our tokens, and that only makes the Drover bigger and bigger, there has been games where i have gotten this card up to 18 power/toughness and hit like an absolute truck. There are so many token payoffs in this deck.
Ramp
Since we are in mono-white, we are quite low on ramping, we really don’t do it at all, now normally we would include a card like Land Tax but that far exceeds our budget but we do have Knight of the White Orchid which can be a nice ramp piece if we fall behind. We typically don’t need to ramp, as hitting our land drops every turn is more than sufficient.Keeper of the Accord is quite situational and wont always trigger but if we fall behind can be quite strong.
Card Draw/Card Advantage
You may not think that we have that much card draw in the deck since we are in mono-white, but you’d be surprised to know we actually do! With cards like Mentor of the Meek and Skullclamp allowing us to draw a lot of cards on our turn, we, of course, have Bennie as well, who provides consistent card draw for something we try to do on nearly every turn. Welcoming Vampire is another strong source of card draw for the deck. When I tested this deck, I rarely had an instance where I wasn’t at a full seven cards, which is something you cannot say about a lot of mono-white decks.
Removal
While before i sang the praises of mono-white, this is certainly one area where we are lacking, we dont have very much removal, we do have both Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile and Generous Gift but beyond that dont have a ton of ways to interact with opponents outside of combat. We are also running Return to Dust, which can be a great way to remove big support artifacts or enchantments that our opponents may have. Entrapment Maneuver is a perfect card that is a little pricey but very strong for the deck. This card is a true bomb against Voltron decks and allows you to create a ton of tokens, which we will never complain about.
Protection
Protection is something we are also lacking in quite a bit. This is by design; we have so many disposable creatures, mostly our tokens, and we don’t care if they die. Riot Control is one of the pieces of protection that we do have and has saved me many times when an opponent swings much bigger than we can handle.
Win Conditions
Our win conditions are straightforward, if we can resolve one of our big buffs like Cathars’ Crusade or True Conviction we can be very hard to beat in combat, combine that with some of our other buffs like Unbreakable Formation, Felidar Retreat and Inspiring Leader. We can win through combat. It didn’t happen during my testing, but we do have Halo Fountain as a valid win condition. It is actually easier than you think. There were multiple times when I had 30+ tokens.
Utility / Support
Since we are a full-on combat deck, we have quite a few support cards for the game plan. Makindi Stampede is an awesome MDFC land that we can also use as a temp buff for all of our creatures and hit a lot harder. Blessed Sanctuary is another awesome support card for the deck that allows us to avoid some of the big sweepers like Chandra’s Ignition and produces additional tokens for us. By far, my favorite support card is Throne of the God-Pharaoh. It can easily kill opponents and is just an amazing card for us.
Mana Base
Being in mono-white, our land base isn’t that interesting, but it does have some cool support cards like Castle Ardenvale, a pretty boring card by all means, but can be a token producer if we need, albeit an expensive one. Since we have more card draw than a typical mono-white deck, we do have Reliquary Tower, and in my testing games, I did get usage out of this. We finish out with Windbrisk Heights, which is very easy to activate in this deck and allows us to get a card for free. Obviously, the hideaway is quite random, but you can get some true bombs off of this card, and it’s very easy for us to trigger, a great piece of support for the deck.
Strengths of the Deck
One of our biggest strengths is our ability to overwhelm the board. We can be extremely hard to kill because we can chump block so much, and we really give even the heaviest creature decks a run for their money.
Even though a large majority of our tokens are 1/1’s, we can easily make their power bigger and make them much more of a threat. While they start as 2/2’s, they oftentimes do not stay that way for long.
Weaknesses of the Deck
We are a true all-in deck; it’s not impossible, but it can be tough to recover if a big board wipe happens.
Since we are in mono-white, opponents know we don’t have much removal outside of combat, so they often try to cast more threatening stuff against us early because they know we don’t have much recourse. We do have Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, and Generous Gift in the deck, but beyond that, all of our removal is through combat, which many decks can thrive in that environment.
4 Upgrades i would make
Please note these are completely optional.
These upgrades can be done in any order, you can get them one at a time or all at once!
Power Upgrades
Mondrak is a premier card for a token deck, and while Sram’s Expertise is strong, we certainly don’t need that much more token production, especially if we have Mondrak. The four slot is a jam-packed slot in our deck, so cutting Sram’s just makes sense.
Keeper of the Accord can be tough to trigger if we haven’t fallen behind, and we usually don’t need the ramp. Elesh Norn positions us very well against other token decks, which is extremely helpful.
This is another instance where we are cutting a way worse card for an absolute bomb. Anointed Procession is just insane and lets us output tokens over an absolutely ridiculous range. Idol is a sound card for the deck, but with all of the extra tokens, we don’t really need it with Procession in.
Moonshaker is the finisher this deck really needs. Parhelion can be a powerful card, but we typically don’t need it since we have much better, cheaper token production like Divine Visitation. Moonshaker almost always ends the game when it comes out, is such an aggressive bomb, and can easily win us the game!
Conclusion
Thanks so much for reading to the end! Budget tokens don’t feel all that different from regular tokens. Being able to flood the board and swing out at our opponents super hard is awesome and just a great feeling. Tokens continue to be one of the most budget-friendly archetypes! I hope you all enjoyed this one. Thanks so much for reading to the end.