Commander Overview
Brigone solves the biggest problem that mono-white has: built-in card draw for our commander! Having this ability on a creature that scales a ton and is a great attacker for the deck allows us to play some of the best auras in the game, be a great blocker, and on the end step before it’s our turn, get some card draw! The counters that Brigone gets are very easy to come by, so we have no problem drawing a card during every turn cycle. While this deck has a lot of the weaknesses that mono-white typically has, we can curb one of the biggest, and with all of the amazing enchantments present in white, we can easily get a one-shot going! Brigone is a huge part of our deck and is much more critical to its function. Luckily for us, they only cost a couple of mana, so it is quite easy to recast them if they die, and we have a lot of protection built into the deck.
Creature 16
Instant 16
Sorcery 6
Enchantment 26
Land 32
EDH BRACKET
Beyond the strength of an average precon deck.
- Late Game 2-Card Infinite Combos
- No Mass Land Denial
- Up to 3 Game Changers
- No Chaining Extra Turns
How to Play the Deck
This is a perfect deck for a player of any skill level. There are next to no complicated interactions going on, as long as they can count damage and keep track of the +1/+1 counters that Brigone gives them, they should be just fine. This deck is quite simple overall and doesn’t have any complicated interactions. I think this could be a good teaching tool for a newer player to get familiar with some more advanced concepts.
Synergy’s in the deck
Our whole synergy is auras, which is why we are running cards like All that Glitters and Ethereal Armor as well as Helm of the Gods these are all great because they provide a significant buff for our commander, are cheap and most importantly are a payoff for the biggest focus of our deck. On the defensive side, cards like Sphere of Safety are a great way to ensure we don’t die when we have a low creature count, which is quite often in this deck.
Phases of the Game
Early-Game: We come out of the gate-swinging! We are greatly aided by Brigone, who only costs two, and we have a whole host of cheap auras in the deck that allow us to be quite aggressive and hit hard when opponents are just setting up. Getting in this early damage can be very impactful as the late-game goes on, since we almost always go for commander damage kills, and getting commander damage on an opponent early helps speed up their death!
Mid-Game: Nothing really changes for us in the mid-game; the biggest difference is that we have protection from our opponents’ removal and can easily hold it up to ensure we can keep Brigone on the field. We do need to be careful at this stage of the game and lean heavily on Brigone because when opponents have a big board, they can go a lot wider than us.
Late-Game: By this point in the game, our opponents should have quite a bit of commander damage, and we should have a huge Brigone, so we should be able to simply finish them off with the aid of cards like Spirit Mantle, which makes blocking simply not possible. I always keep up protection here as opponents have a lot of mana, and we can’t afford to have Brigone Die. Brigone does have vigilance, and as long as we aren’t attacking into a terrible situation, I try to be pretty aggressive.
Card Breakdowns
Ramp
We have no ramp in the deck, not even a Sol Ring! But we are perfectly fine with that, we have an extremely low overall mana cost/curve in the deck and top out at five mana, because of this we don’t need a lot of mana to get going and with a two commander commander and a large majority of our cards being in the one to three mana range ramp doesn’t work for this deck. While we may not ramp, we are still quite explosive in the early game.
Card Draw/Card Advantage
Brigone is a big piece of card drawn for our deck. It allows us to attack on our turn, and when it gets to our last opponent’s end step, we can draw. We can obviously draw whenever we want, but this consistent source of extra card draw is something that many mono-white decks typically don’t have, and having access to it is amazing. Sage's Reverie is another amazing piece of card draw, and if our hand is empty, we can easily refill it with this. We are good at card draw, especially for a mono-white deck!
Removal
While we do have some removal we for the most part don’t care about what our opponents are doing, luckily being in mono-white allows us some great options for removal like Generous Gift, Stroke of Midnight and Swords to Plowshares which are great options to take care of our opponents threats. We also have quite a few one-sided board wipes that allow us to keep Brigone and fully devastate our opponents’ boards. Cards like Winds of Rath, Damning Verdict, and Single Combat allow us to ensure only our commander stands alone and can allow us to get some amazing commander damage kills in one turn!
Protection
This is another strong aspect of our deck, we have a ton of one and ton mana ways to ensure Brigone doesn’t fall victim to single-target removal or board wipes. At the same time, we are still vulnerable to sacrifice effects; we are great at ensuring we don’t lose our commander that much. Protection is one of the strongest aspects of our deck and something we are great at! Nearly our entire instant package is protection.
Utility / Support
Let’s go over some of my favorite cards in the deck! Umbra Mystic is a crazy card for our deck and can be a true nightmare for our opponents to deal with, especially if we don’t have the mana to keep protection up. This can be a great catch-all for us. Mavinda, Students' Advocate is a card I had never played with before, but did a lot of work in the deck, especially if we don’t have protection mana up, we almost always target a creature, so we just pay the mana cost and ensure we can keep Brigone! I got a lot of great use out of Idolized. We almost always solely attack with Brigone, so giving them a huge buff can allow us to one-shot an opponent easily. Armored Ascension was another enchantment that was very strong for the deck since our mana base is almost all plains, and the flying can make our commander damage one-shot even easier.
Mana Base
We have a low land count compared to a lot of decks, but with our mana curve capping at five mana, we are not a deck that can run super heavy on lands. I did try a couple of builds with thirty and twenty-nine lands, but after all of my testing, I found that thirty-two was more consistent. We can get a little aggressive later in the game and attack with more creatures than just Brigone, so Minas Tirith can be an easy source of supplemental card draw for the deck. I also got a ton of usage out of Adagia, Windswept Bastion; it feels so good when you copy an insane enchantment like Sphere of Safety or All that Glitters.
Win Conditions
Our primary win condition is through commander damage; we can close out games with regular combat damage with the help of something like Kor Spiritdancer, but overall, Brigone is the primary way we win.
Strengths of the Deck
We are a really fast deck and can hit very hard in the early game.
Our opponents being at twenty-one life allows us one-shot opportunities regularly.
Weaknesses of the Deck
Go-wide decks can be pretty good against us if we aren’t fast, since they have so many more creatures than we do.
The deck can lack a lot of “punch” and speed if we don’t have Brigone out or we can’t keep them on the field.
Deck Testing/Matchups
I tested this deck against three different decks
Game 1: Vs Baylen, The Haymaker. Matchup Record: 2-3
A winnable but tough matchup, Baylen goes so much wider than us. The only hope of us winning is being really aggressive and focusing them down and starting that early. If we let them develop to the mid-late game, it can be very tough for us to compete.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Winds of Rath, Loran's Escape and With Great Power….
Game 2: Vs Giada, Font of Hope. Matchup Record: 3-0
A true mono-white matchup for the ages here. I didn’t have any trouble with this one; just don’t let them get to the point where they can cast their best angels like Avacyn, Angel of Hope, and you should be just fine with this one.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Daybreak Coronet, Helm of the Gods and Avatar's Wrath.
Game 3: Vs Cloud, Midgar Mercenary. Matchup Record: 3-1
This matchup is about speed. Cloud has some very scary equipment, and our protection isn’t great against a deck that doesn’t have a lot of removal. This is a winnable matchup, and I didn’t have a ton of trouble, but never underestimate the Cloud player; they can certainly get you if you’re not careful.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Idolized, Stroke of Midnight and Mesa Enchantress.
Conclusion
Thanks so much for reading to the end. I hope you all enjoyed! Brigone is a very fun commander who is certainly underplayed and needs some more love. They are a ton of fun, and having actual card draw in mono-white is a true dream come true. While this deck has a lot of the same characteristics as a mono-white deck, it is certainly unique.
