Tuesday Night Takeover
Myrel, Shield of Argive
EDH May 1, 2026

Myrel, Shield of Argive Soldiers

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Commander Overview

Myrel, Shield of Argive is a true mono-white powerhouse. Being the true “commander” of our army and allowing us to build a truly unstoppable army of soldiers that can truly hit like a truck when we have something like Cathars' Crusade on the field. Myrel is the commander of a soldier-focused deck and synergizes perfectly with our deck. Pretty much every card in the deck is a soldier, and being able to use Myrel’s ability to create a ton of tokens allows us to attack hard and leave up a true army of blockers for our opponents’ turns. Myrel is firmly in a support role in this deck. While we do want them on the field as much as we can, the deck can still function and be perfectly fine without them, albeit a little slower than when they are on the field. While Myrel’s ability to create tokens is great for us, her defensive side is even better, stopping our opponents from interacting with us much on our turn and even restricting the abilities of creatures, artifacts, and enchantments. This ability is extremely powerful against control strategies that want to mess with us on our turn. If you love soldiers and swinging hard and having a true army on the board, this is certainly the deck for you. Although I would recommend a bigger playmat, you are going to have a ton of tokens while piloting this deck.


Bracket 2 Soldiers Mono-White Going Wide
Command Zone

Myrel, Shield of Argive

Legendary Creature — Human Soldier
$547.52

Creature 31

1 Baird, Steward of Argive $0.22
1 Ballyrush Banneret $0.15
1 Bastion Protector $1.02
1 Bennie Bracks, Zoologist $12.17
1 Boromir, Warden of the Tower $4.49
1 Brimaz, King of Oreskos $7.65
1 Captain of the Watch $0.34
1 Catapult Master $1.13
1 Cathar Commando $0.26
1 Cosmogrand Zenith $6.41
1 Darien, King of Kjeldor $1.19
1 Daru Warchief $2.75
1 Field Marshal $4.28
1 Firemane Commando $1.17
1 Goldnight Commander $0.25
1 Haliya, Guided by Light $3.15
1 Hero of Bladehold $0.84
1 Keeper of the Accord $0.39
1 Knight-Captain of Eos $2.36
1 Mentor of the Meek $0.38
1 Moonshaker Cavalry $5.26
1 Odric, Master Tactician $0.31
1 Platoon Dispenser $0.59
1 Preeminent Captain $0.65
1 Rescue Retriever $0.44
1 Reverent Hoplite $0.28
1 Selfless Squire $0.37
1 Serra Redeemer $0.22
1 Siege Veteran $0.30
1 Thalia, Heretic Cathar $1.09
1 Valiant Veteran $0.43

Planeswalker 2

1 Elspeth, Storm Slayer $39.94
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion $1.66

Instant 14

1 Akroma's Will $18.26
1 And They Shall Know No Fear $10.65
1 Call the Coppercoats $5.85
1 Duty Beyond Death $0.35
1 Erode $5.87
1 Flare of Fortitude $3.18
1 Flawless Maneuver $21.17
1 Generous Gift $1.43
1 Make a Stand
1 Path to Exile $0.91
1 Rebuff the Wicked $6.81
1 Settle the Wreckage $2.55
1 Swords to Plowshares $0.97
1 Unbreakable Formation $1.29

Sorcery 2

1 Ravnica at War $0.55
1 Vanquish the Horde $0.32

Artifact 11

1 Akroma's Memorial $33.58
1 Banner of Kinship $5.24
1 Chronicle of Victory $19.82
1 Coat of Arms $17.15
1 Dolmen Gate $32.10
1 Horn of Gondor $2.54
1 Pearl Medallion $4.41
1 Skullclamp $5.59
1 Sol Ring $1.17
1 Throne of Eldraine $36.86
1 Urza's Incubator $15.94

Enchantment 4

1 Caretaker's Talent $7.57
1 Cathars' Crusade $8.38
1 Flowering of the White Tree $8.87
1 Ghostly Prison $3.52

Land 35

1 Abandoned Air Temple $6.11
1 Castle Ardenvale $0.27
1 Cavern of Souls $48.67
1 Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire $5.47
1 Emeria, the Sky Ruin $8.20
1 Kjeldoran Outpost
1 Maze of Ith $11.14
1 Minas Tirith $6.34
1 Monumental Henge $0.35
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx $51.56
24 Plains $0.15
1 Windbrisk Heights $0.26

Tokens Used 4

Cat Soldier
Elephant
Human Soldier
Soldier

EDH BRACKET

1
Exhibition
2
Core
3
Upgraded
4
Optimized
5
cEDH
Bracket 2 // Core

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

Playing the deck is straightforward. There really aren’t any complicated interactions in the deck. I would not recommend this deck to a brand-new player just because there can be a lot to track, especially with both Myrel and cards like Haliya, Guided by Light on the field. But if you are an intermediate player or, at the very least, have a few games under your belt, you should be just fine with this deck.

Synergy’s in the deck

While we are in mono-white, card draw is still important. We certainly don’t draw cards as easily as blue players, but we do have some great ways, like Bennie Bracks, Zoologist and Firemane Commando, that let us avoid the classic mono-white trope of not being able to draw cards. Our biggest synergy, by far, is between the soldiers and our commander. Goldnight Commander is one of the coolest cards in the deck, and with Myrel’s trigger, can buff our board up like crazy and make us hit like a truck. Daru Warchief is another great synergy piece in the deck that reduces the cost of nearly our entire deck and makes them bigger and better in combat. An insane creature for only four mana.

Phases of the Game

Early-Game: The early-game is a pretty good time for us; we have some early-game creatures like Ballyrush Banneret and Field Marshal, which are great support cards for the early-game. We tend not to be super aggressive in the early game, but if an opponent is open, we will certainly take the opportunity to hit them. Get some early-game creatures, maybe some support artifacts/enchantments like Flowering of the White Tree or Dolmen Gate, and finish up by getting Myrel out, and you should be just fine.

Mid-Game: The mid-game is where we can start hitting hard and putting a lot of pressure on our opponents. With Myrel out, we can easily begin to flood the board with our tokens. Even if we don’t have any of our buffs like Cathars' Crusade, we can still flood the board and go super wide. If our opponents get out of hand and we aren’t super committed to our board, we do have options like Ravnica at War to ruin most opponents’ boards and keep ours safe!

Late-Game: The late-game is great for us. Myrel just needs to attack so we can still get her trigger pretty easily, and by this point, our board is usually pretty big and buffed up. We tend not to be super aggressive at this stage of the game, but take opportunities when they arise.

Card Breakdowns

Ramp

Being in mono-white ramp is not a huge focus of our deck, but we do have a a couple of sources like Pearl Medallion which reduces the overall cost of nearly every card in our deck and is a great at really any stage of the game. We also have Sol Ring, which is amazing if we get it, but not something consistent. By far the best piece of ramp we have in the deck is Throne of Eldraine, which is a little pricey but also provides some great card draw once we are done using it for ramp. We finish up with Urza's Incubator. While not strictly a piece of ramp, the discount on all our soldiers does give us extra mana to play around with.

Card Draw/Card Advantage

Even though we are in mono-white, we are pretty good at supplemental card draw. Drawing cards is arguably the most important thing we can do in the game, and even though we aren’t as good at card draw, we can keep our hand full and keep filling our board. Haliya, Guided by Light is a very consistent source of card draw for the deck; we almost always have her card-draw ability satisfied because of Myrel, and the life we get is pretty great too! Platoon Dispenser is another great source for the deck; it’s criminally easy to trigger on every one of our turns, it’s a pretty great card for our deck, and it has the bonus benefit of being quite thematic as well. Caretaker's Talent is also a home run for the deck, consistent every turn, and the other levels are pretty great for the deck as well. This is never going to be a deck where we are drawing 5+ cards a turn, but we can keep our hand full and keep casting.

Removal

We have the pretty typical mono-white removal package with a couple of new additions. Erode is a super awesome removal spell and pairs very nicely with Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile. Vanquish the Horde and Ravnica at War are great board wipes for the deck and allow us to stop our opponents if they are beginning to get out of hand. Settle the Wreckage is an extremely underrated removal spell, and exiling an opponent’s entire board if they swing out is truly awesome. The “drawback” of them getting their basics doesn’t matter that much when we exile all of their attackers. This card is perfect if an opponent fully swings out.

Protection

This is one of the weaker points of our deck; a lot of our creatures, and especially our tokens, are quite expendable. We don’t super care if they die, but we do have a couple of pieces of protection in the deck like And They Shall Know No Fear and Flawless Maneuver, which are great ways for our creatures to survive bad combats and keep our board whole. Since we have so many creatures hanging around, Flare of Fortitude is awesome for the deck and also perfect if an opponent swings out their board at us, as we can not block, free cast this and hit them like a truck on the way back. Myrel will likely face a lot of single-target removal from our opponents, and being able to protect them with Rebuff the Wicked is a great, cheap option that many opponents won’t see coming.

Utility / Support

Let’s highlight some of my favorite cards in the deck! Catapult Master is not only a really cool thematic card but a great piece of removal. With Myrel on the board, it is criminally easy to do this in combat as well. Knight-Captain of Eos is a powerhouse of a creature as well. Sadly, they aren’t a creature; they’re a Fog on a stick and super easy to use in our deck. Using this for ourselves is always good, but it can also be a strong political piece if we want to make some deals at the table. Banner of Kinship and Chronicle of Victory are two pretty new cards that are just awesome for the deck and make our board huge, and in the case of Chronicle, give us trample, which can matter a lot because we go so wide.

Mana Base

We have quite a few non-basics in the deck that are great. Since we are a mono-colored deck, we of course have Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, which is a great way to get ahead and play a bunch of stuff in one turn, perfect for cards like Platoon Dispenser as well. Since Myrel is such a big counter/removal target, Cavern of Souls is great in this deck, and ensuring we can resolve Myrel is great for us. I also loved Maze of Ith, a card that isn’t played a ton in EDH anymore but is still a great option. I love being able to stop an aggressive attacker from hurting us, especially early. Thirty-five lands is a great number for this deck, and in my testing games, I had no issues at all.

Win Conditions

Our only win condition in the deck is combat. Go wide and turn all of those soldiers sideways!

Strengths of the Deck

We can go extremely wide and grow our army every turn.

Once we hit the mid-late game, we can get huge extremely quickly.

Weaknesses of the Deck

While we can be effective without Myrel, we are quite a bit less explosive without them.

We are affected by common mono-white problems. If we keep getting messed with or the board gets wiped, recovery will be difficult.

Deck Testing/Matchups

I tested this deck against three different decks

Game 1: Vs Brigid, Clachan's Heart. Matchup Record: 3-1

A true token vs token matchup. I found this to be a good matchup for us, while they can ramp up our explosiveness with Myrel on the field. The only real downside is that if they keep removing Myrel, they can go wider than us and beat us.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Chronicle of Victory, Goldnight Commander and Field Marshal.

Game 2: Vs Emperor Mihail II. Matchup Record: 2-2

A split matchup that was pretty fun, the toughest part about this matchup for us is that they have quite a bit of counters and islandwalk creatures, and there are quite a few ways for them to make our lands islands, which not only disrupts our mana but means we can’t block. This is not a horrible matchup, but it can be a bit of an uphill battle.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Settle the Wreckage, Skullclamp and Akroma's Will.

Game 3: Vs Drizzt Do'Urden. Matchup Record: 3-1

Another pretty good matchup for our deck, they can get big, but we can go wide, just always be wary about trample, they can devastate us once they get trample on their creatures. The cat token they create is a much bigger problem than their commander, so try to remove that if you can. Follow the core gameplan and be aggressive, and you should be just fine.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Rebuff the Wicked, Path to Exile and Ghostly Prison.

Conclusion

Thanks so much for reading to the end! The TNT team has loved this deck for a long time, and it finally got an update. This deck truly is pure mono-white fun. While it may be simple, it is a blast to play and an amazing time against a variety of decks. If you’ve ever wanted to command an army, this truly is the deck for you.

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