This list serves as a great resource for new players to gain some familiarity with cards they may be seeing frequently!
Commander staples are cards in every color that are just universally good and played in most decks that can play them todays list focuses on very common white spells and permanents you will encounter throughout your EDH journey! Please note that this list is definitely meta / playgroup dependent although these cards are played heavily this list may not be totally accurate to your EDH environment!
White is a color in magic that has always played a great support role focusing on lifegain destruction / protection and creatures with a lot of abilitys. White has changed a lot since the early days of magic, while it is often played as a great support color in EDH, it is not often played as mono-white. Regardless there are a ton of great standalone white cards that see a ton of play and we are going to go over some of those today!
10. Grand Abolisher
Grand Abolisher is an awesome creature that can come down in the early game and stop your opponents from interacting on your turn! The biggest downside of grand abolisher is that he and you are both very vulnerable when it is not your turn but being able to stop opponents from casting spells or activating abilities of creatures, enchantments and artifacts is a huge upside one a turn where you have spells you need to resolve!
9. Enlightened Tutor
Enlightened Tutor is a great way to get a key artifact or enchantment to the top of your deck at instant speed, the best thing about enlightened tutor is its cost being able to do it as early as turn 1 and grab whatever you need. This can be a great card in the late game to grab an important game-changing / combo piece or in the early game grab a well needed Mana Rock or Land Tax
!
8. Esper Sentinel
Esper Sentinel in a lot of ways is white Rhystic Study
but only for an opponents first noncreature spell, if you pump sentinel up it is a great way to make it so you pretty much always draw the card. In the early turns when mana is pretty tight it also makes it so your opponents will not pay the tax and give you a free card! Esper Sentinel is a great way to easily draw cards or tax your opponents resources!
7. Drannith Magistrate
Drannith Magistrate is another great white hate card that makes it so your opponents have to play fair and cannot cast a spell from anywhere other than there hands! This effect is great for any free permanents or effects that attempt to give your opponent a big edge by casting stuff outside of there hand for free. Some of the best examples of this are that it stops all commanders from being cast from the command zone which is absolutely huge and it also stops graveyard and library shenanigans like Muldrotha, the Gravetide
and Elsha of the Infinite
. Drannith Magistrate may not be the hardest creature to remove but it is a pain to deal with if left unchecked!
6.Akroma’s Will
Akromas Will is a great spell that allows you to buff your creatures with huge keyword buffs the first ability gives your creatures Flying, Vigilance and Double Strike but if you control your commander it also gives them lifelink, indestructible and protection from all colors until end of turn. This card only costs four mana and can be cast at instant speed and can very easily end opponents in the combat step with ease. The condition of needing to control your commander for the extra benefits is made even easier because most commanders can get out there pretty early. The best part about Akroma’s Will is that it is both an offensive and defensive spell and can be used in either situation to swing the game in your favor heavily!
5. Farewell
Farewell is arguably one of the best board wipes ever made, even better than Merciless Eviction
. Being able to choose one or more which in this case essiently can be all, this game disrupts all strategies that aren’t spellslinger and even though it does not fully disrupt them it makes it much harder for them to go off. This card is crazy for only 6 mana being able to exile all creatures , enchantments , artifacts and graveyards is just a huge momentum swing and if a player falls behind this can reset set the game to basically the beginning. Just an absolutely bonkers card which is played in a ton of decks
4. Smothering Tithe
This one really is white Rhystic Study well kind of being able to create treasure instead of drawing cards may seem like a downside but this card gives such a huge mana advantage especially against commanders that love to draw cards, it is unreasonable for your opponents to keep paying 2 every time they draw and most opponents will just let you create, in addition to the mana advantage this card is great with artifacts matter cards like Hellkite Tyrant
and really anything that cares about artifacts. Overall Smothering Tithe is just a slam dunk of a card!
3.Path to Exile
White creature removal that exiles is not the most prevalent effect within the white color pie but path to exile is one of the greats a simple efficient one mana exile and you give your opponent an basic land which is such a great tradeoff for exiling a huge creature or even just a pesky creature that will make combat or comboing off difficult. Path to Exile is just an amazing removal spell
2. Swords to Plowshares
Just as Path to Exile is Swords to Plowshares is also a great white one mana exile spell, although instead of a basic land it is life equal to the creatures power. This is arguably an even better trade off then commander since a lot of pesky / sticky creatures have low power and in a 40 life format where most decks are ready to do huge damage the lifegain really doesn’t affect the gameplan that much! Swords to Plowshares gets the edge because it is better than the mana advantage given by Path to Exile
1. Teferi’s Protection
Arguably the best white commander card that we have seen yet this card is just a house making it so your life total cant change gives you protection from everything and makes all your permanents phase out. This card is just amazing and is an absolute lifesaver on turns where you may die or you need to protect your combo piece permanents. This card is super low costed at only three mana, the technical drawback is that it gets exiled after cast but that literally does not matter as it can be the difference between losing and winning a game.
Overall white is not the strongest color in commander on its own but shines in the support role with a ton of staples that are present in multicolor or mono-white decks. It is a really fun color and there are a ton of great cards outside of just this list but these are some of the most common / best!
Thanks for Reading to the End!