White has plenty of card draw options in Commander nowadays. But what are the best ways to draw cards when you’re in Mono White? Kristen shares the best white card draw spells in Commander.
White used to struggle with card draw, it’s true. But thanks to a good few years of excellent designs, white now has plenty of options to draw cards. Some are good in every deck, while others are better in certain builds. Let’s check out the best of them.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
First up, two honorable mentions. Roadside Reliquary is two cards for three total mana, on a land, which is very easy to slot into a deck. White decks can enable it quite easily with their reliance on many powerful artifacts and enchantments. What’s more, white is one of the better colors at ramping and returning lands from the yard to play with cards like Sevinne’s Reclamation and Sun Titan.
The other mention here is one that is powerful in basically any deck: The One Ring. I would feel almost entitled to run this in mono white, given the color can still sometimes feel like it’s punching up, but what makes white decks able to utilize this well is the lifegain that white can do very well.
LIFEGAIN PAYOFF
Many white decks lean into lifegain, whether through Soul Warden & co, or through the Lifelink keyword. Those decks can leverage lifegain with The Gaffer, who can give you up to four cards in one turn cycle, which is a really good rate.
White can draw cards from lifegain in various ways, but I personally shy away from Well of Lost Dreams and Dawn of Hope these days due to the heavy mana sink required to draw cards, and the inflexibility of when that mana is required. Cards that don’t require additional mana, like Sigarda’s Splendor and Cosmos Elixir solve this, but ultimately are a touch unreliable, especially in light of other card draw options in white.
Instead, I’d look at Tenuous Truce. There will always be one player at the table who most threatens your life total, and most lifegain decks also want to keep life high for the likes of Aetherflux Reservoir or game-winning triggers. Stick this on that player and your life total will go down slower, while netting you some cards.
I’m also much happier running Archivist of Oghma in a lifegain deck for the extra value that trigger gains us. The card can be quite inconsistent, and is otherwise quite meta dependent.
EQUIPPED FOR SUCCESS
Lots of white decks love Equipment, and if you’re going to play upwards of 10 equipment, then Puresteel Paladin should be in your list. Doubly so if you can turn on Metalcraft easily; pack an Ancient Den and Darksteel Citadel to increase your odds. Puresteel is great because it triggers on EtB not just cast, allowing Teleportation Circle and recursion to draw you cards in a pinch.
If Puresteel requires upwards of 10 equipment, then I’d say Sram requires a few more. That said, you can pack your deck with Hyena Umbra, Spirit Mantle and Aura-based removal like Darksteel Mutation, Chains of Custody and Ossification to get your card draw up for Sram. This also unlocks Open the Armory as a tutor option.
EVERY DRAW COUNT(ER)S
Dusk Legion Duelist is the hot new card draw option for decks that employ +1/+1 counters, and though you can only activate it once a turn, it can also be triggered in an opponent’s turn, which isn’t hard to do.
Rather than paying six mana for Sanctuary Warden (which is still a fine card for these decks) you should first be taking Angelic Sleuth. It’ll give you clues for creatures leaving, sure, but also if your Ozolith gets blown up, or a Planeswalker is “retired”.
Given white can draw plenty of cards these days, and given there’s also more proliferate available than just old artifacts and Grateful Apparition, I’d urge you to consider Pursuit of Knowledge again. It doesn’t take long to draw seven, and you can bring it back with Guardian Scalelord.
CARDS FOR COMBAT
Getting cards for doing what white decks want to do best is now… actually possible. Chivalric Alliance and Glimmer Lens should be making their way into most white decks, and offer both card draw and token synergies.
Firemane Commando is another one that rewards us attacking en-masse, but also limits incoming damage, which is very cool. Annoyingly, this one gets removed for me quite often – people just don’t seem to want those extra cards and would rather attack me.
White is second to blue in its ability to tap creatures down. Court Street Denizen, Subjugator Angel, Githzerai Monk… white has plenty of repeatable and mass ways to tap stuff down. This makes white one of the best colors to utilize Hylda’s Crown of Winter, a card that ostensibly communicates it’s a “blue” card at first glance.
Don’t sleep on Aradesh, the Founder. You get a separate trigger for each creature that attacks and enlists, meaning you’re potentially refilling your hand if you go wide enough and enlist the village in your attack.
If your Commander is low cost and likes to attack a lot, like Giada or Adeline, then Tome of Legends should draw you a lot of cards each game. This one works best with low mana value Commanders, and makes running blink cards like Ephemerate and Eerie Interlude that much better. And of course, Sword of Hearth and Home.
A TOKEN OF APPRECIATION
White has leaned firmly into the color of making creature tokens, and it’s done so by leveraging a lot of great card draw for doing so. You don’t need to be firmly in a tokens deck to take advantage of some of these, as they’ll trigger for making treasure, or playing creature cards, too.
Welcoming Vampire kicks things off here, drawing us cards for either small creatures or small token creatures, once per turn. I like it also because it flies, helping to trigger anything from Chivalric Alliance to strong equipment triggers, with less risk.
Rumor Gatherer is also pretty good, offering card selection on top of card draw. For the rest of the turn, if more creatures enter, you still get to scry more, which is great.
Tocasia’s Welcome offers similar draw to Welcoming Vampire, but at a more forgiving rate, meaning you can run 3+ power creatures as long as they’re under mana value of 3. Practically, this means anthems and +1/+1 counters won’t get in the way of you drawing cards. To get draws in other people’s turns, you can use cards like Whitemane Lion or Spawning Pit.
If you’re firmly on the tokens plan, then look to Staff of the Storyteller, a card that makes a 1/1 flier and should give you a card per turn cycle if you have the mana to spare. The utility of having a token flier here is great if you’re doing similar things to Welcoming Vampire - using it to enable other card draw and value.
Idol of Oblivion is perhaps the most played draw option across decks that isn’t Skullclamp these days, and for good reason. Make a treasure, a food, a clue, a soldier, a warrior with vigilance, or even a 4/4 Angel? Well, you get to draw a card. Two mana outlay with essentially a free card thereafter is really good.
One card that has made it into fewer decks thanks to that Mythic price tag is Bennie Bracks, but it’s one of the most powerful and consistent draw cards in white nowadays. It can grant you a card per each player’s turn, which gets a lot easier when you run a Smothering Tithe. Most things get easier with that enchantment, to be fair.
Rounding things out for this section, I’d like to mention Oblation. Flexibility is always king in Commander, and Oblation can disappear one of your tokens for 2 cards at instant speed – or it can disappear a problem opposing permanent. Giving them two cards might not even matter.
CONSISTENT DRAW FOR EVERY DECK
The final section is the very best of the cards that any white deck can utilize to refill the hand, or keep it topped up. You should look to these first before deciding on what cards best complement your overall strategy.
Cut a Deal is a card I admittedly passed over initially, but I think it fills a particular role that each deck wants at least some of: consistent draw that requires the least board investment to accomplish. While it does scale down in the late game, a three-mana draw-three in the early to mid-game is great, and giving your opponents cards with it might not even be bad, especially if you run effects that profit off of exactly this.
A card I don’t think has had the chance to shine yet is Rammas Echor, Ancient Shield. Casting your second spell isn’t hard if your curve is low enough, and making a creature token can trigger countless other ways to draw cards in white that we discussed above. The added utility of providing blockers to bolster your life total, while granting some cheeky exalted triggers? Yeah, card’s underrated.
Giving opponents resources is something you should actively avoid doing for the most part, but even decks that can’t leverage those gifts can still use them for political gain. Your Temple Is Under Attack is a board protection spell, sure, but should also be used politically to sweeten a bargain. Never freely give those two cards when you can use them to gain a little breathing space.
While Skullclamp is mostly a card for tokens, it’s in this section because even decks that aren’t on the token plan can take advantage of it. A High Market in the manabase, or creatures that have sacrifice abilities, or just an Oketra’s Monument to provide cost reduction – all things that can enable Skullclamp.
Speaking of equipment, Mask of Memory remains one of the best ways to draw cards in Commander, period. It’s cheap, easy to use, and in white, filling your graveyard is something you actively want to be doing most of the time, to take advantage of white’s great recursion pieces.
Master of Ceremonies is a card that always performs. There will always be a best option for an opponent to choose, and in a lot of cases, people are happy to leave this in play because they’re profiting off of it. It won’t always draw cards, but if you build your deck right, the other options can still draw you cards anyways. Master of Ceremonies is a card I’m always keen to remove from play.
Wedding Ring is one I nearly passed up on when making this list, as it’s a card I haven’t played with much myself. That said, it is very powerful, especially in a meta where your opponents regularly play cards like Rhystic Study or other ways to keep topped up on cards. While this does lock you in “‘til death do us part”, it’s easy enough to profit off of this before sacrificing it or blowing it up.
Esper Sentinel is so synonymous with powerful draw that it has earned the nickname “Rhystic Buddy”. It’s hard to argue that a white deck shouldn’t be playing this card, and even if your opponents aren’t greedy enough to ignore paying the one, you can easily buff it with equipment, counters or anthems, leading to almost guaranteed card draw.
It’s probably unsurprising to you that Trouble in Pairs tops the list, and rounds out this guide to the best white card draw options. It will draw you a wealth of cards, and it does so consistently. I don’t need to tell you how powerful this one is, so instead, I’ll use it as a segue.
END STEP
Trouble in Pairs is an apt name, because the white card draw we’ve discussed today is all better when it builds synergies. Running Welcoming Vampire to wield Mask of Memory and trigger Chivalric Alliance; casting a second spell to trigger Rammas Echor, making a token to trigger Tocasia’s Welcome; running Smothering Tithe to capitalize on Cut a Deal and Loran of the Third Path.
To truly master drawing cards in white, you need to master deckbuilding. Consider our Top 20 Essential White Commander Cards, and the The Boros Card Advantage & Ramp Engine to take that deckbuilding to the next level.
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