Mythic White Control - 3/24

This is my homebrew that I used to hit Mythic with a 62% win rate and is built to competently handle all 3 deck types, combo, aggro and control.  This write up is intended to give an explanation for the decklist and how the deck plays.  Lets take a look at the decklist first.

Mythic White Control - 3/24

Deck
20 Plains (M21) 309
4 Boon-Bringer Valkyrie (MOM) 9
4 Unyielding Gatekeeper (MKM) 35
4 Aurelia's Vindicator (MKM) 4
4 The Eternal Wanderer (ONE) 11
4 Depopulate (SNC) 10
4 Sunfall (MOM) 40
4 Demolition Field (BRO) 260
4 Loran of the Third Path (BRO) 12
4 Fleeting Spirit (VOW) 14
4 Ambitious Farmhand (MID) 2

Sideboard
4 The Stone Brain (BRO) 247
3 Soul-Guide Lantern (WOE) 251
4 Lantern of the Lost (VOW) 259
1 Soul-Guide Lantern (WOE) 251
3 Soulless Jailer (ONE) 241

Main Deck

Ambitious Farmhand // Seasoned Cathar - This is an incredible 2-drop that replaces itself with a Plains and helps ensure we hit our land drops.  Additionally, late game this can flip to a 3/3 lifelinker if not addressed and with the spread of creatures in the deck and the backup ability from Boon-Bringer, hitting the Coven is pretty easy to do, especially post-board with the Soulless Jailer having 0 power.

Fleeting Spirit - This is just a solid 2-drop that is designed to avoid our wraths and apply early game pressure alongside the farmhand and gatekeeper.  The ability to exile in response to anything makes this a very resilient threat.

Unyielding Gatekeeper - This card is insane.  2 mana 3/2 early beater is OK but where this card really shines is being able to Disguise it down with Ward 2 - and then you only need to hold up 2 mana to be able to activate an instant speed hard removal against pretty much anything except manlands.  This activate can also be used as a "counterspell" to blink your own stuff in response to the opponent trying to remove your stuff with spot removal and with this deck having (2) different Disguise creatures, the opponent wont know if the disguised creature is the Gatekeeper or the Vindicator.  This is also a hard answer for the gods that flip into lands and Titan of Industry with a shield counter on it.  It should be noted that THIS blink effect is the first of its kind...if you gain control of a nonland permanent "until end of turn" - Unyielding Gatekeeper's flicker does NOT state "return to play under its owners control" - if you threaten an opponents creature "until end of turn" and then use Gatekeeper's flicker on that creature, you will keep the creature permanently, or,  at least until it changes zones through other means!

Loran of the Third Path - This is a very solid card for the deck.  She comes down and destroys an artifact or enchantment, and then continues to apply board pressure until removed.  Vigilance allows her to dodge The Wandering Emperor exiles and her draw effect can be used in a pinch to try and dig for an answer.  Against control, it pressures the opponent to not end their turn with a full hand otherwise you get a "Free" draw by making them draw to 8 and then having to discard down to 7.  Another strong point with Loran is late game The Eternal Wanderer can be used to blink her every turn for a free disenchant against decks with heavy artifacts/enchantments.  The value of +1 on The Eternal Wanderer and also removing an opponents asset, makes Loran a very solid addition to the team.

Aurelia's Vindicator - This is the card that inspired me to build the deck.  I've always been a fan of the 5-drop lifelinkers, Baneslayer Angel, Lyra Dawnbringer, Boon-Bringer Valkyrie and the like, and Aurelia's Vindicator comes in as a 4 drop with so much value that most decks cannot touch.  Against RDW or an aggro deck, you can just wait to play her out as a T4 4/2 Lifelink Flyer with Ward 2.  At 4cmc that is an amazing stabilizer against an aggressive decklist.  She comes down and even with the explosiveness of the current red decks out there, she is able to chump a temporarily beefed up prowess creature and gain back 4 of the life during combat damage.  Thats usually enough lifegain that red has a difficult time overcoming it and if they can, she's backed by the Boon-Bringer on T5.  Her strongest play if you can manage it, is to Disguise her down and then keep her down as long as you can, building up as much mana as you can until you flip her with W3X.  Her Disguise activate can single handedly remove an opponents entire board or at least the problematic creatures to allow for an overwhelming attack that the opponent usually doesnt see coming.  Against control/counter she can be used to bring back all your countered creatures or creatures that died to Depopulate or whatever spot removal they have.  She can also be used to snatch up creatures from your opponents graveyard at instant speed if they are trying to recur something like an Atraxa.  The more mana you have available, the bigger the play can be when you do flip her up.  

Boon-Bringer Valkyrie - This rounds out the top-end for our creature base.  As I mentioned before, I have always been fond of the 5 drop lifelink angels and Boon-Bringer is a great addition to the team.  5/5 flying, first strike, lifelink for 5 is a kill on sight threat.  Her ability to be able to come down as a 4/4 and give another creature flying, +1/+1 and lifelink, first strike can be game changing too.  Late game when The Eternal Wanderer starts doing work, a solid play is to use Boon-Bringer to boon up a 2/2 double strike token as a 3/3 flying double strike, lifelink - that 6 life can usually make the difference if you're in a close creature race.  

The Eternal Wanderer - This planeswalker is absolute bonkers.  6 cmc, she starts with 5 loyalty and is able to ult as a -4 loyalty and her ultimate is sweet stabilizer, being able to remove all your opponents best creatures via sacrifice so it can get rid of indestructible and/or hexproof threats as well as any go-wide strats like tokens.  Her +1 is also great for removing any problematic 2/2 detectives that your opponent may have lingering around from the Gatekeeper activate early/mid game.  Her +1 ability to blink Loran to repeatedly disenchant, blink farmhand to thin your deck/hit land drops and even blink a Boon-Bringer post combat to "untap" her.  All strategically possible given what situation you may be facing at the time and if you dont need to +1 her, you can always just 0 her to start pumping out an army of 2/2 double strikers.  And no more than 1 creature can attack her each combat which makes it very difficult to get rid of her without using a spot removal card like Get Lost but by the time you drop her, usually this deck has been able to out value the opponent so that when she does hit the board, she just starts winning the game.

Depopulate - This is the first of our two wraths.  Pretty simple strategy, bait your opponent into overcommitting to the board, then wrath their value away.  Fleeting Spirit can dodge our wraths and The Eternal Wanderer can +1 another creature to save them from the wraths.  The 4cmc coupled with our early creatures is enough to stave off most creature based strategies like Dinosaurs or any creature based strategy deck.  The only real downside to this is that if you had to give your opponent a blue/white detective with the elephant, then Depopulate nets them a card draw.  If you want to replace this with No Witnesses, thats fine.  I just happen to have (4) Depopulates and so I used this one instead.  I can see No Witnesses being a fine substitute.  

Sunfall - This is a house wrath.  It exiles all creatures and leaves behind a nice big incubate token that gets bigger for each creature exiled.  This is basically an improved version of Phyrexian Rebirth.  One less mana and its hard exile vs destroy.  We'll gladly take 4 for our deck.

Demolition Field - This is clutch land destruction.  This is needed due to all the manlands in the current standard meta and also works against the new "gods" that exile themselves and flip into lands, like Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal and the others in the cycle.  They are very powerful gods that are easily dispatched with this land destruction.  I found that 4 demolition fields were plenty.  If you wanted you could run like 2 field of ruin if you feel the need to run a few more copies of this card.

Sideboard

One thing I noticed about this meta was how heavy recursion is with Breach the Multiverse, B/G land recursion Aftermath Analyst, Reenact the Crime, etc. and that the main deck is well suited to fend off aggro decks so I dedicated my entire sideboard to graveyard hate and deck neutering. 

The Stone Brain - Yeah, this is insane.  2 mana to cast, 2 mana to activate, you name any card and exile all copies.  The fact they are legendary is irrelevant, it just means you can only play 1 at a time and thats all you really need.  This removes Etali's, Planeswalkers, anything that is your opponents win condition.  This can even hits manlands or whatever you need it to hit.  Game 1 I get as much information about the opponents deck and if they are a control/combo matchup, this just neuters their deck and buys you time.

Soul-Guide Lantern + Lantern of the Lost - these are just 1 mana tormods crypts.  I think Lantern of the Lost is slightly better, but, there have been several times that the 0 mana activate on Soul-Guide Lantern mattered too.  Both are great and come in at 1 cmc.

Soulless Jailer - this is great against black/green lands, breach the multiverse, etali, even the adventure Virtues.  No recurision, no free casts off discover or adventures.  This is a must-remove for recusion based decks but post board with all the hate, this guy is just icing on the cake.  

Thats basically the deck.  Mono white control.  Its an easy budget build in paper and pretty easy on the wildcards in Arena.  I was able to hit Mythic this month with this deck with a 62% win rate.  I think the decks weakest mathchup is probably mill.  There isnt much mill hate in the format right now and the best thing pre-board this deck can do is hope to apply early pressure with the 2 drop and hope to get there before they can mill your deck.  Post board, if you can stick an early Brain, you can hit Jace, the Perfected Mind which slows their mill down quite a bit.

I would be interested in your thoughts on the deck.  Feel free to email me or comment on the deck and let me know how you do with it. 

Thank you for taking the time to check this deck out and reading my write up!

Alifromcairo