Anafenza, Unyielding LineageAnafenza, Unyielding Lineage | art by Matt Stewart 

Enduring Stupidity

The week before last on The Monolith we talked about building hybrid mana commanders as though they were just one color which lead to some pretty fun out of pie actions as we made a mono green Aristocrats deck with Hogaak, Arisen NecropolisHogaak, Arisen Necropolis.

I've always loved building Commander decks that try to perform the typical archetypes of one color, without that color present. And a non-black Aristocrats deck provides a lot of fun challenge as so many of the best payoffs for sacrificing your own creatures of course exist in black.

Now this week I had designs to do something very different, we were going to take a look at one of the new monocolored legends from Tarkir: Dragonstorm. And that's when I saw AnafenzaAnafenza:

"Wow" I said, "That seems like a great legend to lead a mono white Aristocrats deck!". But surely that's already pretty played out, and we just made one in mono-green anyway.

As white is the go to color pairing for black when building an Aristocrats deck, I could only assume it would be one of the more popular choices for sacking your own creatures off outside of black.

But no, there's even less mono-white Aristocrats decks registered here on EDHREC.com than there are mono green ones! Turns out I was playing it safe.

So let's break that color pie once again and build around what looks to be a very fun new commander from the brand new set.

The Spirit of the Deck

First of all, let's take a look at AnafenzaAnafenza herself. I'll even embed the card a second time for easy reading, because I'm nice like that. Tell you what, we'll use the alternate art.

Our new commander is a three mana, white, Spirit Soldier with Flash and First Strike. She's a 2/2. Or at least she is when she enters the battlefield, because the most important thing about Anafenza is her third line of rules text.

It reads, "Whenever another nontoken creature you control dies, Anafenza endures 2". Endure X is a brand new triggered keyword which allows you to either place X counters on the creature who triggered it, or to create an X/X Spirit creature token.

Anafenza is going to act as our main payoff for sacking our own creatures. She can reward us in one of two ways, by flooding the board with 2/2 tokens or buffing herself up to try and swing in for lethal commander damage.

The Secret to Mono White Aristocrats

One of the trickiest things about building an Aristocrats deck is selecting your sacrifice outlets. It's also a good reason that a lot of Aristocrat decks need black in the color identity to function.

Black does have the best pay offs for letting one of your own creatures die, sure. But they also have a glut of good sac outlets they can field as well. Often they'll be filled with creatures that not only allow you to sacrifice your stuff, but also give you a payoff in return. All stapled onto the same card.

Now any color has access to the big three above, all powerful options that pretty much any self sacrifice deck that can afford them will probably run. And we're likely to put them into our list as well!

But the special secret sauce that white brings to the table that I think seems under discussed when building these decks, is that mono white creatures can often sacrifice themselves.

Introducing Selfless SaviorSelfless Savior, the reason for shed tears of players everywhere and the archetype for the sort of creatures we'll be running in this deck.

At instant speed, without any extra costs, cards like this can sacrifice themselves to protect your important board pieces.

They're not just for protection, either! There's also plenty of variants that can be used offensively, like Bounty AgentBounty Agent which can take out an enemy commander or Remorseful ClericRemorseful Cleric that can hate on graveyard strategies.

By running a big batch of these creatures in our deck we can ensure that there's always a way for us to sacrifice for value whenever we need. And pretty much always at instant speed with no additional costs.

With a payoff sitting in our command zone, we can start buffing her up or pumping out tokens immediately on turn three.

To Endure or to Endure, That is the Question

What's interesting about Anafenza as a commander is that her ability is modal, meaning we have three options to take when building her. We can make a load of tokens. We can make Anafenza very big. Or we can have a little of column A and a little of column B.

If you're building this deck yourself, you'll need to decide on what your wincon is. It could be a pretty standard go wide deck, turning your saviors into Spirits and overrunning your opponents.

Or it could play a little bit more like a Voltron deck. One giant commander swinging into your opponents surrounded by bodyguards.

There's definitely a deck in here that can do both, and one of the nice things about our commander's modal ability is that it should be pretty easy to switch lanes immediately depending on the cards that come out of the deck or the ways in which our opponents are defending against us.

But let's look at each of these builds individually, starting off with the more simple strategy of going wide.

Spirited Slugging

In all likelihood you know how to go wide by now. Especially in mono white. We've got a lot of creatures that are going to destroy themselves for our cause and return from the grave to fight for us as Spirit tokens.

But swapping a 1/1 for a 2/2 isn't exactly game breaking. We'll likely want to provide some support for our commander's ability through token doubling using cards like Annointed Procession and Mondrak.

There's plenty of cards that will reward you for making tokens in white. Bennie Bracks, ZoologistBennie Bracks, Zoologist is a pretty popular commander for token focused decks, and because of your cards' ability to sacrifice themselves at instant speed you could very easily be drawing a card on every players' end step with a big enough board.

You could also play classics like Mentor of the MeekMentor of the Meek or the more recent Enduring InnocenceEnduring Innocence which has the benefit of also providing a risk free sacrifice fodder. A truly sacrificial lamb.

If we are going wide then we're going to need some board wide buffs to push us over the finish line before enduring a game ending board wipe. Wilds of Eldraine provided us with one of the best mono-white token deck finishers ever printed not too long ago in Moonshaker CavalryMoonshaker Cavalry. You'll give all your creatures flying and buff them equal to your board size with some of the prettiest art in the set.

A Sneaky Infinite Combo

Another option for buffing up your board for the final swing is to play the old classic, Cathars' CrusadeCathars' Crusade. It's far more annoying than cards like Banner of KinshipBanner of Kinship as you have to manually track loads of differently sized piles of +1/+1 counters which can be a real headache in token spamming decks.

However, with the ability to immediately put a +1/+1 counter on any of our creatures that enter the battlefield will unlock a spicy little combo with one of the easiest keywords to break in the game's history, Persist.

There's only two creatures I could find in mono-white that Persist. If you're not familiar with the keyword, it basically reanimates a creature that dies. They come back with a -1/-1 counter on them, and it only triggers if they don't already have one of those counters. In theory this means it should only trigger once.

But when a creature has both a -1/-1 counter and a +1/+1 counter on them, they cancel each other out. Which means our creature can Persist all over again.

With one of our two Persist creatures out, Cathars' Crusade, and a free sacrifice outlet like Ashnod's AltarAshnod's Altar, this creature can be infinitely sacrificed. Every time we do so we'll get another trigger from our commander and if we choose to make a Spirit our board will grow bigger and bigger from all the counters Cathar's Crusade gives us.

We can even do this on our opponent's end step so that on our turn we can swing out with an infinitely wide, infinitely large board. Nasty!

Protect Your Protectors

If we're going wide then we definitely need to factor in some protection for our board. We're already running creatures that want to sacrifice themselves, and there's a few in white that will not only protect one target, but can make your entire board indestructible. Make sure to include these if this is your chosen strategy!

Outside of that, most cards in your deck will be able to provide single target protection for your key board pieces. Especially your commander, which we'll talk about next.

Spirited Slaying

Now making tokens is all well and good. You'll probably want to make at least a few of them regardless of how you build this deck. That way you've got chump blockers and can easily trigger white card draw. But there's an alternative way of building Anafenza that I think is far cooler, and much funnier.

And that's as a Voltron deck. As we know, we can make Anafenza pretty large, pretty easily in this deck. She starts off as a 2/2 but every time one of our creatures dies, she gets two +1/+1 counters.

So in theory, if ten of our creatures die before Anafenza does, she can deal lethal commander damage. The only problem is, she doesn't have any evasion attached to her other than first strike.

Which does make it harder to block and kill her, but won't guarantee we can make it through another player's blockers to deal our lethal damage. Except, that's not true is it? Quite a few of our creatures, when sacrificed, give a target creature protection. Which can make her... unblockable.

Imagine someone is swinging at you with a potentially lethal commander. They just cracked a Cliffside Rescuer and now they have protection from everything you control.

On top of that, if you'd like to respond to the trigger, they have about five different other protectors on board that can also foil your kill spells or provide further protection. What exactly do you do about that?

Well, that's our plan! By assembling enough of these Selfless Savior style effects we can not only make a commander that's near impossible to deal with, but also one that gets bigger every time we activate one of our countermeasures.

Rinse and Repeat

The main problem with this tactic is that it can end up being a bit of a one trick pony. If you swing into an opponent with your unblockable commander and sack all your bodyguards to get them up to 22 power, killing your target... now what?

You've run out of protection and your opponents can just murder your commander, setting us back to step one of the plan.

For that reason we need some to make sure we can cycle our protectors to ensure that we don't leave ourselves high and dry. Not to mention that it would be great to use that Rescuer more than once to ensure we can't be blocked when we next attack.

We should also look for extra value from our sacrifices in true Aristocrats style so that we can set up another turn with a similar board state.

Luminous BroodmothLuminous Broodmoth is one of my favorite mono white cards, and I've attached a lot of fond memories to it. It also serves as a perfect card to recycle our bodyguards, giving us an extra activation with them.

Martyr's BondMartyr's Bond will force our opponents to sacrifice their own creatures when we do the same, making it easier for us to swing in without using up our protection. Field of SoulsField of Souls on the other hand will ensure we have something to block with after we've effectively just board wiped ourselves.

Can Our Opponents Endure?

It's certainly a deck that requires a lot of moving parts to play well. Which is probably why I love the idea so much. It's playing white out of its color pie, whilst also playing an archetype in a way it's not normally approached.

What do you reckon, could it actually win games? Will our wall of dogs be enough to protect us and see us to victory? Or will the only thing we'll actually endure be an early death and a night of spectating?

Let me know what you think in the comments and tell me if I'm missing any vital pieces that you think could get this strategy over the line. And most importantly, get out there and build some monocolored decks for your next commander night. Until then though, have fun enduring and I'll see you next week.