Spirit BondsSpirit Bonds | Art by Willian Murai

As Magic players, we've all been there: the aristocrats player waits for the perfect moment to unleash a long string of sacrifice effects that ends the game. On one hand, it's impressive to watch; it feels like a complex puzzle being assembled before your eyes. On the other hand, it can feel like an unsatisfying way to lose, essentially having your game plan amount to nothing.

Whatever your feelings may be on aristocrats, there's no denying their popularity within Magic, especially in Commander. According to EDHREC data, there are over 100 thousand aristocrat decks in their database. This huge amount of popularity means that there are only six deck "themes" or strategies that are more popular than it on EDHREC.

Most aristocrat decks are heavily associated with the color black, as it provides the most support for both sacrifice outlets and cards that benefit from creatures dying. However, there are plenty of great aristocrat cards outside of black, and this mini-series of articles covers the best options for aristocrat players in every color!

We began this series over on Commander's Herald with green, and will be continuing our "mini-series" here with white.

This list is in no particular order, but the first card is an absolute heater...

Martyr's CauseMartyr's Cause

Martyr's Cause is a rare sacrifice outlet in white that covers two critical categories for any aristocrat deck: protection, and free sacrifice outlet. By "free," I mean that it doesn't cost any mana to sacrifice creatures, and the difference between having to use mana vs. not is pretty huge. The "protection" piece comes in the form of protecting our life total; we're playing aristocrats, so there's no denying that we will be attacked. This card allows us to blank potentially lethal attacks, and aristocrat decks often only need to survive one or two combat steps before being able to go off.

Fanatical DevotionFanatical Devotion

Fanatical Devotion is another "free" white sacrifice outlet, which is amazing, but it also provides aristocrat decks with a rare opportunity: regeneration. Regenerate is not a mechanic that's seen too often anymore, but that's no reason to underrate it.

If you're unfamiliar with how regeneration works, it's pretty simple. Whenever a creature is destroyed (either from a "destroy" effect or from damage), you may activate the regenerate ability (in this case, sacrificing a creature), tap the creature, and remove it from combat (if it's in combat). When you do this, the damage is removed and the creature is not destroyed. This can save some critical creatures in response to spot removal or a board wipe, and that's what makes this card so good.

Aristocrat decks often have several expendable creatures, so sacrificing something expendable for the good of protecting something more important is a price we're willing to pay.

Knight-Captain of EosKnight-Captain of Eos

Like our first two picks, this is another sacrifice outlet, but a little more specific. It does two things that we want: it generates disposable bodies when it enters, and it gives us a sacrifice outlet that can protect our life total. Sure, we need to sacrifice Soldiers, but this creature makes Soldiers when it enters and Soldiers are one of the most common creature types in white.

Martyred RusalkaMartyred Rusalka

This card might seem innocuous, but it can prevent an opponent's biggest threat from attacking us. It's the perfect political piece, as we can threaten to activate it if an opponent is aiming to attack us. The mana cost on any sacrifice ability can be tricky, but holding up one white mana can telegraph this and things like Swords to PlowsharesSwords to Plowshares or Path to ExilePath to Exile.

Promise of BunreiPromise of Bunrei

This card can act as a three-mana spell that creates four disposable bodies for our strategy, and that's amazing. The only tricky part about it is that we can't choose exactly when to trigger it; we have to sacrifice it as soon as one of our creatures die. We should have enough sacrifice outlets where this shouldn't be a problem, but it's important to keep in mind.

Promise of TomorrowPromise of Tomorrow

There is no other card that can be riskier to our strategy than this one. Exiling our creatures is not a "may" trigger, so any reanimation effects are effectively turned off while this is in play.

The floor of this card might be low, but the ceiling is incredibly high. If we have a sacrifice outlet onboard, we can sacrifice our creatures to trigger this whenever we need. On the plus side, this card is crazy against board wipes, as it basically renders any effort from our opponents to deal with our board null and void (outside of FarewellFarewell).

One thing to keep in mind with this: it does not take away any death triggers you may have, as the creatures become exiled after they die - which is so cool!

Spirit BondsSpirit Bonds

This card creates tokens from our nontoken creatures entering the battlefield, for the small price of . While that ability is pretty good, we're going to focus primarily on the second ability: making a non-Spirit indestructible. Similarly to Knight-Captain of Eos, this relies on a specific creature type, but also like Knight-Captain of Eos, this card creates the creature type we need.

It turns out, protecting our important pieces is very good!

Worthy CauseWorthy Cause

This is a single-use sacrifice spell that gains us life equal to the sacrificed creature's toughness. Instead of seeing this as a one-mana spell, I advise you to see it as a three-mana spell, as we'll want to use the buyback ability. Always having a three-mana, instant-speed way to keep us alive is huge. Remember when I said we'll probably be getting attacked a lot?

Anafenza, Unyielding LineageAnafenza, Unyielding Lineage

This card just came out in Tarkir: Dragonstorm, but it's incredible for aristocrat decks. Endures 2 means that we can put two +1/+1 counter on Anafenza or we can create a 2/2 Spirit. Getting Anafenza big doesn't really do anything, as she doesn't have evasion, but the ability to create more expendable creatures is why I'm talking about this card. Our creatures will die, and if we can benefit by creating more creatures in the process, we're in a winning position.

Loyal RetainersLoyal Retainers

I tried to stay away from creatures with single-use sacrifice abilities, but this one is just too strong. Not only can it generate infinite combos (this is Gerrard, Weatherlight HeroGerrard, Weatherlight Hero's best friend), but it can also bring back our commander in a pinch. Depending on the commander, this may not matter, but it's likely that our commander will be a magnet for removal, and rather than casting it for 10 or more mana, we can just return it with this ability!

Outside of "protecting" our commander or going infinite, the game is flooded with great legendary creatures these days, and that makes this card the perfect reanimation option for any white deck (especially if it lacks black!).

That concludes my list for the color white. I hope all you aristocrat players out there learned something new today. Stay tuned for my exploration into the remaining colors, all while saving the best (black) for last!