While they briefly had their time in the sun after the June bannings, Midrange decks are another casualty of the Vivi Cauldron menace nowadays. Both the Dimir and Golgari variants have fallen off a ton under the Vivi regime, meaning we’re once again in a hyper-fast Standard format. Not to be discouraged, some players are trying out new takes on the archetype at the moment. Earlier this week we saw Abzan Midrange, and yesterday a Mono-White Midrange list showed up in MTG Standard.
This is unusual for a whole host of reasons. Mono-colored Midrange strategies are rare, for one, since they don’t tend to offer the versatility the archetype needs. Mono-White is more often the realm of Aggro decks than Midrange ones. That said, Gamedaiv’s 5-0 League-winning list we’ll be looking at today seems to have found a sweet spot. It’s low to the ground, but with enough grindy potential to play a Midrange game well.
Mono-White Midrange In MTG Standard
Interestingly enough, one of the decks that Mono-White Midrange borrows the most from is Esper Pixie. The deck runs a pair of Nurturing Pixie, which enables a lot of its plays, both aggressive and grindy. Bouncing a Novice Inspector for an extra Clue is great in Midrange games, for example, while resetting a Shardmage’s Rescue gives you another protection spell to use when needed.
Pixie plays wonderfully with all of the deck’s shiny new toys from Edge of Eternities, too. Starfield Shepherd, in particular, is fantastic when you can Warp it out for two then return it to your hand. This gives you multiple one-drop tutors, or even just fetches a Plains if you’re mana screwed. This deck is actually referred to as ‘Mono-White Shepherd’ on MTG Decks, and it’s easy to see why.
Beyond Shepherd, Cosmogrand Zenith is another banger of a new card. Mono-White Midrange is capable of building a reasonably wide board, and Zenith makes that into a serious problem. It can also build said board itself, with that token ability. This is probably the most explosive card in the deck, and the one that will close out games for you most often.
Seam Rip is more subtle, but it may actually be more important for the deck overall. Exiling any nonland permanent that costs two or less gives you an answer to both Agatha’s Soul Cauldron and Proft’s Eidetic Memory. It also lets you shut down Cauldron’s powerful early creatures, like Marauding Mako. With Pixie, you can even do the latter then switch to the former later, as the game progresses.
Sweet ‘N Low
Edge of Eternities gives Mono-White Midrange a lot of its punch, but its foundation is built with classic MTG Standard cards. Between Enduring Innocence and Splitskin Doll, there’s a bit of a ‘low power matters’ theme going on here. Both reward you with card advantage for playing and sticking small creatures. Both also play quite nicely with Pixie, since they do so when your creatures enter. Ultimately, these cards are what push this deck into Midrange territory.
The other big Midrange piece in the deck is Elspeth, Storm Slayer. This is a total Swiss Army Knife in Mono-White. It helps you build a board with that +1, while supporting your advantage engines in the process. It can also leverage a wide board with the 0, helping you close things out even more effectively than Cosmogrand Zenith. The -3 even has a lot of utility right now, chiefly as a way to kill Vivi before it gets out of hand.
Elspeth’s token-doubling passive also does a lot of work in Gamedaiv’s list. You can get two Clues per Novice Inspector entry, and four Soldiers from Cosmogrand Zenith’s ability. You can also get four instant attackers from Voice of Victory, sneakily one of the best cards in the deck. Being a low-power creature that makes low-power tokens is enough here, but the pseudo-Grand Abolisher effect can mess up your opponent’s lines, too. Rather than hold up interaction for your turn, your opponents will now have to commit to plays on their own.
Throw in some solid removal in Get Lost and Static Snare, and a few Fountainports to lean into the token theme, and that’s Mono-White Midrange. It takes elements from both Esper Pixie and Mono-White Token Control, resulting in an aggressive deck with plenty of grindy potential.
Simple But Effective?
The big question for Mono-White Midrange is the same as it is for every deck in MTG Standard right now: can it beat Vivi Cauldron? The deck is easily over 30% of the meta right now, after all. If Cauldron is a bad matchup, then Mono-White Midrange is a bad deck.
On the positive side, Mono-White Midrange certainly has answers for what Cauldron is doing. Seam Rip gets Cauldron itself out of the mix for cheap, which is a huge deal. It also deals with Proft’s Eidetic Memory, thus hampering the ‘fair’ side of Cauldron, too. Cathar Commando can also come in out of the sideboard to give you another out to both of those cards. Dealing with Vivi itself is much trickier for the deck, but as long as Cauldron isn’t on the board you can just use Get Lost and not worry about it sitting in the graveyard.
Mono-White Midrange’s go-wide nature also matches up quite nicely against Vivi Cauldron. All of its threats, outside of Steamcore Scholar, are ground-based. As long as you have chump blockers, which the deck can produce in ample numbers, then you can hold off scaling Vivis and Marauding Makos even after a big pop-off turn.
So far so good, but the real problem here is one of efficiency. Vivi Cauldron is capable of playing a much higher-value game than Mono-White early, and it has a higher ceiling for shenanigans too. Even if you can answer the titular duo, the rest of the deck works just fine as-is. Ultimately, as interesting as the deck is, it’s unlikely to save Standard from its current predicament.
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