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Much Abrew: Five-Color Mono-White Aggro (Modern, Magic Online)


Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. Last week during our Instant Deck Techs, our Fishbowl Thursday option—Five-Color Mono-White Aggro—was most popular (by a significant margin). As such, we're heading to Modern today to see if being both five-color and mono-white (all while on a budget) is actually a competitive plan for the format. The basic idea of the deck is to use a bunch of a hybrid white creatures to make a ton of 1/1 tokens with the help of Hero of Precinct One and then pump the team with Honor of the Pure and Wilt-Leaf Liege to hopefully force through enough damage to close out the game. Is it possible that a budget-friendly deck that's both five-color and mono-white can work in Modern? Let's get to the video and find out; then, we can talk more about the deck!

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Much Abrew: Five-Color Mono-White Aggro (Modern)

 

Discussion

  • As for our record, we played a league with the deck and finished 2-3, which isn't an exciting record, but I was pretty happy with our results in general. Heading into our matches, I was afraid we'd go 1-4 or worse.
  • While you probably noticed during the videos, we did make a few small changes to the deck based on feedback to the Instant Deck Tech. The biggest one is playing Honor of the Pure over Glass of the Guildpact. While the term "strictly better" gets thrown around way too often, in the context of Five-Color Mono-White Aggro, the enchantment is strictly better for the deck, since it not only pumps all of our hybrid creatures but Hero of Precinct One and the tokens it makes as well. Plus, generally speaking, enchantments are harder to kill in Modern than artifacts.
  • Let's start with the good news: Five-Color Mono-White Aggro is pretty good as a white weenie-style deck for Modern. The combination of efficient creatures and plenty of ways to pump them gives us a chance to just overwhelm opponents with fast starts.
  • Hero of Precinct One is great in the deck, although opponents seem to be aware of its power because it tends to die often and quickly (much like Young Pyromancer), but if it manages to stick on the battlefield for just a couple of turns, we can get enough value that it's more than worth the two mana it cost.
  • We also get some weird but somewhat random value from the other creatures in our deck. While matchup dependent, cards like Dryad Militant (against Faithless Looting decks) and Boros Reckoner (against midrange creature decks) can be really good in the right matchups.
  • On the other hand, there is some bad news as well. For one thing, our reliance on all hybrid creatures does limit the power of our deck, to some extent. While none of our cards are truly bad, many are slightly less powerful than other non-hybrid options in the format.
  • Another issue is that a lot of our cards are matchup dependent. While Boros Reckoner is great against creature decks, it's pretty bad against control and combo decks, and that's true of a lot of our cards.
  • Most importantly, Five-Color Mono-White Aggro suffers from the fact that generally speaking, white weenie decks struggle in Modern. They fall into this weird spot where, while they are fast, they aren't quite fast enough to keep up with the most aggressive decks in the format, and while they can be disruptive, they aren't disruptive enough to really fight through control and combo. This probably isn't unique to our deck. Pretty much all white weenie decks have similar problems in Modern, and there isn't a really great solution.
  • Oh yeah, the multicolor removal spells were really bad. While making a 1/1 if we happen to have a Hero of Precinct One is a nice upside of Response // Resurgence, in practice, that doesn't happen all that often, certainly not often enough to make up for the downside of Response // Resurgence compared to something like Path to Exile. Needing a creature to be attacking or blocking is oddly punishing in some matchups, such as against Storm, where we couldn't get a Goblin Electromancer or Baral, Chief of Compliance off the table.
  • While it would make the deck more expensive, one interesting possibility (although it would diminish the meme aspect of the deck) is to not really be mono-white. Hero of Precinct One is good enough to see play in Modern, and a more dedicated two- or three-color deck could have some real potential. A straight GW Stompy list would take advantage of Loxodon Smiter, Watchwolf, Kitchen Finks, and Wilt-Leaf Liege, while going three colors into Naya also has potential. Another option is to embrace the power of Hero of Precinct One with Burning-Tree Emissary and play some sort of multicolor 8 Whack deck. Hands with Hero of Precinct One, multiple Burning-Tree Emissary, and a Goblin Bushwhacker or Reckless Bushwhacker seem like a pretty good way to kill opponents on Turn 3, even in Modern.
  • If the goal is to improve Five-Color Mono-White Aggro, perhaps the best option is to become slightly less five-color. Cards like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Path to Exile are really strong and help in some of the deck's worst matchups, and it's possible that we don't need every single card in our deck to be multicolor to make Hero of Precinct One good.
  • So, should you play Five-Color Mono-White Aggro in Modern? I think the answer is yes, but as a fun, meme-heavy budget deck. While the deck is good enough to win some matches and can probably be improved with a few changes, it's more of a fun FNM-level budget deck than something that's going to win a Grand Prix or 5-0 a league on Magic Online. It does have one of the best names in the format though, and having an excuse to tell people you're playing "five-color mono-white" is worth something.

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. Don't forget to vote for next week's deck by liking, commenting on, and subscribing to Instant Deck Tech videos. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.



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