General Giving White things to do

[Dom Harvey]

So it was said in another thread that white is the hardest colour to fashion a distinct identity for, and I think most of us agree. Nothing I've tried has worked, so I've had to resort to doubling up on white' strongest cards and just riding them rather than playing off white's strengths as a colour. Any ideas?

 

[FlowerSunRain]

I was talking to a friend of mine about this very issue and we agreed that white's identity basically amounts to anthem aggro and "cards that are pretty ridiculous individually, but don't really have any particular synergy with the rest of the color."

 

[Jason Waddell]

Not sure if it helps, but...
http://riptidelab.com/cube-academy/color-identity-white/

 

[CML]

i don't mind having white do a little of everything. this means it matches well with every other color and has a lot of fun gold cards that people will fight over, but not too much.

 

[Dom Harvey]

That link confirmed what I thought tbh: white has good creatures, good removal, not much interesting

 

[Lucre]

This is a tough one. White seems to be kinda savanty. Like you get these bursts of real high density quality. But it has no idea how to engineer any profitable state for itself (I guess duh guys + anthem etc kinda works) and the cards quality often is kinda situational (wraths are poor with guys, swords is mediocre with nothing to spend your saved mana on or when it could just be any topdecked removal spell, white creatures tend to have specific windows where they are above the curve or phasing that makes them exciting) and many of your white cards don't understand each other at all.

But the sorta wonkiness adds a bit of interest of its own. I like cards that unlock for decks and I like what the threat of not playing them to their fullest does to a deck / draft / preconception. I also like really high impact or bang for buck type spells because I know everyone can't be blue and it's nice to see some serious spikes in some decks to validate the dumb (potentially not blue) thing they were doing and add a little bit to the value of your average draw.

Umm I think I've lost my direction here but white is a really inneresting subject to me and I'm glad other people are thunked about it.

 

[Eric Chan]

I don't know what any of you guys are talking about. White has guys that turn sideways and attack for two. Sometimes you give them all a buff, and then they attack for three.

What more could you ask for? #teamweenie

 

[CML]

when we critique formats for staleness of gameplay we always come back to "not enough activated abilities" or "sparseness of decision." so throw in some tutors and stuff with ":" in rules text and see what happens

 

[Jason Waddell]

I don't know how relevant it is, but one time we ran through dealing sample packs and a disproportionate number of P1P1 picks put players into white. We have drafts where 5-6 players are in white, all just dipping in for what they need. I'm actually pretty okay with that, and have never considered this to be a "problem".

 

[FlowerSunRain]

I'm with you. I've "given up" on trying to fix this because its not really a "problem" so much as it is disappointingly untapped design space. White is the color of small dudes, anthems and randomly awesome stuff. Its not the ideal, but it works. We'll see where we are in 3-5 years of new sets.

 

[DreamPaint]

So I've been pretty unhappy with my white section lately. The white weenie decks are good when they come together, but they can be difficult to assemble and there isn't much incentive to go into that archetype. On top of that a lot of white creatures only go into that sort of weenie aggressive deck and are pretty linear as a whole. So last night I decided I am going to push the tokens theme in white. It's an amazing part of white's identity and I want to exploit it. In order to achieve this, I am going to break singleton like I did with black. I must say, redesigning black with the gravecrawler theme made cubing much more fun and interesting, not to mention it actually made black do something proactive and powerful that wasn't broken (turn two Griselbrand/Elesh Narn ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ sup son?). So i'm thinking of going up to 4x Spectral, 2x Windbrisk, 2x Cloudgoat, 2/3? Lingering Souls (might be pushed, I know), 2x Honor of the Pure, and then delving into some battalion cards like Boros Elite and Frontline Medic or w/e. Thoughts?

 

[Jonas]

If you want to push the tokens, you could always go for intangible virtue instead, and open up for the tokens in other colors. Have you thought about Geist-Honored Monk?

 

[Lucre]

• Make it play more nicely with another colour.
• I've been totes impressed with some of the human crap in Erik's cube. Timing decisions are sweet and reminds me of the complicated soldiers tribal deck I used to play.
• Remove all aggro elements from white and make it have to be a really awkward midrange or control element that requires playing it's impact spells at opportune moments to work. I always feel like those decks make me plan the hardest.

White cards make a big splash, it's kinda hard to get a lot of nuanced decisions out of them because white doesn't give you much of a way to interact with your availability of options. It does however pose hard questions of how you are willing to use your splashy dumb effects. Make it harder for your white players.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I worry about something like Spectral. Mainly from an aspect of creating competing demand and lots of variants on the archetype. Would the deck look pretty identical from draft to draft? It is an interesting idea that I've never thought about before, but I'm not really visualizing an environment, just a deck.

 

[Eric Chan]

Yeah, like Jason, I'm a bit wary of pushing the tokens theme too hard. From a development standpoint, if you're not careful with the knobs you're adjusting, tokens gets out of hand very quickly, and goes from a fun subtheme to oppressive archetype. In particular, if you support red-based aggro, watch out for the impact of multiple Spectral Processions and Lingering Souls on red's ability to attack with small creatures. At the very least, you might want to put in some specialized answers to the flood of tokens you're introducing, whether that means more Forked Bolts or Electrickerys.

 

[Jonas]

I've spread my token theme over Naya, and there's a sprinkling of it in black, with reanimation strategies for extra value end the flashback on Lingering Souls. Seeing as how the army in a can dudes are highly sought after in a lot of decks and archetypes in general, due to their all-round board impact and general awesomeness, no-one has actually been able to draft a really oppressive token deck so far, but tokens have been part of quite a few strategies. The largest danger I see with tokens is along with cards like Purphorous and things like Pandemonium, since if the token based decks are able to assemble that, it is a ridiculous amount of damage for little to no work.
Spreading the cards in that way has ensured that you will always have to fight for them in a draft, but there will be a large reward if you can get it together

I have thought about putting in echoing truth as a defense against token strategies, and I already have maelstrom pulse in. Seeing as how there are a lot of different tokens, humans, soldiers, kithkins, etc, it doesn't feel like it would be too oppressive.

 

[CML]

So I've been pretty unhappy with my white section lately. The white weenie decks are good when they come together, but they can be difficult to assemble and there isn't much incentive to go into that archetype. On top of that a lot of white creatures only go into that sort of weenie aggressive deck and are pretty linear as a whole. So last night I decided I am going to push the tokens theme in white. It's an amazing part of white's identity and I want to exploit it. In order to achieve this, I am going to break singleton like I did with black. I must say, redesigning black with the gravecrawler theme made cubing much more fun and interesting, not to mention it actually made black do something proactive and powerful that wasn't broken (turn two Griselbrand/Elesh Narn ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ sup son?). So i'm thinking of going up to 4x Spectral, 2x Windbrisk, 2x Cloudgoat, 2/3? Lingering Souls (might be pushed, I know), 2x Honor of the Pure, and then delving into some battalion cards like Boros Elite and Frontline Medic or w/e. Thoughts?

don't think you need to push the token cards, they're really powerful on their own and pushing a WWW card is going into poison principle territory. just make multicolor aggro more of a thing and then the little white dudes will go into more decks

--HOWEVER-- i too am having issues with designing white aggro. the human theme is incredibly fun and you have to run it. (Xathrid Necromancer, Mayor of Avabruck, maybe a second Champion of the Parish)

 

[Jason Waddell]

Human tribal thread? Sell me on it people.

 

[DreamPaint]

The problem is I already have a mild humans theme (1x Champion, 1x Necromancer, and then max humans in white and a few in other colors) and I dabbled with playing 4x Champion and I liked it less than just playing Savannah Lions/Elite Vanguard/etc. since there were so many times I would draw a Champion and wish it had 2 power later in the game. I think if there were more Humans matters cards in white I would attempt Human tribal again, but I think for now i'm going to test this token strategy and see how it works out.

On a side note, multicolor aggro is a thing in my cube, but our group values fixing abnormally high so getting a good 3+ color aggro deck to function properly can be pretty challenging when all your fetches and duals are getting sniped. But actually this bring me to another question I would like to pose to you guys. I was also thinking about adding in a Zoologist and when you draft him you receive a Loam Lion, Kird Ape, and Wild Nacatl. What i've seen in my cube is that when someone wants one of these cards they want all of them, and most often nobody wants any of them. So in order to buff the Zoo deck so that they can prioritize picks on critical cards like Fetches/Duals/Shocks instead of spending 3 picks on cards that nobody else wants anyways, why not just give them a slick 3 for 1 pick? Thoughts on this?

 

[CML]

human tribal isn't even a thing that you need to support, you throw however many champion of the parish, mayor of avabruck, xathrid necromancer, gather the townsfolk (probably 1 of each) and then forget about it. i'd argue that going out of your way to support it would make it actively stupid as cards like captain of the mists and even increasing devotion are uninspiring, though devout chaplain and deranged outcast are a little interesting.

innistrad's biggest success was the light touch with tribal and if we are celebrating mtg's finest design principles here then i want to follow that example.

really though just put those four cards in and they'll be a little "draft-around" but mainly just good. an extra bonus is you can get that fucker with mikaeus, the unhallowed or stromkirk noble

 

[Eric Chan]

Yeah, I was about to type up an intro for a new thread on human tribal, when I realized that it's really just about adding those three key cards across //, and then optionally a Gather the Townsfolk for kicks. Most people already run a metric crapton of humans without even trying, and stuff like Ranger of Eos and Falkenrath Aristocrat, which are quite strong as is, get ever so marginally better.

I think I had two Champions to start, and then somebody in my playgroup said they wanted more, so I said what the heck have all four. People seem to be really enjoying the theme, so I'll leave it at that number until I hear complaints or I personally get sick of being clobbered to death by 4/4 one drops.

 

[CML]

be careful champ is pretty fucking good

 

[Jason Waddell]

Maybe I'm just not seeing it, but playing a one-drop that needs help to become Isamaru feels like bad times. It's something I've never tried though, and I don't think I'm going to get an educated opinion here by doing anything short of flying to Toronto.

 

[Jonas]

Just doing a quick check in my cube, I have, at the moment, 36 humans, so sure, he can fizzle, and the humans are all good, so there will always be competition about them, but most of the time he will end up at least as a 2/2 or 3/3, no?

 

[CML]

as a one-drop in the humans decks of standard formats of yesteryear, he was really tough to beat -- it wasn't too uncommon for him to quickly grow out of burn range on turns 2-3, then finish the game as a 5/5 or 6/6. now cube doesn't have that density of humans but champ is still nuts, again it's barely any work that he needs (he grows for 0 mana, which is an enormous boon) as the human theme also fits seamlessly into decks and not just cubes, while giving a small reward for drafting some more humans