Foxy
- Aug 14, 2021
- 9 min read

Mono-White Golos

By Jeremy Rose

“The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” – Orson Welles

I have found that, the more I play Commander and build Commander decks, the harder it is for me to find a deck I want to actually play or build. Like most Commander players, I have my few decks that I just keep around forever and never get tired of playing. But I also find deckbuilding to be one of the coolest and most fun parts of playing Magic. That sometimes means that I find myself wanting to build a deck but struggling to find one that is exciting enough or interesting enough to actually make the time and monetary investment to build.

I wanted to find a way to build a deck, even if I’ve already played a similar strategy or archetype before, in a way that would break the monotony I was feeling. My solution was to build a deck with a specific stipulation and restriction on it to try and find fun ways to push the limits of my deckbuilding skills. Thus, my “Mono-White” Golos deck was born. The strategy with this deck is a flicker/blink strategy similar to a Brago, King Eternal or Roon of the Hidden Realm deck, but with a unique stipulation.

Golos is the commander, which gives me access to all five colors, but the rule for this deck is that I can only pay white mana to cast spells in my deck. I can use mana of any color to activate abilities, mostly Golos’ ability, but any spell I cast can only be paid for with white mana, or Golos’ ability. This is one of my favorite decks I’ve ever built, and I hope you’ll go on this journey with me as I explain some of it.

“Mono-White”

So, here’s the thing: if we’re talking strictly mono-white as it pertains to the color identity rules of Commander, this deck doesn’t quite fit the bill. This list includes hybrid mana symbols in a few mana costs and even runs Phyrexian Metamorph. To fit the stipulation, I can only pay white mana for the hybrid symbols, and I can only ever pay the two life for Metamorph, never the blue mana. It bends the term mono-white a bit, but because Golos’ color identity is all five colors, it doesn’t actually break any Commander rules.

Ramp and Card Draw

One of the most lamented aspects of mono-white in Commander is its lack of ramp and card draw. I am a huge fan of white as part of the color pie and I do sometimes think it doesn’t get a fair reputation because it’s not quite as good at those two things as other colors. This deck aims to tackle the problem of white’s low density of ramp and card draw by protecting and flickering the permanents that provide those advantages to repeatedly accrue value.

Ramp is pretty standard as far as Commander decks go because we’re running Sol Ring and Mana Crypt if you happen to have one. If you don’t have a Mana Crypt, have no fear, there are plenty of other mana rocks out there and it is by no means necessary for the deck to function, it’s just efficient. Smothering Tithe has been an auto-include in white decks since it was printed, and this deck is no exception. I’m also trying out the new Archaeomancer’s Map and Monologue Tax, though I’m not quite sure on how long they’ll stick around in the deck list.

I’ve also included Gilded Lotus in this list despite the fact that it’s bit more expensive than I’d like. It does provide access to colors needed for Golos’ ability and hitting a Gilded Lotus off of a Golos activation feels really great. Despite this deck trying its darndest to be mono-white, Arcane Signet and Commander’s Sphere are actually five-color rocks and can help fix your colors for activated abilities. Chromatic Lantern is another five-color rock, but also provides fixing for all of the lands in the deck too. This makes spinning the Golos wheel super easy and helps us reliably hit all the colors we need.

There aren’t many ramp creatures in white, but I have included a couple. Knight of the White Orchid is pretty bad once Golos is out because it is unlikely that I have less lands than other players, but that’s not a bad problem to have in a mono-white deck and it’s great for some early game advantage. Kor Cartographer is white’s version of Wood Elves. Of course it’s worse. But it is still a great flicker target and can provide value all game long especially when searching up nonbasic Plains cards like our Triomes.

White card draw creatures like the new Priest of Ancient Lore or the not-as-new Wall of Omens are excellent flicker targets to keep drawing cards throughout the game. Early game card draw is taken care of by Esper Sentinel, which I have found to draw me more cards than I ever thought it would. Thraben Inspector is another great flicker target and while its card draw is significantly slower, the Clue tokens it creates will still get the job done in a pinch.

One thing that’s important to note about this deck is that Golos is the commander, not only because he gives access to all the colors, but also because its activated ability is a really great form of card draw. While it may not exactly draw the cards, playing the top three cards of your library every turn is just a better alternative. Golos also ramps us when it enters the battlefield, which is helpful as well. Games where I activate Golos a bunch tend to be games where this deck wins.

Flicker? I Hardly Know Her!

The main strategy I use with this stipulation deck is flickering or blinking my creatures repeatedly to increase my advantage over time. Golos is always a good flicker target to ramp out some multicolor lands that might be needed to fix mana, and flickering Golos also solves the problem of white not being great at ramp. There may not be a ton of creatures that draw cards in white, but we can sure flicker the ones we do have to draw over and over. In addition to the ramp and card draw creatures, this deck runs a few other permanents that do wonderful things when they enter the battlefield repeatedly.

Phyrexian Metamorph is a versatile card that can replicate other creatures’ ETB effects and you can even flicker the Metamorph itself to get different effects as it changes what it copies. Elspeth Conquers Death is a sweet flicker target to exile multiple things and also keep taxing your opponents’ noncreature spells turn after turn. Stonehorn Dignitary can lock some opponents out of combat and keep you safe that way, while cards like Skyclave Apparition can keep removing problematic creatures.

Fiend Hunter is also included in the list as a way to exile creatures and Fiend Hunter can also be flickered in response to its ETB trigger so as to exile a creature permanently. For a more detailed explanation of this interaction, be sure to check out Jumbo Commander’s video on YouTube called “You Are Doing It Wrong! | Exile Effects in Commander”. You can watch it here.

Panharmonicon is a must-have in this deck to double up on our sweet ETB triggers and really get the value train rolling. There are also cards like Sun Titan and Karmic Guide that can recur some of our creatures that may have died along the way and help to keep our creatures around to flicker.

In order to flicker these permanents, we need cards that will actually cause that to happen, and this deck has a wide variety of those. There are a couple of cards that do it every turn like Conjurer’s Closet and the new Teleportation Circle from AFR.

I’ve also included some mass flicker effects that flicker a bunch of permanents and might even save the board from a sweeper. Cards like Semester’s End, Ghostway, and Eerie Interlude can flicker our board at instant speed whether for value or protection. Sometimes both! Yorion, Sky Nomad does a similar thing, albeit at sorcery speed, and flickering Yorion with a single target flicker spell will also flicker the rest of the board.

The bread and butter of the deck are the blink and flicker instant and sorcery spells. I run actual, factual Flicker in the deck just because it feels wrong not to, though it is probably our worst version of this effect being that it’s at sorcery speed. Ephemerate and Cloudshift are all-stars and there are a few others that do it for a bit more mana, like Otherworldly Journey and Acrobatic Maneuver.

Last, but certainly not least, are creatures that flicker other creatures. Eldrazi Displacer and Mistmeadow Witch are the best of these repeatable flicker effects, while Flickerwisp, Restoration Angel, and Felidar Guardian have a nice one-off ETB flicker effect. This deck is absolutely packed with value creatures and ways to continually get that value from early to late game each time.

Lands Package

While this is not a lands deck specifically, I think it would be incorrect not to include a ton of lands that fill different needs for this deck since Golos can get any land really effectively.

We’re running all the white Triomes and all the white shock lands to take advantage of the Plains basic land type. There are a decent number of cards that care about Plains cards specifically and I want to be able to capitalize on them consistently. Emeria Shepherd provides some pretty solid recursion and encourages having as many lands with Plains typing as possible. Emeria, the Sky Ruin is another nice recursion piece and meeting the seven Plains condition is surprisingly easy. Emeria is also searchable with Golos which makes it a very consistent utility land for the deck.

In addition to all of the Plains lands, I’ve also included some five-color lands like Mana Confluence and City of Brass to make sure I always have the colors I need to activate Golos’ ability multiple times every game. There are a couple of fetch lands in the deck, but my collection is missing quite a few of them so I don’t have all the ones I’d like to include. If you have them lying around, they’d be great in this deck to make the mana even more consistent.

There are a couple of other utility lands like Hall of Heliod’s Generosity to bring back any of our important enchantments. Buried Ruin can recur an artifact that is integral to the strategy, and it can help to avoid commander tax on Golos if it gets too expensive. Reliquary Tower keeps our hand full, and we don’t have to worry about discarding anything, which actually can be pretty relevant. Strip Mine is in here too to help take care of problematic lands and does some cool shenanigans with Sun Titan, which we will get to in just a bit.

So…How Do You Win?

There are a couple ways to close out games in this deck, my personal favorite of which is Approach of the Second Sun. Golos’ ability does make it easier to churn through the top of the deck and get to the Approach when it’s seven cards down. However, it’s important to note that if you cast the Approach off of Golos’ ability, it will simply go back to seventh from the top of your library and gain you seven life because, in order to win with it, you must cast it from your hand the second time.

Flickering Master Splicer over and over can create a pretty big army of 4/4 Golems which is a perfectly acceptable way to run your opponents over. It might not be the flashiest way to win, but combat damage still kills people and it’s an axis this deck can definitely play on.

Lastly, though not the nicest way to win, flickering Sun Titan to bring back your Strip Mine repeatedly and destroy all of your opponents’ lands is definitely viable. This is one I would advise you to check with your group before running because it can make the game feel kind of bad sometimes, but when you really need the game to just end, most folks are fine shuffling up and playing again when this loop is demonstrated. I personally am probably going to take this line out and find another way to go about winning, but there’s nothing wrong with having it in there for when there are problematic lands and things like that.

Dextras

There aren’t a whole lot of cards I think this deck is desperately missing, but there are definitely ways to tune it up or down a little bit to fit your playgroup or desired power level. As I mentioned earlier, adding more fetch lands would definitely help the consistency of the mana base, as will original dual lands if you happen to have any of those on hand.

Tutors like Enlightened Tutor can also be helpful and increase power level and consistency if that’s what you’re looking for. I tend to play this deck in lower power level games, so I don’t run into Golos dying a whole lot, but if you need some protection for Golos, Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots would fit in pretty well.