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BMoor's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage
Alex's White Weenie Resurrection
March 16, 2010 

Dear BMoor, 

I appreciate your taking the time to look at my deck.  I have always loved playing creature decks and decided to make a white weenie deck.  It has since become my favorite deck, but I would always love to make it better! 

Land
4 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
16 Plains
 
Creatures
4 Wall of Glare
4 Knight of the Meadowgrain
3 Riftmarked Knight
3 Serra Avenger
3 Epochrasite
3 Razor Golem
 
Other Spells
3 Holy Day
3 Oblivion Ring
2 Pacifism
2 Wispersilk Cloak
2 Mask of Memory
2 Journeyer's Kite
2 Hoofprints of the Stag
2 Luminarch Ascension
2 Devine Sacrament
 
What I was trying to go for was bang for your buck and all for 3 white mana or less!  Emeria, the Sky Ruin is pretty much the ultimate goal of this deck.  Attack, defend, and stall long enough to win with an Emeria Ground and Pound!  My problem is that faster decks like burn take all the fun out of playing, and this deck is particularly weak against Burn.
 
Holy Day, Oblivion Ring and Pacifism really help with the stall, and even ensure my Ascension for the win!  The tokens from Hoofprints, however, seem to be the easier to achieve of the two enchantments.  Journeyer's Kite really helps thin my deck and if played by turn four, can almost guarantee me a turn 8 Emeria trigger.  Mask works wonders! It works really well with cloak, keeps me from stalling, and can even feed my graveyard for threshold and more importantly, Emeria late game, saving mana for my flyer tokens.
 
As far as creatures, I love the big flyer tokens, and Serra Avenger works really well with mask or cloak or both!  Because I don't mind stalling, Riftmark Knight works ok but not as well as Epochrasite. And playing Razor Golem late game for free is awesome! Knight of the Meadowgrain has even saved the game a few times.  Wall of glare is the only card that seems to want to work great, but I haven't had much success with it, and honestly, I'm not sure why.
 
Finally, I was hoping you could answer some questions I had about card mechanics.  Riftmark Knight's abilities trigger at the same time when the last counter comes off, meaning I get to choose which ability resolves first, since they occur separately (I'm hoping I read the rules right!)  Does that mean that the token, if I play it first cannot be countered?

Also, Do creatures coming back with Emeria have summoning sickness? 

More than anything this deck is a lot of fun to play, but I would like to speed it up a bit and try to find a way to control losses to burn and creature removal. Also, If you know of any other cheep strong flyers, I would love to play more of them. Maybe even suggest a few cards to turn this into a flyer deck! Cards I would be willing to part with to part with in exchange for better/stronger cards would be Wall of Glare, Pacifism, and Riftmark Knight. However, If you feel any other cards are holding my strategy back, or could easily be replaced, I would gladly welcome all suggestions.
 
Thanks Again! 
 
Alex
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Alex, I like your deck, but on paper there seems to be a problem with your strategy. You're a white weenie deck, with lots of cheap aggressive creatures, and you want to maximize the effectiveness of Emeria, which doesn't start working until turn eight and is designed to help you win a war of attrition, a long game. Are you playing aggro or control?
 
Okay, it's not that big of a problem. You seem to know that you're the control player, because you're playing cards like Epochrasite and Wall of Glare rather than Elite Vanguard or other pure-aggro creatures that would lose their luster after turn four or five. Emeria is a joke if all it can bring back is a vanilla 2/1 while your opponent is swinging in with 5/5's.
 
So for that sake, you need as least one heavy hitter in your line-up. Black reanimation decks have always sought out the biggest and toughest Demons, Vampires, Horrors, and atrocities of nature they could to bring out on turn four courtesy of Zombify, you need to do the same. The difficulty is that White has never been known for being the color of big creatures. It gets Angels, sure, but you'd be surprised how few Angels are really that big and bad, and the ones that are all that-- Baneslayer, Akroma, Reya Dawnbringer-- are really expensive to get, money-wise. Admonition Angel might be a good choice, since her price tag is currently being kept low thanks to Baneslayer sharing Standard.
 
Or you could find a big, bad, artifact creature. Sure, finding good colorless beatsticks may be even harder due to artifacts' need to not be better at any aspect of the game than whichever color is worst at it, but there are still a few good ones, even at uncommon. Phyrexian Snowcrusher from Coldsnap and Wicker Warcrawler from Shadowmoor both look pretty good. The Snowcrusher would be better if you had snow-covered Plains, but it has no real drawback beyond "attacks each turn if able". And while the Warcrawler shrinks every time you use it, you don't really care because all that will happen is that eventually it gets small enough to kill by burn or combat damage, and then Emeria brings it back at full strength!
 
And while we're on the subject of artifact creatures, I want to call your attention to Mindless Automoton. I think the Automoton would be good for you for several reasons. First, you can discard cards to it to make it bigger, and if those cards are creature cards, Emeria will bring them back. Second, you can use it to draw cards, which will fuel Hoofprints of the Stag along with all the other wonderful reasons you would want to draw more cards. And third, you can remove its counters for cards without worrying that it's going to die, because Emeria will bring it back! Once Emeria is online, you can use the Automoton as a sort of one-sided Howling Mine, if you get tired of using it as a free Zombify every turn (or if you resurrect everything else in your graveyard).
 
I know I'm switching gears rather abruptly here, but Divine Sacrament was one of my old-time favorites. It was in my first mono-white deck, mostly because I had a copy and it was better than trying to track down copies of Glorious Anthem because I was just getting started and didn't want to spend a lot of money. But also like your deck, I ran Razor Golem, and it didn't get +1/+1, and that made me sad. But the good news is, there's been a better card printed for you to use instead. Marshal's Anthem would be perfect in your deck, since you're already of a mind to bring back dead creatures, and to make the game last until you have eight mana. You could cast Marshal's Anthem with two kickers the turn after Emeria triggers, and suddenly you're up three creatures, all of which get +1/+1! Whether they're white or not!
 
And finally, since you mentioned that you were willing to take Pacifism out of your deck if there was something better, I'd suggest using Path to Exile or Condemn instead. Either one will get rid of problematic creatures much more effectively than Pacifism and can't be undone by a Naturalize.
 
Good luck!
 ~BMoor