Budget White: Plain Cheap, Plain Powerful

Even though White isn’t actually the strongest color in Commander, it has a lot of expensive staples, but luckily, budget White is still a possibility. You have many powerful cards, but these come at a high price tag. However, by sacrificing a bit of power, you can save your wallet a good chunk of change. This guide will look at the budget options for various things White can do. It will also show off some budget Mono-White Commander decks for ways to dip your toes into Mono-White decks without needing to spend a ton of money on building them.

If you’re new to budget deckbuilding in general, we have an overview on how to build decks cheaply this way.

Budget White Staples

There are a lot of cards that White wants to run. However, some of them are just too expensive for any budget White deck to consider. Luckily, with how long the game has been around, there are a lot of budget alternatives to many of the best cards.

Ramp Spells

Mono White is not a color known for its ramping. In fact, it’s arguably the worst color at it outside of Blue. The one way White ramps is through Treasure creation permanents. Cards like Smothering Tithe, Gleaming Splendor, and Master of Ceremonies. While these cards are great at making Treasures, they’re not great on the wallet since they’re rather costly.

There aren’t too many budget replacements for this, but there are some! The best of which is Monologue Tax, which nets you a Treasure whenever an opponent plays two spells in one turn. While this may seem like a big ask, in Commander, casting more than one spell is rather common, and it’ll make Treasure tokens more often than not. You only get it once, but Summon: Yojimbo can create a ton of Treasures on its last chapter. It’s strong so long as you’re not going first, as Discerning Financier depends on your opponents having more land than you. If you’re up against a Green deck, it’s extra useful since they’ll often be ahead of their mana curve thanks to their ramp spells.

Stax Pieces

The thing White is best at is stalling the game. Stax pieces are plentiful in White, with many of the best ones being in the color. However, due to this strength, they can be on the pricier side. Examples include Grand Abolisher, Drannith Magistrate, and Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines. These cards stop your opponents from playing the game normally, and are forced to play around them while you reap the benefits.

Generally, the budget White Stax pieces are ones that affect you as well, instead of just your opponents. For example, Suppression Field makes non-mana abilities cost two more mana to use, but it affects everyone, not just your opponents. Both Archon of Emeria and Ethersworn Canonist lock everyone into one spell a turn, though can be built around. Deafening Silence and Rule of Law also fall into this category too.

Not all budget White Stax pieces affect you as well, and by paying some extra mana, you can get some useful Stax effects onto the battlefield. Kismet makes various permanents enter tapped on your opponents’ battlefields, along with Thalia, Heretic Cathar. If your opponents are searching a lot, Aven Mindcensor can shut them down.

Tutors

Mono White has access to plenty of strong tutors, but many of them are quite expensive. The most well-known one is Enlightened Tutor, which fetches for any artifact or enchantment. Academy Rector can tutor for an enchantment on death, and Idyllic Tutor can put enchantments directly into your hand. You also have Steelshaper's Gift is the main tutor for Equipment spells. While these are all quite strong, they’re also very expensive.

As with every color, White has access to some solid budget tutor options. Aura decks are quite popular in Mono White especially, making Three Dreams a great tutor for three of them. The cheapest budget White tutor that is useful in many decks is Open the Armory, a Voltron staple since it can put any Aura or Equipment into your hand. White is also home to cheap Planeswalker tutors, including Loyal Tutor, Ignite the Beacon, and Call the Gatewatch.

Budget White Commander Decks

For the second half of this guide, we’ll go over four different Commander decks that are all built with budget in mind. These aren’t necessarily the most optimal, but are crafted to give the most bang for your buck. They are decks that you can build easily, and while they might be budget, are still strong enough to hold their own at the lower bracket levels.

Kemba, Kha Regent

Kemba, Kha Regent is very unique in the Voltron commander lineup. Normally, Voltron commanders load up Equipment and Auras on a commander like Blackblade Reforged and All That Glitters (both of which do feature in the deck). However, you care less about the kind of Equipment on Kemba, and instead care about the number of Equipment on her. Instead of focusing on just your commander, your commander is also providing you with board presence, making a ton of Cat tokens while whittling down commander damage totals. This lets you swing wild with Kemba while still having blockers.

You do make a lot of Cats, so much so that it’s worth running Cat support in the deck. Arahbo, the First Fang gives them a stat boost, with King of the Pride and Regal Caracal doing the same; the latter also gives lifelink to recover any lost life. You have another target for Equipment with Raksha Golden Cub, which will turn all your Cats into double strikers, including your commander.

One downside of Voltron is that you can run out of steam quickly. To counteract this, you play cards that draw you cards for playing your deck. Examples include Sram,, Puresteel Paladin, and Kili the Resourceful. With your commander, Mentor of the Meek leads to a lot of drawn cards, and Danitha, Sword of Hope provides some passive once-a-turn card draw too.

A sample decklist can be viewed below. Since Kemba wants a ton of Equipment on her at all times, the deck is primarily made up of Equipment, including weaker ones since they’re cheap but create more Cats with Kemba, Kha Regent.

Worzel, the Protector

Superfriends isn’t an archetype you think about when thinking of a Mono-Colored deck. However, Worzel, the Protector makes for a very solid Planeswalker-based commander. It creates a ton of tokens that can put loyalty counters on all your planeswalkers, making it quicker to get to their ultimate abilities like the one on Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants or to reuse the high-loyalty abilities on planeswalkers like The Eternal Wanderer.

The biggest downside of Planeswalkers in Commander is that there are three different players that can attack them before a turn cycle ends. Luckily, there are ways around this. Both Norn's Annex and Sphere of Safety are noncreature ways to add mana tax to be able to attack your planeswalkers. Tomik, Orzhov Lawmage makes it so only one creature can attack one planeswalker, while Archangel of Tithes and Baird, Steward of Argive tax attacks on planeswalkers and you. All of these tax effects stack with one another, so it’s very possible to make it very expensive for any opponent to attack you, keeping your Planeswalkers safe.

There are various ways to get more counters on your planeswalkers. Crimes are very common, as this triggers whenever an opponent targets anything they don’t own, making Patrolling Peacemaker an excellent way to proliferate constantly. Once you amass a lot of tokens from Worzel, the Protector, you can keep tapping them constantly since they’ll untap with Drumbellower. For some more consistent proliferation, Contagion Clasp can keep it up every turn for four mana.

A sample decklist can be viewed below. It runs all the best budget White Planeswalker options, and ways to prevent your opponents from being able to attack them easily.

Lucy MacLean, Positively Armed

For this flavor of budget White, we have a Group Hug commander with Lucy MacLean, Positively Armed. This deck utilizes a ton of token generators with the intention of giving copies to your opponents for card draw. Or, you can have your opponents make tokens with cards like Akroan Horse and Hunted Lammasu then make a copy for yourself as well.

This is a Group Hug deck, so you have multiple ways to deter opponents from attacking you. One such card is Combat Calligrapher, as it rewards your opponents for attacking each other instead of you. You can target opponents to directly to help out with Tenuous Truce and Silverquill Lecturer, the latter of which lets you give copies of your creatures to your opponents to net you an extra for yourself. And since that copy is a token, that’ll trigger your commander to give someone else a copy of that token. You want to play friendly, giving your opponents tokens so they want to keep you in the game.

There are a lot of ways to close out games. The easiest ways are with Approach of the Second Sun and Halo Fountain, as the deck can easily achieve their alternate win conditions. Alternatively, you can overrun the battlefield with Felidar Retreat counters, Divine Visitation making you a ton of Angel tokens, or Champions from Beyond giving your creatures a massive stat boost during your swing.

A sample decklist can be viewed below. The deck is mostly made up of token generators and ways to take advantage of tokens entering the battlefield.

Dion, Bahamut’s Dominant

Dion, Bahamut's Dominant is a Knight commander and gives all your Knights flying on your turn. This makes you very strong in combat, especially with Knights with good abilities like Chocobo Knights since your creatures will usually have counters, and Kinsbaile Cavalier to give all your creatures double strike (technically only Knights do, but your creature lineup is all Knights). Transforming Dion, Bahamut's Dominant is great too, as it helps to bump up your creatures’ stats while eventually getting rid of a probelm permanent on the battlefield.

On top of your commander, there are a lot of other great cards that give your Knights useful abilities or stat boosts. Since the deck spreads so many counters around, Inspiring Paladin gives them all first strike to make them more threatening in combat. Knight Exemplar is one of the best, as it’ll give indestructible to all your Knights so unless it gets removed, your Knights aren’t likely going to go anywhere. To help give more board presence, Worthy Knight can turn your Knights can into 1/1 Humans too that you can use as chump blockers, while Valiant Knight gives your Knights a +1/+1 boost and is able to give them all double strike with mana investment.

The deck is very combat-focused, so cards that bump up stats are very vital for the deck to win. Virtue of Loyalty nets you a Knight early, and later, constantly provides all your creatures with +1/+1 counters and untaps them so you can use them offensively and defensively. To gain a ton of life and deal a ton of damage, True Conviction has you covered, giving them lifelink and double strike. There is a lot of basic +1/+1 stat boosting permanents as well, including Honor of the Pure, Rally the Ranks, and The Circle of Loyalty.

A sample decklist can be viewed below. It’s very creature heavy, with a ton of Knights and ways to give them better stats.

In Conclusion

Budget White is a color that has a lot of tools. White is a strange color in Commander, with there being a ton of strong options, while at the same time, being one of the weaker colors. In spite of this, you can still do a lot with a limited card pool if you’re building on a budget. White is generally best with other colors, but as shown off here, Mono White can still make an impact, even when you’re under the restriction of budget deckbuilding.

If you want to explore more budget colors, you can check out our guide to Budget Green deckbuilding here.