The Best Card Draw in White
Esper Sentinel by Eric Deschamps
There are few things Magic: The Gathering players love more than drawing cards in Commander. While blue is often considered the premier option for filling your hand, each color has its own way of ensuring you have plenty of gas to enact your gameplan. Today, we're going through the top card draw options available to you in white when building your EDH deck.
Top One-off Draw Spells in White
In order to avoid stepping on blue's toes, each other color is given some sort of caveat to their card drawing capabilities. In white, this most clearly manifests in the relatively new design space of "group draw" instants and sorceries. While giving your opponents extra resources sounds bad in a vacuum, Commander is a political format where doing so can actually turn into an upside!
Secret Rendezvous
For instance, Secret Rendezvous draws you three cards for three mana; a great rate, even by blue's standards. The drawback of also providing an opponent with three cards will feel pretty terrible if your game is down to two players, but the rest of the time, you'll often be in a position where those cards could be granted for favors ("Don't attack me for the next two turns!") or in order to help another weaker player take down the table threat.
Your Temple Is Under Attack
Your Temple is Under Attack is similar while trading some potency for flexibility. Drawing two for three mana is still pretty solid in white, but being able to instead cast it as board protection is a great and often better alternative. This also skirts around the aforementioned issue of being stuck with symmetrical card draw when it's down to just you and one other player.
Cut a Deal
If you'd rather not have to pick a favorite opponent, Cut a Deal might be the card for you. It has that nice Secret Rendezvous rate of three cards for three mana (assuming you still have three opponents!), but instead of piling the shared value in one place, it gives one card to each other player. This is a less political option than the previous two entries, but feels a bit less risky than paying to load up someone else's hand. Just remember that it'll draw fewer cards as other players are removed from the game!
Honorable mentions:
Top Card Draw Stapled to Creatures in White
Where it lacks a bit in instants and sorceries, white makes up for it in creatures that draw. While most of these have triggers that require your deck to be constructed a very particular way to support, there are plenty of ubiquitously good options that can slot into just about any white Commander deck.
Esper Sentinel
Esper Sentinel is the gold standard of creatures that draw; not only in white, but across all colors. Don't worry too much about buffing its power for more expensive taxes: it turns out a Rhystic Study that can only trigger once per turn per opponent on noncreature spells is still pretty good! If you can drop the Sentinel on an early turn, most players aren't going to be interested in holding their ramp spells in order to pay your tax. That said, if your deck does run Equipment, +1/+1 counter effects, or anthems, Esper Sentinel's tax can get truly untenable, virtually guaranteeing you three or more cards per turn cycle. Just remember, it doesn't have to be an opponent's turn to trigger! If they cast a counterspell, removal, or any other sort of instant during another player's turn, they'll trigger our man.
Archivist of Oghma
Archivist of Oghma is an incredibly solid workhorse that opponents are loathe to play around. It takes some real discipline to not crack a fetch land or play a Cultivate, so you may be drawing multiple times per turn cycle. At higher power tables where other tutor effects are plentiful, things can get even more lucrative. Though we're primarily focusing on card draw here, the one life gain on trigger may be relevant in your deck as well as an enabler for other cards, like Archangel of Thune or Cleric Class.
Mangara, the Diplomat
Rounding out our top drawing creatures in white is Mangara, the Diplomat. Mangara has two different ways of triggering card draw. Though the first will grab you a card or two on occasion, it mostly serves to disincentivize small swings that might have been sent your way on a whim. The real power comes from drawing on opponents' second spell each turn. In the mid to late game, when opponents have plenty of mana available for extra casts, you'll likely pick up multiple cards per turn cycle. A 2/4 with lifelink is also nothing to sneeze at, making Mangara's slightly higher mana value a bit more palatable than it'd be on a less relevant body.
Honorable Mentions
Creatures that require a specific kind of deck to draw with but I'd be remiss to leave unmentioned
Top Enchantments that Draw in White
In some ways, white is the enchantment color in Commander. It then comes as no surprise this is where we'll find some of the color's best recurring card draw effects.
Trouble in Pairs
A recent addition to the pantheon of powerful white enchantments, Trouble in Pairs is almost too easy. Putting aside the extra turn negation, this is Mangara, the Diplomat PLUS a draw whenever an opponent draws their second card each turn. Insanity. If there was an award for "Card Most Likely to Make You Miss a Trigger Because It's Doing It Constantly", Trouble in Pairs would be a shoe-in. As much as I appreciate the white design space of rewarding you whenever your opponents do things, this feels pretty extreme. The art for Trouble in Pairs also has a curiously controversial backstory.
The Courts
Monarch is a mechanic that doesn't exist in a game of Commander until someone plays a card that introduces it. Once crowned, the monarch draws a card at the beginning of their end step. Any player can become the monarch by dealing combat damage to the current monarch, who simultaneously loses the crown. This is a beloved mechanic for good reason: it draws cards, incentivizes attacking, and adds a fun and simple mini-game to the larger game of Commander. The "problem" with monarch is making sure you can keep the crown. After all, it doesn't feel too good to be the one to put the mechanic in a game only to watch your opponents reap the benefit.
Court of Grace and Court of Ardenvale minimize the risk of helping your opponents by giving you bodies to defend the monarchy with. An extra draw at the end of your turn plus some tokens or recursion respectively can add up to some serious value. Just keep in mind that each Court's trigger applies at the beginning of your upkeep; if you want to get maximum value from it, you'll have to keep the crown for the full cycle!
Thorough Investigation
Clue tokens are another major source of delayed gratification card draw in white. Though they require two mana apiece to activate, they have the consolation prize of synergizing with a variety of token and artifact strategies.
Thorough Investigation is neat because it provides both a fairly easy way to investigate on each of your turns and gives you dungeon venture triggers. Without getting too into the proverbial dungeon weeds, venturing offers some nice bonus value that will make cracking those clues feel even more lucrative. If you have other ways of creating Clues in your deck, just watch how quickly Thorough Investigation gets out of hand.
Honorable Mentions
Top Artifacts that Draw in White
Yes, I'm afraid we now live in a world where many artifacts have a color identity besides colorless. Fortunately for white, it has a few good ones!
Rammas Echor, Ancient Shield
Casting two spells per turn isn't always an easy ask in white. Fortunately, Rammas Echor, Ancient Shield rewards you for doing so with more cards to trigger it with on future turns. Even if you don't plan to make use of your exalted triggers, a steady supply of 0/3s will help slow down aggressive opponents and draw you even more cards if you're playing creatures like the aforementioned Welcoming Vampire, Mentor of the Meek, or Bennie Bracks, Zoologist.
Wedding Ring
Ah yes, back to giving your opponents cards. While Wedding Ring might not feel great when you're the one popping off with a Sram, Senior Edificer, the reality of playing white is that there's usually someone at the table drawing significantly more cards than you. Identify that person early and slap a ring on their finger the first chance you get.
It's probably best to avoid playing this if your plan involves much life gain. The final bit of text on Wedding Ring is likely to do you more harm than good in those instances.
Honorable Mentions with Narrower Uses
Slim Pickins'?
White has traditionally had the reputation of having the worst card draw in EDH. Do you think that's still true, or has recent design on cards like Esper Sentinel and Archivist of Oghma saved it from that notoriety? What other drawing all-stars have we missed highlighting here?
If white is famine, then next time we'll be feasting with card draw in blue. Stay tuned!
