Whitemane Lion | Art by Zoltan Boros and Gabor Szikszai

I'd Be Lion If I Said I Didn't Have a Trick

Welcome back to Singleton Shmingleton, where I bend the singleton rules of Commander by building decks with as many functional reprints of a certain card as possible. This week we're talking about the cat that comes back, Whitemane Lion! This little common has seen play in all sorts of Pauper and Peasant cubes, but has struggled to make it on the big stage of competitive play. It's a tricky card to play with and against, allowing you to protect your creatures from removal, chump block without losing a card, re-buy something with a good enter-the-battlefield effect, or repeatedly turn on any trigger that requires a creature cast. This flexibility has kept it close to breaking into the Pauper scene for over a decade now, but for much of that time it has simply been outclassed by Kor Skyfisher. While less tricky, Kor Skyfisher still takes advantage of permanents with enter-the-battlefield effects, and has truly impressive stats to boost. In a format of creature combat, a 2/3 flier is no joke.

But in a format like Commander, Flash becomes the more relevant difference between these two cards. Almost five times as many people are playing Whitemane Lion than play Kor Skyfisher, because when there is no metagame and everyone has forty life, flexibility becomes more important than raw stats. I also love that Commander is a format where this comparison is skewed by Whitemane Lion being a Cat. Can't stop the people from playing their Cats.

There are a lot of creatures that make you return a creature your hand when your play it, and their distribution is unusual. For most of the cards I build around, their abundance is a result of the recent explosion of releases, and most of the functional reprints come from the last few years. But for Whitemane Lion, this mechanic is something of a callback to a common ability from Planeshift. In that set, the ability was often included on creatures with efficient bodies as a tricky downside that players could turn into their favor in the right situation. However, the set might have been a little overloaded, with twelve different creatures that can't even be played onto an empty board. Since then, this design has been much more spread out over the years.

Given that there are 41 versions of this effect, I restricted my search to only include creatures that cost three mana or less. If these creatures are going to make an engine, clunkers like Steel Leaf Paladin are not going to make the cut. Here's the list:

Even with the bigger creatures excluded, there are still twenty-three creatures with this effect. The most common colors are white and blue, but all colors are represented here. The most played of these cards is in fact Whitemane Lion with 21,005 decks, proving that classic name-recognition and Cat subtype is more appealing than the strictly-more-flexible Rescuer Chwinga. The second most played card, in 12,599 decks, is Jeskai Barricade, followed by Shrieking Drake in 12,592 decks. Bringing up the rear of our list, Lava Zombie and Silver Drake see play in only 131 and 151 decks, respectively. These early versions were still figuring things out, as they restricted the color of the creature they could bounce, and Lava Zombie especially looks very out of place in black and red.

Bouncy House

So what are we going to do with all of these creatures? The level one strategy that screams out is to use some commander with a powerful trigger off of creatures entering the battlefield. With so many creatures that can bounce themselves to hand, we can re-trigger these abilities as many times as we have mana. Most of the Whitemane Lions are concentrated in Bant (white, blue, and green), which has some extremely powerful commanders. In mono-white, God-Eternal Oketra creates a 4/4 whenever we cast a creature, which can get out of hand. In selesnya (white and green), Karametra, God of Harvests can search up a land for every creature cast. But why not play a commander that can include both of these cards? Chulane, Teller of Tales is a ridiculous card, one that turns every Whitemane Lion into card draw and potentially ramp as well. It's still one of the most powerful commanders out there for players who love their little creatures.

With a powerful storyteller in the command zone, we have a lot of options to add mini-combos. One of the aspects of Chulane, Teller of Tales that can get overshadowed by his ability to draw dozens of cards is his ability to flood the battlefield with lands. We might often start a turn with seven cards in hand and fifteen lands on the battlefield, which opens up some incredible loops. Many of our Whitemane Lions have Flash, and there are a ton of fiddly tricks to pull off when we can bounce our creatures at instant speed. Creatures like Fiend Hunter and Spell Queller have two triggers, the first of which takes something away and the second of which gives it back. But if we can bounce the creature with the first trigger on the stack, the second trigger will have nothing to give back, and whatever we take away will be gone forever. The Fiend Hunter returns to our hand, and we can re-use our trick as many times as we have Whitemane Lions and mana. If we run out of the former, we can even use the same trick by activating Chulane, Teller of Tales.

Another genre of creature that really plays well with Whitemane Lion is Evoke creatures. Most of these creatures have enter-the-battlefield abilities, and can be cast for cheaper, but they will be sacrificed when they come into play. But that sacrifice is also a trigger, and we can respond by bouncing our creature to hand. Cards like Foundation Breaker and Mulldrifter are fabulous value, but the truly broken versions, just as in other formats, are the free Evoke Elementals. Solitude, Subtlety, and Endurance are card disadvantage on their face, but Chulane, Teller of Tales recoups the lost card immediately, and free spells are never fair. With the ability to re-buy these cards to our hand, these cards can really take over a game. Solitude and Subtlety especially can stop multiple creatures per turn from our opponents, giving us time to dig through our library.

What Are We Digging For?

This deck can power through a ton of cards, and besides the classic win condition of attacking with creatures, there is a sneaky infinite combo made of cards we would love to play anyways. The Ravnica bounce lands are perfect for this deck, since Chulane, Teller of Tales lets us re-play the lands we bounce, and they also combine incredibly well with either Amulet of Vigor or Spelunking. With Chulane, Teller of Tales on the battlefield, we can play a bounce land, tap it for mana, return it to our hand, and put the bounce land back on the battlefield with Chulane, Teller of Tales. If that creature is one of our two-mana dorks that can return itself to our hand such as Shrieking Drake, we have an infinite loop that can draw our deck.

This is a four-card combo, but it's more achievable than it might appear. One piece is our commander, and we have multiple redundant versions of each other piece. Plus, each piece is totally respectable on its own in this deck. Amulet of Vigor is probably the weakest individual piece, but in a deck that can draw a ridiculous number of cards, a low-impact cheap one-drop artifact isn't too bad. Infinite combos aren't usually my favorite primary win conditions, but having something in the back pocket really adds some hope to hopeless games. No matter how dead we might be next turn, it adds a lot of fun to a game to have an out to win. There's also other combos to consider over on Commander Spellbook:

The Decklist

Oh my goodness, Chulane, Teller of Tales is good. It slices and dices, provides an incredible amount of mana and cards, and feels right at home at the helm of this deck. The Whitemane Lions are incredible as well, enabling tons of tricks and even protecting our commander quite well. Having a ton of creatures works just as well as always as a way to win, and this deck can easily dig into its powerful payoffs like God-Eternal Oketra. And the possible combo finish adds a lot of play to games, especially against opponents who have seen the combo before. It's a known quantity, and is something we can dig towards as a hail Mary, but our opponents can also play around it with some well-timed removal. I love a good creature engine, and it really doesn't get better than Chulane, Teller of Tales alongside tons of tricky little creatures.

Until Next Time

Gaining life is bad, right? That's what I've heard over and over. But what about gaining 100 life? Congregate is the card that unlocks my inner child more than any other card, and there are a large handful of effects that imitate it. I dream of running out of spindowns to track my life total and dying to commander damage at 400 life. Will it work? Find out next time on Singleton Shmingleton!

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Jesse Barker Plotkin

Jesse Barker Plotkin started playing Magic with Innistrad. He was disqualified from his first Commander game after he played his second copy of Goblins of the Flarg, and it's all been uphill from there. Outside of Magic, he enjoys writing and running.