Thank goodness the Onslaught prerelease is over. We can talk about the set without Mark Rosewater writing an article.

The raging weakness of White was made painfully apparent to Wizards once Odyssey was released, and many tournaments reportedly featured more Executes than Plains. I think the loss of Swords to Plowshares in Extended only highlighted the weakness in White, because it made people take a closer look and realize that White has a very shallow pool of tournament caliber cards, both in Standard and Extended.

Given the time lag involved in R&D identifying a problem and then addressing it, Judgment was supposed to fix White. It was a nice attempt, but as Randy Buehler said in his"What I Really Learned At Worlds" articles,"White... started out so far behind that the impact (of Judgment) on Standard wasn't huge."

In retrospect, it is silly to think that one small set could bring enough tournament caliber White cards into the card pool - even if it is part of the"Green-White Set". Most other colors have cards from Seventh edition that contribute to deck building, not to mention the other five sets in Standard at the time of Judgement. Black has Duress, Green gets Birds and Elves, try to imagine Blue without Counterspell, Red at least gets Shock, Stone Rain and Pillage - whereas White gets Disenchant. Sure, Disenchant is a good card, although many people run Dismantling Blow over it when they can, and I would personally prefer to run Uktabi Orangutan and Elvish Lyrist to deal with artifacts and enchantments.

You could make the case that Disenchant was so superfluous that they went ahead and gave a copy of it to Green.

Let me restate the main problem with white: White has no way of disrupting the opponent's strategy. Imagine a football team with no defense. Won't win many games, will it? Even the best offense in the world will still lose games with no defense whatsoever (and white's offense certainly isn't the best) - after all, what good are a bunch of 1/1 white weenies against 350-pound offensive linemen? All the white weenies in the world aren't going to matter if your opponent casts Mutilate or Wrath of God. More or better weenies is not the answer - some form of disruption is crucial.

Black can disrupt opponents' game plans by taking cards from their hand or killing them once they hit the board. Blue has counterspells, bounce, and Upheaval to interrupt the opponent's tactics. Red can also kill creatures when they hit the board, or it can destroy enough lands so that the opponent can't cast anything. Green disrupts with either the quality or quantity of its creatures: How easy is it to kill a Blastoderm once it hits play? I've killed several blue mages with the uncounterable Blurred Mongoose. Even if you kill one Call Token, there's another to deal with.

What can White mages do to disrupt their opponent's game plan? Up till Judgment, they could destroy their opponent's artifacts and enchantments. The traditional source of White's disruption has always been Armageddon.

Of course, Wizards decided not to reprint the mighty 'Geddon in 7^th edition, but I honestly believe that decision was a good one even if it did seriously weaken White - and for two reasons:

1. Overly powerful. Armageddon is an"I win" type of card on par with Dark Ritual or Morphling. Armageddon limits the strategic qualities of the game, and increases the importance of luck in winning. If you cast some weenies on the first three turns and 'Geddon on the fourth, you have almost certainly won the game. If it gets countered or you don't draw it, then you've just got a bunch of weenies.
2. Environment-altering. Armageddon clearly skews the game towards speed decks and away from non-Blue based control decks. With Armageddon popular, every deck must either play around the fear of losing all their lands, or must play such cheap creatures that it can win with two or three lands on the board. With Wizards' (correct) decision to slow the game down, Armageddon has no place.

Those of you who argue that Armageddon prevents Blue-based control (ala Psychatog) from getting out of hand are correct - but you are incorrect if you think that Armageddon is the only way to prevent Blue-based control from getting out of hand.

The question then becomes,"Will Wizards reprint Armageddon?" I don't think so, but maybe. Possibly they know Armageddon will be in eighth, and are specifically not giving white a whole lot in anticipation of its return. The Invasion Block will also be rotating out, and it appears that Invasion's multi-colored theme was a major impetus for the removal of Armageddon. With Invasion gone, would it be okay to bring back Armageddon in 8^th? Again, I don't think so... But Wizards knows what cards will be around for the next one or two years and can plan accordingly.

Judgment brought three important disruptive spells into the White card pool: Anurid Brushhopper, Battle Screech, and Glory. The Brushhopper disrupts the opponent's plan by being so hard to kill. Battle Screech disrupts in the same way that Call of the Herd does - you have to kill four 1/1 tokens rather than one 4/4. Glory disrupts by making your creatures either unblockable, or by preventing damage to your creatures.

Spurnmage Advocate gets an honorable mention here, but it's fragile and its disruption is very conditional.

Does Onslaught bring enough to allow white to compete on a level playing field? I'll give a conditional yes to that, although there is still plenty of room for improvement. I believe that the future strength of white decks will be based on four, perhaps five, new cards:

1. Mobilization - This card is extremely disruptive once it becomes active, because your opponent must deal with it or lose. I think it will be good in offensive and defensive white decks, and it has great synergy with Wrath of God. This spell also will make the Torment Black decks either obsolete, or force them to dip into another color for enchantment removal. The story I remember was that Squirrel Nest was so damaging to the Torment Black decks that Wizards had to print Rancid Earth in the common slot in order to keep the black decks competitive; well, you can't get rid of Mobilization with Land Destruction.
2. Whipcorder - The Whipcorder is a solid beatdown creature with a very disruptive ability. By combining offense with disruption, the Whipcorder will get in a few points of damage and then remove your opponent's blockers for the kill. Very solid.
3. Exalted Angel - This Angel allows you to race other offensive decks, thereby disrupting their strategy to kill you first. Without Morph, it's junk... But morphing it into play allows offensive weenie based decks to have access to it.
4. Words of Wisdom - This card will allow you to gain enough life to disrupt your opponent's means of killing you. In offensive decks, it could be used to keep you alive while your flyers or Glory-protected creatures finish off the opponent. In control decks, particularly when combined with Blue (or Black - Skeletal Scrying comes to mind), you could gain ten or twenty life in one turn. Most lifegain is irrelevant because when you're losing, gaining three life is irrelevant. Twenty life matters.
5. Possibly True Believer - The True Believer disrupts the strategies of certain decks while providing a solid offensive creature. He stops the single most common creature kill spell, Chainer's Edict, and he stops all discard and burn aimed at the dome while he's in play. Is he disruptive enough to enough decks to include, and can you keep him alive long enough to matter? I honestly don't know.

The rest of Onslaught White, when mixed with Judgment, probably combines enough efficient creatures to allow at least a tier-two caliber White Weenie deck. It is not at all clear if any White based deck, even when backed with Mobilization and great lifegain, can compete with 6/6 Wurm tokens, 8/5 trampling regenerators, removal cards like Infest and Pyroclasm, or even White's own Wrath of God. It also appears as though a White-based control deck would be substandard, and would have to rely more on Blue for the control elements than White. White appears to still be relegated as the support color in most decks where it appears.

There are two main unexplored areas that Wizards could still delve into if they want to continue expanding White's future potential, as well as expanding White's real estate on the"ability pie"; the first area is Abeyance-style effects.

By this, I mean a spell or ability that simply says,"you can't do X." Abeyance was superior disruption, but by breaking apart the ability and making it conditional you have a whole series of abilities that are highly disruptive, that don't break the whole game, and are still in flavor for white. Meddling Mage and Blinding Angel were great extensions of the Abeyance ability into new areas, and it would be nice to see more cards like that printed. For example:

Life Gain
Abeyance
1W
Instant
For the remainder of the turn, if any opponent plays a spell, gain 20 (or 10 or 15) life.

Card Draw Abeyance
1W
For the remainder of the turn, if any opponent plays a spell, draw 3 cards.

Meddling Card Drawer
1WW
Enchantment
When Meddling Card Drawer comes into play, name either Sorceries, Instants, Creatures, Enchantments or Artifacts. When any opponent plays a card of that type, draw 2 cards.

Abeyance Knight
WW
Creature
2/2
If Abeyance Knight damages a player, that player can't play instants (or sorceries, or spells with a converted mana cost of more than 3, etc.) this turn.

Abeyance Wall
1W
Creature
0/5
If Abeyance wall blocks, that creature's controller can't play spells this turn.

Suicidal Abeyance Soldier
2W
2/2
WW: Put a -1/-1 counter on Suicidal Abeyance Soldier. Players can't play spells this turn. Use this ability only during your upkeep.

You get the idea. Certainly it would take some balancing, because it has great potential to lock down your opponent - but this ability gives White the opportunity to be as disruptive as Black or Blue and to still be in flavor. I also think these cards would be a lot of fun to play with! What scrub doesn't like gaining ten life when an opponent casts a spell?

The other opportunity involves stealing another one of Blue's abilities from the"ability pie." Blue has the ability to tax its opponent's spells and permanents by forcing them to pay more mana for them. This ability used to be more common in older sets, but it seems to have somewhat fallen by the wayside recently. Older examples include the original Power Leak, but go on to include Aura Flux, Energy Flux, Pendrell Flux, Propaganda, and others. Perhaps white wouldn't actually be stealing this ability - it would be just returning it to its rightful place, because it certainly seems more in flavor and White actually had a spell with this ability in the form of Aura of Silence. Here are some examples of what I mean:

Sorcery/Instant Flux
1WW
Enchantment
Spells that don't put a permanent into play cost an additional 2 (or 3) mana.

Tax Collecting Soldier
WW
2/2
Creature spells cost an additional 2 to play

Mini Void
3W
Enchantment
All spells cost an additional 2 colorless mana

White Propaganda
2W
Enchantment
Creatures can't attack you unless their controller pays 2 for each creature attacking you. (This card probably isn't as broken without Winter Orb and Armageddon)

Card Drawing Taxman
2W
2/2
Each player must pay 2 mana any time they draw a card. If he or she can't, then they don't get to draw. (Broken with Armageddon in Extended - The Ferrett)

Cards like this would give offensive white decks the mana disruption element they need to press their creatures forward to victory. It's no Armageddon... But what is? You get the mana denial without being nearly as broken. There's probably a critical mass point to these cards, where if you have too many of them at once you create a degenerate lock deck... But careful design and testing can prevent that. These"Tax" cards are in flavor for white, and are not nearly as broken without the Winter Orb (as Static Orb was also voted out of 8^th edition) or in color land destruction spells, and to a certain extent they are in the theme of slowing the game down.

Overall, white has drastically improved in the last two sets, but there are still a few things missing. I really hope that Wizards is open to giving White at least some of the abilities I've listed here, or to giving White some new abilities that I haven't thought of. It seems to me that White is a vanilla color, with fewer abilities or options than any of the other colors (except Red), and some well-designed abilities will go a long way towards making it more competitive and more fun to play.

Then they can fix Red.