When the spoiler for 8^th Edition was released, many players (myself included) rejoiced at the reprinting of an old favourite beater. Savannah Lions was the one-drop to end all one-drops, the penultimate of fighting efficiency. Jackal Pup, Ghazban Ogre, and Carnophage might as well be called Accursed Centaur for all they compared to the Lions. One of white's staples had returned!

Those same rejoicing players were quick to point out that with the depth of good, fast white creatures that the White Weenie archetype would once again be a dominant force in the Standard metagame. Rough decklists were bandied about, and players began to debate which build of the deck was optimal. Some people began to splash blue for Mana Leak, Unsummon, and card drawing. It was clear that mono-white builds were unable to compete with the current tools available.

A good White Weenie deck does not win solely on the strength of its creatures. Rather, it uses the combination of fast creatures backed by punishing mana disruption and some sort of card advantage. The following decklists illustrate these principles in more detail.

Tom Champheng
Winner, World Championships 1996
4 Order of Leitbur
4 Order of the White Shield
2 Phyrexian War Beast
4 Savannah Lions
2 Serra Angel
4 White Knight
1 Armageddon
1 Balance
4 Disenchant
1 Land Tax
1 Reinforcements
1 Reprisal
1 Sleight of Mind
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Lodestone Bauble
1 Zuran Orb
1 Kjeldoran Outpost
4 Mishra's Factory
11 Plains
4 Adarkar Wastes (misrecorded as Plains)
4 Strip Mine

Sideboard:
2 Arenson's Aura
1 Black Vise
4 Divine Offering
1 Energy Storm
1 Exile
1 Kjeldoran Outpost
1 Reprisal
2 Serrated Arrows
1 Sleight of Mind
1 Spirit Link

Champheng's deck is as good a place as any to begin a discussion of the White Weenie archetype. Although the deck may look odd in 2003 with its many singletons, it sets the pattern that would be followed for years. Twenty of the best creatures of the time provide early beats. Although only Serra Angel had evasion, protection from black and first strike gave the smaller men a bit of an edge. Swords to Plowshares removed blockers, while Disenchant removed opposing Serrated Arrows and Nevinyrral's Disks. Mana disruption was adequately handled by Armageddon, Strip Mine, and Balance. Land Tax was simply broken, and"land taxing" remains one of white's best card advantage mechanics. Regrettably, it is also one of the rarest.

Two years later, Tempest block would revitalise and reinvent White Weenie. Creatures became faster and had better evasion than ever with the introduction of the shadow mechanic. Weatherlight introduced what is without doubt the best creature enchantment ever printed in white: Empyrial Armor. Matt Linde would run the field at 1998 US Nationals with the following build.

Matt Linde
Winner, US Nationals 1998
3 Nomads en-Kor
3 Paladin en-Vec
4 Soltari Monk
4 Soltari Priest
1 Soltari Visionary
4 Soul Warden
4 Warrior en-Kor
4 White Knight
1 Aura of Silence
4 Cataclysm
3 Disenchant
4 Empyrial Armor
4 Tithe
17 Plains

Sideboard:
1 Afterlife
3 Abeyance
3 Aura of Silence
1 Disenchant
1 Soltari Visionary
2 Spirit Link
2 Tariff
2 Wrath of God

The introduction of shadow creatures radically improved white's creature base, and once enchanted with Empyrial Armor a Soltari Priest was nigh-invincible. Cataclysm was the stand-in for Armageddon, destroying creature rushes and mana bases simultaneously. The en-Kor creatures provided"virtual" card advantage, ensuring that the most important creatures would survive burn or combat. Tithe was intended as a fixed Land Tax, but in Linde's deck it provided two-for-one card advantage, thinned the deck and boosted the effect of Empyrial Armor.

While Urza's block threatened to send Magic thundering off its rails, Masques block slowed things down to a virtual crawl. Good countermagic prevented large creatures from dominating what was by design a mostly-weenie format. With the introduction of Rebels, white received some of the best weenies along with one of the most abusive card advantage engines. Kai Budde piloted a near mono-white Rebel deck to victory at PT Chicago.

Kai Budde
Rebels (Winner PT Chicago 2000)
16 Plains
2 Dust Bowl
4 Brushland
4 Rishadan Port
4 Ramosian Sergeant
4 Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero
3 Steadfast Guard
3 Longbow Archer
2 Defiant Falcon
2 Defiant Vanguard
2 Ramosian Sky Marshal
1 Thermal Glider
1 Rebel Informer
4 Chimeric Idol
4 Parallax Wave
4 Wax / Wane

Sideboard:
4 Armageddon
3 Seal of Cleansing
3 Wrath of God
3 Mageta the Lion
1 Defiant Vanguard
1 Lightbringer

Budde's deck combines all the traditional elements of White Weenie: fast creatures, card advantage provided by the Rebels and mana denial through Dust Bowl and Armageddon. The green splash was for Wax/Wane, the only Invasion card in the deck. It provided a neat combat trick with cheap removal for Saproling Burst.

The future for White Weenie remains uncertain. In more recent sets, R&D has been making large creatures more and more mana-efficient. Anurid Brushhopper and Ravenous Baloth can hold off a weenie horde almost single-handedly, providing time for heavier hitters such as Silvos and Akroma, Angel of Wrath. Couple this with a lack of quality white removal and no white mana disruption at all, and one comes to the sad conclusion that it is a bad time to run little men - at least the ones that aren't red. The loss of Disenchant becomes more relevant now that it is clear Mirrodin will be an artifact-heavy set and, flavor aside, I am bewildered why R&D seems committed to taking away staple removal cards from a color that already had precious few ways of dealing with permanents.

It is my sincerest hope that Mirrodin will provide white with something in the way of good card advantage or mana denial, allowing White Weenie to flourish once again.

J.P. Brichta