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Daily Digest: W/G Monument

Wow! Now this is a new one! Sometimes Ross finds decks that have a new tweak or piece of tech, but this is another Beast altogether! Or should we say…Angel?

Oketra’s Monument was a late bloomer in Standard last summer, becoming a significant player in the metagame for a few months, with many expecting it to pick up where it left off after Ixalan’s release that fall. Things didn’t go exactly as expected there, as the loss of some key pieces and the continued dominance of Abrade as the premier removal spell in the format kept the deck handily in check.

So what is a diehard Monument fan to do? Port the deck into Modern, of course!

There’s already a mono-white creature deck in Modern that looks to play an attrition game in Mono-White Martyr, and the core of that deck reappears here. Martyr of Sands, Thraben Inspector, and a pair of creatures that play incredibly well with Oketra’s Monument by producing tons of bodies: Squadron Hawk and Ranger of Eos.

We also see the addition of the same utility lands in Emeria, the Sky Ruin and Field of Ruin to gain significant value from a single-color manabase, an important task to accomplish when other Modern decks have a much larger card pool to draw from. There is a light splash here, but it’s for a couple role players and you won’t want much more than that here given the payoff for being mostly white.

Whitemane Lion supplements the other cheap creatures as one that gains value in the long game since you can return itself to the triggered ability and keep making tokens with Monument. Beyond that, the deck gets big with the Angel meld plan of Gisela, the Broken Blade and Bruna, the Fading Light.

Thalia’s Lancers helps find either copy, but can also find Shalai, Voice of Plenty as a great mana sink, the singleton Karametra, God of Harvests if you need more mana, or Archangel Avacyn to protect against a sweeper. Normally these cards are too slow/clunky for Modern, but the combination of Martyr of Sands, cheap creatures to play defense, and a cost-reducer makes it more tenable here, and Brisela, Voice of Nightmares is, to say the least, a powerful Magic card.

As this deck plays well to the battlefield, the sideboard is focused on combo and big mana decks that can ignore your incremental value. Even with four copies of Damping Sphere and three copies of Stony Silence, I imagine Tron is a rough matchup, but against the removal-heavy decks this one can more than put up a fight.