This is a mono white angle tribal deck that uses the basic shell of the soul sisters mono white life gain deck but with a subtheme of angels. The deck is very low to the ground and hyper synergistic. It’s one goal is to trigger Resplendent Angel as early and as often as possible. Although the deck folds pretty easily to interaction or board wipes. If we get set up, however, we can run away with games.

Remember that the life gain in this deck is used for a PURPOSE -- life gain itself will not win you games, and it does not matter if you win at 1 life or 100, it still counts as a win. So, life gain in this deck is a means to an end -- a way to enable some of the more power, explosive, and splashy combos of the deck. You need to mulligan to get a hand that has a balance of life gain and life gain payoffs. 

Also note that I’m not running any interaction in this deck: all my effort, every turn, goes into pulling off the combo and outracing the opponent.

Tips, feedback, and suggestions are always welcome!

I will now give a basic rundown of every card in the deck, sorted by mana cost. For each card, I will talk about that card’s function in the deck, why I chose it, and any specific synergies and tips on how to play the deck as a whole.

One Drops

This card is ubiquitous among mono white life gain decks. It is the most important one drop in the deck, and it should be prioritized getting out first, as it enables the other synergies of the deck. Four of is an absolute must.

Again, this card is common to all the mono white life gain shells. It's good, but it hardly ever ticks up to a 6/6 with flying. At that point in the game, you are usually heavily favored to win anyway. Even if the opponent has blockers up, don't be afraid to attack with this if you need that one extra point of life gain for Resplendent Angel to trigger. 

A newcomer to the deck, and the card that I think pushes this deck over the edge from solid Tier 2 to high Tier 1.5 or even low Tier 1. However, it's hard to say, since the meta is still shifting since the release of M21. The meta will continue to change drastically with Jumpstart releasing in less than a month and Amenket coming the month after, so who knows how long this deck will remain viable.

This card is a directly improvement over Alseid of Life's Bounty, which I was running in a previous iteration of this deck before M21. 

This card, while not the main engine of the deck itself, does everything the deck wants to do: gain life and make angels. Don't forget that because of vigilance, you can swing in and THEN tap him for his ability during second main. Just try not to get him killed during the attack. Just like Serra Ascendant, this can swing in for that extra point of life gain for Resplendent Angel to trigger. 

I'm trying out two copies of this card to give me some protection from removal or boardwipes. Keeping one mana open is typically not that bad for this deck, and the fact that I can save an angel (or Daxos) AND a human for one single mana is pretty good. I have to say, though, it's no Heroic Intervention...

Two Drops

Again, ubiquitous in mono white life gain decks. While this card does not have angel synergy (sad), it does payoff, in a major way, from life gain. If the opponent can, this card usually gets removed. Which is good, in a way, as this card has no evasion and even as a 100/100 it can easily be chump blocked by a 1/1. Thus, it acts as a sacrificial lamb (or cat?) and eats the removal that could be used on our bigger threats – the angels. This is usually a good target for Heliod, Sun-Crowned to gain a massive amount of life (and grow the Pridemate). 

As far as I’m concerned, this is just Soul Warden 5 – 8. Getting a trigger when things die too is nice, but if our things are dying, we’re usually in a bad state and have a hard time recovering. I’m running this over something like Ajani’s Welcome because the warm body and big booty is nice when going against other aggro decks. I’m running three of this because four felt like too many – occasionally one would sit dead in your hand. For the poor folks out there, an OK substitution for this is Impassioned Orator, although it is strictly worse.

Now we are getting to the bread and butter of the deck! This bishop sets us up to trigger Resplendent Angel as early as turn 3. The life swing is MASSIVE and he usually gets our head above water against fast aggro decks like Gruul or Red Deck Wins. He also provides from nice insurance for when our angles get removed. The 1/1 spirit has good evasion and will also trigger any of our Soul Sister effects. Heliod, Sun-Crowned can also stack counter on these, making them a bit more of a threat. Four of is highly recommended to get this deck to work.

Three Drops

This one card is the heart and soul of the entire deck. The whole deck is built around triggering it as early and often as possible to out race the opponent. This card draws the most removal out of any card in the deck, because if it lands (and usually we can trigger it the same turn it’s played), then it’s the beginning of the end for our opponents. Don’t forget about the activated ability than can proc the creation of an angel – it can occasionally get you out of tight spots that the cards in your hand cannon. Also, this card (or one of the angels it generates) is the best target for the counters and activated ability of Heliod, Sun-Crowned. Four of is an absolute MUST to get this deck to work.

The ideal sequence of turns for this deck:

Turn 1: Land, Soul Warden

Turn 2: Land, Bishop of Wings

Turn 3: Land, Resplendent Angel, gain 5 life (4 from Bishop and 1 from Soul Sister), make a 4/4 angel at end of turn, which also triggers Bishop and Soul sister again, gaining us another 5 life.

The entire deck is built around this silly sequence, and while it only happens if you get a nut draw AND your opponent does not remove any of your things, it feels SO good when it all comes together.

This is Resplendent Angel’s younger, less attractive sister. This is the only other card in the deck that procs Bishop of Wings. Since most of the life gain we get is from Soul Sister triggers, this card basically doubles all the life we gain, easily making it a 4/4 beater in the air, while also getting us up to the life limit for Speaker of the Heavens and Serra Ascendant, turning our early 1 drops into dangerous mid-game threats.

This card has it all: giving big things lifelink, making things big when we gain life, and acting as an indestructible wall to block any big threats our opponents might send at us (looking at you, Questing Beast. This is probably the most synergistic card in the entire deck. I’ve thought about running three instead of two, but I don’t want to remove any of the angels and I never want a second one of these gumming up my hand. While this single card helps push the deck over the edge, it’s not strictly necessary for the main combo.

Four Drops

This is a card I’m testing out, but I think I’m going to like it. I tried a 2/2 split between this and Ajani, Strength of the Pride, but this card was putting in the work, so I decided to test out more (plus, Ajani is really more of a win-more card in my opinion). This card is straight gas and can single handedly recover the deck from a board wipe. Typically, you want to pull out Soul Wardens with this, but depending on the situation (i.e. you are above 30 life), you might want to pull out a couple Serra Ascendants to act as game-finisher. Unfortunately, he has no life gain synergy. But the card advantage is just too good to pass up on. Plus, he can be used as a meaty body to block or attack with after his enter the battlefield triggers.

Lands

This provides much needed card advantage (in the form of small bodies) late in the game. I’m currently running four of, but I don’t think this is strictly necessary. Feel free to drop down to three or even two. Basically, don’t waste wild cards crafting this.

I’m testing out this card to see how I like it. The good news is that it MIGHT get us over the edge to trigger a Resplendent Angel some turns. The bad news is that it’s a bit anti-synergy with the Castle Ardenvales. Also, this deck is typically mana-pip intensive, so I’m not sure if running a colorless land is good – it might make us have to mulligan more often than we normally would.

The rest of the land slots are good-ol’ planes. I feel like 23 lands total is a good number, given how important it is for the deck to reach 3 lands on turn 3. I’m basing my assessment on this old Channel Fireball article (https://www.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/articles/how-many-lands-do-you-need-to-consistently-hit-your-land-drops/), which is admittedly out of date since the newest change to the mulligan rule. There also might be some shenanigans going on with Arena’s BO1 hand strategy that might make this about 1 land too high. I wouldn’t fault anybody if you decided to kick it down to 22 lands and add something else.

Honorable Mentions

While this card has good synergy with the deck, and occasionally provided a one-sided board wipe to clear out a stuck board state (especially in the mirror match), every time I drew it I always felt like I wanted MORE out of it. And playing it right after a board wipe feels pretty bad. So this almost feels like a win-more card. I think I prefer Ranger of Eos over this. Especially if you compare the floors and ceilings of each card.

What would angel tribal be without an angel lord? Apparently, more focused and consistent that’s what. Lyra is also a win-more card, doing little on an empty board state and only slightly buffing our angles. By the time this is good, we’ve already won. Plus, 5 mana is a bit hefty for this deck. Many times, I could just never get the mana to cast this sucker.