Despite being a heavy synergy deck with quite a defined set of cards in constructed formats it seems to have translated into singleton well. There is a bit of extra redundancy you can put up with to make up the numbers as well as some relatively on theme conventional gems. As with all first outings I am keeping this simple. There are some really nice options for this list in black and ultimately that is probably the most powerful way to go. Black has some payoff cards for having high life which is ideal. It also has plenty of things you can pay life to do and this Pandora's Box of possibility and potential counter-synergy is a big part of my wanting to try out a mono white list to get a handle on things before experimenting further afield! Here is my proposed list;
24 SpellsSerra Ascendant
Soul's Attendant
Soul Warden
Martyr of Sands
Legions Landing
Soldier of the Pantheon
Mardu Woe Reaper
Mother of Runes
Sword to Plowshares
Auriok Champion
Ajani's Pridemate
Lone Missionary
Lone RiderSuture Priest
Serene Steward
Honor the Pure
Proclamation of Rebirth
Spectral Procession
Ajani Goldmane
Faith's Fetters
Ranger of Eos
Archangel of Thune
Crested Sunmare
Felidar Soveriegn
16 Lands
Kabira Cross Roads
Windbrisk Heights
14 Plains
So the core of the deck is the same core as the modern builds, that being -
Serra Ascendant
Soul's Attendant
Soul Warden
Auriok Champion
Ajani's Pridemate
Spectral Procession
Ranger of Eos
Archangel of Thune
They also tend to pack four Path to Exile which I have substituted for the more thematic Swords. I like the idea of having a cheap instant lifegain effect for cheeky unexpected triggers! In practice both would be ideal but it is trickier picking up both. Honor the Pure also crops up a lot in the constructed lists although not often as a four of. That usually gets them to 36 spells and 24 lands. In cube those cards only make up a third of the deck and so we need to find rather more playables. Honor is better in modern where turning 1/1s into 2/2 is significant. In cube it will help less as your utility dorks will still not really want to get into combat much.Ascendant, Archangel and Pridemate are the best payoff cards for lifegain in this kind of deck. I was concerned that this would be the limiting aspect of the deck, not having enough payoff to merit having all the weaker lifegain cards. Several things add up to make this not seem like an issue. Firstly there are a bunch of OK lifegain payoff cards I padded things out a bit with. There are some pretty weak ones as well like Test of Endurance which seemed too deep and bad! Secondly, you have a bit of tutoring and recursion for your Ascendant, which being the cheapest of the lot is generally going to be the biggest player. I would consider Recruiter of the Guard for more tutoring before turning to any of the weaker payoff cards. Lastly, the mere fact you are perpetually gaining life will be enough in itself. You won't always need a payoff for your lifegain in cube for it to win the game. Something like an Izzet tempo list simply won't have enough legs in its whole deck to win a game if you gain a couple of life every turn against it.
Spectral Procession is not wildly on theme being neither a source of lifegain nor a lifegain payoff card however it has synergy everywhere else. It is a huge payoff card for being mono white with its high stand alone power level. It also has great synergy with the Soul's Attendant style cards offering a lot of triggers in one card and brutal synergy with the Anthem effects.Ranger of Eos seems pretty important in this list, more so than in the modern version. A source of value and the ability to find a wide selection of relevant cards. He seems so good it makes me want to play Recruiter of the Guard even more but you probably then need to run Aether Vial or something to support it all.
Suture Priest is the 4th sister in this list who isn't good enough for the modern versions. She is quite a lot weaker than the others but I think still worth it given your aim and synergies. Marty of Sands is a bit of an odd one. She was part of a different sort of modern deck than the Soul Sisters setup. While both lists have some overlap the Martyr list is much more of a lockout control deck. It would use Proclamation of Rebirth and Emeria, the Sky Ruin to have ongoing access to the Martyr and then it would use cards like Squadron Hawk to ensure a lot of life was gained each sacrifice. The soul sisters list, both this cube one and the modern ones, have less in the way of hand refill and are more inclined towards developing a board both of which hit the value of Martyr pretty hard. I think she is still worth it overall in my list but she is one of the more cuttable things. I like the ability to get a massive early bump in life to turn on an Ascendant. I like the ability to have an instant lifegain trigger on the board as well. The tutoring and recursion of one drops in this list all help empower Martyr too.
Ajani's Pridemate is the best tempo card in the deck. Following a one drop sister it is the best two drop in the deck. It grows rapidly in this list and can just win a game all by itself Long Tusk Cub style. It was a card I was scared of lacking redundancy for. Serene Steward is a whole lot worse. The mana cost makes her a far less impressive tempo card. Expect utility and value from it rather than tempo.At the top end we have Crested Sunmare and Felidar Sovereign doing their best to be Archanagles two and three. Sunmare is powerful in this list, you should be able to trigger it the turn you make it and perhaps even deny your opponent the ability to make dorks else incur a total of 15/15 worth of horses coming at them! While powerful it is not a great finisher card being fairly slow and having no evasion. It has less immediate impact than Archangel as well. Mostly the Sunmare will draw out removal but it should leave a 5/5 token behind which is still fine. The Sovereign is a bit more awkward. It has minimal impact and is a six drop. In a 16 land deck with basically no draw in it you are looking at about a 40% chance of having six lands on turn six, a bit over 50% for turn seven. It is a bad body for the mana, it is pretty easy to kill, it is going to come much later than other people's top end and there is a very real chance you have no where near 40 life nor look like getting there even if you do manage to get it to stick on the board. It does say win the game on it and it isn't a dud otherwise. It is useful to have a stalemate breaker and nothing breaks a stalemate quite like a card with actual win the game text on it. I imagine the best the card will be will all be at the hands of Windbrisk Heights.
Ajani Goldmane is a cute addition. This is like the only deck where both the +1 and the -1 are good abilities! Ajani has always been the ultimate Procession follow up play, his issue is being so linear usually. In practice Elspeth or Gideon are probably going to perform better but it seemed wrong not including Ajani in the perfect spot for him! The vigilance is also going to be more relevant than usual as you are often in the business of protecting your life total.Another cute addition is Faith's Fetters and it is probably just inferior to Cast Out, Council's Judgement or Unexpectedly Absent. I felt like I needed some general purpose removal and as all of it is somewhat clunky I figured I might as well play a clunky card that also has some bonus synergy.
Soldier of the Pantheon and Mardu Woe Reaper are probably necessary evils just to get that one drop count up. They can offer a feeble amount of lifegain but no where close to being good on that basis. You cannot abuse these cards in the way you can with Soul's Attendant or Martyr of Sands and you need the abuse to properly empower the payoffs. These two additions are primarily 2/1's for one. They give you more early plays and help to empower your global buffs. They help you play like a white weenie deck a bit more and they give you some dorks you are happy to use in a disposable manner. The lifegain aspect of these cards probably just falls into the cute category again and mean that you would be better off with Thraben Inspector and Kytheon in those slots. Sacred Cat is another interesting option in the one drop slot going a bit deeper on the support aspect at the cost of being a less potent stand alone card.
While the Cat felt like an option Legions Landing felt like a must. It has all round ideal support element. The 1/1 token is good, it gets you on the board and it gets you gaining life. It triggers your sisters, gets bigger with your global buffs, and gains life as Sacred Cat would do! Then you get to flip it into a land which means you are kind of playing 17 which is super helpful what with all the 5+ CMC cards you are running. Lastly, if it goes that long, a 1/1 lifelink or bigger every turn will really really stall out a game and let you win with Sovereign or going wide.
Proclamation of Rebirth is an odd one. The three mana mode will rarely be optimal in the early or mid game. You only have seven one drops so having three in the bin is going to be somewhat later in the game. Probably when you have already hit six mana. This is another reasons to consider Recruiter of the Gaurd. More things that can pull the one drops out of the deck when so much of the key cards are one drops sounds nice! As a forcast card this is super late game. It is later than Adanto, the First Fort or Felidar Sovereign. I feel like the card is going to get cast least out of all the cards in the deck but sadly I feel it is required. With less redundancy and a general lack of card advantage or protection against sweepers I think the deck is too fragile without it. In constructed the card is primarily used to abuse Martyr of Sands but that isn't how I expect the card to be used in cube. In cube it will be more copies of the soul sisters and Serra Ascendant. While other cards protect better against mass or spot removal specifically the Proclamation is the only card that really helps against both. It does also offer another aspect of inevitability. So much so that I considered Mistveil Plains. If you can perpetually recur threats and restock your library you don't loose the long game to very much. I think at that stage we are looking at more of a Proclamtion Martyr control deck and a cascade of potential changes would ensue. Dusk / Dawn is another potential way to get some more late game gas in this list. It is a bit clunky and awkward but also potentially very powerful even with some imperfect synergies.
There are cards that could be refined all over the place in this list and I have drawn attention to them. Before doing anything like swapping Ajani for an Elspeth or Woe Reaper for an Inspector or anything like that I would look to simply replace Lone Missionary and Lone Rider. They are just filler cards. Off theme one drops would probably be better because one drops! These were the most powerful two drop dorks I could find that had lifegain aspects to them. Missionary is just a one off shot of life and has a pretty pathetic body. While it is nice having loads of incidental lifegain throughout the deck you are mostly trying to abuse multiple triggers or cards that will have a huge payout. Just gaining four life once is never a huge payout. You probably don't need that little bit of life at the cost of having a weak card. Knight of Meadowgrain is an upgrade in power now that I think of it and a pretty easy substitution and even Knight isn' thrilling It is still just a dork and a relatively slow and small lifegain potential. Lone Rider is both a source of lifegain and a lifegain payoff card. The issue is much the same however. It is just a dork, either a terrible one or a decent one (that no longer benefits from Honor the Pure). You are not looking to win with these little edges. The payoff with Ascendant is huge while the payoff for Rider is fairly tame. It is good for a two drop but not just good period. Good luck winning with your 4/4 lifelink trample first strike thing once the four mana plus cards start to hit the deck. It is somewhat on theme but on closer inspection not in the most effective of ways.
Selfless Spirit is probably too important an insurance policy to not play over one of these weaker two drops. Although it has no life aspect to it it just covers you nicely in the area you are most vulnerable while also being a fine stand alone card. This deck needs to extend onto the board to really push the majority of the lifegain triggers and as such it is going to fold to a well placed Wrath of God. With no hand disruption or countermagic the deck is just a sitting duck. Proclamation is some help at recovering but more would be very welcome indeed. If I were doing this in a rotisserie I would likely draft some anti mass removal sideboard tech like Second Sunrise or just Hallowed Spiritkeeper in addition to running Selfless Spirit main. Even the shockingly slow Emeria starts to appeal more!Land Tax is something I wanted to run but didn't find the space for. Such sillyness would make me want to run a Kor Skyfisher which would then in turn make me consider Oketra's Monument and another cascade of changes goes down! Path to Exile coming back being the first of those in this case. Should the list show promise and be fun to play I will likely try out all the variants I can imagine.
As ever I have presented a list chock full of the most synergy options so as to showcase the range of the less commonly seen cards. In practice the refined build of this deck is going to have a handful of less exciting but wildly more powerful cube mainstays. While I am fairly sure of which cards I want to cut and the kinds of things they should be instead. I will test out this pushed linear version first. The weaknesses of the deck will be better exposed so I can best assess how to patch them up. The various support cards may also surprise me, I might find Lone Rider is exactly what the deck wants! Testing is essential but I find I learn more in the testing process if I form expectations on cards before doing so. I know what Selfless Spirit does and how it will help so I can use that slot in testing for something like the Lone Rider in one of the only lists it will ever be viable. Not only do I get to see what such a card can do I also get to see how savage the matchup is in the face of mass removal.
Lastly for the alternate options for this list we have the black aspect. There are three fairly big payoff cards in black for lifegain although sadly two of them are five drops. The addition of black to this list makes it very top heavy and that in itself would need some significant adjusting to accommodate. A black version would either be more midrange with better odds of hitting land drops all the way to five perhaps even with some ramp, or it would cut much of the white top end. Blood Baron of Vizkopa and Divinity of Pride are high stand alone power cards and good game ending threats.
Ayli, the Eternal Pilgrim is the other black lifegain payoff card and is the thing I most want in this list. She is cheap, has a great starting body that controls the board well, offers utility and support with the lifegain ability and then turns into a complete beast should you hit 30 life. I expect the best builds to use Ayli. Once you go down that path, even if you ignore the five drops you still have things like Lingering Souls looking better than Procession, Sorin looking better than Ajani and that kind of thing. Even extort cards have something to offer a list like this. For an archetype that seems fairly narrow this has a lot of options and a fair degree of direction it can go it. It is going to take several goes at it to get it properly honed. At least with a weaker mono white starting point I will know which are the weakest links and therefor less likely to get carried over into alternate builds. Given how much I have talked about what should be changed from my proposed list it seems cruel not to give a proper one. The reason I shy away from doing so is because I don't know for sure, I can guess at what seems good but I will learn more about how to make a good thing by intentionally testing a weaker list. Anyway, this is the expected form of the best build;24 Spells
Serra Ascendant
Soul's Attendant
Soul Warden
Martyr of Sands
Legions Landing
Kythoen, Hero of Akros
Thraben Inspector
Mother of Runes
Sword to Plowshares
Auriok Champion
Ajani's Pridemate
Ayli, the Eternal Pilgrim
Selfless Spirit
Suture Priest
Serene Steward
Spectral Procession
Proclamation of Rebirth
Lingering Souls
Recruiter of the Guard
Ajani Goldmane
Sorin, Solemn Visitor
Faith's Fetters
Ranger of Eos
Archangel of Thune
16 Lands
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