I think people can make lack of whiteboards work. The issue I have seen is when your team is partially co-located and partially remote -- the co-located people

I think people can make lack of whiteboards work. The issue I have seen is when your team is partially co-located and partially remote -- the co-located people do the whiteboarding without bothering to involve the remote people, or the remote people do a lot more one-on-one discussions with other remote people. I think remote can work well, but the entire team needs to be remote to ensure communication.