Then in War of the Spark not only did they print a whole slew at rare, but uncommon planeswalkers were popping out of packs left, right, and center. Planeswalkers are a unique type of permanent spell in Magic with some very special rules. This Daretti deck is all about slowing down the pace of the game with artifacts like Trinisphere, Magus of the Moon, and Lodestone Golem.

MTG Salvation

Oko, Thief of Crowns is definitely one of the best Planeswalkers of all time, but this is one of the few, if not the only, Planeswalker that can turn off a commander. Similar to Song of the Dryad or Darksteel Mutation, we get to Elk our opponent’s Commanders, which can really put a damper on our opponent’s plan. Aminatou’s ultimate is really interesting, and once in a blue moon, you might be able to manipulate the board to a state where you can steal something really good while giving your opponent next to nothing.

What really helps her make this list though is her ability to combo with a few spells to win the game on the spot. Examples of this are Chain of Smog, Chain of Acid and an indestructible artifact like Darksteel Ingot just to name a few. Dihada, Binder of Wills is all about legendary creatures and permanents. She doesn’t much care what they are either, working well with pretty much any legendary you like. The most eye-catching part of this card is the -11 ultimate effect, but what this mainly does is give people a reason to be scared of (and target) Dihada; you basically never get to use it.

Follow the singleton or color identity rules according to your format. You can only activate the loyalty abilities of planeswalkers as a sorcery. This means you can only activate it on your turn and, unless you have something like The Chain Veil or Teferi, Temporal Archmage’s emblem in play, you can only activate one ability per turn. You can, however, use a loyalty ability the turn your planeswalker enters the battlefield. If a card refers to your Commander, it means either the legendary creature or the legendary Background enchantment. So cards like Command Beacon can fetch either the legendary creature or the legendary Background.

Magic Origins wasn’t massively impactful on the Commander format, but it did have a fairly huge addition in the form of transforming planeswalkers with the ability to start as creatures. The most powerful of these is likely Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy, who starts as a two-mana looting creature that can essentially give your spells flashback once it flips into a planeswalker. This opens up new design space, too, since Planeswalkers designed to be commanders can be written as true leaders and deck-defining cards and not just as tools to augment an existing strategy. That’s already the case with cards like Commodore Guff and Estrid, the Masked, and the game could stand to have more Planeswalkers like that. Counter doublers are excellent with planewalkers as long as they don’t specify a nonloyalty counter, because such effects will add loyalty counters when the planeswalker enters. The + loyalty abilities do not add additional counters since the +ability is seen as a cost to do the ability, not the ability itself.

The first ability gains one loyalty counter, creates a small 1/1 Insect token, mills one card, and repeats the process if the milled card is an insect card. The -2 ability, allows you to sacrifice a creature in order to destroy another creature or planeswalker. This is excellent commander in Golgari decks that love to have creatures in the graveyard to target with their various reanimation spells.

This is incredibly potent and makes Grist, the Hunger Tide an immediate lightning rod once it hit’s, so make sure you’re either ready to defend it or content with one activation. Communicate what you enjoy about Commander, what you’re hoping (or not) to see in that game (such as specific cards, length of games, or general strategies), then change plans a bit if necessary. Sometimes that’s pulling a few cards, sometimes swapping a deck, sometimes changing tables or deciding not to play.

Mins & Boo, Timeless Heroes is an amazing Gruul planeswalker commander that wants to kill opponents by throwing giant hamsters at them. It creates a Boo creature token each turn, encouraging you to either grow the rodent with your plus ability or ‘fling’ it at the enemy with the minus. Daretti’s abilities are all heavily focused around this game plan, from the loot effect to fill your graveyard, to the artifact sac and reanimate, to the ultimate that means your artifacts keep coming back. The tricky thing is, Daretti doesn’t make any tokens or remove opposing threats, making it quite difficult to protect him at times. Lastly, Bolas’s ultimate might as well state “target player loses the game,” as it exiles all but the bottom card of a player’s library. As long as he’s backed up by heavy sums of mana and support, this particular incarnation of Nicol Bolas is a force to be reckoned with.

#23. Commodore Guff

While occasional exceptions to this can be fun, when used regularly they often make games less interesting for most players, and are not allowed without prior approval. Watch out for Teferi, Time Raveler and Displacer Kitten hitting your opponent’s board. These two cards, combined with a mana neutral or mana positive rock like Sol Ring, allows a player to draw their entire deck and, in the case of mana-positive rocks, float infinite mana. Chandra, Hope’s Beacon offers an incredible amount of value to any player who can consistently take advantage of her static ability. Able to copy one instant or sorcery you cast per turn, this can both double the efficiency of a massive spell on your turn while making your interaction mtg card not only a lot more deadly, but difficult to interact with.

Who’s the Strongest Planeswalker in MTG?

Technically I evaluate Lukka, Wayward Bonder here, but having Mila as the front-facing half of the card means you get to sneak this planeswalker into the command zone of a deck. It’s a little disappointing that the first card for a character who literally rewrites history in the lore ended up being so flat and narrow. Despite being pretty cool and unique, Guff doesn’t make the superfriends Commander strategy any more or less reliable than it was before. Jared Carthalion isn’t the worst card in the world, but the competition for 5-color commanders is steep. When compared with the likes of Kenrith, the Returned King, Najeela, the Blade-Blossom, and Morophon, the Boundless, you can see how Jared doesn’t offer a whole lot. Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy, or JVP as I’ll call ‘em, is an excellent card that just doesn’t hold up in Commander too well.

If you want to run a Commander event, the best approach we’ve found is to simply provide space for folks to self-aggregate and let them join in with groups where they think they’ll have fun. Encourage them to have social contract conversations to make better matches, but don’t force it. Initially there may be a lot of watching of games and people figuring out where they belong, but that will eventually turn players who don’t know each other into trusted groups. Magic is a collectible card game and only official Magic the Gathering cards produced by Wizards of the Coast should be used in games.

If they die, get exiled or anything else that removes them from the board, you can instead put them back in the Command Zone, but you have to pay two more mana to cast them – and that cost goes up every time. Otherwise, Dihada can ultimate surprisingly fast, and this ultimate ends games. This is both incredibly powerful in graveyard synergy decks, and has the potential of ramping you up four mana. In the likely scenario where it adds something to your hand, Dihada just gave you card advantage and a way to cast it. Teferi, Master of Time has one of the most unique static abilities ever printed on a Planeswalker.