Summary
Magic: The Gatheringprints hundreds of new legendary creatures every year. In fact, in 2024 is printed 340 new ones, all vying for a spot at the head of your next commander deck. Some are exciting, some are functional, others kind of stink, but the beauty of the format is that everything can fit somewhere.
Out of the 340 new commanders printed in 2024, ten have stood out. Not necessarily because they’re the strongest, most overpowered commanders in the game, but because they do something new, or breathe life into an old, tired archetype.
10Laughing Jasper Flint
Stick ‘Em Up
Mercenaries weren’t a big part of Magic until Outlaws of Thunder Junction came along and gave it a big kick up the backside, and Laughing Jasper Flint is perhaps the single best way to make use of them.
Jasper lets you take cards off the top of your opponent’s library and cast them, with creatures you cast then becoming Mercenaries. Provided youhave enough outlawsin play, you can burn through your opponents’ decks incredibly quickly and steal their biggest toys.
Rogues, Warlocks, Mercenaries, Pirates, and Assassins are the five creature types that count as outlaws.
Jasper may work best in the one-on-one environment of Brawl, but still makes for a fun, different take on traditional Rakdos (black/red) theft decks in Commander.
9Captain America, First Avenger
Marvelous
Though Marvel wouldn’t get its first full set until 2025’s Universes Beyond: Spider-Man,Captain Americawas one of the first five characters from the comic giant released for Magic in the form of a Secret Lair.
Cap offers a neat take on Equipment decks, by having you chuck them at your opponents instead of building him up big with a whole armoury as you normally see. Equip him with a Kaldra Compleat, or an Excalibur, Sword of Eden, and he can dish out massive damage for just three mana.
Of course, the Catch ability does mean you can stack him up and swing in if you need to, as it gives you an easy way to cheat expensive Equip costs.
8Caesar, Legion’s Emperor
That’s Kai-Sar, Not See-zar
Another Universes Beyond commander,Caesaris the face of one of the Fallout Commander decks. As is befitting the ruler of a slave-trading legion, Caesar has you sacrifice creatures you control to give you a wide spread of abilities.
Caesar’s power comes in how much of a toolbox he is. You could make tapped and attacking tokens, draw cards, or blast your opponent in the face once you’ve gone wide with enough tokens. And in the Mardu colours of white, black, and red, you’ve got plenty of ways to profit off of death and tokens to help stretch Caesar’s influence even further.
7Edward Kenway
The Captain Of The Jackdaw Does It All
The pirate Assassin of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag,Edward Kenwayis a perfect fit as the face of a huge number of decks.
On the one hand, Edward wants you to have Assassins and Pirates, making him ideal for an outlaw deck. Alternatively, he cares about Vehicles too, turning your Vehicles into a way to steal cards off the top of your opponents’ decks.
In a lot of ways, he’s similar to Laughing Jasper Flint, but with a wider spread of colours and more flexibility in how you build him. He’s also in the popular Pirate kindred colours of blue, black, and red, meaning he could easily take over from Admiral Becket Brass if you fancy playing Pirates slightly differently.
6Rendmaw, Creaking Nest
It Takes Two To Tango
Rendmawoffers up a playstyle we’ve not seen a whole lot of before: multiple card types mattering. Whenever you play a card with at least two types, the entire table makes goaded 2/2 Birds to help dish the damage out around the board.
The initial play is to stack your deck up with artifact or enchantment creatures, to ensure you’re always triggering Rendmaw. But don’t forget there are Kindred instants, sorceries, and enchantments you may play as well that will work.
Legendary and Snow are supertypes, so won’t trigger Rendmaw. Likewise, subtypes like Elf, Shrine, Dog, and Saga also won’t work.
Once you’re done playing all these types, having them in your graveyard is a great way to build up a delirium count. Rendmaw may not strictly be a graveyard-matters commander, but in green and black there’s always going to be something you’re able to do with your bin.
5The Wise Mothman
Out of the many, many commanders the Fallout decks introduced,The Wise Mothmanis easily the most interesting simply by way of making use of the set’s most interesting mechanic: rad counters.
Rad counters helped make mill decks finally feel fun for everyone. You’ll still be throwing lots of cards away, but by having counters to work with it feels like the mill player is putting in more effort than kicking a Maddening Cacophony. The Mothman is the commander built around this, granting rad counters and dishing out +1/+1 counters for each nonland card milled.
On top of all that, the Wise Mothman is based on one of the world’s coolest cryptids. The Mothman finally came to commander, and, even if you’re not a big Fallout fan, it’s hard to deny that that is pretty rad.
4Ygra, Eater of All
What’s The Charge? Eating A Meal? A Succulent Commander Meal?
Food commanders come in all shapes and sizes, whether it be Gyome rewarding you for playing nontoken creatures, or Rocco, Street Chef playing cards from exile.Ygragoes the much more direct route of having you eat everything on the table.
Ygra makes all creatures Food in addition to their other types, giving you the ability to pay two generic and tap a creature you control to sacrifice it and gain three life. Crucially, any Food entering any graveyard will put two +1/+1 counters on Ygra.
Drop Ygra and sacrifice your own creatures for a huge buff, or simply punish your opponents for having their own, delicious creatures hitting the graveyard instead. Targeted removal and board wipes are great, but throwing a +30/+30 Ygra and forcing your opponent to block it is just as good.
3Arabella, Abandoned Doll
Who’s The Weenie Now?
One of white’s most famous decks is the White Weenie. Filling the board with small creatures, it aims to flood an opponent under a tidal wave instead of hitting with a few, bigger threats.Arabellatakes this go-wide style and ramps it up in a huge way.
Whenever Arabella attacks, your opponents each take damage equal to the number of creatures you control with power two or less. This is before damage, and you don’t even need to swing with your weenies – just Arabella.
Drop a Storm Herd, or a Nesting Dovehawk, or even a Wedding Announcement to build up a mass of tokens, and Arabella is easily one of the scariest commanders we’ve seen in a good long while.
2Bristly Bill, Spine Sower
Showdown At The Landfall Corral
Bristly Billisn’t just one of the best commanders of 2024, it’s also one of the best mono-green cards we received in the year. It’s found a home in a number of formats and deck archetypes for its flexibility and cheapness.
At just two mana, Bill buffs up your creatures with each land you play. Pay five mana, and he doubles every +1/+1 counter, which is easily game-ending. Paired up with cards like Caretaker’s Talent or Doubling Season, and he can be swinging for ridiculous amounts of damage before your opponent has a chance to mount a defence.
Landfall decks love him. +1/+1 counters decks love him. Stompy decks love him. Bristly Bill was the slam-dunk card of Outlaws of Thunder Junction, and for good reason.
1Voja, Jaws Of The Conclave
The standout card from the ill-received Murders at Karlov Manor,Voja, Jaws of the Conclavehas been controversial ever since it hit the game.
Voja fits nicely in with Elf kindred decks, giving each creature +1/+1 counters equal to the number of Elves you control. That alone would have been fine, but the addition of a ward cost of three generic tipped it into one of the cards most likely to be hit with a ban this year.
A three-mana ward cost might as well be hexproof, and with it also nabbing you at least one card each turn in the process, it was the big bad Wolf of Commander until Nadu came along a few months later.
Magic: The Gathering
Created by Richard Garfield in 1993, Magic: The Gathering (MTG) has become one of the biggest tabletop collectible card games in the world. Taking on the role of a Planeswalker, players build decks of cards and do battle with other players. In excess of 100 additional sets have added new cards to the library, while the brand has expanded into video games, comics, and more.
