MTG: Top Five EDH – White Commanders
Careful what you call the “weenie” color; White has more than just 1/1 Soldiers. Let’s talk EDH White Commanders.
Welcome Planeswalkers and Praetors to our ongoing series about the best casual experience in Magic: Commander. For the uninitiated, Commander is a semi-casual format for Magic: the Gathering, where you use a deck of 100 cards led by a legendary creature, your Commander. Aside from basic lands, you are only allowed one copy of each card in the deck. Moreover, you can only include cards in your Commander’s “color identity” or artifacts. Each color and color combo has a unique playstyle and a wealth of mighty generals to lead your deck to victory. EDHRec.com is a great source for Commander info and can give you ideas to build your next Commander deck, tune an existing one, or build up your first library from scratch.
White is the color of life, order, and peace on the MTG color wheel. It’s probably the least aggressive of the five colors, but that doesn’t weaken it by a long shot. While it is the realm of Soldiers, Cats, and Humans, it also plays host to Angels, Avatars, and the Mother of Machines herself. White is the land of vigilance, lifelink, and, most feared of all, exile, and it plays them to brutal efficiency. In a world of order and discipline, these are at the top of the proverbial roster.
Giada, Font of Hope
Angels are one of the most popular tribes in Commander and at the top of the charts of White decks. With the ability to fly over the opponent’s blockers, they usually pack some extra nastiness, like vigilance or lifelink. Giada takes all that incredible holy power and cranks it up to eleven. Not only is she low cost, meaning you get your Commander out early, but she also makes all your Angels bigger based on the Angels you already have. But what if you’re out of mana? Giada has a fix for that, too, albeit a small one. If you want to unleash a divine army, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better general.
Light-Paws, Emperor’s Voice
It’s not often that EDH decks have only one creature. With ninety-nine possible cards, relying on just your commander to get things done requires a particular brand of leader. Luckily, Light-Paws is precisely that. This unassuming Fox can empower herself with Auras and pull more from your library to make her even scarier. Are you facing high damage? Pull out an Indestructibility and keep her safe. Creatures in your way? Dig up some evasion. Light-Paws can do it all. Just be careful she doesn’t get sniped.
Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines
The source of a thousand memes, Elesh Norn’s second incarnation is one of her nastiest, and for good reason. On the surface, she’s a 4/7 with vigilance for five, which is pretty solid. However, what makes her so nasty is her ETB-based abilities. While she’s on the field, all your ETB effects are doubled, and those of your opponents are completely shut down. That can cripple a ton of decks right out of the gate, but with all YOUR effects doubled, you can go crazy in just a few turns. She’s the queen of New Phyrexia for a reason.
Myrel, Shield of Argive
Another typical commander with a control twist, Myrel makes your Soldier tokens into an army faster than your enemy can blink. Whenever this champion attacks, your Soldier army doubles in size, and if you have any ETB or type-based abilities, it will explode with this commander. Even better, she prevents your opponent from responding at all on your turn, forcing them to keep their nonsense to their own turn instead. Myrel hates traps, so she just turns them off.
Heliod, Sun-Crowned
Closing out our list, we have one of the most notorious monocolor Commanders out there. Heliod is a pretty nasty piece, able to increase the power of one of your creatures every time you gain life or give them the coveted lifelink ability. However, when you combine that with a card that can deal damage by removing tokens, like Walking Ballista, you create a Gatling gun that takes out all your opponents for just six mana (four to make the Ballista a 2/2, two more to give it lifelink and start blasting). Heliod won’t win you many friends, but he’ll certainly win you games.
