MTG: Ghosts with the Most – Top Five Spirit Commanders
Call the Ghostbusters, because when these five Commanders hit the field, you’ll get all the Casper with none of the Friendly.
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. You use a deck of 100 cards led by a legendary creature, aka, 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 an excellent source for Commander info and can give you ideas on how to build your next Commander deck or tune an existing one.
Spirits are one of the more underutilized creature types in the game, but they’re fun nonetheless. They usually have some form of evasion, either flying, unblockable, or the criminally underused shadow, and they usually mass up pretty quickly. Spirits rarely fight alone, and their creatures aren’t usually the biggest, but they can overwhelm the enemy in short order. Get into the spirit of the game with these five ghostly leaders.
Millicent, Restless Revenant
Millicent is the queen of the undead and an absolute powerhouse at the head of a Spirit army. She gets cheaper the more Spirits you have, making her Commander tax a non-issue if she dies. She also has everyone’s favorite form of evasion. Even better, whenever one of your other nontoken Spirits damages an opponent or dies, you get ANOTHER Spirit, making her even cheaper on the next cast.
Best of all, she’s in Azorius, so you have all the control options with the token power of a Selesnya player.
King of the Oathbreakers
Turning from Kaldheim to Middle-earth and Azorius to Orzhov, we have another army maker with a few fewer teeth. King of the Oathbreakers is another flyer, but his Spirit-based ability is a little strange. Whenever a Spirit is targeted by a spell, they phase out, giving them a bit of evasion. However, once they phase back in, you get ANOTHER 1/1 flyer. While that does mean you can’t target your own creatures with spells, it does give your army a measure of protection. Just watch out for nontargeted wipes.
O-Kagachi, Vengeful Kami
A powerful Dragon Spirit with a massive statline, O-Kagachi is an incredible value. A 6/6 with flying and trample, O-Kagachi is a beatstick of the highest order. However, his nastiest ability is his vengeful side. If he deals combat damage to a player that attacked you during their last turn (whether it got through or not), you get to exile one of their nonland permanents. It’s like a bit of protection; sometimes, the fear of reprisal is defense enough.
Iname, Death Aspect
A relic of an older time, Iname, Death Aspect is the king of recursion decks. Once it hits the field, you can empty your deck of creatures and then have a graveyard ripe for bringing back. A Return of the Dark Realms, Patriarch’s Bidding, or Living Death makes this deck especially nasty. Just watch out for Bojuka Bog.
Kyodai, Soul of Kamigawa
Another interesting offering, Kyodai is a surprise sleeper hit. Thanks to flash, it can hit the field at any time, making things indestructible for a turn. It can also buff itself to an obscene degree. While it doesn’t lend itself well to leading an army, it can make a nasty center to rally around.
What do you think of these Commanders?
