MTG: For Lord and Land! – Top Five Knight Commanders
Whether you’ve sworn a mighty oath or you’re simply a blade for hire, these five Commanders will happily lead your forces to battle.
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 to build your next Commander deck or tune an existing one.
Knights are an interesting creature type in Magic. While they can be very powerful, they didn’t have a lot of typal support for a while. However, Eldraine shook all that up be introducing a wealth of powerful knightly leaders. As time continued, more and more potent leaders rallied to the cause, and these days, making a deadly Knight deck is simple. If you want to reenact the Rohirrim charge from Return of the King, these are the Commanders for you.
Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir
One of the most recent additions to the Knightly order, Jabari is nonetheless an extremely potent leader for your army. His eminence trigger is already nasty enough, triggering just for building him as your Commander. However, once he hits the field, it’s lights out for your opponent. Even death can’t keep your Knights down, and with Esper colors, you’ll be unleashing a devastating charge in no time.
Syr Gwyn, Hero of Ashvale
Every good Knight needs a good weapon, and Syr Gwyn is here to make sure they get it. She’s a powerhouse at 5/5 with vigilance and menace, but she’s also about the free distribution of swords. All equip costs that target Knights while she’s on the field are free, and whenever an equipped creature attacks, you get an Arena trigger. That’s a potent combo, but you’ll want to make sure you’re GAINING some life, too, or the cost of war may become too high.
Aryel, Knight of Windgrace
Another powerful Knightly Lord, Aryel can attack and STILL reinforce your legion, thanks to vigilance. However, her primary draw is her ability to simply delete an enemy creature by tapping down enough Knights. Since a lot of Knight creatures have vigilance, you can use this ability to remove a pesky blocker or stop an attacker in their tracks.
Kenrith, the Returned King
While not a Knight himself, every good Knight needs a lord to follow, and Magic’s own King Artur isn’t a bad choice. He gives you access to all five colors plus a suite of powerful abilities to buff your troops, improve your setup, or bring back an important piece. Kenrith is all-around one of the best Commanders out there, so it stands to reason he’d lead a powerful Knight deck.
Elenda and Azor
A bit of an odd team-up, Elenda and Azor are nonetheless a powerful Esper Commander. You get a flying, evasive 6/6 for six, which is already a pretty great deal. However, you ALSO get a card draw trigger, and once you’ve filled your hand, you can turn those cards into more fighters. Just make sure you have a Reliquary Tower or some other way to exceed hand size limits.
What do you think of these Commanders?
