The 10 Best Colorless Commander Cards To Power Your Next Deck

Commander has long been magic’s format of playing whatever funny, ridiculous, and sometimes overpowered cards in your singleton monstrosity. Since there’s 30+ years of choices to fill your 100 slots, this list takes a look at the 10 most powerful colorless cards in commander. 

 

As a quick note: this list doesn't include the most powerful colorless commanders, as that is a separate list. This list, naturally, does not include cards banned as of the writing of this list. (sorry to all the jeweled lotus enjoyers.)

 

10: The Fan Favorites

 

The number 10 slot is occupied by an homage to all of the slightly worse mana rocks. Cards like Commander’s Sphere, Fellwar Stone, Mind Stone, and Thought Vessel are auto-includes in most decks, but are outshined by their faster, or better mana fixing counterparts that will be mentioned higher on this list. Generally all of these are good cards, supported the fact that they appear, on average in 1in5 decks (edhrec.com) but are lacking a little something that takes them from good to insanely powerful.

 

9: “Choose A Creature Type”

 

Number 9 goes to specifically Roaming Throne, Urza’s Incubator, Herald’s Horn, and Vanquisher’s Banner. All of these cards ask their caster to choose a creature type as they enter the battlefield. In creature based decks, and especially tribal decks, all four of these cards are incredibly powerful. For example, here is the average Edgar Markov vampires deck per EDHREC:

 

 

The above deck includes 4 different artifacts that say “Choose a creature type”. Not only are these cards strong enough to take up 1 slot in your deck. You want more than one because they can be that impactful on games. Roaming Throne generates extra value for every triggered ability on your creatures. Since many of the strongest creatures in the game and, indeed, many commanders, have triggered abilities, by doubling those triggers, Roaming Throne essentially reads “win more”. Urza’s Incubator shows obvious power since its mana reducing effect will allow you to play more creatures in a turn, and make your board as big as possible, as quick as possible. Herald’s Horn, like Urza’s Incubator helps you get your threats on board faster with cost reduction, which is already good. What makes Herald’s Horn have further power though, is the fact that it also draws cards, if the top card is the chosen creature type. Vanquisher’s Banner thereby is powerful for similar reasons. Drawing a card for every creature of the chosen type played can let you churn through your deck for more and more creatures, quickly filling the board. All four of these are strong because they induce more value, or allow you to get value on the board faster.

 

8: The Altar’s

 

Ashnod’s Altar, Phyrexian Altar, and Altar of Dementia clench number 8. It is not terribly uncommon for commander games to go wide. With a lot of creatures on the board, or, better yet a deck created around token generation, all three of the Altars are extremely powerful. This Teysa deck:

 

 

uses both of the mana-generating altars to not only be a free sacrifice outlet for dies triggers on many of its cards, but also to keep churning out said cards and maintain game-winning life and board advantage. Ashnod’s Altar and Phyrexian Altar  are powerful for the same reason, creatures becoming mana allows decks to play many spells, and spells of many mana that can win the game in as little as a single turn. Further, if the deck is built specifically to churn out creatures, Altar of Dementia can serve to break the stalemate that is often found in long commander games. Sacrificing the whole board to play something devastating, or just to devastate the opponent’s library is generally game-winning and is why the altar’s are so strong.

 

7: Steel-toed Boots

 

Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots take up the number 7 since they both allow your commander creature to go fast and stay protected. Both of these cards make sure that your commander can either get swinging, or activate its tap-abilities faster and therefore get the game moving quicker. More importantly, the Hexproof or Shroud present on these equipment mean that your commander will stay protected from spot-removal, making your gameplan much harder to disrupt. Their power and popularity are supported by the fact that they are played in over a quarter of commander decks (edhrec.com). 

 

6: The Top

 

Sensei’s Divining Top has been a multi-format staple since its printing. Top is able to filter the top of your library into the order that you want it with its one mana ability, after you've ordered the draws the way you want them, top is also capable of drawing you a card and putting itself on top. Because of the immense power of being able to order your draws in the most effective way for your deck, as well as being able to draw the most beneficial of those ordered cards, top is playable in most decks. Many competitive commander decks run top for these deck-smoothing properties, like this one:

 

 

Further, if played with any kind of mana reduction like Foundry inspector, paired with the ability to play the top card of your library like Mystic Forge, top can be utilized to draw the entire deck. In most cases, top makes any commander deck run smoother, and in some, is the win engine.

 

5: Arcane Signet

 

Arcane Signet is automatically present in most commander decks for its quick ability to fix your mana. Since it taps for any color of mana in your commander’s color identity, and all of the cards in your deck must match that identity, arcane signet effectively says tap to add 1 mana of any color. What makes it much stronger than most other mana rocks is the fact that it has this ability on 2 mana. It makes for a good ramp option since its so cheap, and because it taps for any mana you would use in commander, it has no downside for being so cheap. Compared to the mana rocks presented earlier in the list arcane signet is played in 72% of decks (edhrec.com). Cheap mana is always good, which will be further represented by the top 3.

 

4: Precious

 

The One Ring recently was banned in Modern for how absurdly strong it is. The ring brings both protection, and card draw to the equation for the tradeoff of life loss. Since commander has such a high starting life total, often cards that induce life-loss as a downside to immense value are seen as having little to no downside at all. This fact remains with the one ring. The burden of the one ring increases such that you are drawing cards equal to the life you lose on the next turn. Cards like Griselbrand are banned because 1 for 1 life loss to card draw ratio has proven broken time and time again. Furthermore, The One Ringgives its caster protection from everything for a turn. Not only do you get insane card advantage for nearly no downside, but you can slow down your opponents ability to kill you as well. While the one ring isnt as overpowered as Griselbrand since you can't draw all the cards at once, it is very close and thereby is about that overpowered.

 

3: “Totally Not Grim Monolith”

 

Mana Vault is a card so powerful that it baffled the community when both Mana Crypt and Jeweled Lotus got banned but the Vault stayed legal. Mana vault, like any other fast mana or mana reduction in commander allows you to spam out your deck as fast as possible. Sure, there is a 1 life per turn downside to allowing it to remain tapped after you effectively play colorless Dark Ritual, but as we discussed with The One Ring life loss is hardly a downside in commander. Mana Vault like any other fast mana speeds up your game plan immensely, causing it to be one of the most powerful cards in commander. Here we can observe its raw power in competitive edh, alongside some of the cards that end up higher on the list:

 

 

2: The Other Ring

 

What's better than fast mana with a slight downside? Fast mana with zero downside. Sol Ring allows you to pay a single mana to get 2 in return. Better yet, it untaps every turn, making it less a ritual like Mana Vault and more so the best ramp spell that you can play in commander. In most games, a turn 1 Sol Ring will make you the table’s target due to the sheer power presented, in some others it will single handedly make you go fast enough to outpace and win against the entire table targeting you. Sol Ring is played in over 80% of decks (edhrec.com). Due to its cheap real world price and game-warping speed up, its a no brainer to include Sol Ring in every commander deck you build.

 

1: The Moxen

 

Chrome Mox, Mox Opal, Mox amber, Lotus Petal, and even Mox Tantalite are some of the most powerful cards in the game, let alone commander. All of them allow you to play an extra mana for free. All with various, usually inconsequential downsides. For instance, Mox Opal Allows you to tap for a mana of any color as long as you control three or more artifacts, in a format where mana rocks are a staple, getting three artifacts on the board usually occurs naturally. Chrome Mox Requires you to exile a card from hand to be able to produce mana, and Lotus Petal sacrifices itself to make the mana, but even still, fast mana allows any deck to play more powerful cards earlier, and to build a board faster than it otherwise would have. Augmenting game-speed in your favor often leads to snowballing a board bigger than your opponents can deal with. All of these cards often find themselves in competitive commander decks because of their raw power:

 

 

Because of the speed warping abilities of Moxen, and fast mana in general, they top the list as the most powerful colorless cards in commander.

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