10 Best White Cards To Play In Commander

Magic The Gathering’s Commander Format has one massive deckbuilding advantage over formats such as Standard: You have the option to include almost any card in Magic The Gathering’s storied history. But with so many cards, how can you decide what to put in your deck? We’ve got the lowdown on the best White cards for the format.

 

As an important aside: we’re not considering lands in this list. We’re also not including banned cards in this list, as we want to discuss cards that you can actually play in the format. This list also won’t reflect the best Commanders for the color, as that’s a separate list.

 

Swords To Plowshares/ Path To Exile

 

Swords to Plowshares and Path To Exile are both extremely similar cards. They’re both one drops that exile a creature on the field at instant speed, allowing for quick spot removal that can prevent an opponent from really going off. They’re just altogether really useful cards and should be in every deck that can play them.

 

Ranger-Captain of Eos

 

Ranger-Captain of Eos is a pretty great card for a couple of reasons. The first is that it can search your library for any creature with a converted mana value of 1 or less, meaning it can grab some cards that can slow down your opponents (such as some that appear in this list!). The real sweet stuff comes in the second ability, however: by sacrificing itself, Ranger-Captain of Eos makes it so that your opponent can’t cast non-creature spells this turn, which can shut down entire strategies for a turn so that you can better prepare for what’s coming. 

 

Esper Sentinel

 

Do you hate it when your opponents cast spells without you getting some value from them? Good news! Esper Sentinel exists to solve that problem. Whenever an opponent casts their first non-creature spell each turn, you get to draw a card unless that player pays mana equal to the power of Esper Sentinel. Sure, that’s only one mana, but people tend to forget about the existence of this card until it’s too late, meaning you’re likely going to draw a few cards before it’s removed.

 

Drannith Magistrate

 

Drannith Magistrate is a card that you may not have heard of if you only play Commander casually, yet if you’ve even got a passing familiarity with Competitive Commander then just the name of the card gives you shivers. For a meager 1W you get a creature that essentially tells your opponent that they can’t play their Commander. Indeed, they can’t play cards from anywhere other than their hands, completely shutting down strategies relying on Cascade and Discover, in addition to the aforementioned Commander shutdown. Bradford uses Drannith Magistrate to help shut down pesky Eldrazi's across the table from him at a regular FNM.

 

 

Arbiter SaltMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
Commander
1 Grand Arbiter Augustin IV

Creature
1 Eluge, the Shoreless Sea
1 The Council of Four
1 Baral, Chief of Compliance
1 Drannith Magistrate
1 Reflector Mage
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Lavinia, Azorius Renegade
1 Archon of Emeria
1 Grand Abolisher
1 Aven Interrupter
1 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
1 Faramir, Prince of Ithilien
1 Sunblast Angel
1 Chancellor of the Annex
1 Avacyn, Angel of Hope

Enchantment
1 Search for Azcanta
1 Elspeth Conquers Death
1 Ghostly Prison
1 Smothering Tithe
1 Rest in Peace
1 Propaganda
1 Shark Typhoon

Land
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Otawara, Soaring City
1 Minas Tirith
1 Rivendell
1 The Grey Havens
1 Celestial Colonnade
1 Restless Anchorage
1 Irrigated Farmland
1 Lonely Arroyo
1 Polluted Delta
1 Archway of Innovation
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Prairie Stream
1 Castle Vantress
1 Command Tower
1 Temple of Enlightenment
9 Plains
11 Island

Artifact
1 Winter Orb
1 God-Pharaoh's Statue
1 The One Ring
1 Norn's Annex
1 Nevinyrral's Disk
1 Pearl Medallion
1 Sapphire Medallion
1 Vexing Bauble
1 Arcane Signet
1 Commander's Sphere
1 Thought Vessel
1 Sol Ring

Instant
1 Hindering Light
1 Render Silent
1 Cryptic Command
1 Dovin's Veto
1 Commence the Endgame
1 Narset's Reversal
1 Rewind
1 Behold the Multiverse
1 Teferi's Protection
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Absorb
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Flare of Denial
1 Path to Exile
1 Counterspell
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Brainstorm
1 Essence Scatter

Sorcery
1 Planar Cleansing
1 Drawn from Dreams
1 Farewell
1 Portent of Calamity
1 Time Wipe
1 Approach of the Second Sun

Planeswalker
1 Teferi, Master of Time
1 The Wandering Emperor
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Narset, Parter of Veils
1 Teferi, Time Raveler

 

Smothering Tithe

 

Smothering Tithe is a card that probably needs no introduction. It’s a staple in any white deck, a card that has been fairly expensive for a while now, and a card that can generate a wild amount of value. Every time your opponent draws a card, you get to create a treasure token unless the opponent in question pays two mana. While that might not seem like a massive cost, some decks rely on draw power to such an extent that just getting to removal for this enchantment could give you an incredible amount of treasure tokens.

 

Silence

 

Silence is a simple card. For 0W you get an instant that just tells your opponent they can’t play the game this turn. They can’t cast creatures, they can’t cast sorceries, they can’t cast anything. The only thing that they CAN do is activate abilities of permanents that are already on the battlefield which, depending on when this is cast, might be very little help.

 

Teferi’s Protection

 

Teferi’s Protection is probably the single best example of protection in the entirety of Magic The Gathering. For a measly three mana, your life total can’t change and you get protection from everything, while all permanents you control are phased out. Phasing out actually works a lot better than indestructible or hexproof, too, as these cards don’t exist until they phase back in, meaning they can’t be targeted.

 

Solitude 

 

The cycle of elementals from Modern Horizons are all pretty great cards, but Solitude is probably one of the most oft-forgotten about of the bunch. This card has Flash and Lifelink (though the Lifelink is unlikely to come up much, for reasons we’ll get into shortly), and when it enters the battlefield it exiles up to one other target creature, with the controller of that creature gaining life equal to its power. If this seems like a slightly worse (and substantially more expensive) Swords To Plowshares, that’s because at first glance it is. But this card also has Evoke, meaning by exiling a white card from your hand you can cast this spell for free, so you’ve got an extra Swords to Plowshares that you can cast for free.

 

 

Farewell

 

We’ve already spoken about the best protection in white, so how about the best board wipe? Farewell is a fairly notorious card, and for a good reason: it can exile every graveyard, every artifact, every creature, and every enchantment on the field.  You can also choose exactly what you want to exile here, meaning that if you’re playing a primarily enchantment-based deck (as an example) you can simply choose to not exile all of the enchantments on the battlefield so that you’re ahead of your opponent.



Boromir, Warden of the Tower

 

You’ll have likely noticed a pattern with cards on this list. Many of them stop your opponent from playing the game or stop certain strategies from ever getting off the ground. Boromir, Warden of the Tower is another of these cards, but this one specifically shuts down strategies that rely on getting free spells. Every spell that an opponent casts without spending mana to cast it is countered, and that’s not all: by sacrificing Boromir, your creatures gain indestructible until the end of the turn, stopping big board wipes from shutting you down. 

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