10 Fun and Underrated Commanders You Should Try!

The Master, Formed Anew | Illustrated by Simon Dominic
Lyzolda, the Blood Witch | Illustrated by Jim Nelson
Cait, Cage Brawler | Illustrated by Joseph Meehan
Selvala, Eager Trailblazer | Illustrated by Viko Menezes

Hey, nerds! One of my favorite things about Commander is the freedom to build around commanders that don't see a lot of play, and with how many commanders Wizards releases each year, some might slip through the cracks, so for this week's article I wanted to talk about 10 underrated commanders you should try.

In order to make the list, the commanders had to have less than 500 decks on EDHREC at the time of writing. I'm hoping this article will boost some of their numbers and inspire you to build something new. And after this, make sure to check out my top 10 commanders of 2024 article from last week.

Okay, without further ado, let's get into it! 

Faramir, Steward of Gondor

On the surface, Faramir is a straightforward commander. You just need to play legendary creatures to become the monarch and make tokens. But I want to build Faramir as a draw-two commander. When I say, "draw-two," I mean loading the deck with cards like Prince Imrahil the Fair, Alandra, Sky Dreamer, and Homunculus Horde that provide benefit when you draw your second card.

The monarch is great at triggering this on our turn, but we would still need to add some additional ways. I'd make sure to include cheap draw spells, like Frantic Search, Faithful Mending, and Meeting of Minds, to trigger our card effects on other player's turns. 

The Master, Formed Anew

The Master, Formed Anew is a weird commander. It comes in at only two mana but can become a copy of any creature you own, assuming you exile it, so while they are only two mana, you generally want to wait to cast them until you have something big in play, like Massacre Wurm or Crabomination. But I want to build them as a Gyruda, Doom of Depths companion deck.

The biggest issue I've had with Gyruda companion decks is if Gyruda gets exiled. It can be hard to bring creatures back from exile, so the deck stops functioning. However, if we exile it with The Master, we now get access to Gyruda from the command zone for a lot less mana. The other thing you can do is steal your opponents' creatures with cards like Legerdemain, Cultural Exchange, or, if you're feeling fancy, Gilded Drake.

Lyzolda, the Blood Witch

There are plenty of Rakdos sacrifice commanders we can pick. We have the new Evereth, Viceroy of Plunder or Rakdos, the Muscle. So why pick Lyzolda? I think Lyzolda is more interesting than other Rakdos sac commanders. She specifically wants you to sacrifice creatures that are both red and black to her ability.

The biggest downside is the cost to activate her ability. But we're already playing cards like Ashnod's Altar in sacrifice decks, and because she's the one dealing damage, we can win with poison counters using Tainted Strike or kill creatures while gaining life Basilisk Collar. 

Cait, Cage Brawler 

Cait is another cheap commander that I think is being underutilized. Most of the cards I see on her EDHREC page are +1/+1 counter support, big creatures, and cards that want to be in the graveyard. This makes sense given her ability, but I think she makes a better artifact commander than a traditional Gruul commander.

Red has access to cheap artifact reanimation with Goblin Engineer, Goblin Welder, Daretti, Scrap Savant, Trash for Treasure, and Scrap Welder. We have access to green, so we can tutor these creatures easily. Then we can discard massive artifacts like Portal to Phyrexia, Triplicate Titan, and Phyrexian Triniform that we can cheat back into play. 

Selvala, Eager Trailblazer

Much like her mono-green counterpart, Selvala, Eager Trailblazer has the potential to generate more mana than you'll know what to do with, but unlike Selvala, Heart of the Wilds, we need to do some work to get this ability online. Thankfully, I have just the card in mind to help with our problem: Wild Pair. I know this might seem like a weird idea, but hear me out.

Wild Pair lets you turn your Enduring Innocence into Rumor Gatherer. Or a Silverback Elder into a Moonshaker Cavalry. The higher the combined stats, the wider the range of creatures you can tutor directly into play, which leads to more mana to cast even bigger creatures. 

Triad of Fates

Traid of Fates pulls me in two directions. The first is blink thanks to their second ability, and the second is untapping. Generally, untapping decks are found in blue thanks to Intruder Alarm or in green with Seedborn Muse. Instead, we're going to use cards like Drumbellower, Magewright's Stone, and Sting, the Glinting Dagger to activate our commander multiple times a turn.

Then we can blink our creatures for value or exile threats when needed. Oblivion Stone is a must-add since it adds another way to add fate counters creatures. Finally, you'll want to add The Ozolith and Resourceful Defense as a way to move your fate counters around as creatures leave play. 

Shaun, Father of Synths

At the time of writing, Shaun has fewer than 500 decks on EDHREC and I can't figure out why. He's a unique Izzet commander that doesn't focus on spells or artifacts like the more traditional Izzet commanders. He wants us to attack with legendary creatures to make artifact copies of them. Okay, fine, he cares a little bit about artifacts, but imagine having two or three copies of Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain or Karlach, Fury of Avernus? Or maybe you want to animate your The One Ring and make another copy of it?

The biggest downside is if Shaun gets removed, you have to exile all of your clones. I'd lean into legends that have powerful enters triggers so even if we lose Shaun later, we still got most of the value. 

Bortuk Bonerattle

Domain is something usually restricted to five-color decks, since you need all basic land types, but did you know there are plenty of green enchantments that give you all land types? Cards like Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, Prismatic Omen, and Nylea's Presence make it easy to get all five-colors. You can play the new overlords from Duskmourn, House of Horrors Overlord of the Hauntwoods and Overlord of the Balemurk, both of which can be reanimated with Bortuk's ability.

The biggest hurdle is getting Bortuk back into your hand or the command zone so we can cast it again for its reanimation effect, but with cards like Oversold Cemetery or Another Chance and some sac effects, this shouldn't be an issue. Then all you need to do is load up on some mill and five-mana creatures you want to bring back. 

Moira Brown, Guide Author

Unlike the fate counters we talked about earlier, there are quite a few more cards that deal with quest counters. Many of them are from the Fallout precon, such as Craig Boone, Novac Guard, which is also an underrated commander, Duchess, Wayward Tavernkeep, Overseer of Vault 76, Sierra, Nuka's Biggest Fan and ED-E, Lonesome Eyebot.

There is also a cycle of quest counter enchantments from Zendikar, such as Sunspring Expedition, Quest for the Holy Relic, and Luminarch Ascension. We also want to add some blink so we can make more Equipment with our commander. Which means we should add Metastatic Evangel to proliferate when we blink our commander. Oltec Matterweaver is also a powerhouse here so we can copy our cheap Equipment tokens. 

Marcus, Mutant Mayor

I originally wanted to put Elrond of the White Council for Simic, but there aren't quite enough Simic voting cards to make this work, so we're falling back to tried and true Simic stompy. Marcus is a bigger Edric, Spymaster of Trest that also puts counters on your creatures.

I want to give creatures double strike with Fireshrieker or Brass Knuckles to make sure we can get a counter on a creature and draw a card. Or if it already has a counter, we can draw two. Or you can try to build a Simic Mutant kindred deck.

There are 54 other Mutants in Simic that are legal in Commander. Of these 53, 12 of them have graft, five have adapt, and five have evolve. I'd want to include Helium Squirter, Elusive Krasis, and Skatewing Spy to make combat easy. 

So, what underrated commanders do you enjoy? Any you think I missed? Let me know down below and make sure to checkout my YouTube channel for more Magic: The Gathering content. Alrighty nerds, I'll see you in the next one!