3 Fun Simic Commanders You Should Try!

Radagast, Wizard of Wilds | Illustrated by Tomas Duchek

Jyoti, Moag Ancient | Illustrated by Brent Hollowell

Galadriel of Lothlórien | Illustrated by Magali Villeneuve

Hey, nerds! Last week I released my fun ranking video for all Simic commanders, and it inspired me to go more in-depth with some of the more unique commanders. Often when people think of Simic, they think of ramp, counterspells, and overall pretty boring gameplay. However, Wizards has done a great job of releasing some pretty unique Simic commanders that I think deserve some love. I'll go over each commander, deck ideas, and card suggestions. At the end, I'll go over some honorable mentions. Let's jump in and see what we can do with these Simic commanders. 

Radagast, Wizard of Wilds

First up, let's talk about the Beasts and the Birds featuring Radagast, Wizard of Wilds from Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth Commander Decks. I want to shout out Darkmagedan2353 for giving me this idea. They said they built a deck that leans into Beasts and uses spells that turns creatures into Frogs. I love the idea of using nature-themed spells to remove threats and making Beasts in the process. The other idea is something akin to Crashing Footfalls into Modern, where we only have cards with mana value five or greater. This might seem dumb, but we can use Adventures and split cards to get around this restriction and of course we would use Keruga, the Macrosage as a companion. 

Simic is great at taking big creatures and making them into Frogs, Fish, and sometimes trees. We can use cards like Amphibian Downpour, Frogify, and Song of the Dryads. For noncreature removal, Nature's Claim and Return to Nature fit the theme perfectly. If you want to lean hard into the theme, Force of Nature could be a fun inclusion. You can even negate the downside by giving it lifelink. As for some big Beasts, Craterhoof Behemoth feels perfect for the deck and provides a great win condition, while Rampaging Baloths, Fangren Marauder, and Rampaging Baloths are solid Beasts that I just love playing with. 

For the five-mana only deck, we need to get a bit creative with our early curve. We don't want to just say "land go" for the first several turns of the game. Ideally, we will be ramping so we can start playing the game a turn or two sooner. Cards like Beanstalk Giant, Beanstalk Wurm, Spring // Mind, Moldering Gym // Weight Room, and the backside of Jadzi, Oracle of Arcavios are ways we can get additional lands into play. 

Jyoti, Moag Ancient

Next up is Jyoti, Moag Ancient creature lands. Lands are a tried-and-true Simic strategy, but I love the idea of animating lands and beating face to win. We still want to use standard ramp packages such as Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, and Harrow so we have lands to animate, but instead of using cards like Avenger of Zendikar to win, we will use cards like Tatyova, Steward of Tides, Jolrael, Voice of Zhalfir, and Embodiment of Insight. There are also one-time effects, such as Kamahl's Will, Sylvan Awakening, and Rude Awakening. 

Now you might be thinking having creature lands is bad, because opponents can just kill your lands. And yes, that is an issue, but there is no shortage of ways to get lands back into play. Staples such as Life from the Loam, Splendid Reclamation, and my favorite Yedora, Grave Gardener. I know Yedora isn't true recursion, but when our land creatures die, they return to play as lands. We can also use Conduit of Worlds, Ramunap Excavator, and Perennial Behemoth to play lands from our graveyard. 

Finally, we have land creatures and creatures that make creatures into lands. Ashaya, Soul of the Wild makes all of our creatures into lands. I tried finding another effect like this, but I can't seem to find one, so if I'm missing one, let me know. Jyoti makes land creatures when it enters, but we can also use Staff of Titania and Awaken the Woods to make Dryad Arbors. We can also take advantage of Aggressive Biomancy and Doppelgang to make token copies of our lands or land creatures. 

Galadriel of Lothlórien

The final commander is a Landfall commander, but not in the way you think. Galadriel can put lands from the top of your deck directly into play whenever you scry. This is great if you want to build a scrying theme deck or you could build a shufle-less Landfall deck. My biggest complaint with Landfall decks is the constant need to shuffle. This isn't a huge deal once or two, but throughout the game, it can take up a bit of time. All we need is enough lands and ways to manipulate the top of our library so we are flipping lands as often as possible when we scry.

Manipulating the top of our library is enough to do in Simic. Cheap cantrips, like Preordain, Serum Visions, and Brainstorm, are great at this, but those only fix the top one time. We need to make sure we are consistently getting lands into play. This is where cards like The Temporal Anchor, Netherese Puzzle-Ward, and Lifecrafter's Bestiary shine. These cards let us scry on upkeep, allowing us to easily set the top of our deck for a massive ramp turn when combined with Retreat to Coralhelm.

Ideally, we will be able to chain three or four land drops in a single turn slingshotting us ahead in mana all the while we get Landfall triggers from Scute Swarm, Springheart Nantuko, or whatever Landfall cards you want. If you have the budget, Sensei's Divining Top and Amulet of Vigor are cheap artifacts that can increase the power level of the deck by allowing you to manipulate the top of your deck and untapping lands. Spelunking is a much cheaper option if you want to have lands to enter untapped. 

I do want to talk about some honorable mentions. These are commanders that I don't have much to say about it, I think are cool but I've already discussed them in other articles, or I think the idea is a bit too cute. 

The idea here is to make a creatureless deck where you can manipulate other players' creature types, to protect yourself, while making salamanders for yourself. I don't think there is enough right now to make this deck idea work, but it is something I may work on in the future.

Kicker is a fun mechanic, but the deck tends to build itself. The last set with kicker was Modern Horizons 3 and even then it only had three Simic cards with kicker, Sowing Mycospawn, Depth Defiler, and Wastescape Battlemage. 

I want to build a Volo deck with no repeating creature types. I originally had the idea when I saw Lonis, Cryptozoologist a few years ago, but I think Volo is a better commander for this idea. Volo, Itinerant Scholar with Master Chef also works for this idea. 

I'd love to hear what cool Simic commanders you think I missed or some weird builds of your own. You can comment below or reach out to me on BlueSky. Alrighty nerds, I'll see you in the next one!