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

Simic is great at taking big creatures and making them into Frogs, Fish, and sometimes trees. We can use cards like Amphibian Downpour

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

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

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

Finally, we have land creatures and creatures that make creatures into lands. Ashaya, Soul of the Wild

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

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

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

I want to build a Volo deck with no repeating creature types. I originally had the idea when I saw Lonis, Cryptozoologist

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!