An Overview of Evergreen Magic Keywords in Commander
Magic cards have become infamous for having long, complicated abilities that require too many words to easily remember. Sometimes, though, you wish a particular card had just a few more words to remind you what exactly 'Protection from blue' means.
Magic: The Gathering has many such keyword abilities, but this article will focus on what Wizards of the Coast refers to as evergreen keywords. These are abilities that can, and probably will, appear in any set, as opposed to plane-specific keywords, like disguise, manifest dread, and outlast.
They're also abilities you'll see on creatures that change the normal ways creatures behave in a game of Magic. Understanding how these keywords complement your playstyle can be key to establishing your win condition, satisfying the needs of your favorite combo, or just keeping your opponents on edge during the game.
Aggressive Keywords
We start with the aggressive keywords. Creatures with these abilities allow you to attack quickly, while making it difficult for your opponent to block. Naturally, these effects are vital for decks that're trying to win quickly, but they're just as important for slower decks trying to leverage bigger creatures, and no ability better Demonstrates this than haste.
Haste
Creatures with haste can attack and tap to activate abilities the turn they enter play. If your deck is full of creatures that have effects when they attack or deal damage, or if you're trying to win by making an overwhelming army of tokens, you're going to need ways to give them haste.
You can expect your first wave of Soldiers or Goblins to face the Wrath of God, so ensuring they're able to attack at least once first makes sure the second wave is able to win you the game.
Even if you're playing with much bigger Angels or Demons, having access to haste means you can start attacking a turn earlier to catch up to the faster decks at the table.
This is why Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves have remained format staples, along with cards that affect all of your creatures, like Rising of the Day.
Flying
Of course, being able to attack quickly doesn't mean much if you just get blocked.
Creatures with flying can only be blocked by other creatures with flying (or reach, but we'll get to that later). Many of Magic's most iconic creatures, from Serra Angel and Shivan Dragon to Birds of Paradise and Baleful Strix have flying. There are also plenty of ways to give your creatures flying.
One of my favorites is Archetype of Imagination, because it not only gives all of your creatures flying, but it strips flight away from all your opponents' creatures.
Flying is such a powerful and common ability that it isn't enough to let you attack every opponent with impunity. Archetype of Imagination makes sure it is.
Trample
If you don't have access to blue, however, you'll have to turn to other tools to force damage through. For the Dragon, Demon, and Angel enthusiast especially, there's no better place to turn than trample.
Normally, when a creature is blocked, it deals all of its combat damage to the blocking creature, even if it has more power than the blocker has toughness. A creature with trample, however, gets to deal any excess damage directly to the player or planeswalker its attacking.
Trample is the bread and butter of green, which specializes in large creatures. It's also extremely helpful when paired with flying, commonly referred to as flample, since most flying blockers aren't especially large.
A Birds of Paradise shouldn't be able to hold off The Ur-Dragon, and adding trample to your deck ensures it can't.
Menace
Another way to make blocking tricky for your opponent is to give your creatures menace. A creature with menace must be blocked by at least two creatures. If your opponent only has one creature, or only one creature untapped and able to block, then they can't block your creatures with menace.
Voltron is a popular strategy in Commander that involves powering up one creature to take out your opponents. Giving your creatures menace is a great way to outmaneuver Voltron decks. Even if that player has a few extra creatures lying around, they're probably smaller utility creatures that player won't want to risk by blocking with.
That goes for non-Voltron decks too. It's also a powerful combination with flying, like on Two-Headed Hellkite. Trample might let you deal damage through Baleful Strix, but menace keeps your creatures alive.
First Strike / Double Strike
If trample represents overwhelming force and menace a horrifying monstrosity, then first strike and double strike are for pure skill in combat. Normally, attacking and blocking creatures deal combat damage to each other simultaneously, during the combat damage step.
Creatures with first strike, however, get their own combat damage step first. Therefore, a 2/2 with first strike will destroy a normal 2/2 and survive combat. Creatures with double strike get to deal their damage in both combat damage steps. As long as it's blocked, however, that double damage will go to waste.
As long as a creature is blocked, it can't deal damage to the player or planeswalker it attacked, even if the blocking creature is destroyed before damage is dealt. Add trample, however, and all that extra damage gets to punch through, making a deadly combination with double strike.
Vigilance
For the last of the aggressive keywords, we have vigilance. Creatures with vigilance don't tap when they attack, allowing them to tap to activate abilities after attacking, or block on your opponent's' turn.
This may seem like a defensive ability, since it allows you to block when you otherwise couldn't, but really vigilance lets you attack when you otherwise couldn't. In Commander, attacking often means leaving yourself vulnerable to counter attack from three opponents.
Having vigilance eliminates that risk and opens opportunities for you to play aggressively when you otherwise couldn't. Vigilance also pairs extremely well with flying, ensuring you can damage your opponents while remaining untouchable yourself.
Angels, in particular Avacyn, Angel of Hope and Aurelia, the Warleader make excellent use of these two abilities together.
Defensive Keywords
But what if you're the one trying to stave off the onslaught powered by these keyword abilities? You'll need some creatures of your own, and at least one ability to make your creatures better at blocking.
Defender
The archetypical defensive keyword is defender, which prevents the creatures with it from attacking at all. Thus, defenders (or in older parlance, Walls) often sacrifice attack power for high toughness, and often have additional defensive abilities. Fog Bank is an excellent example.
If, however, you build your deck around an effect that lets defenders attack and deal damage equal to their toughness, such as Arcades, the Strategist or Doran, the Siege Tower, you end up with a surprisingly effective aggro deck instead.
Deathtouch
Creatures with defender may be better at blocking, but that isn't because of defender. If you want to make your creatures scarier to attack into, then look no further than deathtouch. Any amount of damage a creature with deathtouch deals to another creature is considered lethal damage and will destroy it.
This allows small creatures, like Baleful Strix, to threaten mutual destruction with almost any other creature in combat. But the effect of deathtouch isn't limited to combat damage. Savage Punch effects become sure-hit kill spells with deathtouch creatures.
In combat, however, you can pair deathtouch with first strike to ensure your creature survives combat while eliminating the enemy no matter their size.
Then, when you go on the offensive, trample is an extremely effective combination. Since deathtouch makes one damage lethal, all of your creatures left over power can be dealt to your opponent.
Lifelink
Lifelink is an often underappreciated ability, but with four opponents, gaining a little extra life is a great way to stay alive the extra turn or two you need. Lyra Dawnbringer is a powerful commander because she allows you to gain more life than your opponents can deal.
Even outside of those situations, however, having a few lifelink creatures hanging around your deck can get you out of pinches you couldn't otherwise survive. This is the allure of Vampire Nighthawk and what makes Serra Ascendant so devastating on turn one.
Reach
Reach is green's answer to flying, most famously present on Giant Spider. Creatures with reach can block creatures with flying as if they didn't have flying. This is green's answer to Angels, Demons, Dragons, and Sphinxes, and like most simple things it has some surprise applications.
A clever opponent might try to use Bower Passage to stop you from blocking their flying creatures, but will still be tangled in your Nyx Weaver web.
Flash
Flash is another simple ability with many applications. Spells with flash can be cast any time you could cast an instant. Flash creatures let you appear more vulnerable than you are, luring your opponents to overextend before deploying your own blockers at the perfect moment.
Giving flash to artifacts and enchantments can be even more devastating, effectively introducing new rules to the game at the moment that most benefits you. Dictate of the Twin Gods, Notion Thief, and Gerrard's Hourglass Pendant are all great ways of swinging a game in your favor.
Protective Abilities
Finally, we come to protection abilities. These are useful for any deck, and tend to cause the most confusion.
Ward
Ward is the newest of these abilities, and it appears in the most varied of forms. It appears on cards as "Ward {cost}". The cost can be anything from a few mana to paying life to sacrificing a legendary creature. Whenever the warded creature becomes the target of a spell or ability controlled by your opponent, they must pay the ward cost. If they don't, that spell or ability is countered. This is a great deterrent for targeted removal, especially as the ward cost gets steeper. Valgavoth, Terror Eater can be exiled with Swords to Plowshares, but does your opponent really want to pay the cost? You do still have to watch out for spells that can't be countered. Ward can't counter Void Rend, so your opponent can get away without paying.
Hexproof
To absolutely protect your permanents, you'll instead want to rely on hexproof. Permanents with hexproof simply can't be targeted by spells or abilities you don't control. There are still a few tricks to get around this however, mainly spells that don't target. Blasphemous Act deals damage to all creatures without targeting, so hexproof is no protection.
In fact, the language for targeting is very specific. If a spell doesn't say target, then it doesn't target, and therefore circumvents hexproof. An opponent's Clone can still copy your Carnage Tyrant and Council's Judgment is free to exile your Sigarda, Host of Herons.
Indestructible
If your goal is to survive a Wrath of God, then you need indestructible. Just like it sounds, creatures with indestructible can't be destroyed. This includes effects that say destroy, and combat damage.
Again, this language is very specific. Diabolic Edict doesn't use the word 'destroy', so if a player's only creature is indestructible they'll still have to sacrifice it (this also gets around hexproof, since you're targeting the player instead of the creature).
It also doesn't prevent a creature from dying if it's reduced to zero toughness with -1/-1 counters or a Mutilate like effect. Most of the time, however, indestructible lets you attack or block with relative impunity.
Protection
Finally we come to the most complicated of the evergreen mechanics. Protection is shorthand for a variety of effects that protect a permanent from being affected in certain ways by cards and effects with a specified property.
These abilities can be remembered with the mnemonic D.E.B.T, which stands for Damage, Enchanted, Blocked, and Targeted. For example, Animar, Soul of Elements can't be damaged by white or black spells, enchanted by white or black Auras, blocked by white or black creatures, or targeted by white or black spells.
A card can have protection from colors, from multicolored cards, from certain card types, creature types, or even specific mana values. Keep in mind, however, that protection is limited specifically to preventing damage, enchanting, blocking, and targeting.
Effects that don't target, like Damnation, will still destroy a creature with protection from black, although protection from red stops the damage from Blasphemous Act. Unless, of course, Leyline of Punishment is in play.
Keyword Soup
Of course, you'll find on your adventures that there are many more keywords than just the ones listed here. Most planes have their own keywords that help them stand apart, and give each of the factions in the set their own mechanical identity. If you're ever curious how those keywords interact with each other, or want more specifics on how evergreen abilities interact, Google is an excellent resource. Wizards also releases a rules update article with each set to clarify how new abilities work.
