Magic: The Gathering divides its players into three psychographic profiles: Timmys, the power gamers; Spikes, the win-at-all-costs competitive gamers; and Johnnys, who're just here to have fun. Johnnys/Jennys are the players that want to win on their terms with a unique combo or interaction their opponents have rarely (or never) seen. Jenny and Johnny are the off-beat designers, the deckbuilding artists, and the stubborn players determined to find a home for One with Nothing. Johnny wants to express something with their deck, be it a weirdly exploitable rules interaction or a particular three-card combo that just tickles their fancy.
In such a combo-heavy format, what makes a commander particularly Johnny-like? In today's article, we'll dig through some lesser-known legendary creatures to craft some Johnny Commander decks worthy of the Combo family name!
What Are Johnny Commanders?
For the purposes of this list, which is by no means exhaustive, Johnny commanders will be any Commander-legal legendary creatures that either enable a particularly unique theme/mechanic or require a particularly unique amount of building around. These creatures will demand combo-based victories and lead decklists with unfamiliar spells and jank that complement their odd abilities.
Obviously, there are some legendary creatures that are combo-ready out of the box. Commanders like Ghave, Guru of Spores, Riku of Two Reflections, and Breya, Etherium Shaper or Thrasios, Triton Hero and just about anybody else tend to combo infinitely if you just sneeze a little too close to them. While these cards are the undeniable monarchs of the combo deck, every Magic player worth their salt has already heard of Kenrith, the Returned King.
Honorable Mention: Johnny, Combo Player
Obviously, we can't talk about Johnny commanders without mentioning the legendary Johnny card itself. Johnny, Combo Player comes from the cycle of legendary player archetype creatures from Unhinged. Johnny's a mono-blue four mana creature with an activated ability that's basically a colorless Diabolic Tutor. Clearly, Johnny is the best creature for enabling combos, tutoring up exactly what you need to execute your confusingly complex combo.
#10 Garth One-Eye
Listen, putting a Black Lotus in your command zone might seem like a Spike-coded activity, but in the hands of Jenny, Garth One-Eye becomes an enabler for all those gross and offensive combos we've dreamed of. All five colors means there's no combo you can't access.
First, we need to get a hold of that Lotus; multiple times, if you please. Staple a Displacer Kitten and Thousand-Year Elixir to the field to get unlimited access to Garth's Lotus. There are nearly 40 different ways to get infinite Lotuses off of Garth, but this one shows the basic requirements best:
Now take all that free mana and dump it into Garth's Braingeyser for an easy game-ender. Or, since we're in all five colors, dump it into just about any other combo you can think of. Want to use Maze's End? Go for it:
Want to make everyone lose with the cycle of Pacts? Try Hive Mind and cast any Pact your opponents can pay for on their upkeep. Maybe you're looking for the convoluted Door to Nothingness suicide pact combo, where the only outlet for your opponents is showing themselves the Door. This combo is a little convoluted, I'll let this TappedOut poster explain to save you all the words.
#9 Patron of the Moon
Kamigawa's Moonfolk are an interesting creature type. Their original incarnation saw them themed around returning lands to your hand and interacting with your maximum hand size. Patron of the Moon lets you dump those lands back into play for just one mana, and can do so indefinitely with an Amulet of Vigor.
From there, we can mill our opponents out with Hedron Crab or Altar of the Brood, or lean into that Landfall focus and turn the Patron into a beater with Adventuring Gear and Strata Scythe. Or, go for the huge hand-size synergy and use Aeon Chronicler and Body of Research for a board of hand-sized creatures.
#8 Diaochan, Artful Beauty
If someone pulled this Portal Three Kingdoms commander out of their deck box at an LGS, I think I'd go feral; seeing these old cards just gets me so hyped up.
Diaochan, Artful Beauty has a very unique Royal Assassin-ish ability to destroy a creature an opponent controls, then choose an opponent to destroy a creature. In a four-player pod, Diaochan can play a wild politics game where you work together with your opponents to control the board and prevent any one player from skyrocketing their advantage. Dig into an untap theme with some off-color untappers, like sticking a Act of Aggression to an Isochron Scepter, just so you can untap Diaochan multiple times.
#7 Linnessa, Zephyr Mage
Linessa, Zephyr Mage is the mono-blue card from the cycle of Grandeur creatures from Future Sight. Except for Korlash, Heir to Blackblade, each of the Grandeur creatures has less than 100 decks on EDHrec!
Grandeur allows you to discard a card with the same name as the legendary creature from your hand to activate an effect. This is useful in constructed formats where sticking a legendary creature to the field turns additional copies in your hand into dead cards.
Unfortunately, Commander is a singleton format, and we'll never have a second copy of Linessa, Zephyr Mage in our hand unless we do some finagling. The easiest way to go about this is with Clones and Supplant Forms, then returning the real Linessa from our graveyard to our hand, or by using the "legend rule doesn't apply" cards. Then we simply bounce Linessa back to our hand with an Unsummon. Pitch our real Linessa to one of our clones, put her back in your hand with The Underworld Cookbook (or a Triassic Egg if you're a real Johnny) and do it all again next turn.
If that's not combo-y enough for you, check out this one that's currently only listed in one single EDH deck on Spellbook right now:
Finally, if you've been bitten by the Grandeur bug, I recommend you check out this article! It's a great idea for a deck that clones and recurs grandeur creatures all at once.
#6 Blind Seer
With just 545 decks on EDHrec, Blind Seer really gets back to the heart of Magic and reminds us that this is a game about colors. Decks built around Blind Seer are the epitome of color-hosing in blue. A world of possibility is suddenly opened to your Blue Elemental Blasts and Hydroblasts when they can hit anything on the battlefield. Opponents will tremble before the might of our, uh, Narwhal?
The beautiful thing about Blind Seer decks is they can alternatively focus on hosing one color and only running Shifting Sky and Painter's Servant to permanently choose one color to double-down on, or build around just using our commander's relatively cheap targeting effect with Dismiss into Dream, Cowardice, or Willbreaker to control the board.
Of course, any color-matters deck like this will send the already-valuable cycle of Swords through the roof. Beating an opponent down with a $0.50 Blind Seer equipped with $200 worth of swords works just as well as if you equipped them to Balan, Wandering Knight.
The 10 Best Timmy Commanders
#5 Mishra, Artificer Prodigy
The original incarnation of Magic's favorite younger brother, Mishra, Artificer Prodigy shouldn't work in EDH at first glance. However, there are a few wild cards that Mishra synergizes with very well.
The first two are the prohibitively expensive Nether Void and Blood Funnel. Mishra effectively ignores the downsides to these cards. We can decline to pay the additional cost after the spell is cast, then search our graveyard for the artifact we just countered. Mishra works similarly with Nullstone Gargoyle and Ice Cave, as well.
Where Mishra really shines is alongside Possibility Storm. Whenever we put an artifact spell on the stack, we can resolve the Possibility Storm first to reveal cards until we hit an additional artifact, then put the original spell on the bottom of our library. Then, Mishra's ability resolves, and we can search our library for that artifact that was just put on bottom by Possibility Storm!
#4 Norin the Wary
Often seen at the helm of chaos decks, Norin the Wary actually has a lot of play as a Johnny commander. Norin's ability sends him running for the hills whenever a player casts a spell or attacks. That should be every turn, assuming your opponents are playing the game as well.
Norin gives you the opportunity to build a blink deck in the colors that don't really call for it. Red's access to blink effects is basically zero, but Norin handles all that himself. You just have to cast a spell each turn that'll turn him into direct damage. Cards like Confusion in the Ranks dominate the board with your Norin blinking in, trading with an opponent's permanent, and then blinking out and in again back to your side of the field.
Next, use ETB pingers, like Impact Tremors and Warstorm Surge, to drop a little damage here and there with Norin, or assemble the weird and wild Birgi/Grinning Ignus combo:
#3 Zedruu the Greathearted
There are so many weird jank cards you can include in a Zedruu the Greathearted. Kneecap your opponents by giving them Steel Golems and Grid Monitors, ruin their draw step with Aggressive Mining, or hit them for 20 when you donate your Illusions of Grandeur to them and then Disenchant it.
Sure, Zedruu has the potential to be the "nice guy" group hug deck, but where's the fun in that? Johnny loves to build a little puzzle for his opponents to dig their way out of; let's not help them along too much.
#2 General Jarkeld
The reserved list General Jarkeld hails from Ice Age, and has a unique ability to switch around opponents' blockers. His EDHrec page is full of banding creatures, perfect for forcing your opponents to make the wrong choice during their declare blockers steps.
Jarkeld works best in a deck with lots of combat tricks; surprise! We're dropping Battlewise Valor on that attacker and swapping your weaker blocker into it.
Note that the way General Jarkeld interacts with banding is so, so convoluted that more often than not the "correct" response to your declared attackers will just be "no blocks." Technically, this counts as an evasion anthem for your whole board.
#1 Phage the Untouchable
Phage the Untouchable has been a brewer's dream in Commander since the format's inception. A one-shot kill locked behind a prohibitive casting trigger means the Johnnys and Jennys out there have spent years digging through the 22,000 Magic cards out there for viable combos to run Phage.
Luckily, there are a handful of ways to get Phage from the command zone into your hand. The simplest are Command Beacon and Netherborn Altar.
Also, you can counter your own Phage while she's on the stack to put her in the graveyard. Dash Hopes, Withering Boon, and Thrull Wizard are janky counterspells in black that slot right into a Phage deck. Return her to your hand later using Phyrexian Reclamation, or any other Disentomb.
Or, you can just, like, not lose the game. Platinum Angel and Lich's Mastery prevent Phage's ability from forcing a loss on you, and Torpor Orb does the same while also being a punishing stax piece.
Johnny Commander Payoffs
Some cards see play in a lot of Johnny Combo decks. Here are some non-commanders to consider for your 99.
Panglacial Wurm
In case you haven't heard, Panglacial Wurm has one of the oddest abilities in Magic, and it's game-breaking on several levels. The most popular is the timing on effects that tap to add mana along with some other effect and searching your library simultaneously. Once again, I'll save space by not running this combo down, but check this link for a detailed description. Technically this is an Illegal Action, but my research has determined this will probably come down to an individual judge's call if you try this during a sanctioned event.
This weird interaction works alongside any mana ability that modifies the top card of your library, too, so a Millikin can also bring a headache to that table.
Tutors
Your combos are useless if they're spread out throughout your library! Johnny and Jenny need those cards in their hand if they're ever to cast them, so efficient, repeatable tutors are essential to most combo decks. Wild Research, Ring of Three Wishes, Planar Portal; these are all excellent set-ups for your Johnny combos.
Sundial of the Infinite
Finally, we'd be remiss not to mention Sundial of the Infinite. This artifact is an essential enabler for so many effects that'd otherwise be hugely detrimental to our gameplan. We can use it with Phage the Untouchable to not die when she enters the field, we can use it with Araumi of the Dead Tide to keep our encored creatures in play, or even something as simple as keeping any creatures we steal with Zealous Conscripts.
Combo Off
To the Johnnys and Jennys out there, I hope I've represented you well, and to the Spikes, Timmys, Mels, and Vorthos out there, I hope you've come to see the light. Johnny players are the erudite artist, locked away in their laboratories experimenting with forbidden and long-forgotten magic. They're the daredevils that push the limits on what the MTG rules can handle, and they're an essential player archetype that'll be served with new combos for as long as Magic is around.
What are your favorite Johnny commanders? Are there any aggressively stupid and convoluted combos I've neglected? Let me know in the comments! I'd love to hear about more and more complex combos!
Thanks for reading! Keep on combo'ing!
