Which Hare Apparent Commander is Best? A Complete Guide to Hare Apparent in Commander

Rabbit Season

Hi, I'm Michael Celani. You might know me for How They Brew It, the morally gray deckbuilding series that got me banned from seven separate comic stores. If not, then you might remember the last time I wrote a strategy article, for which I refuse to apologize because I did nothing wrong.

Let's cut to the chase: you're here because Foundations blessed us all with a new creature that ignores Commander's singleton restriction, and you need to make a deck about it. Well, I'm happy to tell you that Hare Apparent is the best iteration of the concept we've seen yet.

Jam pack your deck with twenty or so of these guys, throw an Ephemerate in there, and your table will be overrun with bunnies faster than you can say Thomas Austin.¹

But you want for more than just a pile of cards. You want to know everything: what makes Hare Apparent so good, what strategies work well with Hare Apparent, and, of cours, which commander among them all is the very best one.

Luckily for you, I've studied and analyzed all eight hundred and sixty one legal white-plus commanders printed at the time of writing so I could present my findings to you as a public service. That's not a joke: I literally read over eight hundred cards for this article. Let's just say it was a... whale of a time.

Explaining the Card (So You Don't Have To Read It)

Before we dive into the commanders proper, let's take a step back to examine what makes Hare Apparent brilliant by starting with the card itself and then expanding out to the broader Magic context surrounding it.

What That Bunny Do

Hare Apparent is a 2/2 Rabbit Noble for . When it enters, you create a number of Rabbit tokens equal to the number of other creatures you control named Hare Apparent. Sure, the first Hare you play creates no Rabbits, but the second you play creates one, the third you play creates two, and so on.

That means as you continue to cast Hares, the number of creatures you control increases quadratically. Playing just six Hares Apparent would leave you with twenty one creatures; going up to seven bumps that number to twenty eight; and should you cast Hare Apparent #23,489, you'd have a board state that's two hundred and seventy five million, eight hundred and seventy eight thousand, three hundred (and five) strong.

But Why Should I Care?

But maybe none of this impresses you; after all, armies in a can are ubiquitous both inside the white color identity and outside it. Cards like Secure the Wastes, Reverent Hoplite, and even Myr Battlesphere have been conscripting hapless soldiers since the dawn of time in the mid-2010s. What does Hare Apparent have that these cards don't?

It's Easy to Cast

First of all, each Hare Apparent is cheap. At only two mana, you can reasonably expect to cast two or three of 'em per turn in the late game, which means more cards drawn from your Beast Whisperer, more lands found off your Silverback Elder, and more Zombies spawned from God-Eternal Oketra.

It's Inherently Small

That cheap price and 2/2 statline also allows Hare Apparent to work with white's suite of weenie enhancers²: spells which specifically care about low-cost and low-power permanents. Whether it be card draw, recursion or even straight-up reanimation, white has more synergy with small creatures than any other color in the game.

Even better, the token Rabbits the card creates are small, too, so you're checking those boxes multiple times with a single card.

It Makes Lots of Tokens

White also has a reputation for working well with token creatures. Having a wide army is excellent because you can use anthem effects and pump spells to put dozens of points of power and toughness on the board with just a single card.

Hare to the Throne

What sets Hare Apparent apart from previous singleton-breakers like Slime Against Humanity is that every part of the card plays to its color's core strengths in one way or another. Nothing is wasted, from its mana cost to its power to its triggered ability, and best of all: we get to include as many of them in our deck as we want!

Surely that means it's time to finally answer the question: which Hare Apparent commander is the best? Which can be crowned the Boss of Bunnies, the Regent of Rabbits, the Lord of Lagomorphs?

Well, it depends on the context.

What content creators don't want you to know is that no commander deck is truly the best in every scenario. Each deck's strength or weakness will always depend on the other decks in your pod. For example, if your group runs very little removal, then Jetmir will bowl over your opponents in short order as they fail to challenge your lagomorphic legions in combat.

On the other hand, if your pod runs too much removal, then Athreos will tank your rivals' life totals the instant the phrase "I'm casting Wrath of God" escapes their lips.

Even if you choose to ignore the importance of context, what makes a deck the best is subjective. Is the best deck the one that can go the fastest? Is it the deck most likely to win a game regardless of the strategies it encounters? Or is it the deck that's the most consistent at doing what it's meant to do?

No, I can't in good conscience prescribe a single commander to thousands of people without going in-depth. I'm going to look at each strategy Hare Apparent enables, then rank the commanders within each strategy on a variety of criteria. Bring out the rubric!

Getting Good Grades

Keeping everything we've just discussed in mind, I've boiled my rating system for each commander down to three main points. Meet the BUN Scale:

Buffs: Can the commander enhance Hare Apparent in any way to make each individual copy even more threatening?
Utility: Can the commander function without a critical mass of Hare Apparent? Is it capable of adding more than rabbits to a deck?
Nutrition: Can the commander help us find more Hares Apparent, or let us reuse copies we've already played?

Buff Bunnies

This is the most important criteria, befitting its place at the top of the list. If a legendary creature doesn't meaningfully interact with some aspect of Hare Apparent, then it will fail as a commander of a Hare Apparent deck.

This immediately culls from the running tons of irrelevant legendaries, like Sram, Senior Edificer, who really doesn't care at all about tokens or small creatures. So that I don't waste your time more than I already have, every commander I review here will have at least some points in this category.

Utility Closet

It's smart to not put all our Rabbit eggs into one Easter basket, though. A good commander will interact with all the pieces of its deck to further its goals, not just Hares. Sure, it may work best with another Hare Apparent as opposed to any other card in the deck, but your general shouldn't be completely petrified if you can't find another copy.

This category also can act as a good barometer of how complex a deck is to get going. A deck that requires more moving parts to work will necessarily have fewer slots dedicated to responding to a variety of threats or fixing a bad hand, thus having lower utility.

Nutrition Facts

The final point worth looking at is value. Despite having no restriction on how many you can include, the amount of Hares Apparent you'll be able to cram into a playable list is still finite. You'll need to be able to find copies without sacrificing your ability to run engine pieces that keep your engine roaring, so a commander that can find or reuse Hare Apparent is better than one that can't.

With the metrics set, let's go ahead and look at a variety of strategies, and the commanders that work well with them.

Flicker of Inspiration

It should come as no shock that the first strategy we'll cover is blink. The main draw of Hare Apparent is its enters trigger, so it's obvious that reusing that trigger is a valid strategy.

Some blink decks like taking advantage of a single, individually powerful enters trigger over and over. Those decks benefit from a wide berth of fast, efficient flicker spells, like Ephemerate, as reusing the abilities on creatures like Sun Titan can be very powerful. This is, unequivocally, not the case for the average Hare Apparent deck.

Single-target Flickers just aren't that strong in this context. Take a look at Cloudshift, for instance. It does two things: you can use it in response to single-target removal to nullify it, and you can use it to retrigger an enters ability.

For the Hare Apparent deck, it's unlikely people will spend one of their precious kill spells on a creature you have twenty copies of, so that aspect is out. Reusing the enters trigger on a single Hare Apparent sounds like a good idea, but it ends up rather lackluster when you compare it to the alternative: simply playing another copy of Hare Apparent.

No, for this strategy to work, you need the mass blinks, like Another Round. If you flicker every Hare Apparent you control simultaneously, then not only do you get each of their triggers again, but they'll also all be at maximum power because they all enter at the same time.³

The best Hare Apparent blink strategy, and corresponding commander, should be able to consistently flicker your entire board or boost the act of mass flickering so much that it overwhelms your opponents over the course of the game.

Blink Boyz

Let's start with the commanders that flicker first. They generally require less support in their deck for the blink strategy, meaning more room for targets.

Based on the analysis above, I consider any commander that is incapable of blinking more than one copy of Hare Apparent at a time to be inferior to your other options. You simply aren't getting the same bang for your buck as you could be. No Livio, no Abuelo, and no Emiel.

That narrows our competition down to the big three: Brago, King Eternal, Yorion, Sky Nomad, and Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward. Any of them are fine leaders for blink-based bunnies, but they play in subtly different ways. Which you'll prefer is down to personal preference and the playstyle of your group.

Brago, King Eternal

Buffs: All three commanders in consideration here do the same basic thing -- flicker your board -- but their efficacy at that task varies. Brago, unfortunately, has the lowest ceiling, as you're realistically only getting one board-wide blink from him per turn cycle, if even that since you need to have clear skies during your combat step to trigger him.

This is offset slightly by the fact that Brago is also the cheapest of the three at just , but being one mana cheaper doesn't save it.

Utility: What does save it is that, among the big three, Brago is the most self-contained. Unlike the other two in this roundup, Brago doesn't require any additional setup to be able to repeatedly flicker your board; all you have to do is connect to reap the rewards.

This means you don't have to putz around with as many fiddly engine pieces, so this deck can run a higher concentration of the good stuff: Wall of Omens, Cloudblazer, and other permanents that Brago can abuse.

Nutrition: All Brago, King Eternal can do is reuse any Hares you've already found, though with the higher concentration of card draw creatures in the deck, you're pretty likely to find enough of them by accident.

Yorion, Sky Nomad

Buffs: Yorion, Sky Nomad easily runs away with this category. It's the most consistent flickerer: all you have to do is include an instant-blink creature, like Felidar Guardian, in the set of nonland permanents you exile, and you've got a self-sustaining loop.

Yorion enters, exiling any number of nonlands plus Felidar Guardian until the next end step;
The next end step occurs, returning Felidar Guardian who blinks Yorion.

This means you're getting four mass-flickers per turn cycle with no additional input, provided you can find the correct cards. If you're willing to take the efficiency hit, you can also include slow-blink creatures, like Flickerwisp, for some additional redundancy.

Utility: Unlike Brago, Yorion, Sky Nomad requires additional support in the deck to reach its maximum potential. You'll need to include other blink creatures in your list, which cuts down on your available slots for utility creatures.

Fortunately, it's not a massive investment, and those other blink creatures aren't redundant; if you happen to play more than one, simply use their flicker on targets other than Yorion each loop for some extra value.

Nutrition: Yorion, Sky Nomad is probably the worst of the three for this category. It's limited to simply reusing Hares on its own, but it doesn't have the same critical mass of utility creatures as Brago, King Eternal to make up for its poor draw nor the flexibility of Backgrounds that Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward has access to.

Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward

Buffs: Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward can Choose a Background, meaning you get to play with an additional commander.

Without considering Backgrounds, he's smack-dab in the middle. Abdel's average game isn't as good as Yorion, Sky Nomad, because you're not realistically assembling an engine in his deck that works without any additional input. However, he's got unique potential for burst, because you can abuse his ability as many times in a row as you have Cloudshifts in hand.

With Backgrounds included, it's stupidly lopsided in Abdel's favor. You can do tons of things to enhance your bunny army that the other blink commanders couldn't dream of, including:

Agent of the Iron Throne or Street Urchin to turn them into sacrifice fodder;
Master Chef or Inspiring Leader to make them stronger in combat;
Cultist of the Absolute to make them fuel for a Voltron strategy; and
Popular Entertainer to grant them Goad functionality.

Utility: Unfortunately, all this added complexity renders Abdel the least flexible. He needs tons of flickers in his deck to get the most out of him in addition to Background-specific support pieces. That means less good stuff to blink.⁴

Nutrition: On the face of it, Abdel seems just as rough as Yorion, but if you're willing to give up some of his power on the Hare Apparent front, then a Candlekeep Sage Background pick can turn each of your flickers into card advantage.

Blink and You'll Miss It

So, which commander of the three is best for Hare Apparent? It depends on how much help it needs in your playgroup.

If your board states are sparse enough that you can realistically kill your opponents with ten creatures and an Inspired Charge, then go with Brago, King Eternal. It's the simplest deck to build and pilot, and all the extra deck space you save on your gameplan gives you ample opportunity to add in protection, removal, or more varied value pieces.
If you need a wider board, try Yorion, Sky Nomad. It has the most explosive average game, which can help you overwhelm crowded battlefields.
Only go with Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward if attacking is rarely an option, such as against pillow fort decks. The extra reach or draw from the Backgrounds might give you the extra edge, but the added complexity is wasted on simpler games, and none of his Backgrounds are as good as dedicated options in their strategy.

And Make It Double

Now let's discuss the second category of blink-strategy commander: blink enhancers. These commanders wildly empower the effect of a creature entering the battlefield.

Both token-doublers and trigger-enhancers are available on white commanders. Comparing them to the same extent as the previous three commanders is unnecessary, because both double the amount of Rabbits that Hare Apparent produces. You're either creating one times the Rabbits twice, or two times the Rabbits once.

The only true difference between the two is that trigger-enhancers are additive, while token-doublers are multiplicative. Two Panharmonicons will retrigger Hare Apparent twice, leading to three times the Rabbits, while two Anointed Processions will double the amount of Rabbits and then double those Rabbits, leading to four times the creatures. This is offset by the fact that trigger-enhancers work on abilities that don't make tokens, so you can view it as a trade-off between buffing and utility.

Personally, I view the additional synergy with other token-doublers as vastly less useful than retriggering all the relevant enters effects, so if you're looking for a commander in this category, go with Delney, Streetwise Lookout.⁵

There is one last choice in this category, and it's a doozy. Preston, the Vanisher enhances blink spells by creating token copies of whatever you exiled, meaning you'll get more copies of Hare Apparent that stick around permanently. He has a higher ceiling than Delney, but a lower floor, as he does nothing if you don't find any of your flickers. If you prefer to optimize away non-games, go with Delney; if you like racking up high scores, then use Preston.

Wide Like My Body

However, a straight blink strategy can be rather fiddly. You have to get a critical mass of blinkables out on the field before it becomes truly powerful, and your Rabbits aren't doing much until you assemble such a ridiculous number of them that you can win on numbers alone.

By contrast, a good go-wide strategy puts more effort into using the tokens you create at every step of the game.

Unlike the mainly Azorius decks that characterized the blink strategy, go-wide strategies often have access to green. That gets you a ton of support for buffing up your entire army. Overrun effects are much more potent in green than in white, and with both colors, you can play the very best anthems in the game, like Mirari's Wake. Your main strategy will be to simply play enough mass buffs that your Rabbits become jacked enough to split your opponents in half.

Tapping Rabbits for mana is an excellent way to get value out of them before the alpha strike, so include spells like Cryptolith Rite and Ashaya, Soul of the Wild to turn them into mana dorks.

You should also consider running engine pieces that trigger when other permanents enter the battlefield. Creatures with Alliance are excellent starting points; Gala Greeters and Rumor Gatherer put in work. Other notable examples include Kodama of the East Tree and Cathars' Crusade.

Esoteric strategy alert: token Rabbits have no abilities. That means they're enhanced by Muraganda Petroglyphs, Jasmine Boreal of the Seven, and Ruxa, Patient Professor.

A good commander for the go-wide strategy should either give our Rabbits the power and toughness boost they need to end the game or grant them some other extra ability that keeps us going until we can draw that buff. Here's a few choice cuts:

Baylen, the Haymaker

Buffs: Baylen, the Haymaker lets you tap your token Rabbits for mana, card draw, and a win condition in the command zone. Almost everything you could ever want is here, but they're rather slow about it to start. Don't count out the long game, though: once you get to your eighth Hare Apparent and beyond, each one makes enough tokens to draw you a card and pay for the next one.

As a bonus, Baylen is a Rabbit themself and can benefit from kindred synergies, such as Shared Animosity. Tap down a few tokens to give them trample, then play one of these to surprise your foe.

Utility: Baylen falls completely flat without any token-generation, but considering how strong each individual Hare Apparent is in this deck, it's hard to imagine wanting to play much else. The only things Baylen can't do on their own is removal, recursion, and protection, so pack a couple of mass-blink spells like Eerie Interlude to save yourself in the event of a board wipe and a Raise the Past for when someone counters it.

Nutrition: Repeatable card draw in the command zone checks this box pretty nicely. Pack a Drumbellower for even more value.

Jetmir, Nexus of Revels

Buffs: You only need to play four Hares Apparent to max Jetmir, Nexus of Revels, and that's simple. Nine double striking, trampling, vigilant 4/1s should be enough to kill all but the most protective of pillow fort players.

Utility: There is none. Jetmir, Nexus of Revels plans to end the game as soon as you hit the required number of creatures, but without a big board he's completely useless.

Nutrition: As healthy as a carton of cigarettes. Jetmir is the most all-or-nothing commander on this list, so either lean into it or put in a lot of card draw.

Zinnia, Valley's Voice

Buffs: Zinnia, Valley's Voice gives each of your creature cards offspring , meaning you can essentially play each Hare Apparent as two Hares Apparent. If getting twice the card per card wasn't enough for you, Zinnia makes up for it by getting a point of power for every other 1-power creature you control, which conveniently includes all of your Rabbits.

Utility: Luckily, Zinnia boasts excellent utility, too, as her offspring ability works on all creature cards. Use it to boost the amount of draw you get from creatures like Mulldrifter, or snipe an additional artifact by copying Witch Enchanter.

Nutrition: The only thing Zinnia lacks is built-in card draw, but since she basically doubles your count of Hare Apparent, I can let it slide this time.

Amareth the Lustrous

Buffs: Amareth, the Lustrous doesn't enhance Hare Apparent to be more threatening to your opponents in any direct way, but since each of them are now effectively scaling draw spells for two mana each, it doesn't really matter. A Moonshaker Cavalry will eventually show up, ending the game in short order.

Utility: This power is offset by the fact that Amareth has what's effectively negative utility. Your deck needs to be laser-focused on creatures to keep drawing cards, which makes this deck abysmal at responding to changing board conditions.

Nutrition: Come on, though. Imagine how many cards you can see if you just include a little topdeck manipulation.

Ghired, Mirror of the Wilds

Buffs: Each Hare Apparent can now tap to make another Rabbit practically every turn, which is a pretty decent baseline. The true power comes in if you can make a token copy of Hare Apparent itself, which leads to a massive explosion of bunnies all over the board. Just make sure you have a haste-enabler ready alongside an anthem or two.

Utility: But it's not just Rabbits that your creatures can copy. You can duplicate all sorts of tokens, including Treasures for more mana. Even Roles can have their place in this deck.

Nutrition: Pretty sparse, unfortunately. You'll need to make a token copy of a creature that can draw cards to replenish your hand.

Making Sacrifices

One final strategy for Hare Apparent is to use all the creatures you're creating as sacrifice fodder. Roast your Rabbits, slowly and painfully, to draw cards, damage your opponents, and take out enemy creatures.

Hare Apparent handles the token-generation, so all you need is a commander that acts as a sacrifice outlet or a payoff. I've narrowed this one down to two great options:

Commissar Severina Raine

Buffs: Commissar Severina Raine adds two incredible aspects to your bunnies. When she attacks, each opponent loses life equal to the number of attacking creatures. Ideally, you build as wide a board as possible before swinging with everything to kill all your opponents at once. She also provides a way to sacrifice your creatures to draw cards and gain life. It's pricey, but a functioning aristocrats deck should have multiple redundant sacrifice-and-draw effects anyway, so it's better to think of it as a backup plan in case your hand goes pear-shaped.

Utility: Most aristocrats commanders fall flat without a steady stream of tokens, and that's no exception here. Commissar Severina Raine has some light synergy with lifegain triggers, but it's not on the level of the other commander in this roundup.

Nutrition: Though she needs mana and extra creatures to manage it, Commissar Severina Raine can draw cards straight from the command zone, which is relatively rare in the aristocrats space.

Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim

Buffs: Short, simple, and to the point: Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim heals a damage when a creature you control enters, and Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim deals a damage when a creature you control dies. You won't want to sacrifice any actual copies of Hare Apparent, because you need them on the field to actually create more creature tokens, but the Rabbits are fair game.

Utility: No attached sac outlet means Elas can only heal you without backup, but getting so many lifegain triggers when creatures enter means you can lean into lifegain synergy more than other aristocrats commanders. You don't necessarily need too many Hares to succeed here, but they can really supercharge your other pieces.

Nutrition: Well, life is a kind of value. Not dying for longer means more turns, which means more opportunities to draw cards and take over the game.

No Hare Out of Place

With this information, you should be able to create your own, wonderful Hare Apparent decks that run rampant over the entire table. Let me know what interesting creations you come up with in the comments below, and remember the most important information: come prepared to every game with an entire suite of rabbit puns.

Australians know.
Alright, you come up with a better name.
To illustrate that point, blinking four Hare Apparent cards doesn't create 0 + 1 + 2 + 3 Rabbit tokens for a total of six as they did when you cast them one at a time; they instead all see three other Hare Apparent cards, creating 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 Rabbit tokens all at once for a total of twelve.
You can potentially offset this complexity by running Far Traveler as a Background, but then you lose out on access to a second color for what amounts to a worse version of what Brago, King Eternal can do.
Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines is another option, but its stax effect is so aggressive it'll draw an unbelievable amount of heat. The additional two it costs to cast doesn't help, either.