If there’s one thing nearly every Commander player should be doing, it’s playing more enchantment removal. Each color has varying degrees of success against enchantments, so you can rely on these cards to stick around longer than creatures or artifacts.
There are plenty of powerful enchantments to consider, and while everyone knows how landing an Omniscience can practically win you the game, there are tons of cards which slip by most players. Here are some absolute showstopper enchantments which can turn the tide in your game.
Finest Hour
This weird enchantment from Alara Reborn does something few other Bant cards do; provide additional combat phases. Traditionally seen in red cards, Finest Hour gives you an extra combat step so long as you only attacked with one creature the first time around.
The big downside with Finest Hour is its relatively restrictive mana cost. Most Bant Commanders don’t care too much about combat and instead look to out value your opponents through lands and other shenanigans. However, if you find yourself building a Bant Voltron list, Finest Hour could be the thing you need to start taking opponents out of the game.
Binding the Old Gods
Sagas are often times under valued in Commander, particularly those like Binding the Old Gods. For four mana you get to blow up the biggest problem on the board. At the next chapter, you get to ramp and fix your mana at the same time, grabbing any Forest, basic or nonbasic, and putting it directly into play tapped. The last chapter is mostly irrelevant more often than not, but if you can proliferate it at instant speed later in the game you can use it defensively, though the window is narrow.
The downside of Binding the Old Gods, like all sagas, is that once it hits the last chapter, you have to sacrifice it. But consider playing it in a deck like Muldrotha, the Gravetide, where you can replay cards from your graveyard, or with Go-Shintai of Life’s Origin where you can keep cycling through your sagas each turn.
Nahiri’s Resolve
A new comer to the game, Nahiri’s Resolve does two powerful things your opponents will likely underestimate. First up, it gives your creatures +1/+0 and haste. While five mana is a bit of a hefty trade off for this effect, being able to attack and activate abilities immediately can be huge.
The best part of Nahiri’s Resolve is it can both protect your board and help retrigger enter the battlefield effects at the end of your turn. You get to exile any number of artifacts and creatures you control, only returning them on your next upkeep. This lets you dodge board wipes during your opponents turn and helps you get multiple instances of impactful ETB triggers.
Uncivil Unrest
Another enchantment which requires a bit of a commitment is Uncivil Unrest, a five-mana damage doubler with a specific condition. In order to double the damage a creature you control would do, it needs a +1/+1 counter.
Since it gives all your nontoken creatures riot, you can choose to give them the counter or to give them haste. Since you get to pick how the creature comes into play, you can use it with other cards like Renata, Called to the Hunt, which automatically give it a +1/+1 counter, letting you give your new creature haste and double damage the turn it comes into play.
Luminarch Ascension
Playing Luminarch Ascension is a bit of a gamble in Commander games. All it takes to start creating 4/4 Angel tokens is to not take damage for four of your opponents turns, putting a counter on Luminarch Ascension on each of your opponents turns you don’t lose life.
However, as soon as you play it, you’ll likey just painting a huge target on your back, especially as you start to get closer to that four counter threshold. If you’re able to play Luminarch Ascension into a relatively empty board or one where you’ve set up a few good defenses, you’ll have an army of Angels soon enough.
Reconnaissance
If you’re playing a commander that relies on attacking to trigger abilities or one that tries to win through Commander damage, there’s no reason not to play Reconnasiance. This one-mana white enchantment lets you pay zero mana to remove an attacking creature you control from combat and then untap it.
You can do this at any point during combat, letting you attack with cards like Etali, Primal Storm and Alesha, Who Smiles at Death, who both have powerful attack triggers, take themselves out of combat so you don’t risk losing them to blockers.
The Eldest Reborn
Another saga, but this time it comes with an absolutely wild seven-for-one effect. At the first chapter, you force each opponent to sacrifice a creature or planeswalker. Milage for this effect will vary, of course, especially against token decks. You can always wait to drop The Eldest Reborn until after a board wipe to stop players from rebuilding.
At the second chapter, your opponents all discard a card, forcing them to make tough decisions on how they want their next turn to go. And finally, you get to steal a creature or planewalker from any graveyard and brings it back into player under your control. In the right deck, like Tergrid, God of Fright, you can accrue tons of value off of it.
Shadow In The Warp
The Tyranid Warhammer 40,000 Commander deck had a lot of underappreciated cards in it, but Shadow in the Warp might be the one of the best from the deck series. There are two abilities on Shadow in the Warp, the first reduces your first creature spell you cast in a turn by two mana. This can let you cast a six mana creature on turn four if you hit your land drops, rocketing you past your opponents.
Its other ability punishes your opponent for not playing enough creatures, dealing two damage to them after they cast their first noncreature spell each turn. Your opponent wants to counter your creature? Take two damage. They want draw cards before their next turn? Another two damage.
Descent Into Avernus
Commander games can take hours at times, so what if you play an enchantment to speed it up a little? Descent Into Avernus is the Magic equivalent of putting a bomb on the table and leaving it up to everyone else to disarm it. The way it works is on your upkeep. You put two counters on it, then everyone takes damage and makes Treasure tokens equal to the counters on it.
The next time around, there are four counters, everyone takes four damage, and makes four Treasures. Assuming no one is gaining life this game, and you play it on your third turn, Descent ensures all players will drop below zero life on your ninth turn. Your opponents are more likely than not going to have some sort of answer to it, or they’ll team up and take you out eventually. Hopefully you’ll be able to win the game on your own before then.
Rabble Rousing
The white version of a cycle of hideaway enchantments from Streets of New Capenna, Rabble Rousing is a fantastic token generator that can eventually give you at least one spell. Everytime you attack with one or more creatures, you create that many 1/1 Citizen tokens. If you have ten or more creatures when this ability triggers, you get to play the card you hid for free.
Token decks love Rabble Rousing but even playing it in a semi-agressive list will double your attackers in no time. The tokens don’t come in attacking so you can hold them back as blockers or use them as fodder for sacrifice effects like for Thalia and The Gitrog Monster.
Ryan Hay (he/him) has been writing about Magic: The Gathering and video games for years, and loves absolutely terrible games. Send him your bad game takes over on Twitter where he won’t stop talking about Lord of the Rings.