Hello awesome folks! Today I want to look at what I consider to be the best underused enchantments ever printed for Commander. This is yet another Top Ten where I look at underplayed cards, and I've already done a Top Ten for Auras, so those won't be here, and then I won't be doing other subtypes like Shrines, Classes or Sagas here either. To make my cut they must be under at least 10,000 decks over at EDHREC.com and the fewer the better. Also, they cannot have been printed in the past year. Ready? Let's do it to it!

Honorable Mention #1. Frontier Siege

The only charting one in the Siege cycle is this 4-drop with 8821 decks registered aver at EDHREC.com. This has two options, and it's here for Khans, which makes four Green mana each of your turns and pays for itself in a turn cycle. The ramp from this thing is pretty good. The Dragons option is to turn flyers entering your battlefield into fighters which is synergetic with a flying Commander that has a few here and there like Rith, the Awakener that can use the ramp normally or the Dragons half if that is needed instead.

Honorable Mention #2. No Mercy with a shoutout to Dissipation Field

8878 and 5972, respectively. No Mercy used to be a classic of multiplayer and Commander and it's here in my honorable mention section because it is pricey on the secondary market but worth it. Any damage that is dealt to you by creatures (including non-combat damage like Guttersnipe) will be destroyed, so there is just one hit. In a 40-life format trading that one hit for a dead creature is well worth it and provides massive great things.

Also check out Dissipation Field, which bounces the things that dealt damage to you, again hitting all sources. This can be played into as people might attack you to self-bounce their Mulldrifter to draw two more cards and recast it, so it's not as much of a sure thing as No Mercy, but it's still nice to play keep away. Also note that you'll bounce your own things so you can bounce your own stuff to keep it from dying, which makes it work with effects like Pestilence that would otherwise die after sweeping the board.

Honorable Mention #3. Helix Pinnacle

9263 uses. This feels like a key win-con for me since this 1-drop has shroud to keep from being targeted for removal, and can spend X at instant speed at the end if a foe's turn before you untap to put tower counters on it and win on your upkeep. It's a colorless infinite mana win with Ashnod's Altar combos. It loves ramp decks like Simic that want to use their mana over time. This is really strong stuff. I also like this as a win con in control builds that save their mana for instants like Counterspell and then can put it here for winning at the end of your foe's turn. It's back here in my honorable mention section since it's close to 10k, my criteria for this article.

Honorable Mention #4. Necrogenesis and Night Soil

Just 4193 are used even though graveyard abuse is rife in this format. Exiling a creature from any graveyard for the ability to make a 1/1 Saproling for yourself is quite valuable. You don't lose value like the card getting sacrificed like Tormod's Crypt, you get a valuable resource over and over again. This is strong in metagames with recursion, reanimation, Incarnations like Anger, Volrath's Stronghold, and loads more answering. It makes tokens so it fits in Thallid/Saproling and token decks. It's quite good alongside other graveyard answers in these colors. It was clearly inspired by Night Soil, a common from the earliest days of the game used in just 2889 decks.

Top Ten Time!

10. Dictate of Heliod

7714 are registered. Our only scoring Dictate cycle card is the mono-White one. A Glorious Anthem or Gaea's Anthem is a wonderful card. For three mana you get a permanent +1/+1 boost to your dorks until it is answered. A +1/+1 effect is great for tokens and aggro brews that go wide quite early on and need closers. The Dictate is twice the size of an Anthem's bonuses for just two more mana, so it's much better when cast on your turn. However, you can cast this with flash any time, not just on your main phase, so you can swing, and then when no blocks happen, double boost. You can wait until they block poorly and then double boost and combat trick your team. You can double anthem and win much like Overrun. You can wait and pass the turn with 1/1s, get attacked by 2/2s and then cast, and block and kill their things that swung your way. You can wait until the end of a turn and cast it, and then untap and swing with your now bigger force out of nowhere, or the hasted thing you just dropped with a boost to size. Nasty! This thing should easily crack at least twice as many decks.

9. Trade Routes

This is run in 6727 decks. After getting printed, this was a multiplayer heavyweight and strong in many formats. You drop it for two mana and then can discard lands you draw after setting up your mana for one generic mana and draw a card. Then you can pick up a land for a colorless mana at instant speed and discard it for another so you can basically cycle lands in play for two mana to try and find that Counterspell or Swords you need right now.

In a normal deck with a few answers of each common card like an Azorius deck with 7-10 counters, two commonly played exiling removal and Pongify (plus Swords and Path) you have a few chances of finding the answer to that Blightsteel Colossus attacking you or that Thassa's Oracle that was just cast that'll win the game with its trigger. This is strong in decks with a lot of redundancy. This is also amazing in Simic ramp deck that put the lands into your hand rather than the battlefield as well as mass land recursion from the graveyard. It's very strong in loads of places.

8. Glare of Subdual

3329 decks registered over at EDHREC.com. This will let you tap your untapped dorks to tap down mana rocks and other artifacts or opposing dorks. I run this in my self-bounce Bant iconic Equinaut brew where you cast a flashing self-bouncer like Whitemane Lion or Fleetfoot Panther, trigger the cast trigger of Equilibrium and spend a mana, trigger Aura Shards or other ETB to Disenchant, a self-bounce like Azorius Aethermage to draw a card, and then a tapper like this to tap-lock something your foe controls.

That's:

• for Whitemane Lion
• for Equilibrium
• for Azorius Aethermage
• Free Aura Shards and Glare

And the result is bouncing a foe's dork, drawing a card, destroying an artifact or enchantment and tapping something. That's worth the investment. I run this in token and go wide brews that are heavy in Selesnya brews anyway as you can tap your things made en masse. I also like this in Bant or Selensya Hate Bears since you'll need to control a few bodies like Aven Mindcensor that hose folks, so you might as well tap them and get value from them. This also serves as a backup Opposition in Squirrel Nest + Opposition combos.

7. Necromancer's Covenant

1996 decks use this, and this is in my real-life Commander Cube. This Orzhov rare will exile all stuff from a given graveyard on arrival to the table, so it acts like a one-sided Tormod's Crypt. Then for each dork exiled from said graveyard, you get a 2/2 Zombie token. Again, just like the two enchantments above, this exiles and gives you something. In this case Zombies of the 2/2 persuasion, and all of your Zombies have lifelink, so this will slide into the Orzhov Zombie or Orzhov Tokens deck as well as just in any metagame that has a lot of graveyard (ab)use. It's pretty strong and I love it loads here in this format and it's a pretty fun thing elsewhere.

6. Lich's Mastery

4109 are registered. This 6-drop legendary enchantment requires three Black, so it's harder to cast in a three-plus color brew. It has hexproof to prevent targeted removal, only sweeping removal like Akroma's Vengeance or Planar Cleansing will hit it. You cannot lose, and when you gain life, you draw that many cards without jumping through any hoops. And then when you lose life you have to exile that many permanents, cards in hand, or cards from your graveyard. When it is answered, you lose.

This is awesome in a few places. Note that the exiling from losing life doesn't say anywhere "nontoken" so those mass Treasure making cards that are getting played everywhere in Commander in decks like Smothering Tithe will be the first place to go. I also like this in decks with a load of graveyards but little proper recursion, like Dimir Mill that seeks to mill everyone and might have one or two ways to abuse recursion, but not that many since it needs cards for the alternate win con. The Food deck seems like another good place for this since you can sac them for life to draw cards. And then there is the obvious life gain decks where this should draw you a ton of cards.

What cards hit my Top Five overall? A full house! Three uncommons and two rares.

5. Angelic Exaltation

This win-con in decks is running at 3704. This will pump your Commander (if they attack alone) by +X/+X when they swing equal to the creature you control count, and note that it does include itself. In a deck that wants to go wide with tokens or aggro this will also let you go up with a win-con of your Commander from Commander damage. It's also strong in decks that want to have a few bodies on the battlefield but don't normally swing with them, like Hate Bears and Elfball where you have a bunch of Elves to tap for mana to fuel giant spells that win the game.

I also like this with creatures that have a combat damage trigger that scales up with the combat damage dealt. Also, this is great in midrange and blink with a bunch of dorks with ETB abilities that sit around after and just take up space like Flametongue Kavu and Eternal Witness and Karmic Guide. I also like this as a win-con in a Superfriends Brew where you make a ton of token dorks to block attacks on your planeswalkers so they aren't attacking and you can win with Commander Damage. You could easily give your Commander +4/+4 or +5/+5 when swinging for the win turns earlier in that creature heavy brew. When you do a deep dive into this, it's way more synergetic than it appears at first.

4. Bonds of Mortality

Just 3320 of these. This draws a card on arrival to the battlefield - so it's a free, cantrip, enchantment. Then you can spend a Green mana to force opposing dorks to lose indestructible and hexproof this turn. People lean on those a lot in this format to save their stuff, from a nasty Commander equipped with Swiftfoot Boots preventing you from interacting with it to a potent game ender in the indestructible Eldrazi Titans to even answers that are commonly played at instant speed. This is the common answer to removal targeted and mass. Remove it from your foes! And if you don't run into any in a given game, no worries, since you didn't lose a card by running this, it replaces itself. In some metagames this is a must play answer to problems protected by those two keywords. Also, a cantrip two-mana enchantment that can be blinked or returned and recast in Enchantress decks is an engine of card drawing fun times.

3. Perilous Forays

5351 registrations. Our final uncommon on this list is this 5-drop enchantment. You can spend a mana of any color to sacrifice a dork (including tokens) to grab a basic land tapped. You can do this repeatedly at any time. I also like this in an Aristocrats and sacrifice-matters brews as a key repeatable and mana making engine of the sacrifice variety. Two key archetypes interact with this color - Jund and Golgari. I still run this quite happily in many brews and Abe's Deck of Happiness and Joy, and this loves a deck that has more colors or needs more of a card type like Swamps for Cabal Coffers.

2. Collective Restraint

3396? Are you kidding me? This 4-drop Propaganda variant requires X to attack you, where that is your basic land count. In a two-color deck that's usually a four mana Propaganda. In a three-color deck that's usually more, and in 4-5 color decks that's downright nasty good. It's a five-color essential and I run one in every real life Five Color Commander deck I run, as well as a key defensive card in Abe's Deck of Happiness and Joy.

It's better the more colors you are playing, and you just need to control it in order to really shut down attacks on you. It's also better now with the improved quality in these brews with the Triome three land ten card three land types cycle that was just finished. This is a very strong thing to unfurl in any multiplayer format. This thing is way too good not to clock in in 5x the number of brews and clock over 15k easily.

1. Dire Undercurrents

Coming in just barely more than 2k at 2127 decks is this Dimir enchantment. When your Blue critters arrive to the party, draw a card! When your Black critters arrive to the party, a foe discards a card! This is very strong in any Dimir deck with the expected 25-30 creatures. I also like this in creature heavy midrange/blink that is playing things like Ravenous Chupacabra, Liliana's Specter and Mulldrifter and similar things all over the place for its spell slots. This is broken in a deck with some gold creatures that are both colors, like your leader and similar friends. This is very potent indeed in those decks! Enjoy our card that tops the list overall!

And... there we are! I've done a few of these Underrated Top Tens for Commander, and now we'll be moving on. What did you think of my Top Ten Underused Enchantments list? Anything in here that I missed or that you'll try out in your next brew? Just let me know, and have an awesome day!