Hello awesome folks and happiest of days today! Today I want give you my choice for the Top Ten Commands with three honorable mentions, since we just got ten more in the last couple of years bringing our total to 21 (22 if you count Very Cryptic Command, but I don't). Because of just how powerful and flexible they are, they are very heavily played in kitchen table formats like Commander, Five Color, Type Four, Highlander, multiplayer and more. Let's look at my choices for the top 13 Commands ever printed!

Honorable Mention #1 (#13 Overall) - Kayla's Command

This three-cost White sorcery has four cool abilities. You can make a 2/2 artifact dork, put a +1/+1 counter on a dork and give it double strike for the turn, ramp a basic Plains to your hand, gain 2 life and scry 2. The first three are all quite strong. In Commander putting a +1/+1 counter and double strike on your leader can give you a Commander Damage kill out of nowhere. However, the default of token making, Plains fetching feels like a solid base line when that isn't an option. Gaining life and scrying are nice on a card doing other things in life gain decks and scrying matters brews. I also love this in artifact decks since its creature it makes is an artifact or with +1/+1 counter brews as well. It's also just generally useful in kitchen table play. It's also super cheap, and just one color. Don't sleep on it.

Honorable Mention #2 (#12 Overall) - Ojutai's Command

This four-mana instant Azorius Command is pretty special. It has four great options. The first is to Resurrection a small size creature from your graveyard to the battlefield with a mana cost of 2 or fewer. Great in-color examples include Esper Sentinel, Mother of Runes, and such. It's great with artifact dorks you just sacrificed for death triggers like Myr Sire and Myr Retriever. Then you can gain 4 life which is twice the previous one. You can counter a dork. Then you can draw a card.

The typical base line is counter and draw, but you can counter and Resurrection, or counter and gain life, or even Recur and draw, all of which are two for one. Also, a cantripping gain life that also has the ability to Resurrection or Remove Soul also works very strongly in some brews. Control loves this, and I also think that life gain, cantripping, small stuff, sacrifice artifacts, amid other brews will be quite the thing here. It's very flexible here, and its instant status raises it above the previous card, but the two colors for Commander drop it.

Honorable Mention #3 (#11 Overall) - Silumgar's Command

Clocking in one spot ahead of the previous Dragonlord's Command is this one. This one can counter a non-creature spell, bounce a permanent, wither a dork by -3/-3, or destroy a planeswalker. The typical one is likely Negate and Boomerang. Note that it can bounce a land. Negate is much more powerful than Remove Soul. Bounce, kill of a dork and a planeswalker are all key ways to add in value as well, so this is much better than the previous one by albitites. It's two for one is pretty easy. But it should, because it costs one mana more, which keeps it here at the 11th spot overall and just off my Top Ten overall. Nice!

#10. Titania's Command

One of the most expensive Commands ever printed but in the color of ramp, so that's fine. Your choice two is pretty powerful. You can exile an opposing graveyard and gain some life. You can ramp two lands, not just basic, tapped. You can make two 2/2 Bears. You can put two +1/+1 counters on your stuff. The ramp feels like the default setting, and then the other based on need. Getting two nonbasics onto the battlefield lets you get both halves of a combo, like Coffers and Urborg. Ramping two and making two 2/2s feels like you are ahead in the card advantage game. You can exile a graveyard against an abusive Commander like Meren of Clan Nel Toth. All of these are quite strong, and this is very powerful mid or late game.

#9. Lorehold Command

Our first command of this cycle. This five-cost instant has four key abilities. Make a 3/2. Give your team indestructible for the turn as well as haste and +1 power. Lightning Helix. Sac and draw two. Card flow, dork saving, removal, and dork making. All of those are very strong. I put this into my decks into the same slot as Rootborn Defenses and Heroic Intervention since that is the use typically. And you can tether to that a removal, drawer, or token maker too based on what you need.

#8. Profane Command

The first win con in our list. This fun powerhouse can force a foe to lose X like equal to the mana spent. You can also wither a dork by -X/-X, Zombify a dork with X cost or less, and give X dorks fear. It's great at twinning the win con with recursion, removal, or evasion. Because it's in the color of Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Nirkana Revenant there are tons of mana available for the killing to begin with this one. It's also strong in reanimation, Mono-Black control, tokens that need to go wide with the fear, other colors control with the dork removal, and is pretty flexible.

#7. Prismari Command

Hitting roughly halfway on today's list is this three-cost Izzet instant that was heavily played in Standard while legal. Instant speed plus a low cost led to that. Your options are pretty strong. Shock something, Shatter something, draw and discard two, and make a Treasure token. In a multiplayer game at the table, there are always Shockable and Shatterable targets to take out like Eternal Witness, Birds of Paradise, Goblin Welder, as well as Skullclamp and Lightning Greaves, artifact dorks like Steel Hellkite and Burnished Hart.

Then you have card flow if you just want to take out one target or are digging for something. If you are playing Commander, you can make the Treasure and then cast your Commander a turn early and then use it with Looting two cards or destroying something so it's not card disadvantage. It's very strong at the kitchen table. It's a key card in Izzet Spellslinger due to its colors and instant status.

#6. Mishra's Command

You have four options: deal X Damage to a creature, deal X damage to a planeswalker, discard up to X and draw, target dork gets haste and X power. All four are very strong. The obvious two for one here is to hit an opposing dork and planeswalker in one spell. It's also strong with the card flow, although worse since you discard first, but more flexible since you can draw more than two if you have the discard fodder for it. You can get card flow in your removal slate in your deck building. Don't sleep on the pump, especially in Commander where you can give your Commander haste to kill a turn faster and then a big fat damage boost for another turn faster Commander Damage kill.

It slots into a lot of decks, from discard-matters like Jund's Lord Windgrace that wants to play lands from its graveyard to madness brews to reanimation to cycling and triggers like Archfiend of Ifnir and loads more. And that's just synergy for the large card flow which is more drawable than your typical Cathartic Reunion. I love it with evasive Commanders like Rith, the Awakener that flies, or Feather, the Redeemed which will target it, or Tana, the Bloodsower with trample. That last one is really strong. I also adore this with Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh since it has first strike in addition to trample and menace.

What makes my top five?

#5. Kolaghan's Command

This is our highest scoring Dragonlord's Command. This powerful also costs three mana in Rakdos at instant speed. This gets played in Modern and other formats at the tournament table as well as kitchen table play. You can choose two from a few different options. Firstly, you can Raise Dead a dork. Secondly, you can force someone to discard a card (at instant speed, no less). Thirdly, you can Shatter an artifact. Fourthly, you can Shock a target. It's basically the two for one flexibility mentioned above with Prismari Command getting Shock and Shatter, but added to two more card advantage options.

No matter what two options you choose, you will be up a card. It's in the colors of reanimation, so don't sleep on the Raise Dead effect here, as well as instant speed discard too. Normally Raise Dead is a sorcery speed one-drop, so getting a dork back at instant speed means you can cast it with flash as a combat trick out of nowhere. As good example of that is with recently printed Necron Deathmark, which is a flashable Murder on a stick so you can kill something out of nowhere with this. It's also strong in a Grixis deck with counters like Draining Whelk or Voracious Greatshark. This is our highest charting gold Command.

#4. Urza's Command

Our second-highest scoring Command from The Brothers War is this four cost mono-Blue instant. This this has three great abilities and one you might use sometimes. The first is an okay combat trick, but I doubt you'll use it much. You can also make a tapped Powerstone token, make an X/X artifact dork where X is your artifact count, and scry 1 and then draw. Making a Construct with the power and toughness of artifacts is a game winner at instant speed, and you can make one when you are attacked and then make that at instant speed. On an empty board that will be a 2/2 since it counts itself and you can make a Powerstone. Like I mentioned before with the Treasure making one, you can drop a Commander a turn early with it. This clearly wants to be in a deck with a bunch of artifacts but even just a Treasure deck will love this. It's card flow combined with a game winner or a ramper or a combat trick. Nice.

#3. Gix's Command

This five-drop mono-Black card is our third card, final one just printed, and strong option moving forward. Check out its four abilities. Put a pair of +1/+1 counters on a dork plus give it lifelink for the turn. Destroy all dorks with a power 2 or less. Raise Dead up to two dorks. Every opponent sacrifices their highest-powered dork. That is massive card advantage. Destroying all of the small stuff is mass removal. The Edict for your foes can easily be a three for one in a four-player game. The double Raise Dead is a two for one, so that with the Edict is a five for one card advantage. The Edict plus the mass removal of the small stuff could really punish the board around, while not touching you at all. Don't sleep on the first ability, a permanent double boost to your Commander can kill quicker with Commander Damage and the lifelink is a strong double life swing.

I adore everything this has, and since it's mono-colored, it can fit into a massively wider range of Commander decks.

#2. Cryptic Command

This is a controversial choice, as this Command dominated tournament play from Standard to Modern to other formats. And it's strong in casual table play too. It costs four, but it does have the awkward three-Blue mana there and we've all had times where we were unable to cast it. You get four cool abilities, countering anything, bouncing anything, tapping all of your opposing dorks, and drawing a card. In kitchen table play, tapping is better in a multiplayer game where you are tapping three players' stuff, so it actually gets played. Its default is Counterspell + Cantrip, so it's an awkward to cast Dismiss. It's also very strong with Counterspell + Boomerang since it bounces anything, even lands. That's the default in Type Four where you have infinite mana but just one spell per turn, so countering their one spell while bouncing their one permanent is setting them back two turns. It's also very good with the Boomerang and the Cantrip in Type Four or generally. It's mega powerful in most kitchen table formats except for Five Color, where's it's just too hard to reliably cast.

Now what card upset the Big Bad?

#1. Austere Command

This six-mana sorcery! Even after years it's still one of the best sweepers ever printed. You have two options: destroy all artifacts; enchantments; cheap dorks or pricey dorks. If you just want a wrath, you choose the latter two. If you just wanna sweep equipment and stuff like Sylvan Library and not touch creatures because you are ahead, just choose the first two.

But the best thing here is combining one of the first two with one of the latter two. Every game situation on the battlefield is different. In one game you might control Mulldrifter, Timeless Witness and Sun Titan. In another game with the same deck you might control Esper Sentinel, Reclamation Sage and Thassa's Oracle.

In the first case you want to destroy all cheap stuff and whatever you just don't care about in the other two like enchantments, and in the second case destroy all expensive stuff and the same. You remove nothing of yours but a bunch of other things. It's very powerful. Also note that tokens do not naturally have a casting cost unless they are copies. That means you really want this in token decks since none of your game winners cost 4 or more. Now that I have created this list, let's see if it's just me that thinks the Austere Command is the best.

How many are being registered in Commander decks over at EDHREC.com?

• Cryptic Command - 22,239 - Nice, definitely a staple, in 2% of decks
• Austere Command - 113,179 - Yup, it's not just me!!, in 13% of decks

Alright, what did you think about my Top Ten Commands? Should I have included Very Cryptic Command? What did I miss around or leave off? Just let me know!