Planeswalker centric strategies have made up a sizable part of the Commander format's meta for a very long time. In general, planeswalkers benefit a lot from the format's longer games and more casual nature, and the commanders they're most often played with tend to capitalize on that. Atraxa, Praetors' Voice makes for an excellent example. She's perfectly tailored to lead a planeswalker deck, between her ability to proliferate loyalty counters each turn and her smattering of powerful keywords. Planeswalkers are vulnerable to attacks, but a blocker as excellent as Atraxa will deter a lot of aggression. In fact, I'd say her synergy with planeswalkers is a large portion of why she's the most popular commander in the format.

With the release of the Commander Masters preconstructed decks, we got interesting new spins on four beloved deck archetypes - enchantress, eldrazi, slivers, and planeswalkers. While I have things to say about all four decks, the lattermost is our focus for today. You see, the two new commanders printed in the Planeswalker Party deck are both Jeskai (), and Red was previously an extremely underrepresented color in planeswalker decks. The aforementioned Atraxa is every color except Red, and the next most popular, Carth the Lion, is Golgari (). Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge and Nicol Bolas, the Ravager // Nicol Bolas, the Arisen are both Red, but it doesn't feel right to me to call either one a Red planeswalker commander. Esika is all five colors, and Nicol Bolas doesn't have any particular synergy with planeswalkers, he's just the best commander for a Bolas themed deck.

Commodore Guff does everything you could want from a Red planeswalker commander. He has a triggered ability to give another planeswalker a free loyalty counter each turn, his +1 ability can create tokens that can block or tap for mana, and his -3 will damage opponents and draw you cards for each planeswalker you control, making him an excellent payoff for an often slow strategy, but he doesn't really interest me. He's too utilitarian. If I play a planeswalker deck, I want a commander that's a bit more explosive. Something that highlights the strengths of the planeswalkers in my deck. I want Leori, Sparktouched Hunter.

I feel that Leori has been criminally underlooked by most players. I've only ever seen him referenced as "that commander for people who want to play Chandra or Jace typal", but he is far, far more than that. A three-mana creature that can copy planeswalker abilities for free is legitimately powerful, even if it's only affecting a single planeswalker, and while he's no Atraxa, as 3/3 with flying and vigilance he's still pretty competent at blocking. He isn't nearly as effective a deterrent, but it's still miles better than leaving yourself and your planeswalker army completely open.

With Leori, our gameplan will be more aggressive than most planeswalker decks. Most games, we'll be playing out Leori on our third turn, and then follow him up with a planeswalker on turn four. Leori, now able to attack, can take a swing at any opponent without flying blockers to activate his ability, naming whatever subtype our planeswalker happens to have. After that start, we'll transition into a slower gameplan, using Leori to enhance our value engines while we focus on keeping the board under control.

These Planes Were Made for Walkin'

Shockingly, this planeswalker deck plays quite a lot of planeswalkers. Nineteen, to be specific. They serve as the backbone of this deck.

Few cards are quite as versatile as Chandra, Torch of Defiance. She can give you card advantage, deal damage with her +1, or produce mana with her other +1. If her mana ability is doubled by Leori, she can even be mana neutral. Her -3 can deal four damage to a creature, allowing her to function as a decent removal spell, and since her starting loyalty is 4, she can survive using it on the turn you play her. Have I mentioned that she's also a win condition? Her ultimate, costing 7 loyalty, gives you an emblem that deals 5 damage to any target whenever you cast a spell. As an emblem, this effect is impossible to remove once it's created, and dealing 5 damage with every single spell can very easily carry you through a game. Even though you won't often get the opportunity to use this ability, its presence makes her already excellent +1 abilities even more threatening.

A bit more expensive, but no less powerful, Chandra, Awakened Inferno is capable of making an enormous impact on a game. While six mana is quite a high cost, you can rest assured that you'll get value out of it, since she can't be countered, and her +2 alone can justify that cost. When you use her +2, Chandra will give each opponent an emblem that deals one damage to them during their upkeep. Emblems are impossible to interact with, and this ability can single handedly put a ticking clock on a game. And remember, our commander can double that. That's a Shock every single turn, which can add up very quickly. The one drawback of this is that it puts a bit of a target on your head. While emblems can't be targeted or sacrificed by any means, there is one way to get rid of them: killing the player that created them. Hopefully, you can deal with that level of aggression, which Chandra (now at 8 loyalty, after using her first ability) can do quite a bit to help you with. Both of her other abilities focus on killing creatures. Her -3 deals 3 damage to each non-elemental creature, which conveniently excludes our commander, and her -X will deal X damage to a creature or planeswalker, and exile them if they die.

Though he's not quite as flashy, Jace, Mirror Mage never fails to bring a smile to my face. There's something so novel about having a token planeswalker. While Jace is quite cheap, at three mana, the kicker to make a token copy of him costs two, so you'll usually be paying five mana for him. Since both Jaces have the subtype Jace, Leori will copy the abilities of both. The token copy starts with only one loyalty, but as you'll see, that doesn't matter a ton. His first ability is a +1, letting you scry 2. His second ability technically costs 0 loyalty, but it removes counters as it resolves. You reveal and draw a card, and he loses counters equal to its mana value. He'll usually struggle to survive drawing two cards in a deck with a curve as high as this, but the token copy is reasonably disposable, so it's perfect for that purpose.

I think it's safe to say that escape has proven itself a strong mechanic. Both Uro and Kroxa are incredibly efficient and difficult to deal with, and have seen success in several formats, and Underworld Breach is an unbelievably powerful enabler for strategies like storm. Self-recursion is a powerful thing for any card to have, and Elspeth, Sun's Nemesis is a self-recurring planeswalker. Her +1 can give two creatures +2/+1, which doesn't matter an enormous amount, but it's far from useless, and her -3 isn't dissimilar, only gaining you 5 life. Elspeth's best ability by far is her -2, which creates two 1/1 tokens. Tokens serve an important role for our deck, since we can throw them in front of attackers to protect our planeswalkers, and they can also serve as a win condition. Remember, as long as we have Elspeth and four other cards in our graveyard, we haven't run out of steam, since we can always recast her.

Dack Fayden (may he rest in peace) is a planeswalker I'd consider for most decks in Izzet () colors. He's cheap for a planeswalker, at only three mana, and both the abilities you're likely to use are excellent. His +1 allows you to draw two and discard two, providing an impressive amount of card selection over time, and his -2 can permanently steal an artifact from an opponent. Commander is a unique format where, between the regular use of mana rocks for ramp and the multiplayer nature of the game, you're extremely likely to see targets for this ability. Dack can function as either ramp or impromptu artifact removal, and either way, he's punching above his paygrade, and only becomes more powerful with Leori.

Originating from the same preconstructed deck as Leori, I expect Vronos, Masked Inquisitor to be a staple in planeswalker decks moving forward. This is predominantly because of his +1, which phases out up to two of your other planeswalkers. Phasing out a permanent is one of the best ways to protect it from removal, since it's impossible to bypass, and doesn't remove counters. Since the planeswalkers phase out at the beginning of the next end step, he even works with Atraxa! His other abilities don't slouch, either. With removal in the form of a -2 that returns multiple nonland permanents to their owners hands, and an ultimate that serves as a perfectly functional win condition, turning an artifact into an unblockable, indestructible 9/9 with vigilance, Vronos does everything you could want from a five-mana planeswalker.

[3-card strip: Quintorius Kand, Serra the Benevolent, Comet, Stellar Pup]

Turning to the elephant in the room, Quintorius Kand is fantastic. Even though we can't make much use of his triggered ability, he more than justifies his price. His +1 creates an impressively sized 3/2 token (which, again, our commander can double), and that's not even his best ability. Quintorius's -3 is very simple: you discover 4. Discover is an extremely powerful mechanic, a "fixed" version of the infamously strong and exploitable cascade keyword. In practice, it's mostly just an upgrade, giving you the choice to either cast a spell from the top of your deck for free, or put it in your hand for later. For his ultimate, Quint lets you exile cards from your graveyard, produce mana for each, and cast any number of them, and as a -6, it's reasonably accessible. And remember, both discover and that ultimate allow you to cast cards from exile, letting you take advantage of that triggered ability.

While Serra has been referenced since the very start of Magic, it took until Modern Horizons for her to actually get a card, more than 25 years later. That's a lot of time to build expectations, and I don't think Serra the Benevolent fails to live up to them. Her +2 gives your flying creatures +1/+1 until end of turn, which isn't incredible in this deck, but it's not useless, either. Leori has flying, as so do several of the deck's other creatures. Her -3 creates 4/4 tokens with flying and vigilance, which are also affected by that +1/+1. Because of these tokens, Serra is one of the best cards we can play on turn four. You can attack with Leori, play Serra, and then get two big, evasive tokens and a planeswalker at 1 loyalty behind them, ready to make them even bigger. That might be the best thing you can do with her, but her ultimate is still far from useless. It's only a -6, meaning it's possible to access on the second turn after you cast Serra, and it has the effect of Worship, preventing fatal damage as long as you control a creature.

The very bestest boy in the Un-iverse (oh yes he is), Comet, Stellar Pup, is part of the reason I chose to build Leori in the first place. The two have incredible synergy. You see, Comet is a very unique planeswalker- his only loyalty ability costs 0, but will add or remove counters upon resolution, randomly selected via a dice roll. On a 1 or 2, he gets two loyalty counters, then makes two 1/1 tokens and gives them haste. A result of 3 will subtract one loyalty to return a card with mana value 2 or less from your graveyard to your hand, and a 4 or 5 will damage a creature or player for two loyalty. Those might not seem too exciting, but they're all pretty good, and the 6 result is what you're really here for. A result of 6 gives Comet one loyalty, and allows you to activate his loyalty ability two more times that turn. Leori will copy both extra activations, and for each instance of the ability, you'll get to roll again. Each time you roll, you'll have another chance to hit a 6 and keep the circus going.

Supporting the Superfriends

Planeswalkers can't be the entire deck, obviously. We still need the connective tissue of creatures, removal, protection, and win conditions for our deck to actually function, especially given how vulnerable planeswalkers can be.

Another card originating from the same deck as our commander, Onakke Oathkeeper is an excellent way to protect our planeswalkers. It's a very defensively statted 0/4 for two mana with an excellent ability - a miniature Ghostly Prison for our planeswalkers, making it cost a mana to attack them. Between being a solid blocker and taxing attackers, Onakke Oathkeeper does a lot to discourage your opponents from picking off your expensive, vulnerable value engines. Throwing it in front of an attacker it can't survive blocking isn't a problem, either, because it can even do things from the graveyard. If you pay 6 mana and exile it, you can reanimate one of your planeswalkers. It's an extremely efficient defensive creature for any planeswalker focused deck.

While we're on the topic of protecting your planeswalkers from attack, our next card does exactly that, although it's a bit more heavy handed. Promise of Loyalty costs five mana, and forces each player to sacrifice all but one of their creatures. The creatures that survive the spell will also be saddled with a vow counter, which will prevent those creatures from attacking you or your planeswalkers. While board wipes that allow your opponents to choose what they keep can normally be ineffective against many strategies, Promise of Loyalty subverts that by ensuring the surviving creatures won't be as much of a threat to you. It's not perfect, as many creatures remain indirect threats even if they can't attack you, but I think this spell's strengths are worth that one weakness.

Urza's Ruinous Blast is one of the best payoffs for running a deck focusing on legendary cards, planeswalkers included. It's one of the game's few legendary sorceries, requiring you to control a legendary creature or planeswalker to cast it. That isn't as much of a drawback in Commander, but it's still fairly meaningful. It makes up for that drawback by being an absolutely insane board wipe in any deck that would consider running it. It's a very simple spell. Exile all non-legendary nonland permanents. In the right deck, this can be completely asymmetrical, and exiling everything that isn't yours is an absolutely obscene effect. Commanders and other legendary creatures will survive it, but decimating the board state of every player that isn't you remains useful, especially when it bypasses indestructible and hits enchantments and artifacts.

With planeswalkers being vulnerable to both attacks from creatures and conventional removal, it's important to be able to protect them. While Leori and tokens and board wipes and counterspells are all useful for that, they aren't perfect. Ripples of Potential is the best protection spell a planeswalker deck could ask for. It's kind of insane in any deck that relies on permanents with counters on them. At instant speed, and only two mana, Ripples of Potential proliferates, letting you put an extra loyalty counter on all of your planeswalkers. Then, the things you put counters on phase out. I've already sung the virtues of phasing as protection from removal, and Ripples of Potential can give you that at any time, on top of free counters for your trouble.

Boros Charm is one of the best cards in an excellent cycle, and is one of the most versatile instants you can get for two mana, with three modes to choose from. The first mode deals 4 damage to a player or planeswalker. While this is probably the weakest mode of the three, it's still quite useful. It can function as removal for an enemy planeswalker, or it can be used to finish off a player close to death. The second mode gives all your permanents indestructible until end of turn. This won't prevent your planeswalkers from losing loyalty counters from taking damage, but it does invalidate destruction based removal against them, along with affecting the rest of your permanents. Lastly, the third mode is my favorite, here. It gives a creature double strike until end of turn. Not only does double strike allow Leori's ability to trigger twice, you can also use it on an opponent's creature during combat, potentially allowing them to kill another opponent when they otherwise couldn't.

Phoenixes are one of my favorite creature types. I enjoy graveyard strategies, and I love birds. In fact, I'm pondering building a phoenix typal deck. The only problem is that a lot of them are kind of mediocre. So, when I get an excuse to run an actually good phoenix in a deck, I jump at it, and Jaya's Phoenix provides exactly that. A five-mana 3/3 with flying and haste is a decent start, and it also brings an ability not unlike Leori's. When it deals combat damage to a player, the next loyalty ability you use gets copied. While this ability is pretty good, it's not as strong as Leori. Resiliency is this card's real strong suit. Whenever you cast a planeswalker spell, it returns itself from your graveyard to the battlefield. For free. In a deck with this many planeswalkers, this card is pretty much guaranteed to stick around, so long as it doesn't get exiled.

This deck focuses a lot on controlling the table and grinding out value until the game ends, but an actual win condition of some sort is nice to have. Sparkshaper Visionary acts as that, and smoothes out our draw in the process. It's a three-mana 0/5 that turns your planeswalkers into 3/3 birds with flying and hexproof, which scry 1 when they deal combat damage to a player. Because they only become creatures at the beginning of combat on your turn, and return to being planeswalkers when your turn ends, this doesn't make them significantly more vulnerable to board wipes, and is a safe and efficient way to help close out the game.

There are a lot of good cards a planeswalker deck gains access to for playing Red. All Will Be One might be the best. For five mana, it's an enchantment that deals damage to an opponent, creature, or planeswalker whenever you put counters on something, with the damage dealt being equal to the number of counters. This will trigger off of everything you could hope it would, from planeswalkers entering the battlefield with loyalty counters to activating loyalty abilities. Dealing sizable chunks of damage whenever you do the things you were going to do anyway can help you keep control of the board and eventually close out the game.

The List

This definitely isn't the strongest deck I've built. It's slow, it's a bit fragile, it's not very good at ending the game, and I love it. If anything, I'm glad it's not as finely tuned. It's important to have a variety of power levels among your decks, and I'm terrible at making less tuned decks on purpose. I doubt this deck will win a lot of games, but I think it can put up a good fight. Planeswalkers have a lot of inherent strengths, and this deck ended up being a unique take on the strategy, able to hit the ground running and generate advantage quickly.

Leori, Sparktouched Hunter | Commander | Lilian Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Leori, Sparktouched Hunter

• Creatures (12)
• 1 Deepglow Skate
• 1 Flux Channeler
• 1 Gold-Forged Thopteryx
• 1 Grateful Apparition
• 1 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
• 1 Jaya's Phoenix
• 1 Lae'zel, Vlaakith's Champion
• 1 Mila, Crafty Companion
• 1 Onakke Oathkeeper
• 1 Spark Double
• 1 Sparkshaper Visionary
• 1 Thrummingbird

• Planeswalkers (18)
• 1 Chandra, Awakened Inferno
• 1 Chandra, Legacy of Fire
• 1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
• 1 Comet, Stellar Pup
• 1 Commodore Guff
• 1 Dack Fayden
• 1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
• 1 Elspeth, Sun's Nemesis
• 1 Jace, Mirror Mage
• 1 Narset of the Ancient Way
• 1 Narset, Parter of Veils
• 1 Quintorius Kand
• 1 Serra the Benevolent
• 1 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
• 1 Teferi, Master of Time
• 1 Teferi, Temporal Archmage
• 1 Teyo, Geometric Tactician
• 1 Vronos, Masked Inquisitor

• Instants (9)
• 1 An Offer You Can't Refuse
• 1 Arcane Denial
• 1 Boros Charm
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Ripples of Potential
• 1 Semester's End
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Valakut Awakening // Valakut Stoneforge

• Sorceries (5)
• 1 Blasphemous Act
• 1 Deploy the Gatewatch
• 1 Promise of Loyalty
• 1 Supreme Verdict
• 1 Urza's Ruinous Blast

• Enchantments (8)
• 1 All Will Be One
• 1 Deification
• 1 Duelist's Heritage
• 1 Flaming Fist
• 1 Oath of Gideon
• 1 Oath of Jace
• 1 Oath of Teferi
• 1 Whirlwind of Thought

• Artifacts (9)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Ichormoon Gauntlet
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Talisman of Conviction
• 1 Talisman of Creativity
• 1 Talisman of Progress
• 1 The Chain Veil

• Lands (38)
• 4 Island
• 2 Mountain
• 5 Plains
• 1 Adarkar Wastes
• 1 Arid Mesa
• 1 Battlefield Forge
• 1 Command Beacon
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Deserted Beach
• 1 Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Flooded Strand
• 1 Great Hall of the Citadel
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Interplanar Beacon
• 1 Karn's Bastion
• 1 Marsh Flats
• 1 Maze of Ith
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 1 Plaza of Heroes
• 1 Raugrin Triome
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Scalding Tarn
• 1 Sea of Clouds
• 1 Shivan Reef
• 1 Spectator Seating
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Stormcarved Coast
• 1 Sundown Pass
• 1 Training Center

Buy This Deck Export text

I struggle to give advice for tuning this deck up, beyond the usual suspects of fast mana, free counterspells, and more interaction in general. Farewell is a must, as well as Rhystic Study, but beyond that, I don't have many suggestions. Planeswalker decks can struggle in faster and more competitive environments, and I could only do so much to compensate for their weaknesses. Tuning down is much easier. Just cut Cyclonic Rift and reduce the average planeswalker quality a bit, and you should be golden.

Final Thoughts

I'll admit, I began building this deck with measured expectations. When I start working on a deck with a commander as obscure as Leori, I don't usually expect the result to be much better than okay, and by that metric, the deck succeeded with flying colors. It's not the strongest thing I've built, but that's fine. It's fun to play, and I enjoy pulling out an uncommon commander and watching my opponents read it for the first time since spoiler season. I always love being someone's first experience with a card.

Planeswalker strategies aren't really something I'd experimented much with prior to this brew. The closest I'd gotten was my Aminatou, the Fateshifter deck, which had a light planeswalker subtheme in an earlier build before it became a more dedicated combo-control deck. That subtheme came to be when I realized I could use planeswalkers twice in a turn, if I flickered them. Wait, that sounds familiar. A 3-drop, three color commander that can let you use a planeswalker ability twice? That's a lot like Leori. I didn't actually notice that similarity until just now, but it's interesting. My Aminatou deck is teetering on the edge of being taken apart (mostly on account of being too competitive for its own good) and it's possible that Leori takes its place.

In Commander, the game starts before the first turn. Choosing a deck that matches up with the sort of experience the table is looking for is an important skill for anybody trying to cultivate a playgroup, and sometimes, if you try to make a deck the strongest possible version of itself, you'll just end up with a deck that's too weak for competitive games, but too strong for a lower-powered table. That's what happened to my Aminatou deck. Decks like that aren't fun for anybody. In a lot of ways, playing a "weaker" deck can sometimes be better. You'll be under less scrutiny from the rest of the table, and you'll have more enjoyable games when you match the table's power level.

After all this, I'd say I understand the appeal of planeswalker decks a little more, and because of that, I have a more complete grasp of the format as a whole. I think most of us would benefit from branching out from the decks, strategies, and power levels we're used to. That's going to be all for now.