Top Strategies for Dominating with MTG’s Best Commanders in 2025

When building a commander deck, it can be hard to know where to start. With almost every card available in Magic: the Gathering’s rich history to choose from and 100 cards to fill, there are a LOT of options. Some best commanders MTG will naturally just speak to you, but other times you just want to play with something good… or even so good, it’s busted.

Let’s take a look at the most powerful commanders in 2025 and the best ways to build them.

Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice

Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice has been the community’s most popular commander for years for three main reasons: first, it has a huge amount of flexibility in its ability that means it can be built many ways, second its colour identity opens up almost every colour apart from red, and three it’s a Phyrexian Angel (and it doesn’t get much cooler than that!).

While Atraxa has been power-crept a little and lacks some of the pure power she had back in 2016, she provides a great amount of synergy and makes your other cards much better. Top strategies include building with +1/+1 counters, infect (to give them even more poison), or superfriends (i.e. planeswalkers) to turbo up to their ultimates. Atraxa herself has some pretty great abilities in flying, life link, vigilance and deathtouch, helping you to catch up if you fall behind.

Key cards to play with her vary on your exact strategy, but you can go wrong with fellow proliferators, such as Tekuthal, Inquiry Dominus, Ezuri, Stalker of Spheres and Evolution Sage. 

Edgar Markov

Edgar Markov has the eminence ability, making him pretty broken because you don’t even need to cast him. He obviously shines in vampire decks that want to go wide, playing lots of small vampires to maximise the token potential, and swinging in for lethal. Mass pump effects work well to make all the vampires bigger, as do token doublers, and aristocrats style sacrifice decks that can make use of the tokens. Access to red, white and black also gives the best removal in the game. Stromkirk Captain is a classic lord to pump those tokens, while Blood Artist and Skullclamp let you drain your opponent to death or draw a ton of cards respectively.

Vivi Ornitier

Vivi Ornitier is a new arrival to the Commander scene thanks to the recent Final Fantasy set, and does everything you could want in a noncreature based ‘spells’ deck. He drains your opponent, gets bigger AND adds mana according to spells cast, meaning he can almost do it all. He’s certainly vulnerable to removal, but his cheap mana cost means he’s relatively simple to replay. While there are several routes to go down with Vivi, what’s clear is he shines best with cheap spells like Brainstorm, Curiosity, while also making room for highly synergistic cards like Harmonic Prodigy.

Teval, the Balanced Scale

Teval, the Balanced Scale is another new Commander, offers a huge amount of value on top of being a 4/4 flying dragon for four converted mana, providing a source of lands, tokens and mill. Teval offers a lot of options in terms of build – you can lean hard into the ‘lands’ theme, or just use the abilities more as a ‘Sultai graveyard’ theme. Regardless, Life from the Loam offers great synergy in keeping the graveyard stacked and removing cards to generate more tokens, while Colossal Grave-Reaver (if you can get it into play) can bring any milled creatures straight into play. Teval's Judgement provides even more benefit for cards leaving the graveyard.

Baylen, the Haymaker

Baylen, the Haymaker is another Commander that can do a bit of everything, from adding mana, to drawing cards, to being your finisher… all you need are the tokens to fuel the bunny warrior (and note, they don’t have to be creature tokens, so treasures and such like work just as well). Cards like Smothering Tithe provide a stream of tokens, while doubling effects like Doubling Season mean they’ll add up fast. Jacked Rabbit adds to both the token theme, and the bunnies!

The Necrobloom

The Necrobloom is an Abzan landfall Commander, opening up an extra colour for fans of The Gitrog Monster and similar. While it may look unassuming, The Necrobloom’s ability mounts up fast, especially when making multiple land drops each turn. Fetch lands (and equivalents) work especially well, providing double triggers of landfall, plus they can be brought back to your hand via the Dredge ability. Beyond the Gitrog himself and fetches, cards like Doubling Season help build an army twice as fast, while the likes of Splendid Reclamation bring back a huge number of lands all at once when paired with mill effects.

Kenrith, The Returned King

Kenrith, The Returned King is the Swiss Army Knife of Commanders. Being five colours and having multiple abilities, you can build him in almost any way you like. The most ‘boring’ way to go (but powerful) is general ‘good stuff’ where you play the best of each colour. Personally I like picking a theme with Kentrith – reanimator can work well, given the incredible options of fatties across all five colours. You can also go far more specific, for example ‘activated abilities matter’ with Zirda, The Dawnwaker as a companion, or lean into the ‘Royal’ theme as a more casual and fun deck choice. The sure flexibility on Kenrith is his biggest asset, but can make deck building a real challenge.

Muldrotha, The Gravetide

Muldrotha, The Gravetide is an incredible Sultai commander, either as a ‘good stuff’ option, or more focused towards the graveyard. With Muldrotha at the helm, your deck is incredibly resilient, making it hard for your opponent to keep anything destroyed for long. Costing six is a bit of a downside – if your opponent deals with her just once, it might be hard to get her down again, especially as you really want to take advantage of her ability the turn she comes down and play something from your graveyard. Thankfully as she has blue in her colour identity, so counter spells can keep her safe. To make the most of Muldrotha, you want to make sure the majority of your spells are permanents, for example Ravenous Chupacabra, Sakura-Tribe Elder, and Seal of Primordium.

Tymna The Weaver

As a partner Commander, there are many options on how to build Tymna, providing lots of opportunities to brew. Much like the companion mechanic, ‘partner’ is so powerful because it provides you with effectively an extra card (two Commanders in the command zone), which has the added bonus of providing huge flexibility in colour identity too. Tymna is particularly strong due to her ability to draw cards. You’ll most often see her paired with Thrasios, Triton Hero simply because they are both cheap, provide access to four of the five colours, and have generally strong abilities.

The Gitrog Monster

Possibly my favourite commander, I fell in love with the giant frog the minute it was previewed ahead of Shadows Over Innistrad’s release (it even has its own story to hunt out, if you are interested). The Gitrog Monster is all about lands, specifically lands going to the graveyard to draw cards. To fuel the gruesome amphibian, you’ll need to be playing plenty of extra lands with cards like Explore, while lands that end up in the graveyard, such as the fetches, are especially powerful. Add in cards that bring lands back from the graveyard, like Splendid Reclamation and Crucible of Worlds.

Isshin, Two Heavens As One

I adore commanders like Isshin, who encourage specific strategies rather than generic good stuff. Isshin is all about one thing, attacking, doubling your attack triggers in the aggressive colour combination or red, white and black. Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin is a powerful option, and is Sword of the Animist and Aurelia, the Warleader. Fans of the combat step will find plenty of fun options

Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow

Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow is the perfect Commander for anyone with a penchant for ninjas. The gameplan here is simple: hit them with low cost, evasive creatures, launch Yuriko into play via ninjitsu, and then reap the rewards – cards, and pain to your opponent! And the best bit? The ninjitsu ability gets around commander tax, meaning you can ALWAYS play her for two mana that way, making the deck very resilient. Add in some blue counter magic, and you can protect your board of evasive weenies too. Changeling Outcast really shines here (both evasive, and a ninja), and even Ornithopter has its time in the sun. Card selection like Brainstorm are great for making sure you're drawing the cards you want, especially when combined with shuffle effects like the fetch lands.

Sauron, The Dark Lord

Sauron, the Dark Lord may be big, but wow is he powerful. Ramp is tough in the Grixis colours, however once you get him down, he’s a real pain for your opponents to deal with. Not only is the ward requirement really difficult – giving him semi-hexproof – but even if your opponent has a spell, Amass will trigger, giving you some value. Most likely though, they are just going to have to deal with it, and Sauron’s self-fuelling abilities kick into action, providing an ever growing orc and card draw. Play him in a Grixis control shell with additional counter magic to protect him, and you want to go far wrong! Call of the Ring is both on theme and a powerful draw engine, while other Amass cards outside of Lord of the Rings, such as Dreadhorde Invasion, get you rolling even faster.

The Ur Dragon

Fans of dragons look no further, for The Ur Dragon is here! While this huge 10/10 may look like a tricky commander to ever grace the battlefield, thanks to its overpowered ‘Emminence’ ability, you never have to even cast it to have a huge advantage. His ability works from the command zone, making all of your dragons one mana cheaper – which is huge – given that dragons are typically, well, HUGE! He’s all five colours, meaning you can basically play whatever dragons you want from all of Magic’s history, plus you’ve also a huge monster to win the game with later once you’ve ramped up to it or the game has gone long. This deck is all about dragon synergies and needs plenty of ramp and colour fixing, making something like Dragon’s Hoard perfect, while Dragon’s Tempest gives your huge monsters haste while also taking down creatures or even players.

Kaalia of the Vast

Kaalia of the Vast is one of the OG commanders, and surely one of the most iconic cards of the format. It’s emblematic of what the format is all about – big splashy effects, and playing cool cards, and they don’t get much cooler than Angels, Dragons and Demons! As the deck is all about cheating these creatures into play, you really want giant ones, ideally with enter the battlefield effects, for maximum value. That said, you also don’t want to load up your deck with lots of cards that are hard to cast, especially if your opponent is able to keep removing Kaalia. Consider having back-up ‘cheat into play’ strategies, for example big-mana ramp via artifacts or reanimator, and also haste enablers to give you instant access to her ability. Avacyn, Angel of Hope is one of the best hits you can hope for.

Lathril, Blade Of The Elves

Elf decks are typically mono green, or Golgari, and Lathril, Blade Of The Elves provides plenty of reasons to add black to your deck. She provides not only a stream of elf tokens (especially if you’ve a way to pump her power, e.g. with tribal ‘lord’ effects), but then a means to finish off your opponents quickly without the need to attack. This drain ability is especially potent when gumming up the board with tokens that can lead to a stalemate. Adding black gives green some much needed additional card draw options and removal, not to mention other powerful golgari elf options. The game plan is simple – play elves, and pump them up. Consider ‘over the top’ options like Overrun and powerful elf synergies like Marwyn, the Nurturer.

Pantlaza, Sun-Favored

A theme among these Commanders is ‘lord’ commanders who can lead a specific, well-loved, creature type. Pantlaza, Sun-Favored is here to represent the dinosaurs. It gives us access to the most dinosaur of colours in red, white and, especially green, and a powerful ability to ‘discover’ each time we cast one. For those who remember cascade, discover is a hugely powerful ability that not only gets us cards for free, but cheats them straight into play. This can become even more devastating for your opponent when these cards have ‘enter the battlefield' abilities too, providing even more value. Yes, there’s an element of luck involved – but that can be mitigated by ensuring you’ve plenty of dinos along the mana curve to cast, or simply embracing the fact that spinning the wheel is fun! Adding haste via cards like Rhythm of the Wild adds to the value too, meaning you can attack with the dinos as soon as they hit the battlefield – which gets truly devastating later when you drop the likes of Zacama, Primal Calamity.

Shroofus Sproutsire

Shroofus Sproutsire is another tribal Commander, but this time it's all about the saprolings. Shroofus cares about doing a certain amount of damage to make that many tokens – so the more you connect, then better, and given that they also have trample, pumping up Shroofus is the way to make the most of the ability. As well as other saproling makers and general pump effects, the likes of Tendershoot Dryad serving both roles, consider sacrifice effects, the most powerful being Skullclamp, to convert all those saprolings into cards, mana and more.

Atraxa, Grand Unifier

Atraxa, Grand Unifier is expensive at seven mana, but it’s a gamebreaking effect. See this version of Atraxa like a Sphinx’s Revelation, which you cast when you’ve run out of juice to restock your hand, as well as having a huge, flying threat with loads of abilities which can bring you back into almost any game (vigilance to both attack and block, lifelink to catch back up, etc). As Atraxa’s ability is ‘enter the battlefield’, there’s the option to blink it to draw more cards later too, or let her go to the graveyard with the intention to reanimate her. She’s a little ‘good stuff’, probably best in a control-ish shell that wants to dominate the board and restock later in the game, or a ramp deck that gets her out quicker. The real trick with her is just to ensure you’ve a good spread of card types so you can nab as many cards as you can.

Conclusion

And that’s a wrap on the best Best Commanders MTG in 2025 – which one speaks the most to you? I’ve already built four of these, and another three as ‘work in progress’! Whichever of these powerful legends appeal to you, you’ll be able to find them and the rest of the 99 right here on Magic Madhouse – the perfect place for singles, pre-con Commander decks if you want a head start, or boosters to bolster your collection. Keep an eye out for pre-orders and great deals, all with fast shipping.