The Top Five Weakest Magic: The Gathering Commanders of All Time
In a game with tens of thousands of cards, not every legendary creature can be a powerhouse like Atraxa or The Ur-Dragon. Some, in fact, are famously, gloriously, and fascinatingly terrible.
But what makes a commander truly weak? It’s not always about having low stats. Sometimes, it’s about a design so flawed, so paradoxical, or so fundamentally at odds with the rules of Commander that it becomes an irresistible puzzle.
Today, I’m not going to be mocking the cards on this list. Instead, I want to celebrate them. We’re diving in to honor five commanders who are legendary for all the wrong reasons. These are the cards that challenge deckbuilders to their absolute limits.
Phage the Untouchable
At first glance, Phage the Untouchable seems incredible. A 4/4 body for seven mana is a tough sell, but her ability is a game-winner. Whenever Phage deals combat damage to a player, that player loses the game. No need to track 21 commander damage, just one clean hit and an opponent is out.
So, what’s the catch? It’s one of the most brutal downsides in Magic history. When Phage enters the battlefield, if you didn’t cast it from your hand, you lose the game.
Here’s the problem, casting your commander from the command zone does not count as casting it from your hand. So, playing Phage normally is just a very expensive way to lose on the spot.
Players have devised several clever workarounds, like using a Torpor Orb to stop her trigger from happening or using Command Beacon to put her into your hand for a safe cast.
The most stylish players even use Endless Whispers to kill their own Phage and donate her to an opponent, making them lose the game from her trigger.
Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
If Phage tries to kill you, Haakon, Stromgald Scourge simply refuses to be played at all. His rules text is an absolute brick wall in Commander. You may cast Haakon, Stromgald Scourge from your graveyard, but not from anywhere else.
You read that right. He cannot be cast from your hand, and most importantly, he cannot be cast from the command zone. He is, by his own definition, an un-commanderable commander.
The reward for jumping through these hoops is a powerful recursion engine that lets you cast any Knight creature from your graveyard, creating a resilient, grindy board state.
But getting him there is a logistical nightmare known as the three-zone shuffle.
First, you need a rare effect like Command Beacon to get him from the command zone into your hand. Second, you need a discard outlet like Tortured Existence to get him from your hand into the graveyard. Only then, after moving through two other zones, can you finally cast him.
Mishra, Artificer Prodigy
Mishra, Artificer Prodigy is the poster child for a commander designed for the wrong format. His ability reads, “whenever you play an artifact spell, you may search your graveyard, hand, and/or library for a card with the same name as that spell and put it into play.”
In Commander, a singleton format where you can only have one copy of any given card, this text appears to do absolutely nothing. So why is he on this list and not just in a bulk bin?
Because Mishra is the ultimate rules lawyer’s commander. His seemingly useless ability can be turned into an incredibly powerful advantage by manipulating the stack. The trick is to pair him with cards that counter your own spells, like Possibility Storm or Nether Void.
When you cast an artifact, both Mishra and the counter effect trigger. You stack the triggers so the counter resolves first, sending your artifact to the graveyard. Then, Mishra’s trigger resolves, searches for a card with that name, and finds the one you just put in your graveyard, putting it onto the battlefield for free.
This makes your artifacts uncounterable and turns symmetrical pain-enchantments into completely one-sided lockdowns.
Shimatsu the Bloodcloaked
Shimatsu the Bloodcloaked presents you with a very tempting, and very bad, offer. For four mana, you get a 0/0 creature that asks you to sacrifice any number of permanents as it enters, gaining a +1/+1 counter for each one.
The key word here is permanents. That includes your creatures, your artifacts, and most devastatingly, your lands. To make Shimatsu big, you have to sacrifice your entire board, leaving you with one giant vanilla creature with no haste, no trample, and no protection.
This all-or-nothing gamble is tactical suicide in a multiplayer game. You might make a 20/20, but you’re left with no resources and three opponents. When one of them inevitably points a one-mana Swords to Plowshares at your commander, you’ve traded your entire game for their one card, and you’ll likely never recover.
Clever players try to mitigate this by stealing their opponents’ creatures with Insurrection to use as fodder or by flinging a giant Shimatsu at someone’s face, but it remains a true glass cannon strategy.
Lady Orca
Our final entry is a true relic from a bygone era. Hailing from the ancient 1994 Legends set, Lady Orca is a seven-mana, 7/4 Demon with no abilities whatsoever.
She is the epitome of a vanilla creature. In an age where commanders are expected to be value engines that generate card advantage or enable unique strategies, Lady Orca does nothing.
She just sits there, a monument to a time before the Commander format redefined what a legendary creature should be.
There is no clever workaround for Lady Orca. There is no puzzle to solve. Building a deck with her at the helm is an exercise in winning in spite of your commander. You’re essentially just playing a Rakdos-colored deck without a real commander. Her weakness is obsolescence.
Continued Reading: The Top Five Magic: The Gathering Commanders of All Time
Call me a throwback, but i honestly don’t believe EVERY Legendary creature has to be viable as a Commander.