While Commander is an incredibly broad and diverse format, there are still a few archetypes that ultimately rule the roost. Sit down at any given pod, and chances are you’ll run into someone playing Tokens, Counters, Artifacts, or another of the most popular decks. Since these decks are so well-established, you can do yourself a solid by preparing for them in advance during deckbuilding. To help you do that, we’ve hunted down some of the most underplayed Stax creatures in all of MTG, each of which can shut down a specific strategy. These bangers won’t break the bank, either, as each can be had for less than $2 in total.
Kataki, War’s Wage
Artifact-focused decks are some of the most common contenders in Commander, and Kataki, War’s Wage is the ideal card to drop against them. Acting as a The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale for artifacts, Kataki makes controlling a bunch of them an expensive endeavor. Mana rocks and artifact lands, in particular, are essentially fully negated with this in play. It’s particularly good against junk artifact tokens like Food and Treasure, which are typically generated en masse these days.
Since pretty much every Commander deck runs artifacts in some capacity, you’ll want to build in some ways to break the symmetry here. One of the simplest is to just play a ton of ramp, like Land Tax or Claim Jumper. This will help you afford the tax while your opponents can’t.
Alternatively, you can run ways to bounce Kataki before your upkeep, to avoid paying at all. Ironically enough, artifacts like Erratic Portal and Crystal Shard are some of the best options in this area. You can also just run Kataki alongside artifacts that want to go to the graveyard anyway, like Ichor Wellspring or Ugin’s Nexus, using the card as a pseudo-sacrifice outlet for your key plays.
Necroplasm
As complex as Magic can be at times, two of the most popular strategies in Commander are still straightforward Token and Aggro decks. You’ll see these kinds of lists all the time, which makes Necroplasm an indispensable piece to keep in mind. For three mana, this will blow up every creature token in play at the end of the turn it comes down, then stick around to take out bigger threats later on.
The key to getting the most out of Necroplasm is running it with cards that let you manipulate its +1/+1 counters. This will let you target specific mana costs for destruction, as well as avoid Necroplasm blowing itself up after a few turns. Retribution of the Ancients is a nice, repeatable way to scale Necroplasm down, while offering extra removal at the same time. If you want to go the other way, Canonized in Blood is a good source of continuous counters. You can also use some good old-fashioned Proliferate cards here, like Staff of Compleation.
Since Necroplasm has Dredge, it also has a ton of utility as a grindy value engine and combo piece. Pair it with Tortured Existence, for example, and you can recur a creature from your graveyard every turn for cheap. You can also mill your whole deck by looping it with Thran Vigil and Benthic Biomancer. These applications make Necroplasm worth running for more than just being a silver bullet against token decks.
Quakebringer
Dedicated Lifegain decks are everywhere in Commander, but thankfully there are some very strong answers for them available too. Quakebringer, a heavily underplayed MTG Stax creature from 2021’s Kaldheim, is one such answer.
As if turning off lifegain completely wasn’t enough, Quakebringer also burns your opponents for two on each of your upkeeps. This is a surprisingly juicy ability, letting you nab discounts on Spectacle cards like Light Up the Stage, and power out huge creatures with Rakdos, Lord of Riots. If you grant Quakebringer Lifelink with something like Basilisk Collar, it serves as a nice way to top up your own life, too. Its ability doesn’t prevent you from gaining life, after all.
If you’re more interested in the burn ability, Quakebringer can even do work from the graveyard. You need to control a Giant to do this, but that’s easier than ever after Lorwyn Eclipsed. You can just run a cheap utility Shapeshifter, like Chomping Changeling, to fulfill the condition without needing to run a bunch of clunky Giants. Heck, the Giant doesn’t even need to be a creature: Kindred cards like Favor of the Mighty and Firdoch Core will work just as well.
Ravenous Slime
Whether it’s Aristocrats or Reanimator, graveyard strategies are everywhere in Commander. Having cards that can counter them is essential, and Ravenous Slime does so with aplomb. As long as this eerie Ooze is in play, your opponents’ creatures will be exiled rather than hit the graveyard. This is particularly effective against Aristocrats, which tends to win through one sacrifice loop or another.
Ravenous Slime, unlike most graveyard hate in Magic, is also a legitimate threat on the board. It scales up fast on its own, but you can speed it up with counter doublers, like Hardened Scales and Winding Constrictor. Alternatively, edict effects like Accursed Marauder can allow Ravenous Slime to feed on more opposing creatures. The Ooze also naturally packs evasion to get around chump blocks, so you can comfortably stack Equipment like Hammer of Nazahn on it and not worry about wasting the buff.
Rug Of Smothering
Unfortunately, blue isn’t particularly blessed in the MTG Stax creatures department. That said, we have got a lovely underplayed colorless option for you instead in Rug of Smothering. This card looks and sounds hilarious at first, but its abilities are no joke. Like an inverse Aetherflux Reservoir, this causes scaling life loss to players as they cast multiple spells in a turn, serving as a deadly deterrent for both Spellslinger and Combo decks.
To avoid the Rug’s wrath yourself, you’ll want to play around it by spacing out your spellcasting. Cards that grant your spells Flash, like Vedalken Orrery and High Fae Trickster, are ideal here. You can also just run Rug in decks that don’t need to cast many spells per turn anyway, like Ramp lists where you’re dropping the likes of Avenger of Zendikar and passing. If you’re really worried about the life loss, you can always just run Aetherflux Reservoir to totally cancel it out.
Since Rug of Smothering is an artifact creature, it’s a lot more accessible than most Stax creatures in Magic. You can tutor it up with Reckless Handling or Goblin Engineer, for one thing, and recur it with Myr Retriever or Junk Diver. This extra resilience is a big deal for a card like this, as it makes it all the more likely that you’ll have it on hand when you need it to stop a Combo player popping off.
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