Though it was 2023’s Baldur’s Gate 3 that thrust the series back into the popular zeitgeist, Magic was working with the IP even before that. In 2022, Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate rendered the beloved setting in cardboard form, with plenty of iconic characters along for the ride.
While much of this set is fondly remembered to this day, there are, as always, some hidden gems that slipped through the cracks. Mazzy, Truesword Paladin is one such card, providing a snazzy, lesser-seen option for Aura-focused MTG Commander decks. If you like stacking buffs and devastating combo plays, this could be the deck for you.
Mazzy, Truesword Paladin MTG
For your four mana investment, Mazzy Truesword Paladin offers two unique, Aura-related abilities. The first of these essentially grants a free Rancor to any enchanted creature that swings at one of your opponents. At its simplest, this is a nice extra incentive to suit your own creatures up with cheap Auras. If you’re going wide on board, you can use Aura copiers like Three Dog, Galaxy News DJ and Yenna, Redtooth Regent to spread the love and up the damage.
You can also use this ability politically, by slapping Auras on opposing creatures to incentivize them to swing elsewhere. Giving out buffs to enemy creatures can be a risky strategy, but you can circumvent this by using Auras that also Goad their targets, like Redemption Arc and Martial Impetus.
Great as this ability is, things get really interesting with Mazzy’s second ability. If the first grants the buff of Rancor to your creatures, this one grants the resilience of Rancor to your Auras. This helps to address the innate fragility of Auras as a card type, letting you play through removal and board wipes with ease. It’s particularly good in Enchantress builds, where cards like Sythis, Harvest’s Hand can turn your Auras into repeatable cantrips.
Mazzy’s second ability also lets you lean into all the ‘cast from exile’ synergy cards Wizards has printed recently. Cards like Savvy Trader can help you replay your Auras on the cheap, while Passionate Archaeologist can reward you with extra burn damage for doing so.
Aura Farming
In addition to being a great source of grindy value, Mazzy, Truesword Paladin also enables some pretty wild combos in MTG Commander. With Mazzy, Sanctum Weaver, Instill Energy, and Auratog, for example, you can generate infinite mana and an infinitely large creature.
With all the pieces in play, and Instill Energy attached to Weaver, you can tap Weaver for mana, sacrifice Instill Energy to Auratog, then replay it. This will let you untap Weaver, then tap it for more mana to continue the loop. There’s a good bit of redundancy for this combo, too, since any dork that taps for two green or more works. You can also use Triclopean Sight in place of Instill Energy, and Faith Healer in place of Auratog.
If you’d rather create infinite enters and dies triggers for an Impact Tremors win, Mazzy has you covered there, too. With Phyrexian Altar, and either Chishiro, the Shattered Blade or Ajani’s Chosen, you can loop a one-cost Aura in and out of play infinite times, re-casting it on a token each time. With the right Auras, you can get extra benefits from this loop as well. Use Cartouche of Solidarity for infinite 1/1s, for example, or Bequeathal to draw your whole deck.
In a similar vein, you can pull off an infinite draw combo using Mazzy, Unbridled Growth, and Defiler of Vigor. Unbridled Growth can sacrifice itself to draw a card, and Defiler lets you re-cast it for life instead of mana. You’ll need a way to offset the life loss, like Dawnheart Geist or Student of Ojutai, but with that in place, you can dig for any other combo you’d like.
Lost Treasure Of Baldur’s Gate
Mazzy, Truesword Paladin seems simple on the surface, but it’s actually a Commander with potential in a ton of different archetypes. It’s great at the head of Enchantress decks, go-wide Aggro lists, and even Voltron brews. Basically, as long as you’re running a critical mass of Auras, Mazzy can do a ton of work for you.
Despite all this power and utility, Mazzy doesn’t actually see a ton of play in Commander currently. According to EDHREC data, just 2,276 players run Mazzy as their Commander. It sees a little more play in the 99, with around 2,940 players running it there, but that’s still a surprisingly low figure.
While it’s unfortunate that more players aren’t enjoying what Mazzy has to offer, this does mean that the card is very cheap to pick up right now. Copies of the card’s regular printing can be had for a paltry $0.10. If you’d prefer the Showcase Rulebook version, that can actually be had for even less, with copies around $0.04.
Even if you want to get fancy and go for a Prerelease Promo or Foil Etched version, those will only set you back $0.47 or $0.14, respectively. At these rates, Mazzy, Truesword Paladin is an extremely low-risk pickup if you want to try something different for your next Commander project.
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