A little over a year ago, Wizards officially released the MTG Marvel Secret Lair Supderdrop showing off a handful of new mechanically unique Heroes. These legends all present their own flavorful charms, making them exciting Commander build-arounds.
Still, while most of these creatures have emerged as popular Commander options, the same cannot be said about Black Panther, Wakandan King. Thanks to some new synergies with a popular MTG Avatar mechanic, however, this underplayed Hero has more utility now than ever.
Black Panther, Wakandan King MTG
Of all the Commanders that lend themselves to a +1/+1 counter theme, Black Panther, Wakandan King is among the most distinctive. Rather than just paying you off for playing creatures that naturally enter with +1/+1 counters, Black Panther actually incentivizes you to go wide to maximize his Survey the Realm ability. The more creatures you play, the more counters you’ll be able to distribute among your lands. Over time you can put those counters onto your creatures and hit for lots of extra damage.
With this in mind, most Black Panther shells make great use of mass token producers. Any effect from Secure the Wastes to Deranged Hermit gets the +1/+1 counter engine flowing. Interestingly, Doubling Season works overtime in this archetype since it turbocharges both the number of tokens you produce and the number of counters that get put on your lands.
From there, you’ll want to make sure you have access to creatures that reward you for dumping a bunch of +1/+1 counters on them at once. Gyre Sage, Jacked Rabbit, and Ouroboroid are a few examples of cards to look for.
As fun as Black Panther can be to craft around, however, using its abilities can feel a little slow. Building up +1/+1 counters on your lands takes time, and you still need to invest additional mana to move those counters to your creatures. Cards like Ashaya, Soul of the Wild help the cause by letting you place your +1/+1 counters on your creatures via Black Panther’s initial triggered ability, but there aren’t a ton of direct fixes. Luckily, the new Earthbend mechanic from MTG Avatar can significantly speed up the counter distribution process.
Earthbending Snyergies
Obviously, Black Panther’s Survey the Realm trigger does a great job feeding his Mine Vibranium activation, but Earthbending fulfills a similar purpose without requiring you to produce a bunch of creatures first. A single card such as The Legend of Kyoshi or Avatar Kyoshi, Earthbender is capable of putting a ton of +1/+1 counters on one of your lands at once, which you can then move at your leisure. Once you start moving counters around from creature to creature, you can refill your hand in short order.
Notably, by turning your lands into creatures, the Earthbend mechanic also pairs nicely with Black Panther’s first triggered ability. Rather than having your lands with counters on them lie dormant until you activate the Mine Vibranium ability, you can set up some vicious attacks in the interim. Solid Ground is the perfect card to help on both accounts, setting you up with a land creature upon entry and then speeding up your +1/+1 counter distribution moving forward.
Once you choose to move the counters from your Earthbent land onto another creature, the land will come back to play right away, so there’s no need to worry about falling behind on mana. In fact, you can even use Black Panther’s final ability as a proactive way to set up additional landfall triggers this way, further maximizing the power of Toph, Earthbending Master or Evolution Sage.
If you decide to go down the Earthbending route with Black Panther at the helm, you can take further advantage of the all-powerful Ashaya, Soul of the Wild, too. Being able to put a ton of +1/+1 counters from a single Avatar Kyoshi trigger directly onto your payoffs is a huge boon.
An Underrated Option
Despite all of the additional ways to utilize Black Panther, the Hero is still criminally underplayed. According to EDHREC, Black Panther sits outside the top 500 most played Commanders, which is a bit surprising. After all, even if it takes some time to muster its set of abilities, the card itself is at extremely efficient. This makes it trivial to replay if it gets killed, which is a big deal for a deck emphasizing token production. That said, Black Panther’s inaccessibility likely plays a role in how little play it sees.
Beyond its uses in the command zone, there are a handful of other EDH decks that can abuse Black Panther’s abilities in the 99 as well. Toph, the First Metalbender, for example, is a sweet new option whose Earthbending ability fuels Black Panther. There are also plenty of Commanders such as Kyler, Sigardian Emissary that serve as elite +1/+1 counter dumps. All of these factors make Black Panther worthy of more recognition in the world of MTG than he receives.
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