While the colorless commander pile remains absolutely tiny, we seem to be picking up new five-color commanders at an alarming rate. They’re not always five colors because of their casting cost either, which makes them far more consistent as centrepieces for any given deck.
One who is five-colors to cast though, is Garth One-Eye. Garth is an interesting commander, because he doesn’t really fit a specific archetype, and instead just kind of exists. Just because a commander is there, doesn’t mean they’re any good though.
Is Garth One-Eye a good commander?
Garth One-Eye is a 5/5 Human Wizard that costs one of each color. They have an ability that you need to tap them to use, and it reads, “Choose a card name that hasn’t been chosen from among Disenchant, Braingeyser, Terror, Shivan Dragon, Regrowth, and Black Lotus. Create a copy of the card with the chosen name. You may cast the copy.”
While Garth feels more like a card designed for Alchemy than traditional Magic, they’re definitely a real card. You can potentially set up some huge turns if you make sure you’ve got ways to reset their ability in order to make multiple copies of Black Lotus. They’re fun, for sure, but they’re not actually that powerful on their own. Ultimately, a few of the cards they make simple aren’t that strong.
You can use them in other ways, of course. For example, you could have them at the head of a five-color Wizards deck, and that’d be entertaining. However, it’s hard not to view them as one of the runts of the five-color offerings, despite how impressive their ability seems at first glance. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t use them. After all, some of the best EDH decks out there are the ones that rely far more on fun than anything else, and you could certainly use Garth at the head of a card creation deck, or one entirely based around older cards.
