Thanks to almost all Commander decks being led by creatures, most Commander games are now decided by attacking. Whether you’re going wide with typal strategies or suiting up your Commander with a ton of equipment, you still need to attack to close the game out. Because of this, locks that prevent your opponent from attacking can shut down their entire game plan. If you want to stop your opponents from winning with massive swings, these locks should buy you tons of time.
MTG Form of the Dragon
While it’s quite costly and risky, Form of the Dragon can put you in a massively advantageous position if it isn’t removed. Giving you a free removal every turn and preventing creatures with Flying from reaching you, this card can completely shut some opponents down on entry. That said, reducing your life total to five is a huge risk, as removing Form of the Dragon has you dead to just one attack.
If you want to use Form of the Dragon regardless of this, there is a way to make its attack prevention more substantial. Combine the card with Gravity Sphere, and none of your opponent’s creatures can attack at all. All the while, you can take out your opponent’s blockers with Form of the Dragon, and slowly attack to victory.
While this is the only variation of an attack lock available in Red, there are a fair few different locks that involve the same Flying gimmick. Magus of the Moat, Teferi’s Moat, and Moat all play in a similar space, shutting down non-Flying creatures from attacking. Gravity Sphere has some alternatives as well, with Archetype of Imagination and Mystic Decree offering blue takes on the same ability.
Sadly, in addition to these combos requiring two colors, they’re also symmetrical, meaning that your creatures cannot attack. Sandwurm Convergence can fix this problem, but it’s both an extremely expensive enchantment and adds another color to the combo. Still, among all of these different combos, finding one for your Commander deck should be doable.
MTG Chronomantic Escape
Chronomantic Escape is a rather bizarre MTG card, essentially making it impossible for your opponents to attack you every three turns. On its own, this card is basically pointless, but it can get significantly better.
Since the sorcery uses Time Counters, there are ways to speed up the process, such as getting more upkeeps. Sphinx of the Second Sun, Paradox Haze, and Shadow of the Second Sun, for instance, all allow you to remove two Time Counters per turn instead of one. While pairing two of these together will do the job, copy effects like Clever Impersonator, Copy Enchantment, or Clone can make these combos far more consistent.
If you’re not playing an upkeep matters deck, Chronomantic Escape can also create locks in Time Counter decks. So long as you have a white Doctor’s Companion, The Tenth Doctor can also enable this combo on his own, Time Travelling three times with his activated ability. Even if you don’t have the full seven mana to set this up, other natural inclusions in this archetype, like Jhoira’s Timebug, will make Chronomantic Escape a stronger card in general.
MTG Elephant Grass
Even if you aren’t looking to set up a lock, Elephant Grass is a decent addition to Green Commander decks that want to buy time. Essentially offering a Ghostly Prison with a Cumulative Upkeep cost, Elephant Grass does a great job deterring attacks while shutting down black opponents completely. That said, paying more mana each turn for Elephant Grass is a big downside, but these locks fix that.
Because Cumulative Upkeep costs are tracked by Age Counters, Solemnity stops a fresh Elephant Grass from costing any mana to maintain. Throw in a card that makes all creatures black, like Painter’s Servant or Darkest Hour, and your opponent’s creatures won’t be able to attack you at all. So long as you’re willing to pick up a Servant, this combo can upgrade any slower Selensya Commander decks.
MTG Reverence
If you’re expecting a table full of go-wide typal strategies with small tokens, Reverence can be your best friend. Shutting down creatures with low power from attacking will turn a few decks off on its own, and can become a lot more effective with a power modifier.
When using cards like Humility, Kudo, King Among Bears, and Godhead of Awe, Reverence can stop all creatures from attacking. This is already enough to win the game with an alternate infinite combo, but you can turn this into a one-sided lock with a little effort. By using Anthem effects like Amazing Alliance or Glorious Anthem, you can naturally pump all of your creatures beyond Reverence’s two-power threshold. Alternatively, Voltron decks like Captain America, First Avenger can ignore this lock with all the equipment they use.
Sadly, this also means that opposing decks with lots of stat pumps will also get around the Reverence Combo. Humility can help here by shutting off the abilities of creatures in play, but the card will also stop any abilities that you try to use. Because of this, noncreature Commanders, like Shorikai, Genesis Engine or Nahiri, the Lithomancer might get the most out of a Reverence lock. Nahiri generally encourages equipment, naturally offering a way around Reverence, while Shorikai decks traditionally don’t care about attacking at all.
MTG Web of Inertia
On its own, Web of Inertia is a niche MTG card that doesn’t see a ton of play. While Commanders that care about exile, like Umbris, Fear Manifest can take advantage of the enchantment, exiling one card from a graveyard is typically an easy condition to satisfy. Thanks to this, Web of Inertia doesn’t do a great job at stopping opponents’ creatures from attacking without some help.
When combined with Rest in Peace, however, Web of Inertia shuts attacking down for the entire table. Sending every card that hits the graveyard to exile, this combo ensures that opponents will never be able to pay the cost for Web of Inertia. Between being one-sided and only requiring two low mana-value cards, this might actually be the best attack lock of them all. The only downside here is that, generally, Web of Inertia is not a good card outside of this exact combo.
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