Finding your first Commander can be difficult. If you’re like me, you may try to have a Commander for each card type or each card color combination. Today, we’ll be talking about the best Simic Commanders of all time.
Notably, this is strictly for Commanders that exclusively represent a Simic color identity, even after including Partners. This means that, as good as Thrasios, Triton Hero is, it will be omitted because its Partner expands the color identity of your Commander deck.
Let’s take a look!
Galadriel of Lothlorien
- Mana Value: 1GU
- Rarity: Rare
- MTG Set: Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth
- Stats: 3/3
- Card Text: Whenever the Ring temps you, if you chose a creature other than Galadriel of Lothlorien as your Ring-bearer, scry 3. Whenever you scry, you may reveal the top card of your library. If a land is revealed this way, put it onto the battlefield tapped.
This is the strangest pick on the list. Galadriel of Lothlorien is generally not considered a particularly strong or popular Commander. If you want to play one of the strongest Lord of the Rings characters in the lore, Galadriel’s other cards are more popular options. I’m willing to bet that this is the strongest one though, and that opinion comes from personal experience.
Similar to a particular Bird that you’ll find in this list, Galadriel is capable of dropping all of your lands in just one turn. All you need for this is a Landfall card that creates creatures, and a Scry engine that triggers when a creature enters. A classic example of this three card combo uses Scute Swarm and Elrond, Lord of Rivendell. Once in play, you can theoretically play every land in your deck from as early as turn three.
This powerful combo works by Scrying a land to the top of your deck, which Galadriel of Lothlorien puts into play. Once the land hits the battlefield, Landfall will trigger, creating a creature token with Scute Swarm. This, in turn, triggers Elron, causing you to Scry, potentially allowing you to find another land.
Sadly, this combo is far from guaranteed, as a single Scry trigger can only do so much. That said, it’s nonetheless capable of putting in work. In many games, Galadriel will be a turn-four kill machine. With a healthy helping of tutors, protection, and additional enablers, this deck can be worryingly consistent.
Tatyova, Benthic Druid
- Mana Value: 3GU
- Rarity: Uncommon
- MTG Set: Dominaria, Modern Horizons 3 Commander, The Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander, Commander Masters, Dominaria Remastered
- Stats: 3/3
- Card Text: Landfall – Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you gain one life and draw a card.
When MTG players are asked to think of a broken Simic Commander, Tatyova, Benthic Druid is likely one that routinely pops into their heads. This card has been terrorizing Commander tables for years now and is rather accessible thanks to only being an uncommon.
Tatyova’s Landfall trigger is likely more impressive than it looks. The weakness with ramping is that, if you only draw your ramp and not your payoff, you’ll run out of things to do. Tatyova ensures that your ramp also turns into card advantage, which means that you’ll never run out of things to do. You can run all the Fetch Lands and land ramp you want, without the worry of drawing the wrong half of your deck. Instead, you’ll just keep drawing cards.
This unstoppable card engine makes Tatyova, like many of the Commanders on this list, a kill-on-sight one. You do not want the Tatyova player to start making 4-5 land drops a turn and drawing that many cards. Not only did they just deploy five extra mana, but they almost definitely have a nasty card to make your life difficult.
Hakbal of the Surging Soul
- Mana Value: 2GU
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- MTG Set: Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander
- Stats: 3/3
- Card Text: At the beginning of combat on your turn, each Merfolkk creature you control explores. Whenever Hakbal of the Surging Soul attacks, you may put a land card from your hand onto the battlefield. If you don’t, draw a card.
Hakbal of the Surging Soul is the second most popular Simic Commander on EDHREC, right behind our #1 pick that is widely known as a menace in the Commander format. Notably, Hakbal is a face Commander from a Lost Caverns of Ixalan preconstructed deck, which makes creating a deck around this Commander extremely accessible.
Hakbal does encourage you to play Merfolk, which is already a reason why this Commander is likely popular. Otherwise, this card grants you everything you need. A combination of buffing your board, drawing cards and ramping means that this card is capable of doing everything you need to win a game of Commander.
Nadu, Winged Wisdom
- Mana Value: 1GU
- Rarity: Rare
- MTG Set: Modern Horizons 3
- Stats: 3/4
- Card Text: Flying, Creatures you control have “whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or ability, reveal the top card of your library. If it’s a land card, put it onto the battlefield. Otherwise, put it into your hand. This ability triggers only twice each turn.”
As far as play patterns go, Nadu, Winged Wisdom is not a great choice for casual Commander. This card encourages long turns that often end up as nondeterministic win attempts. This slows down the game a ton while forcing your opponents to watch you play extended solitaire turns that largely don’t really get anywhere.
While the play experience isn’t something we would recommend to players trying to put together a casual Commander deck, it is a very strong cEDH Commander. Even if you don’t like the sort of gameplay Nadu, Winged Wisdom is trying to create, it is undeniably one of the strongest Simic Commanders out there.
Combine this with Shuko or Lightning Greaves and Springheart Nantuko or Scute Swarm, and you can generally create an endless army of creature tokens while flipping your entire deck. Ultimately, there are a lot fewer people playing Nadu, Winged Wisdom over our top pick, and both are disgustingly strong kill-sight Commanders, so we ranked Nadu second, but it could really be interchangeable.
Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy
- Mana Value: GU
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- MTG Set: Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths
- Stats: 2/2
- Card Text: Whenever you tap a nonland permanent for mana, add one mana of any type that permanent produced. (5GU): Look at the top five cards of your library. You may put a non-Human creature card from among them onto the battlefield. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.
Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy is an absolute menace in cEDH, and easily is the best, and most popular, Simic Commander of all time. This card ramps absurdly fast, threatening to deploy some of the nastiest spells in the game just a few turns into the game.
Even if you don’t have nasty spells to cast from your hand, Kinnan can help you find them, as long as they’re non-Human creatures. Fortunately, many nasty creatures are non-Human. Think of cards like Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger and Craterhoof Behemoth. That’s the kind of nastiness you should be expecting when you see someone roll up to your table with Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy. This is a kill on sight Commander, and one that your entire table may need to keep under control.
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