Commander is great not only because you have access to nearly every card ever printed in MTG, but because you can impose rules upon yourself to keep things interesting.
Unbridled and uncontained power is hugely entertaining, but it’s often when you limit your options that you find some of the most interesting interactions.
Unfortunately, one of the best restrictions is being a little held back by the commanders that are available to us.
So, consider this us asking you all to join in a campaign for more Colorless commanders.
What Colorless commanders are there at the moment?
As it stands, there are only eight truly Colorless commanders. By that, what we mean is that these are the ones with a Colorless identity, not just a Colorless Creature, and they are:
- Hope of Ghirapur
- Traxos, Scourge of Kroog
- Karn, Silver Golem
- Kozilek, the Great Distortion
- Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
- Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
- Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
- Emrakul, the Promised End
Now, aside from the fact that most of these are ten mana or more, we’re not saying that this is a bad list; it’s just a bit short.
It’s also a little jarring that these aren’t the only Colorless Creatures that can be commanders either, because the list is longer as long as you don’t mind the commander’s color identity not being void.
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What other Colorless commanders are there?
So, the ones in the first section are what we’d consider true Colorless commanders, but there are other options if you don’t mind ignoring part of the Color identity.
- Bosh, Iron Golem (Red technically)
- Brisela, Voice of Nightmares (White and also two Creatures smashed together)
- Golos, Tireless Pilgrim (Five-color technically)
- Hanweir, the Writhing Township (While the fusion is Legendary, neither of the other sides is, and one of them is Red)
- Memnarch (Blue technically)
- Ramos, Dragon Engine (Five-color technically)
- The Prismatic Piper (Colorless, but you have to give it a color)
- Morophon, the Boundless (Five-color technically, again)
- Emrakul, the Aeons Torn (Banned)
So, while the list is a little longer because of the fact that you can choose to ignore the colored aspects of these Legendary Creatures, it feels like a cop-out to not just have more actual true Colorless commanders.
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What do we want from a Colorless commander?
Our current list, which is the top one, has three Artifact Creatures and five Eldrazi. These are probably the logical paths for a Colorless Commander card, but it’s not like there isn’t more room to explore within those two themes anyway.
For example, take the Eldrazi. Imagine a commander which gave all of your Creature emerge or something? There are plenty of things that Eldrazi do outside of just being big and scary, and it would be wonderful to see something more intriguing in that space.
The same is true of the Artifact-based ones. Traxos is fun, Karn is entertaining, but Hope of Ghirapur isn’t what we’d describe as good. There are plenty of other Artifact strategies which are better in Red or multi-colored decks, but should that be the case when Artifacts are generally colorless?
You can go one step beyond that too. What if we had colorless Creatures that were neither Artifacts nor unimaginable horrors from another realm of existence? It would be fascinating to see a Legendary Creature who was neutral in their magic use and Colorless as a result.
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Why is this even a big deal?
All of this might seem a little silly to you, maybe it’s not something that you’re all that bothered by, but there’s no denying that some of the best parts of Commander come from limitations.
While there are plenty of netdecks and optimal card choices to be made all over the place, things are always at their most entertaining when you don’t have those options available to you.
Without more potential choices for Colorless commanders, it makes it very hard to impose one of the hardest things of all upon yourself. It’s just kind of a shame, and it’s something we’d love to see addressed at some point, even if it takes a while to properly come to any kind of benefit.
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