Top 10 Partner Commanders

by
DougY
DougY
Top 10 Partner Commanders
(Tymna the Weaver | Art by Winona Nelson)

Grab Your Partner, Do-Si-Do

Welcome to Too-Specific Top 10, where if there isn’t a category to rank our pet card at the top of, we’ll just make one up! (Did you know that Eleven, the Mage and Mike, the Dungeon Master are the only partners that will let you play five-color?)

There are currently six different ways that you can end up with two or more "commanders" in the "command zone".

With all of those options, it's sometimes a surprise to me that I don't see more decks doing so. Maybe it's because of the sheer amount of choices that various Partners, Companions, Backgrounds, and the like entail?

Maybe it's because the combination of multiple cards in the Command Zone feels a bit like cheating, in some sort of hipster reflex brain?

Well, whatever it is, I don't have it. You're looking at a genuine fan of all things Partner, and if I'm successful today, hopefully by the end, you will be too!

Top 10 Partner Commanders

Partner debuted in Commander 2016, still the only four-color-focused set in the history of Magic, and that history colors the mechanic to this day. In general, more colors means more power in Commander, and there would be no question if we ranked just the best commanders you could have multiples of, the entirety of the list would more or less be made up of the original two-color Partners.

With so many more options out there today, I wanted to make sure we got to see and discuss them in out top ten, so instead of a narrow approach, I've gone against the Too-Specific Top 10 mantra and widened things out as far as they can go.

Criteria: Cards with a mechanic that allows you to start the game with them in an exterior zone to the game that you are then able to play from said zone, which also allow for multiples of said cards in said zones. As is tradition, all results are ordered by EDHREC score, although in this case we will be ranking each card within its own mechanic which allows for it to be a commander, Companion, or otherwise.

Why all this talk of "exterior zones", you ask? Well, put simply, because of Companion.

Companion is an infamous mechanic that attempted to bring the idea of a "commander" to other formats, and in doing so, broke every single one of them.

From Standard to Vintage, it turns out that having access to an eighth card in "hand" to start the game was just too much of an advantage, and was well worth making strange deck constructions like not playing any permanents that cost three or more, only having activated abilities, or adding an extra 20 cards.

The only format not heavily impacted was Commander, where you could already play an eighth card outside your hand, and deck construction is already heavily impacted by the singleton nature of the format. Still, having a ninth card is pretty good, so there are some die-hards like myself who have still tried to make Companion work.

With that in mind, the same as "Player Characters" and their Backgrounds, Doctors and their (other) Companions, and the more limited Friends Forever and Partner With mechanics, we're going to count Companion as yet another "Partner" mechanic.

So, with that playing field set, let's get to the list!

10.

Didn't I say there were six different "Partner" mechanics? So why are we only seeing four? Well, so far at least, there are only nine legal Companions (RIP, Lutri) and seven cards with Friends Forever. In other words, we'll get to them, but let's focus on what we do have at number ten for now.

While we haven't gotten to the two-color, OG Partners yet, it's still not much of a surprise to see Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools on our list. Everything you could want in a planeswalker, Tevesh Szat protects himself with Thrull blockers, draws cards by sacrificing them, and has an ultimate that will go a long way to winning the game.

Combine that with the ability to combine him with the two-color Partners out there like his most popular, Thrasios, and it's very common to see high-powered versions of Tevesh Szat floating around your local tables.

Speaking of powerful commanders and powerful decks, Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy! I covered why I think Gale is cEDH-adjacent early this year, but honestly it wasn't that hard to explain. Getting access to a previously cast spell anytime that you cast another spell of the adjacent type is powerful.

Combine that with an easy mana cost and the ability to choose whatever other color you want to find combos, and everything you could ever want in a Partner is right here.

9.

If we're being honest, Lutri, the Spellchaser isn't the only Companion that's banned from Commander. Yorion, Sky Nomad is in the awkward position of breaking the only Commander rule I've always found nonsensical when played as a Companion: requiring you to have more than 100 cards in your deck.

With that said, I know for a fact that the zero decks we're tracking is an incorrect number, because I've seen folks rule zeroing Yorion as Companion multiple times out at conventions and the like. We may not know that they're out there because they look like "in progress" decks to EDHREC's deck scrapers, but there are definitely folks out there squeezing 120 cards into a deckbox because they want to get a bit blink happy!

I like The Twelfth Doctor well enough that I built an entire Sliver deck around him, but if I'm honest, the really interesting tidbit here is his most popular Doctor's Companion, Vislor Turlough.

The only inherently black Doctor's Companion, Turlough combines well with The Twelfth Doctor due to his other oddity of donating himself to an opponent when he enters the battlefield, allowing you to play him out of the command zone with The Twelfth Doctor as your first spell of the turn, therefore copying him with Demonstrate (forcibly giving an opponent a copy on the stack).

The copy will enter the battlefield first, and put its trigger on the stack, which will also resolve before the original Vislor Turlough does, meaning you can give it away before it dies to the Legend Rule. The end result? A Vislor Turlough for each opponent. Pretty neat trick!

8.

The idea of "Voltron" feels a bit stretched when you can have two commanders in the command zone, but Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist doesn't mind. With him stacking Auras and Equipment onto a permanent of your choice every combat, he can make anything worth worrying about for opponents, but there is a reason that fully half of his decks come Partnered with Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh.

With a zero casting cost, three relevant keywords, and a deck full of Equipment, it's not hard to start stacking up commander damage early and often.

I was a bit surprised to see Pir and Toothy this low on the list, if I'm honest. The premiere Partner With pairing out of Battlebond, Pir and Toothy have been a couple of friends worth paying attention to in the pregame for six years now. Pir giving you Hardened Scales in the command zone would be good enough, but everything about Toothy has always been pushed.

Even without Pir in play, Toothy gets bigger every turn, and no matter how it leaves the battlefield, you're bound to draw an absurd amount of cards when it does. Really, the only reason I can think of that this isn't further up the list is that Pir and Toothy became so ubiquitous as a "you can't let this person play Magic" kind of commander pairing that people got a little sick of it and moved on to browner pastures.

7.

Gyruda has always been one of the more popular Companions, due to one thing and one thing only: Clones. With Gyruda entering the battlefield and an even Clone creature in the graveyard, you can bring the Phyrexian Metamorph back and make it a copy of Gyruda, allowing you to mill four more cards into hopefully another Clone, which will allow you to mill four more cards and bring back a Clone, and so on.

The only question is, why would you do that with Gyruda as Companion, when you can just do it with Gyruda as commander? Well, what if I told you that you can play Sakashima of a Thousand Faces and another Partner as your commander? Would that interest you?

For those looking at the Sakashima and Krark pairing above, I would implore you to look up some footage of a Krarkashima deck in action so that you can spare your local table.

With that said, Sakashima is popular for a reason. Having a Clone as your commander, especially with a second commander immediately available in the zone, is powerful. Throw in the nonlegendary rider, and things can get out of control quickly.

However, if you were looking for access to a third "commander" as well, might I suggest pairing up Sakashima with Francisco, Fowl Marauder and throwing in Gyruda as Companion? If we're gonna do this thing, why not do it all the way?

6.

Now, I don't know a whole lot about Doctor Who, but I have always been a bit shocked that The Thirteenth Doctor didn't catch on a little bit more. Putting counters on creatures is fairly trivial to do, as is casting cards from places other than your hand, and even a bad Seedborn Muse in the command zone sounds pretty good.

Having the natural pairing of Yasmin Khan, who gets you your initial +1/+1 counter and allows you to cast more cards from exile to trigger The Thirteenth Doctor every time you untap her, makes things even more enticing. Maybe that's why we're sitting down here at number six, however... Not everyone likes being led by the hand the way this pairing seems to be doing.

Upon first reading Chief Jim Hopper, I have to admit, I was rather unimpressed. With that said, revisiting Sophina all these years later, I'm not sure why I wasn't impressed.

A 4/4 with menace for four that will plop down loads of Clues for all your other attacking creatures? Heck, I'd play that in just Boros, tacking on more colors and a second commander is just gravy!

5.

If I can be honest for a moment, I find Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward boring. Not because of the card itself, mind you, but rather because of what people are constantly trying to do with it. He has a combo page a mile long, and blinking him over and over again is just too easy to do.

With that in mind, Abdel has the "are you playing the combo" problem, where even when you tell people that you're not, they'll often decide they still have to kill you anyhow. Which is all very sad, because Abdel is actually interesting, outside of the blink arena where he's busted in half.

There are a lot of other ways to have a commander leave the battlefield, and smattering a whole bunch of tokens and ETBs down when he does so can be a lot of fun.

Elmar is just the kind of commander I love, being as addicted to game actions as I am. Cast two spells, untap a creature, make a token, pass turn, do the same thing again in response to whatever my opponent is doing during my game of Solitaire...

What I am surprised to see, however, is that the most common pairing for him is Wernog, Rider's Chaplain, rather than one of the Friends with a tap ability that can be untapped by him, like Hargilde, Kindly Runechanter or Bjorna, Nightfall Alchemist. Best to move on, however, before I explain in too great detail how to build four-color flash-speed artifact spellslinger.

4.

It makes me happy to see Umori up this high on any list, even if it's one that I created. As a well-known fan of this little collector Ooze, I do think that it gets dismissed as the worst Companion a little bit too often.

Not because it isn't, it fairly obviously is, even my own deck with Umori in it rarely casts it because it's been completely outclassed by the newer version I play as my commander. No, the reason I feel that Umori shouldn't be dismissed is because it's a really fun deck-building challenge that people have been doing since way before Companion existed.

Making a deck out of all one card type is difficult and enters you into a rewarding brain space, and is obvious enough at a table that people will catch on to what you did, even if they never read your weird card over there in a weird zone. And that should be celebrated, not dismissed!

Without question, and as much as it sounds insane, the most powerful of all of The Doctors is The War Doctor. Putting cards into exile is so easy in the modern game that The War Doctor would stack counters high in any random deck you picked up and put him at the helm of.

Actually build around him, and have the ability to add a third color, however, and you're instantly talking about a commander that you can build at high power. With Cascade and various other mechanics that exile multiple cards all counting up his counters, it's routine for The War Doctor to swing in and one-shot an adjacent player along the way, all while you continue to play various Swords to Plowshares effects to keep him alive in combat and ensure he'll one-shot the next player, as well.

3.

Can I just say how hot I am for the community right now? Wilson, Refined Grizzly has absolutely no business being the third-most popular Background commander, and yet here he sits!

He's a Grizzly Bear in the command zone! Who doesn't love that! Okay, okay, I might have a slight gripe with Raised by Giants being the preferred background when Tavern Brawler is right there to have your Bear commander reenact Savage Punch in reverse, but let's not rain on the parade, all right?

There's a lot of Partners these days, so it can be hard to pin down a favorite for some folks. I am not one of those folks. Rograkh danced his way into my little Kobold heart a long time ago, and I can't get enough.

The delight of having a zero-cost commander is almost as great as the delight of him not doing anything on his own--which is where Partner comes in. My personal favorite is Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful, the combination that allows you to get both your commanders down on turn one, and then put a +1/+1 counter on one of them. That right there is just good, smiling value, that's what that is!

2.

Spoiler alert: The most popular Doctor pairing is The Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler. Reverse those two, and they're also the second-most popular pairing, with good reason.

Suspend was an oft-ignored mechanic, prior to the Doctor Who Commander decks, and both The Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler not only allowed for playing around in that space, they're also sort of... the most popular Doctor Who pairing there's ever been.

While I personally preferred pairing up The First Doctor and Amy Pond (and TARDIS and Rory Williams while we were at it) to play in that space, it's understandable that folks saw the obvious pairing that headed up the Suspend deck and went for it. Not a bad plan!

I know we already highlighted this in the intro, but it's worth doing again: Othelm and Cecily are the only partnering of any kind that allow you to play all five colors. Combine that with them actually being fairly good, and I'm surprised to see they're not played even more.

Cecily provides card draw in the command zone, and it's fairly easy to get up to the Eleven cards to start casting things for free if you can find a sac outlet to start abusing ETB creatures with Othelm's ability. Just be careful, if you're not trying to go too powerful, you might want to stay away from Ashnod's Altar.

1.

The best Partner isn't complicated, it's been well-established. Even with Thrasios providing an easy infinite mana outlet that can draw your whole deck, Tymna the Weaver's consistent, immediate card draw wins out.

Combine that with Kraum, Ludevic's Opus for a fast-flying threat in the air that will also draw you more cards, and you get the leaders of Blue Farm, the cEDH deck that has ruled the meta for several years now. It turns out, if the cards you draw are good enough, all you need is more cards!

It turns out, though, if you want the most popular partner pairing, it's not with the Partner mechanic, but rather the Partner With mechanic. Alongside the best-selling set in Magic history came The Lord of the Rings Commander decks, and the most popular of those was the Food deck helmed by none other than Frodo, Adventurous Hobbit and Sam, Loyal Attendant.

Even as a huge LotR fan, however, I'm not sure that I see the appeal. Sam is good enough, making Foods and then making it cost less to sacrifice them, but Frodo has so many ifs, ands, and buts that you may never get around to actually drawing any cards with him.

For me, there are better Food options and better LotR options, all in the same deck Frodo and Sam came from.

Honorable Mentions

While we went the more all-inclusive route, there is a list that just details what Partner pairs are the most popular. There's two problems with it: One, I already did it. Two... well, let's look at the list.

Top 10 Partner Pairings

  1. Frodo, Adventurous Hobbit & Sam, Loyal Attendant: 12393
  2. Haldan, Avid Arcanist & Pako, Arcane Retriever: 6602
  3. Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist & Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh: 5868
  4. Okaun, Eye of Chaos &Zndrsplt, Eye of Wisdom: 5848
  5. Tymna the Weaver & Kraum, Ludevic's Opus: 5838
  6. Sakashima of a Thousand Faces & Krark, the Thumbless: 4390
  7. Thrasios, Triton Hero & Tymna the Weaver: 4366
  8. Burakos, Party Leader & Folk Hero: 3454
  9. Cazur, Ruthless Stalker & Ukkima, Stalking Shadow: 3446
  10. Breeches, Brazen Plunderer & Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator: 3430

Here's the thing, though: I don't think this list is actually interesting. Partners are fun to those that enjoy them for reasons outside of the raw power they provide because of the choice that they provide.

Having a list of the "best" of them feels almost dismissive from that perspective, when you could be looking at half of a pairing with a mystery on the other side for you to solve. Maybe that's just my broken brewing brain talking, but I'll always think that's the way to approach partners, no matter which specific kind we're talking about.

Nuts and Bolts

There always seems to be a bit of interest in how these lists are made (this seems like a good time to stress once again that they are based on EDHREC score, NOT my personal opinion…), and people are often surprised that I’m not using any special data or .json from EDHREC, but rather just muddling my way through with some Scryfall knowledge! This week, however, we didn't even do that, instead directly referencing EDHREC's various partner pages:

What Do You Think?

As mentioned previously, partners of any sort aren't actually that popular, and I'm not sure exactly why. So, care to help us find out?

And finally, who is your favorite partner? Which mechanic do they come from? Who or what are they partnered with?

Let us know in the comments, and we'll see you at the two end tables of approximately even heights we pulled together to jam a game on.

Read more:

Doug has been an avid Magic player since Fallen Empires, when his older brother traded him some epic blue Homarids for all of his Islands. As for Commander, he's been playing since 2010, when he started off by making a two-player oriented G/R Land Destruction deck. Nailed it. In his spare time when he's not playing Magic, writing about Magic or doing his day job, he runs a YouTube channel or two, keeps up a College Football Computer Poll, and is attempting to gif every scene of the Star Wars prequels.

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