The 41 Best Enchantments for Commander in Magic Ranked

Last updated on January 18, 2025

Necropotence | Illustration by Kuregure

Enchantments might be my favorite MTG card type. They provide incredible value and often have excellent flavor. They lean into the strategies I like: longer games where I extract more value from my cards than my opponents do.

Enchantments can be built around enchantress strategies or simply play a role in your deck’s game plan. They’ve been around since the dawn of Magic, so they can fill any role: card draw, ramp, removal, stax, and so on.

So many choices can be overwhelming, so let’s check out the best enchantments for your Commander deck!

What Are Good Enchantments for Commander in MTG?

Smothering Tithe | Illustration by Aurore Folny

The best enchantments for Commander provide more value than they cost, which is surprisingly easy since they often represent continuous value turn after turn. We all know what an enchantment is, so let’s focus on what makes an enchantment good for Commander.

Because (most) enchantments stick around until they’re removed, they often present an increasing amount of value because they produce resources at a steady rate. Think of cards like Authority of the Consuls and Bitterblossom. The longer these cards sit in play, the more value they provide.

This makes enchantments perfect for slower decks that can extract that value, though aggressive decks can still find valuable enchantments like Warleader's Call and Fires of Yavimaya. Enchantments also become ideal candidates for effects that you want to get every turn. For example, it’s far better to source your card advantage from Rhystic Study and Black Market Connections rather than Divination and the like. You’ll draw cards slower but you’ll often get way more throughout a long EDH game. This won’t hold for every deck—for example, Niv-Mizzet, Parun prefers drawing cards off instants and sorceries—but it can be a useful metric.

I’ve also found enchantments to be more resilient than other card types. Players never seem to have enough dedicated enchantment hate, especially outside green decks that naturally bundle it with artifact destruction. They dodge most board wipes as well, so enchantments can be a fantastic source of value if you find your playgroup relies heavily on Wrath of God and Toxic Deluge to control the board. It simply won’t work against Black Market Connections and Shark Typhoon, even if it sets you back.

#41. Kaya’s Ghostform

Kaya's Ghostform can be a nifty protection spell for your commander or any planeswalkers you’re running. Protection from getting exiled is especially potent since few cards do that.

#40. Lurking Predators

Your deck needs to run a lot of creatures to justify Lurking Predators, but it can be a great casual card. Try to play it with some deck manipulation like Sensei's Divining Top and Worldly Tutor for maximum impact.

#39. On Thin Ice

Oblivion Ring variants are generally great removal spells. On Thin Ice is among the most efficient options, though there’s a genuine cost to ensuring your mana base has enough snow lands to enable this aura.

#38. Curiosity

Curiosity often combos with cards that deal damage directly to your opponents. It goes infinite with Niv-Mizzet, Parun (hands down the strongest Izzet combo) but cards like Nekusar, the Mindrazer and Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph make excellent use of this blue enchantment. It’s also fine with evasive commanders like Ivy, Gleeful Spellthief.

#37. Dueling Grounds

Dueling Grounds fills a great niche role. Voltron decks can make excellent use of it; Voltron commanders often end up being the largest creature on the board and the only one you need to attack with, so you often force chump-blocks or better if your commander has menace. Decks that don’t rely on combat damage can use this Selesnya enchantment as a defense measure to slow their opponents' offense to a crawl.

#36. Exploration

Exploration works best in decks with plenty of card draw to keep the lands flowing. I like playing it in blue decks because of this, though enchantress decks often draw enough cards to justify this green enchantment.

#35. Sigarda’s Aid

Sigarda's Aid fills a very niche role in that it only works with equipment decks, often narrowed further to Voltron decks, but turning your best equipment and auras into combat tricks opens many lines you couldn’t have otherwise. It also helps cheat some of the more expensive equip costs on cards like Argentum Armor and Colossus Hammer.

#34. Rabble Rousing

Rabble Rousing pops off with relatively little input. It easily makes three or four tokens the turn it comes down and often more. The trick that makes this white enchantment shine is that it triggers off its own tokens, so it becomes a self-fueling engine as long as one survives combat.

#33. Virtue of Loyalty

I think the entire Virtue cycle from Wilds of Eldraine is at least playable; the adventures are reasonably costed, and the enchantments have strong abilities. Virtue of Loyalty stands at the top of the pack for its impact on the board. You can do a lot with +1/+1 counters on your entire team, and it gives you inevitability as even the humblest 1/1 becomes ferocious with three or more counters.

#32. Gift of Doom

Gift of Doom is a nifty bit of tech. Turning a morph face up is a special game action that doesn’t use the stack, so you can flip this aura and attach it to a creature you want to protect at instant speed, and your opponents don’t get a chance to respond. It protects your most valuable creature from most removal while fueling sacrifice synergies.

#31. Furnace of Rath

One way or another, Furnace of Rath promises a fast game. Hopefully, it’s because your aggressive deck had a blisteringly fast start, but even in the worst-case scenario, you’ll have time for another game.

#30. Blind Obedience

Blind Obedience helps slow games to a more reasonable pace. It does its best work when shutting down Treasure decks so they don’t pop off. It shuts off many combos, including anything with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. Extort does plenty of work to drain your opponents. Don’t forget this card has a mono-white color identity since the black symbol is reminder text.

#29. Coastal Piracy + Bident of Thassa

Coastal Piracy provides aggressive decks with a way to refill their hands. Blue has plenty of evasive creatures like birds and Slither Blade variants that trigger this easily. Bident of Thassa, which is one of the best blue artifacts on top of being a legendary enchantment, provides an additional version of the effect plus a way to forcibly tap opposing creatures.

#28. Authority of the Consuls

Authority of the Consuls has a home in any lifegain EDH deck as it gains absurd amounts of life, especially when played early, but it can also work in aggressive decks. Blocking becomes much trickier when your opponents’ creatures come into play tapped, a tempo play your tokens or attacks-matter decks make great use of.

#27. Thassa, Deep-Dwelling + Teleportation Circle

Magic is flooded with powerful ETB abilities these days. It’s no wonder that flicker decks are powerful. Thassa, Deep-Dwelling and Teleportation Circle are powerful value engines in decks with cards like Tivit, Seller of Secrets and Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines. Sometimes, they even work with one commander that has a powerful ETB you want over and over, like Atraxa, Grand Unifier or Pantlaza, Sun-Favored.

#26. Rule of Law

Rule of Law is one of the most impactful stax pieces in Commander. You need a specific strategy that doesn’t care about this effect—perhaps you use cards like Winota, Joiner of Forces and Zur the Enchanter to get cards into play without casting them. Your opponents almost certainly care about this effect, making this white enchantment an effective way of slowing the game to your pace.

#25. Grave Pact + Dictate of Erebos

Grave Pact gives sacrifice decks an incredible amount of board control. It could also be used by token commanders so that their tokens always trade with opposing creatures, which you can fuel with a hefty token-creating engine. Dictate of Erebos lets you surprise your opponents with the effect, which can be useful when they cast removal targeting your creatures.

#24. Rest in Peace

The most broken strategies utilize the graveyard, which is why every EDH deck should have some graveyard interaction. Rest in Peace sits near the top of good graveyard interaction because it deals with any cards in the graveyard when it's cast and any that end up there after. It’s so powerful some players don’t run it in EDH because it locks decks out for a mere 2 mana.

#23. Bitterblossom

Bitterblossom is on the slower side, but Commander often gives decks time to set up. You can use it for faerie or rogue typal decks, but the steady stream of tokens makes it perfect for decks that care about attacking or dealing combat damage thanks to all the evasive threats it creates. My preferred use is in sacrifice decks for a continuous source of sacrifice fodder.

#22. Shark Typhoon

Shark Typhoon’s charm lies in its versatility. It can be the top-end for a spellslinger deck that floods the board with flying tokens or a single, beefy threat that replaces itself, depending on what you need. You can even cycle it as a 2-mana prayer for another land drop or removal spell in desperate times.

#21. Defense of the Heart

You never need to worry about your opponents not having enough creatures to trigger Defense of the Heart; the odds of all three players having fewer than three creatures each in a long game of EDH are low. You can often win once you crack this by tutoring up two-card combos like Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Zealous Conscripts, or Devoted Druid and Vizier of Remedies.

#20. Heliod, Sun-Crowned

Heliod, Sun-Crowned’s primary claim to fame is the infinite combo with Walking Ballista (or Triskelion), but this also works as a reliable lifegain payoff. The issue with lifegain strategies often lies in how gaining life rarely impacts the board. This enchantment creature’s trigger gives your Soul Sisters some extra board presence and power to go with the life advantage.

#19. Xenagos, God of Revels

Aggressive Commander decks need to go big and hard to overcome the hurdle of three opponents and needing to deal 120 damage. Xenagos, God of Revels, one of Magic's best extra-combat commanders, excels at going big and fast with its incredible combat trigger. It’s excellent with cards that care about their power or dealing damage, like Quartzwood Crasher and Bloodthirster.

#18. Ghostly Prison + Propaganda

Ghostly Prison and Propaganda are among the best cards in EDH that dissuade your opponents’ aggression. Some decks shrug these off, and they won’t win, but decks that go wide or players who care more about curving out than paying to attack you give you plenty of time to assemble some wicked win conditions.

#17. Purphoros, God of the Forge

Purphoros, God of the Forge throws tons of damage at your opponents’ faces, especially in decks that go wide. Think commanders like Krenko, Mob Boss, Xyris, the Writhing Storm, or Otharri, Suns' Glory. If things go well, you could win without attacking much! You can find similar effects in Impact Tremors and Warleader's Call, though they deal less damage.

#16. Nyxbloom Ancient

Nyxbloom Ancient becomes an appealing top-end enchantment for the green player who doesn’t think 12 mana is enough. The easiest way to spend all that mana is X-spells like Torment of Hailfire or Eldrazi like Emrakul, the World Anew. You could also pump it into powerful activated abilities a la Thrasios, Triton Hero or Kenrith, the Returned King. You could also just cast five spells a turn since you have triple the mana.

#15. Aggravated Assault

Aggravated Assault easily becomes a combo piece with the likes of Ancient Copper Dragon or Savage Ventmaw, but it has plenty of potential as a fair card. Aggressive decks need to go big in Commander, and extra combats give them the means to do so. For some decks, an extra combat is just as good as an extra turn, so this is a repeatable Time Warp.

#14. Greater Good

Card advantage is one of the most important resources in Commander. Greater Good can be one of the strongest card advantage engines in the game. Not only can you draw a dizzying number of cards, but you also get to fill your graveyard! I prefer this in decks with enough large creatures that discarding three cards won’t be card neutral or negative, but any green deck interested in sacrificing creatures should eye this as a potential inclusion.

#13. The Meathook Massacre

The goal of a board wipe is to stabilize the board when you’re behind. The Meathook Massacre excels at this as a black board wipe that gains a bunch of life when it hits the table. But wait, there’s more! You also get a win condition because this legendary enchantment sticks around as a Blood Artist. You can even tailor X to ignore your big creatures while sweeping away smaller ones. I hesitate to call it the best board wipe in EDH, but its role as a catch-up tool and win condition lands it in the top 5 at least.

#12. Land Tax

Land Tax can win games single-handedly. It draws tons of cards and ensures you’ll never miss a land drop and always have the appropriate colors (assuming you’re playing enough basic lands). All for a single white! It’s especially well-suited to Commander; Land Tax is only good on the draw, and you’re more likely to be on the draw in Commander than not. Plus, the green decks are almost always packing land ramp like Three Visits and Cultivate that put them up on lands anyway.

#11. Blood Moon

Too long have multicolor value piles run amok. Too long have mana bases composed of fetch lands, shock lands, and Triomes assembled perfect mana with no effort. It’s time for Blood Moon to rise!

Hey, why are you booing me? I’m right!

I know players don’t like land destruction and nonbasic land hate effects and all that, but mana bases these days are stronger than ever between all the incredible fixing lands and utility lands like Field of the Dead and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. The ways to disrupt them are important, and Blood Moon is among the most efficient. Just make sure that your mana base isn’t impacted.

#10. Kindred Discovery

Kindred Discovery might be the strongest typal support card in the format. Drawing cards matters, and this blue enchantment draws so many. Typal decks lean aggressively because the gameplan tends to be flooding the board with, say, merfolk, then buffing them with lords like Lord of Atlantis and Master of the Pearl Trident. Kindred Discovery even counts tokens!

#9. Animate Dead + Necromancy

Reanimate is the best reanimation spell in the game, but Animate Dead and Necromancy aren’t far behind. Their value in reanimation strategies is obvious, but I think they have broader applications. Pretty much any black EDH deck that isn’t packing tons of graveyard hate can, potentially even should, run Animate Dead. It’s one of the best black ETB cards, and it's like drawing the best creature that’s died or been milled in a given game. In Commander, those can be some powerful cards indeed.

#8. Aura Shards

One-for-one removal suffers in Commander because you need to deal with three players. One-for-one trades often mean card disadvantage, so you need your interaction to remove multiple targets where possible. Aura Shards excels in this regard. Blowing up two artifacts or enchantments puts you up a card. You can often answer many more. The prevalence of mana rocks in EDH means most players have at least one target for this and often several more.

#7. Black Market Connections

One benefit of starting at 40 life is that you have more life to pay for powerful abilities. Black Market Connections might be the best enchantment to pay life for these days. It’s card advantage and enchantment-based ramp and board presence but it also opens the path to many synergies. Black decks, especially when paired with red, have cards that synergize with Treasure production, plus those Shapeshifter tokens work with any typal synergies in your deck. The floor is incredible value, and the ceiling is all that value with powerful synergies. What’s not to love?

#6. Doubling Season Effects

I’m grouping a variety of enchantments here, all the ones that double counters or double token creation. These include cards like Branching Evolution and Primal Vigor, but Doubling Season takes the crown as the most powerful and most famous version. Are you playing tokens? Overwhelm your opponents with so many tokens you’ll need d50s to keep track. Playing planeswalkers? Ultimate all of them the turn they come into play! Doubling Season could be a marquee card for Commander value and the ideas the format was built upon.

#5. Underworld Breach

One of the best escape cards in the game and arguably the best red wincon, Underworld Breach is probably the strongest enchantment-based combo card in EDH these days. cEDH players are familiar with the trifecta of Breach, Brain Freeze, and Lion's Eye Diamond to fuel Thassa's Oracle as a cEDH win condition, but you can do way more with the card. Maybe you have a ton of mana to cast Time Warp many times, or you can cast Lightning Bolt or Overrun until your opponents are goners. However you use it, casting Underworld Breach often heralds the end of a game.

#4. Smothering Tithe

A successful EDH deck does two things: It draws more cards than its opponents and generates more mana than them. Smothering Tithe generates the most dominating mana advantage you can get without resorting to fast mana. You get at least three Treasure tokens a turn cycle and often more since, again, everybody wants to draw cards.

#3. Mystic Remora

Don’t be put off by the cumulative upkeep on Mystic Remora. This blue enchantment doesn’t need to hang around for long to be impactful. Taxing your opponents for 4 mana when they cast a noncreature spell is absurd. They’ll either “feed the fish” and give you a bunch of cards or avoid playing anything that triggers it until you let it die—both situations benefit you.

#2. Necropotence

Paying life for card advantage is a deal black players have made forever. Look at cards like Night's Whisper, Dark Confidant, and Phyrexian Arena. One of the best black enchantments in the game and black's best card-drawing effect, Necropotence stands well above these other effects, allowing you to pay life until you’ve sculpted the perfect hand. is a daunting mana cost that may restrict this card to mono-black or 2-color decks, but the mana cost and life are all worth it for such incredible card advantage.

#1. Rhystic Study

Rhystic Study tends to top lists of best Commander cards when it’s eligible. Best enchantments, best card draw, most annoying card… it does it all. It’s a fascinating card that shines in multiplayer formats with three players casting spells. The level of card advantage exceeds any other draw spell in Commander, except perhaps The One Ring.

Best Enchantment Payoffs

The easy answer to this question is all the enchantress cards. True enchantresses (creatures that draw you a card when you cast an enchantment) like Sythis, Harvest's Hand and Argothian Enchantress reward you handsomely for loading your deck with enchantments, and Sythis is arguably the best enchantment commander available. You can also play cards like Sigil of the Empty Throne and Archon of Sun's Grace to get some board presence.

I also really like enchantments in decks that control the board with wraths. Most board wipes ignore enchantments, so you can lean on cards like Sunfall and Crux of Fate to control the board while amassing a value engine from enchantments.

Slower decks also benefit from enchantments. The longer you want the game to go, the more you can squeeze value from cards that do something every turn, whether that’s making a token, gaining life, or drawing cards.

Wrap Up

Black Market Connections | Illustration by Evyn Fong

Enchantments translate well to Commander since they often represent long-term value, which is what you want in a multiplayer format. They’re resilient to common removal spells and can fill any role in your deck.

I’m sure every enchantment has at least one Commander deck it works in. Which of these do you want to add to your decks? Did I miss your favorite enchantment? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe and keep enchanting your board!