Wonder | Illustration by Volkan Baga
Flying creatures are staples of any Limited format and pack plenty of power in Constructed and Cube; it’s simply the most effective evasive mechanic in the game next to true unblockablility. Flying creatures are often incredibly strong.
But imagine if you had all that evasive power on any creature you liked, including those with really high power, or strong saboteur abilities or attack triggers. Thanks to flying enablers that give your cards a boost, you can! Let’s figure out which of them are the best.
What Are Flying Enablers in MTG?
Winged Boots | Illustration by Kim Sokol
Flying enablers simply give one or more of your creatures flying, either temporarily or permanently. The temporary effects can be useful finishers by allowing you to attack out with your entire board state, while permanent flying granters give continuous evasion to key threats, like your Voltron commander. This list primarily considers Commander and Cube in its rankings.
#43. Fleeting Flight
Fleeting Flight’s a fine combat trick that looks an awful lot like a removal spell when it eats a creature in combat. It’s also great offensively since it enables lethal attacks.
#42. Feather of Flight
Angelic Gift offers clean simplicity. Your creature gets flying and a small power bump, and you get a card to minimize the impact of losing said creature. Cards don’t need to be flashy to be good.
#41. Cartouche of Knowledge
It loses out on flash, but Cartouche of Knowledge has a better stat boost than Feather of Flight, and has cartouche-trial synergies with cards like Trial of Knowledge.
#40. Glasswing Grace / Age-Graced Chapel
Being an MDFC does a lot to make Glasswing Grace a reasonable card. I’d happily run this if my deck cared about auras or enchantments.
#39. Soaring Lightbringer
Soaring Lightbringer loses points for specificity, but I appreciate that it brings a flying army and a plethora of constellation/eerie triggers; if you care about enchantments, you probably want this.
#38. Cyberdrive Awakener
Cyberdrive Awakener works best in decks that create plenty of Clues and Treasure to animate, but making a few constructs airborne provides a great finisher.
#37. Song of Eärendil
Song of Eärendil takes its time to give you the flying counters, but permanent flying on top of all the other abilities makes it a fine value engine.
#36. Agent’s Toolkit
Agent's Toolkit does many little things that culminate in an impressive, flexible card that ensures your creatures are well-equipped for whatever task you need, and it even replaces itself!
#35. Call a Surprise Witness
Call a Surprise Witness works incredibly well with a hatebears strategy since those decks tend towards leveraging small creatures like Orcish Bowmasters and Drannith Magistrate the table wants to kill. It’s even great in white weenie decks for a little sustain.
#34. Ascent of the Worthy
Ascent of the Worthy might be slow, but pretty much any creature worth reanimating becomes better with flying. I’m sure you can break the first two chapters with some crafty deckbuilding.
#33. Shield of the Oversoul
I’m normally low on auras given the high two-for-one potential, but Shield of the Oversoul blows all that away thanks to indestructible. Pretty much any GW+ commander that cares about attacking wants to be enchanted with this.
#32. Odric, Lunarch Marshal
Odric, Lunarch Marshal throws around keyword abilities better than most, with flying being one of the most potent. It requires a little building around but often warps combat in your favor.
#31. Phantom Wings
Phantom Wings protects the creature it enchants, which makes it pretty appealing. It works particularly well with creatures that have strong cast triggers or enters abilities to repeat.
#30. Ms. Bumbleflower
Ms. Bumbleflower only works under specific circumstances—typically as the leader of your group hug deck—but it provides an amazing advantage when you meet the requirements.
#29. Faerie Guidemother
Faerie Guidemother doesn’t see much play outside of Pauper Cubes, but the combination of a Flying Men with a combat trick that enables lethal swings makes it a fierce threat for white.
#28. Starry-Eyed Skyrider
Starry-Eyed Skyrider is simply the newest version of 3-mana white creatures with flying that give another attacking creature flying. I specifically like them as threats in Pauper and Peasant Cubes; if you find too many games getting stalled out, try one or two of these to give white some evasion.
#27. View from Above
View from Above is fairly niche, but it works well in WU+ decks interested in either attacking or just casting multiple spells in a turn.
#26. Pemmin’s Aura
We all know Pemmin's Aura for going infinite with a variety of dorks that tap for more than 1 mana, but the combination of shroud and flying makes it a reasonable aura to run fairly.
#25. Ajani, Caller of the Pride
I’d like Ajani, Caller of the Pride far more if its flying ability didn’t remove almost all of its loyalty counters, but I suppose flying and double strike is a good reward for defending this planeswalker and getting +1/+1 counters for a few turns.
#24. Diviner’s Wand
Diviner's Wand has a fairly narrow use case, but it shines in wheel decks and anything else that draws enough cards to make the +1/+1 trigger a substantial threat.
#23. Winged Hive Tyrant
An important aspect of Winged Hive Tyrant is that it doesn’t require the creatures it grants to have +1/+1 counters; though those are often the enablers, you can also use shield counters, finality counters, and plenty more; that makes it a strong threat in many decks, and haste lets it turn the corner in an instant.
#22. Archetype of Imagination
Though the textbox is undeniably powerful, Archetype of Imagination isn’t the powerhouse it once was; this archetype creature is awfully expensive considering how fragile the small body attached to this enchantment creature is. This dies to a stiff breeze, but I suppose it still works as a finisher in a low-powered environment.
#21. Merrow Levitator
Merrow Levitator asks for a lot of mana up front, but the potential of giving multiple creatures flying makes it stand out in a world of equipment and auras that boost only one creature.
#20. Archangel Elspeth
Archangel Elspeth grants divine inspiration to your best creature, providing a fairly strong finisher with which to close the game even if Elspeth doesn’t survive the downtick.
#19. Defy Gravity
Defy Gravity offers clean, simple evasion twice that plays nicely with graveyard strategies since you can mill or discard it for additional value.
#18. Bleeding Effect
Bleeding Effect looks quite strong. We have similar effects like Odric, Lunarch Marshal, but maintaining a full graveyard is often easier than keeping a board alive. This enchantment seems like a powerful finisher for a creature-based graveyard deck.
#17. Toby, Beastie Befriender
Toby, Beastie Befriender does an awful lot for a 3-mana creature. The Beast token smacks incredibly hard, and it doesn’t take long for an army of flying tokens to take over a game.
#16. Angelic Destiny
Angelic Destiny is a nasty threat because the recursive ability practically makes it an equipment you can apply over and over. Your opponents need very specific removal or this eventually wears them away.
#15. Elspeth Resplendent
Elspeth Resplendent ensures your creatures reach their full potential with a range of ability counters and a small power boost off the uptick. These abilities are great at pushing damage, making this Elspeth a lovely finisher for aggressive white decks filled with cheap creatures.
#14. Eldrazi Monument
Eldrazi Monument is a classic EDH finisher that holds up well these days, especially if you can leverage the sacrifice ability with cards like Blood Artist and Midnight Reaper.
#13. Akroma’s Memorial
Akroma's Memorial provides a convincing finisher to any creature-based deck that cheats it into play or simply casts it. You can often take out one player when it hits the board thanks to flying.
#12. Elspeth, Knight-Errant
Elspeth, Knight-Errant has been around for a minute, yet it’s still one of white’s best planeswalkers to stick in a Cube thanks to two powerful upticks. It can produce a board or make an existing board lethal, all without endangering itself.
#11. Zephyr Charge
Zephyr Charge asks for a continuous mana investment, but it’s arguably not that different from an equipment with a high equip cost. Besides, you can give multiple creatures flying at once.
#10. Steel Seraph
Steel Seraph is an excellent white card in Cube. The flexibility of prototype lets this be a fairly cheap aggressive threat on turn 3 or a nasty late-game threat; either way, it often enables at least one attack the turn it comes into play.
#9. Celestial Armor
Celestial Armor belongs in many Voltron EDH decks because it doubles as evasion and protection to ensure your massive commander gets a hit or two in.
#8. Aboshan’s Desire
Aboshan's Desire looks pretty decent in any deck that reliably enables threshold; flying and shroud makes this a reasonable protection spell for its cost.
#7. Wings of Hubris
Wings of Hubris offers incredible flexibility; it pecks away for damage early before landing the finishing blow by making your largest creature completely unblockable once some fliers hit the field.
#6. Hadana’s Climb / Winged Temple of Orazca
Winged Temple of Orazca is a rather messed up card that easily ends games. It takes time to obtain it from Hadana's Climb, but the enchantment offers plenty of power for +1/+1 counter decks on its own. Each card is powerful; the combination belongs in many decks.
#5. Elspeth, Storm Slayer
Elspeth, Storm Slayer does an incredible amount of work. A token doubler that comes with its own token generation is absurd… but we’re here for the 0 ability that boosts your team. It’s just excellent; this could be the top-end of a white weenie deck that leverages the 0 for lethal, a piece of a midrange shell that generates tons of attackers, or a consistent source of counters or sacrifice fodder. This extremely pushed planeswalker demands an immediate answer regardless of the format or your strategy.
#4. Wonder
For the low, low cost of getting Wonder into the graveyard and controlling an island, you get flying! Wonder is the most efficient option for continuous flying, though you need ways to reliably throw the incarnation into the graveyard.
#3. Zephyr Boots
Zephyr Boots is a fine way to grant flying; Magic has many cheap equipment that offer flying, but this stands out above options like Cliffhaven Kitesail due to the loot.
#2. Winged Boots
Flying and ward are pretty impressive keywords to grant for an equip cost of . I wouldn’t run Winged Boots as a protection spell, but it’s an amazing source of flying with commanders like Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow and Obeka, Splitter of Seconds that are desperate to connect.
#1. Akroma’s Will
Akroma's Will kinda does everything. The keyword soup makes it an incredible finisher while being one of EDH’s best protection spells. Most white creature decks should at least consider this in the 99.
Best Flying-Granting Payoffs
Now that your creatures have flying, how should you capitalize on it? Flying has quite a bit of support.
Your creatures become even more formidable with cards like Kangee, Sky Warden and Favorable Winds buffing their power and making them stronger.
Flying enablers could become symmetry-breakers with cards like Stormtide Leviathan and Magus of the Moat that restrict which creatures can and can’t attack.
They also work nicely with Coastal Piracy effects and anything else that rewards you for hitting your opponents; they’re also fine enablers for creatures with attack triggers like Zurgo Stormrender since they provide evasion.
Wrap Up
Archetype of Imagination | Illustration by Robbie Trevino
Flying is arguably the most valuable keyword ability in Magic, though you could convince me haste matters more. It has a deep well of support and just kills your opponents through the magic of combat damage.
What’s your favorite flying enabler? What kind of decks do you run them in? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!
Stay safe, and thanks for reading!
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