The 20 Best Hare Apparent Commanders in Magic Ranked

Hare Apparent | Illustration by Milivoj Ceran

If the Commander singleton rule has ever seemed overly restrictive, you might be happy to know that it doesn’t apply to certain cards that let you play any number of copies with their name. There are quite a few in Magic, Hare Apparent from Foundations is a punny bunny that churns out a warren’s worth of rabbits to bury your opponents with, like in that one scene from Re:Zero.

If you want to bring Hare Apparents to your next Commander game night, there are quite a few potential commanders. I’m here to help you find the perfect general for your fluffy army.

What Are Hare Apparent Commanders in MTG?

Baylen, the Haymaker | Illustration by Ryan Pancoast

Hare Apparent commanders are legendary creatures, vehicles, and spacecraft that work well with Hare Apparent. The absolute baseline is that white must be part of their color identity so you can legally run the card. Beyond that, you want commanders that interact with the factors that make up Hare Apparent. A good Hare Apparent commander interacts with one or more of the following:

• Small creatures
• Enters abilities
• White creatures
• Rabbits
• Tokens
• Go-wide

As long as the commander interacts with one of these, and there’s a clear reason why a commander works with Hare Apparent, it’s a viable commander.

#20. Finneas, Ace Archer

Finneas, Ace Archer leans into rabbit typal support with its attack trigger, which makes your Hares and their brood larger. Though it isn’t bad, I don’t love that it competes with Hare Apparent on curve and it takes a while to get the engine running.

#19. Duskana, the Rage Mother

Most of these commanders care about the Hare Apparent tokens or focus on increasing their output, but Duskana, the Rage Mother cares about the 2/2 bodies themselves. What you want to focus on is that draw trigger: Cast Duskana, draw a bunch of cards, then play more Hare Apparent. Afterwards, flicker Duskana and do it again. This deck really wants cost reducers like Pearl Medallion and Thornscape Familiar to flood the board.

#18. Neyali, Suns’ Vanguard

Neyali, Suns' Vanguard makes your tokens a little more impactful, but you really want the impulse draw. It’s pretty easy to end up in a position where you attack with three tokens, draw two or three Hare Apparent, then drop those into play. Hare Apparent scales fast enough that you don’t care much about the tokens you attack with dying, either. Support this with more Boros aggro cards like Professional Face-Breaker and Aurelia, the Law Above.

#17. Preston, the Vanisher

“What is one Hare Apparent was actually two” is a pretty common theme, and Preston, the Vanisher does a good job of enabling it. You just flicker a Hare Apparent—already a profitable line—and two come back into play. That works particularly well with mass-flicker like Morningtide's Light; the main issue with Preston is the other, better flicker options.

#16. Cadira, Caller of the Small

Cadira, Caller of the Small hits the rabbit typal box (with great green support like Realmwalker and Wild Pair) and makes plenty of tokens. Since Cadira’s tokens are also rabbits, you can double down on typal support like Coat of Arms. I really appreciate this as a commander that can build from 0 if your opponent wipes your board.

#15. Brigid, Clachan’s Heart / Brigid, Doun’s Mind

For this commander, you’re really interested in Brigid, Doun's Mind as Gaea's Cradle on a stick. This is a pretty different Hare Apparent commander because it uses the tokens as a means to an end (unfair amounts of mana) rather than the end itself. Still, there are plenty of ways to spend that mana that benefit your rabbits, like Finale of Devastation and Mirror Entity.

#14. The Jolly Balloon Man

Oh me oh my, another way to turn one Hare Apparent into two! The Jolly Balloon Man works best with ways to stack its ability, like Marvin, Murderous Mimic and Ertha Jo, Frontier Mentor, so you can squeeze as many Hare Apparent copies as possible. Copying Hare Apparent is very powerful because token doublers and populate effects apply to the copies; imagine a Nesting Dovehawk that makes a Hare Apparent each combat.

#13. Brago, King Eternal

Brago, King Eternal is a mass flicker engine. That’s it. If you flicker all your Hare Apparents, they’ll see each other come into play, so five flickered Hare Apparents produce four tokens apiece. You’ll need some protection, but blue has you covered with countermagic.

#12. Eirdu, Carrier of Dawn / Isilu, Carrier of Twilight

Both sides of this elemental work with Hare Apparent. Eirdu, Carrier of Dawn helps dump your hand into play. Convoke lets you tap summoning sick tokens, so your Hare Apparents basically become mana-positive when you make 3+ bodies. Once you have a full board, you can transform the commander into Isilu, Carrier of Twilight. Team-wide persist can be a form of protection or your win condition as you sacrifice your persistent rabbits to retrigger each Hare Apparent you control.

#11. Ghired, Mirror of the Wilds

Ghired, Mirror of the Wilds has a really specific interaction with Hare Apparent. Tapping your Hares to make copies of your Rabbit tokens is fine and all, but we can do better. If you make a token copy of a Hare Apparent with red cards like Twinflame and Jaxis, the Troublemaker, all your non-token Hare Apparents can make copies of the copy.

#10. Jetmir, Nexus of Revels

Jetmir, Nexus of Revels is one of the more straightforward Hare Apparent commanders, and I think that makes it one of the best. Hare Apparent goes wide and Jetmir rewards that by killing your opponents. Sometimes you don’t need to be flashy. Sometimes you just need 30 rabbits with hammers.

#9. Brenard, Ginger Sculptor

Making Brenard, Ginger Sculptor work as a Hare Apparent commander relies on sacrifice outlets. It’s another way to make each Hare Apparent two, except this one extends an olive branch towards artifact payoffs. It can also work as a protection piece in a pinch; if you see Damnation on the horizon, you can leave your rabbits alone, then make a bunch of token copies. Your opponent either needs another removal spell or has to settle with your board sticking around.

#8. Abdel Adrian, Gorion’s Ward

Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward works well with Hare Apparent as a mass-flicker engine. It’s a little more expensive than Brago but also far more explosive since you aren’t restricted to a once-per-turn flicker.

For backgrounds, you have a few options. Inspiring Leader and Far Traveler are great if you want to keep it mono-white, it’s hard to go wrong with Candlekeep Sage for card draw, and Agent of the Iron Throne adds potential aristocrat synergies.

#7. Mondrak, Glory Dominus

Token doublers in the command zone don’t get better than Mondrak, Glory Dominus between its low cost and indestructible counter. Doubling your Rabbit tokens is a simple but effective way to pull ahead of your opponents and works particularly well with other token producers you might run, like Adeline, Resplendent Cathar.

#6. Zinnia, Valley’s Voice

Zinnia, Valley's Voice doubles up on your Hare Apparent, assuming you ramp hard enough. It’s well worth the effort, though. I also love adding red and blue: Impact Tremors is a great payoff for Hare Apparent and blue has great typal support like Reflections of Littjara, Kindred Discovery, and Raise the Palisade.

#5. Baylen, the Haymaker

Baylen, the Haymaker hits the flavor mark as a rabbit but also offers so much. Naya () is a fantastic color combination for Hare Apparent—white for the creature, green for token payoffs, red for Impact Tremors—and Baylen makes excellent use of the tokens with its abilities. You can even establish infinite combos with the right setup.

#4. Nethroi, Apex of Death

Nethroi, Apex of Death wants to reanimate Hare Apparent. When you mutate it onto a Rabbit token, you can reanimate up to five Hare Apparents, which are easy to mill in Abzan (). There are also other, similar effects like Raise the Past and Bloodbond March that you can use to mass reanimate the rabbits, so you aren’t wholly reliant on Nethroi. I’m also giving Nethroi bonus points for having, in my opinion, one of the more interesting buildpaths.

#3. Arabella, Abandoned Doll

Arabella, Abandoned Doll probably makes the most aggressive Hare Apparent deck because it burns your opponents out. Enough of the aggression comes from Arabella’s attack trigger that you can use the other bodies as blockers for a strong offensive/defense combination, especially with cards like Kirol, Attentive First-Year and extra combats generating extra triggers.

#2. Delney, Streetwise Lookout

Delney, Streetwise Lookout doubles the enters triggers while it enables aggressive attacks with evasion. Since it pushes you to run small creatures, cards like Assemble the Players and The Battle of Bywater are easy to include. It’s a super concise choice.

#1. Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines

Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines exists in a similar space to Mondrak, Glory Dominus and Delney, Streetwise Lookout. Its edge comes from its value extending much further than Hare Apparent and interacting with your opponents. If I’m doubling my Hare Apparent output, I’d rather do it with an effect that also doubles the impact of great cards like Grasp of Fate and Restoration Angel.

Example Decklist: Delney, Streetwise Lookout in Commander

Baylen, the Haymaker | Illustration by Ryan Pancoast

This Delney, Streetwise Lookout deck is pretty straightforward; you want to land a bunch of Hare Apparents, and Delney provides an amplification effect in the command zone. You’ll generally want to get Delney down before the second Hare Apparent so you start to make tokens two at a time.

Beyond that, the support cards all care about small creatures. None of your creatures are large enough to die to The Battle of Bywater or Dusk // Dawn, they all trigger Welcoming Vampire, and Assemble the Players is at its absolute best. The removal suite is a little light, but this is realistically a Bracket 2 deck anyway, so I can forgive it.

Notably, this deck is pretty close to being Brawl legal. Many of the protection spells aren’t available on Arena, but there are available substitutes like Divine Resilience and Make a Stand. I also recommend cutting ramp to make room for more removal; 1v1 formats are less forgiving to a low-interaction start with ramp.

How Many Copies of Hare Apparent Should You Play?

I think the sweet spot is 25-30. That’s enough to draw plenty of copies over a long game to get the value you need, but not so many that you only draw Hare Apparent. Just Hare Apparent and lands isn’t enough; you need ways to protect, ramp to deploy them at a reasonable rate, ways to interact with your opponents, card draw, and so on. Sixty Hare Apparent and 40 lands is real funny up until somebody plays a board wipe or Ghostly Prison and you’re done for.

Why Is Hare Apparent so Expensive?

It’s a simple matter of supply and demand. Commons are rarely expensive because there’s an ample supply and the demand is generally low—Constructed players want at most four and anybody playing Commander only wants one. But the demand is much, much higher with Hare Apparent because players want like 20 of them, so they’re more expensive than average. The same is true for pretty much any of these Relentless Rats style cards.

Commanding Conclusion

Finneas, Ace Archer | Illustration by Victor Adame Minguez

Some players might find a Hare Apparent deck too linear for their tastes, but it all depends on which commander you use. Some commanders are as straightforward as buffing or doubling your rabbit tokens, while others push you to construct complex synergy engines to pop off. There’s a Hare Apparent commander for every player.

Which Hare Apparent commander jumped out at you? Are you planning to build any of these? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord! If you want more Draftsim coverage, check out our YouTube channel, The Daily Upkeep!

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!