The 15 Best Morph Commanders in Magic Ranked

Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer | Illustration by Caio Monteiro

I love me some weird Commander themes. There’s nothing wrong with classic stuff like card draw commanders, discard commanders, or token commanders, but I’d rather spend my time among the lesser explored corners of Magic’s archives.

Few mechanics are weirder than morph and its variants, mechanics that let you play cards face-down as colorless creatures. We have some commanders that explicitly work with or support these mechanics, but there are also commanders that do other things that make them suitable for your mighty morphin’ Magic deck.

Let’s see how they stack up!

What Are Morph Commanders in MTG?

Kaust, Eyes of the Glade | Illustration by Volkan Baǵa

Morph commanders are any eligible commanders (legendary creatures, vehicles, spacecraft) that support the morph mechanic, as well as its cousins megamorph, manifest, manifest dread, cloak, and disguise.

Morph commanders either act as lords, payoffs, or cost reducers for your colorless face-down creatures, or give you ways to turn cards from your hand or library into face-down creatures.

#15. Kozilek, the Broken Reality

Kozilek, the Broken Reality is a square peg when it comes to morph decks. It makes other players manifest, not you, and its card pool of morph or manifest cards is miniscule. Watch this one, though. If we get more sets or supplemental products with morph, we may eventually get enough cards for a proper deck to take shape.

#14. Roshan, Hidden Magister

Roshan, Hidden Magister is a payoff for your face-down creatures, both by giving them menace and drawing you cards when you flip them. Roshan suffers from its mono-color identity, though. Black doesn’t have a fantastic pool of morph creatures or manifest cards, and Roshan doesn’t give you face-down creatures itself by cloaking your cards or anything. The assassin-Conspiracy ability does support another morph commander incredibly well, though.

#13. Ixidor, Reality Sculptor

You know, for a commander that’s older than the modern frame, Ixidor, Reality Sculptor is surprisingly playable. It’s vastly outclassed these days, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a lord for your face-down creatures that also lets you flip anything for at instant speed. This is an activated ability and not a special action, so it’s far more interactable, but when you add in Training Grounds, to flip a creature with a potent saboteur trigger or chunky sea monster at instant speed can turn the tide.

#12. Kaust, Eyes of the Glade

It’s never a good sign when a precon’s backup commander overshadows the face commander on EDHREC by a factor of two-to-one. It either means that the backup is absolutely busted, or, on the flip side, the face isn’t even a heel. At best it’s a jobber, and maybe it doesn’t belong in the ring at all.

Kaust, Eyes of the Glade is certainly a morph commander, or at least one made for face-down creatures. It just needs so many moving parts. Start with face-down creatures. And they need to attack. And you need to flip them the same turn that they attack. Ugh.

The activated ability at least helps you to mitigate high costs, but Kaust doesn’t help your creatures apart from flipping them. No haste, no trample, no evasion. They have to reach the end zone on their own. But hey, you’re in Naya (), so extra combats are at your disposal if you want them.

#11. Etrata, Deadly Fugitive

Etrata, Deadly Fugitive follows in Ixidor’s footsteps as a commander that gives you an alternate way to flip your face-down creatures, but with the added utility that it lets you cast noncreature spells.

It’s a little awkward if you’re going all-in on morph creatures, though. The saboteur trigger leverages your assassins to cloak your opponents’ libraries, so you’re really running an assassin commander that steals your opponents’ cards as its gimmick. Roshan, it’s your time to shine!

#10. Jasmine Boreal of the Seven

This commander is criminally underplayed with morph or manifest as its main theme, but that’s probably because it’s more straightforward to win with the likes of Quakestrider Ceratops than to cast morph creatures, then flip them mid-combat. You can use Jasmine Boreal of the Seven’s mana ability to cast morph creatures, but not to flip them, so the fit isn’t perfect, but an unblockable enabler for your morph creatures is worth at least net-building to see if you like what you come up with.

#9. Animar, Soul of Elements

Animar, Soul of Elements’s contribution to the morph space is the potential for free creature spells, as long as you’re casting them face-down. There might be some Bracket 2 or 3 decks that pair Animar with All Will Be One, then casts a bunch of free morph creatures to burn out the table. I need to dig deeper, though; I want to find repeatable/free bounce effects to reuse my morph creatures. This just becomes the Animar/Ancestral Statue combo with extra steps, but I never said that I like to make life easy for myself.

Note that because of the cast trigger, Animar doesn’t work with manifest-like abilities or with some other morph commanders.

#8. Sash and Waistcoast, Unmen

I run a low-power Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive deck for the unblockable gimmick, and Sash and Waistcoat, Unmen does something similar for face-down creatures. What’s neat is that it doesn’t need you to run morph creatures at all, since its activated ability manifests the top card of your library. Mono-blue has plenty of scrying and other top-deck manipulation, so there’s paths to (heh) manifest your own destiny. And because flipping a manifested creature is a special action you can take whenever you have priority, you can do it in response to your opponent declaring blockers.

There’s an extra layer of chaos, though: Your opponents can activate Sash and Waistcoat’s ability to manifest their own cards, and their face-down creatures are also unblockable, as long as they attack anyone but you.

#7. Yedora, Grave Gardener

Yedora, Grave Gardener has a unique interaction with morph creatures specifically; even once Yedora has returned your nontoken morph creature face-down as a land, it still has its morph ability, so you can activate it to finish the reanimation loop. Your creature will just generate landfall triggers rather than creaturefall triggers, but that’s a feature, not a bug. Proteus Machine is the cleanest example when you pair it with a free sac outlet (ex: Ashnod's Altar), but there’s lots of other ways to do it.

Unlike most other morph commanders, Yedora only works with morph and megamorph creatures.

#6. Vannifar, Evolved Enigma

Triggers that go off at the beginning of combat or when I or my creatures attack always lead me wonder if extra combats are viable, but Simic’s () spin on that is extra turns. Vannifar, Evolved Enigma does two things you want in a morph or morph-like build, and the modality of it lets you add to your board or buff it up. Remember that because your creatures don’t leave the battlefield when you flip them, they maintain any counters you add to them before you do.

#5. Yarus, Roar of the Old Gods

Yarus, Roar of the Old Gods starts off as a universal haste enabler, which is textbook Gruul () stuff, especially in a Ravnica-based set like Murders at Karlov Manor. But its other abilities are made for face-down creatures, so all the morph variants play here. Card advantage on a red-green commander is nice to have, but it’s that last ability that ties everything together. You don’t care if your face-down creatures die, because Yarus brings them back and flips them for you. Not a bad way to enable your “when this creature is turned face up” triggers.

#4. Duskana, the Rage Mother

The 2/2s matter commander is a morph commander. Should this be a surprise? Not if you remember which precon it came from. In a morph deck, Duskana, the Rage Mother buffs your face-down creatures into 5/5s when they attack, but they’ll keep that buff if you flip them mid-combat since they remain the same game object. And what do I always say when there’s Naya colors and attack triggers? En français, cette fois: Phases de combat supplémentaires!

#3. Missy

Missy’s ability to return nontoken creatures to the battlefield face down enables a morph strategy, but the true power lurks with how it pairs with Ruthless Ripper. If you have a free sac outlet on the field and a black card in your hand, you can sac the assassin, bring it back face-down, then morph it by revealing the card in your hand to chip someone for 2 life. Rinse and repeat. It’s slow, but morphing a creature is a special action, so it’s much harder to interact with it once you get the loop going, especially when the sac outlet is a mana ability that your opponents can’t stifle.

#2. Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer

As the face of the Faceless Menace Sultai precon () from Commander 2019, Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer was designed for a face-down creatures deck. The first morph creature you cast is free, and all your face-down creatures cantrip. This is later than Fate Reforged, so the ability is templated to work whether you’re casting morph creatures or manifesting the top card of your library. It doesn’t force you to do anything specific besides that, and it’s templated to work with most future iterations of morph and manifest abilities, so Kadena should have some staying power.

#1. Zimone, Mystery Unraveler

Landfall plus anything usually makes for a good deck. Zimone, Mystery Unraveler mixes landfall with manifest dread, and any additional land drops past your first flip your creatures. You’ll want Crop Rotation and any other cards that’ll help you to trigger landfall at instant speed to make it easier to flip your creatures during combat.

The Jump Scare! precon included cards that show off some of the niche interactions that come with face-down cards, like Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle: If you manifest this kraken, it never gains its slumber counters. The moment you flip it, it’s a 12/12 that taps for .

Commanding Conclusion

Yarus, Roar of the Old Gods | Illustration by Dmitry Burmak

At the end of the day, pure morph decks can only be as strong as the morph creatures we have, which is the advantage that manifest and cloak abilities have. You can manifest creatures that don’t have morph, but you still get the advantage of flipping an unexpected beater. You can’t run ETB creatures like Acidic Slime with these mechanics, but the deckbuilding constraints just make it more rewarding when you finally put the puzzle together.

Which of these commanders do you run for your morph and morph-like decks? Are there any viable morph commanders that I haven’t mentioned? Let me know in the comments below or over on the Draftsim Discord. For more from us every weekday straight to your inbox, check out our newsletter, The Daily Upkeep.

Until next time, go out there and brew something fun!