The 31 Best Pillow Fort Commanders in Magic Ranked

Oloro, Ageless Ascetic | Illustration by Eric Deschamps

As the years march on, the public’s interest or awareness of some Commander deck themes tend to wax and wane. Group hug, group slug, stax, aggro; these are all evergreen Magic archetypes that most players know and love. But there’s one theme that’s taken a back seat in recent years: the pillow fort.

Pillow fort decks used to be staples of any EDH pod – it was nearly impossible to play this game without knowing someone who ran Oloro, Ageless Ascetic or Zedruu the Greathearted back in 2012. Since then, new mechanics have expanded what pillow fort decks can do while keeping those original themes and aesthetics that gave the archetype its name.

Which commanders work best for a pillow fort deck? Are the originals still the masters? Let’s take a deep dive into the best pillow fort commanders for Magic!

What Are Pillow Fort Commanders?

Elesh Norn | Illustration by Magali Villeneuve

Pillow fort refers to a popular strategy in multiplayer formats. Pillow fort cards look to mitigate all incoming damage by either gaining life, incentivizing opponents to attack each other, or just flatly preventing the damage from happening. Some pillow fort decks punish opponents for interacting with you, some prevent you from being attacked at all, and some simply generate so much value each turn that any of your opponents’ attacks or spells are effectively nullified.

Pillow forts are found in all color combinations, but are most popular with Azorius commanders (), Bant commanders (), and Esper commanders ().

Typically, pillow fort decks win by assembling a combo once they’re safely protected behind mountains of pillows. That’s similar to a stax deck, with the important distinction that pillow fort decks tend to play nonsymmetrical cards that protect themselves rather than spells that slow down their opponents. It’s the difference between running Winter Orb and running No Mercy. While the Orb punishes everyone at the table, slowing the game to a halt for everyone but the stax player who’s planned around it, No Mercy simply greatly disincentivizes your opponents from attacking you, leaving them free to use their resources on another player.

Other popular pillows include Ghostly Prison, Propaganda, and their ilk, making it difficult for those “go wide” decks to attack. Spike Weaver and other repeatable fog effects are also popular.

Pillow fort decks operate in a unique design space between group hug and stax, making them one of the more challenging decks to pin down.

#31. Kros, Defense Contractor

Kros, Defense Contractor kind of flew under the radar in the Streets of New Capenna Commander decks. While its ability also leans more group hug than pillow fort, you can reframe it by using the goad and shield counters to mitigate any damage that would’ve otherwise come at you. I’ll still never forgive Streets for what it did to the shield counters on Palliation Accord, though.

#30. Elesh Norn / The Argent Etchings

The March of the Machine printing of Elesh Norn comes with a reverse version of the Ghostly Prison effect, instead punishing opponents after they’ve already damaged you with creatures. Its ability to transform into an aggressive saga that creates board presence for you, buffs your creatures, and then wipes your opponents’ boards before returning to the battlefield with Norn’s anti-attackers effect is great at keeping your foes from overextending.

#29. Baird, Steward of Argive

Baird, Steward of Argive is Ghostly Prison on a body, except a bit worse and vulnerable to removal. Baird often makes it into the 99 of other pillow fort decks, but it isn’t necessarily the best choice as its own commander. As an uncommon legend, it makes a great choice for a pillow fort themed Pauper Commander deck!

#28. Oviya, Automech Artisan

Oviya, Automech Artisan’s Elvish Piper-like ability implies it’d be better off at the head of an aggro deck than pillow fort, but there are tons of green creatures and vehicles you can use as pillows. You can use Oviya’s passive ability to incentivize your opponents to attack each other, and you can make sure they have the creatures to do so by dropping Hunted Wumpus and Iwamori of the Open Fist. And to keep the entire table happy, use group hug effects like Rites of Flourishing and Heartbeat of Spring.

#27. Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker

Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker is one of the best ways to deter attackers. While effects like No Mercy destroy the attacking creature specifically, Michiko Konda has the possibility to start forcing opponents to sacrifice other key permanents, like their mana rocks or lands. By paying close attention to the stack, perhaps by Swords to Plowshares-ing the creature you know your opponent planned to sacrifice, you can force them to sacrifice a more important permanent whenever they attack you. Combine this with the usual suite of Ghostly Prisons and Windborn Muses to make every attack on you more costly than its worth.

#26. Auntie Blyte, Bad Influence

Auntie Blyte, Bad Influence is the only mono-red creature to make this list. While it isn’t so pillow-forty per se, it can be built as a suicide red deck that keeps itself afloat with colorless lifelink effects like Basilisk Collar. Auntie Blyte decks stop incoming threats with powerful symmetrical damagers like Earthquake and keep pace with the table by dragging them all down at the same time with Sulfuric Vortex. Auntie Blythe is inarguably a group slug commander, but you can tone it down to focus all of its damage effects on yourself rather than the entire table simultaneously.

#25. Shadrix Silverquill

Shadrix Silverquill’s effect must target two different players with the two modes you can choose. Typically, one of the modes targets yourself, but it’s not unreasonable to play the political angle and try to spread the love around the table. While Shadrix doesn’t fit the criteria for group hug or pillow fort specifically, it’s got the added benefit of being a 2/5 with flying and double strike that’ll sit as a threatening rattlesnake on your board while you assemble your Sanguine Bond combo.

#24. Darien, King of Kjeldor

Darien, King of Kjeldor is a fairly simple pillow fort commander. Basically, it threatens your opponents with a ton of free Soldier tokens whenever you’re dealt damage. Darien’s mono-white color identity means you’re missing out on some of the best pseudo-stax pillows in other colors, but you’ll still have access to some of the best token doublers like Anointed Procession. Many players blend a Soldiers themed deck with Darien’s innate pillow-fort-ness, allowing them to run lords like Captain of the Watch and removal like Catapult Master.

#23. Gluntch, the Bestower

Gluntch, the Bestower leans more on the group hug end of the pillow fort spectrum, meaning you’ll have to use more of your political guile to play it as a pillow. Since its effect has no specific way to mitigate your opponents using its gifted resources against you, you’ll have to constantly justify to them why they ought not attack you. You’ll be making a lot of promises at the table that you’ll need to keep to ensure that you aren’t targeted too early. I think this hurts Gluntch’s overall rating; so many of these commanders protect you without having to trust in the kindness of your fellow player (often a mistake).

#22. Kwain, Itinerant Meddler

Kwain, Itinerant Meddler favors a group hug build over a pillow fort style, but it still meets the criteria for our purposes. Its Azorius color identity means you have access to most of the best pillows, and the “may” clause on its activated ability means you literally can’t lean on it as a win condition to mill your opponents libraries away. To win with Kwain, you’ll have to assemble your own game-ending combo from behind your soft fortress.

#21. Gwafa Hazid, Profiteer

Gwafa Hazid, Profiteer tries to control the board by pacifying your opponents’ creatures. I love the Pacifism effect as a prime example of how white can control the board, but poor Gwafa Hazid completely whiffs against decks that don’t attack, like Izzet () spellslinger decks or Golgari () aristocrats decks. On top of all that, giving your opponents a free card each time you activate your commander will come back to bite you sooner than you’d think.

#20. Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis

Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis’s biggest benefit is being a 4-color commander. This commander has every color except black, giving you access to a wide array of combos that you can assemble lickety-split with its inherent advantage engine. While Kynaios and Tiro’s triggered ability still benefits your opponents in some way, you can always mitigate their possible extra draws and land drops with stax effects.

#19. Grand Arbiter Augustin IV

Anointed as a Commander Game Changer, Grand Arbiter Augustin IV is universally reviled to play against. It slows your opponents down by such a disgusting degree that it doesn’t even feel good for the Augustin player. Grand Arbiter decks tend to play more as stax than as pillow fort, by the simple virtue that you’re already messing with your opponent’s game plans. Augustin players also tend to become the immediate target once their stax commander hits the field, which is a little antithetical to the whole pillow fort aesthetic.

#18. Nils, Discipline Enforcer

Nils, Discipline Enforcer has a built-in Sphere of Safety that counts the counters on your opponents’ creatures, plus a free +1/+1 counter for each player on each of your end steps. This pretty effectively shuts down your opponents’ creature decks, since it comes with a way to ensure those creatures will cost them dearly if they wish to attack you. With everyone swinging their beefed-up creatures at each other, you’ve got all the time in the world to assemble a game winning board state.

#17. Ms. Bumbleflower

Ms. Bumbleflower is a fun commander from the Bloomburrow Commander decks that wants you to find the balance to cast exactly two spells each turn. While it does draw cards for your opponents, you’ll see much more value from this effect when you use the +1/+1 counters and flying effect on your own creatures. You can then draw into more value and better spells as you continue to flash spells in during opponents’ turns.

#16. Breena, the Demagogue

Breena, the Demagogue is one of the best ways to influence your opponents into attacking each other and not you. While you’ll see the benefit of +1/+1 counters on your creatures, your opponents will draw cards as a reward for attacking someone else with a high life total. At 3 mana, you can start this trade-off as early as turn 2 with a hand full of ramp, and Breena can target itself to become a huge creature in no time.

#15. Sythis, Harvest’s Hand

Many of the best pillows in pillow fort decks are enchantments, so it follows that an Enchantress's Presence on-a-body like Sythis, Harvest's Hand would make a great pillow fort commander. Sythis’s passive ability to gain life and draw cards for each enchantment you cast in addition to its low casting cost make it an effective way to start building up a fort and passively generate advantage while you do it.

#14. Tuvasa the Sunlit

If Sythis, Harvest's Hand makes sense for a pillow fort deck, Tuvasa the Sunlit is a no-brainer. Besides its innate enchantress ability, Tuvasa also gives you a win condition by getting +1/+1 for each enchantment you control, turning your wall of pillows into actual damage you can throw around during the combat step. Since Tuvasa is your commander, you only need to get it to 21 damage on each opponent before you win, something incredibly easy to achieve while you protect it with an Asceticism and beef it up with Ethereal Armor and All That Glitters.

#13. Starscream, Power Hungry / Starscream, Seeker Leader

Starscream, Power Hungry is the only card from the Transformers Universes Beyond tie-in that I really like, honestly. A mono-black commander that uses the monarch effect to control the table and influence your opponents just tickles the right part of my brain. Starscream transforms into its vehicle side whenever a creature damages you, which allows it to come in swinging as a flying-menace–haste creature. Basically, Starscream wants you to trade the monarch token around as much as possible, so long as you plan to draw cards while you’re the monarch.

#12. Queen Marchesa

The Mardu commander () Queen Marchesa (long may she reign) uses the monarch mechanic to control and influence your opponents. Besides having a great profile with some aggressive evergreen abilities, Queen Marchesa (long may she reign) comes with the implicit threat of creating 1/1 deathtouch-haste Assassin tokens for each turn you aren’t the monarch. These tokens make excellent attackers to steal the monarch token back from your opponents, and they’re excellent blockers to protect the crown.

#11. Pramikon, Sky Rampart

Commanders that change the fundamental rules of the game are always fun, and Pramikon, Sky Rampart is no exception. Pramikon is the perfect commander for the planeswalker looking to “turtle up.” It effectively locks opponents into only attacking one specific player to their left or right at any given time, depending on which you choose when Pramikon enters. You can then focus on defending yourself from just one opponent at a time, something a deck that's stuffed full of wall creatures can do very effectively.

#10. Kenrith, the Returned King

Kenrith, the Returned King has so many possible builds that it’s no surprise there’s a pillow fort option out there. By focusing on its third and fourth ability, you can fairly easily mitigate any incoming attacks or hostile interactions or swap over to some politics-play to grant your opponents’ creatures haste and trample or +1/+1 counters. You can even reanimate their creatures to the battlefield under their control if you so choose. Soon you’ll have subjects lining up at the foot of your throne, beseeching you for an extra card or the return of their favorite Grave Titan. I recommend demanding they refer to you as “Your Grace.”

#9. Phelddagrif

Good ol’ Phelddagrif. The Bant commander for the true Bant player. This flying hippo is usually seen at the helm of group hug decks, since its abilities all benefit your opponents. However, access to a Bant color identity alone still makes Phelddagrif a possible pillow fort commander.

Phelddagrif decks often end the game with infinite mana and a Suture Priest on the field, giving the hippo 100,000,000 instances of trample, creating 100,000,000 Hippo tokens for your opponents, and obliterating them immediately.

#8. Isperia, Supreme Judge

Isperia, Supreme Judge is one of the simpler pillow fort commanders, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t powerful. By the simple act of compensating you with card draw for each creature that attacks you, you can keep your deck’s engine running when you’re staring down threatening attackers or use cards like Courtly Provocateur to draw cards right when you need to.

#7. Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts

With vigilance and protection from creatures, Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts makes for an effective blocker, and it’ll turn everything it destroys into Spirit tokens for you. Teysa decks tend to revolve around token generation and lifegain to mitigate incoming damage, which can be effective pillows in your deck. Really, the threatening rattlesnake that is Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts alone can be enough to keep your opponents’ creatures on their side of the board.

#6. Eriette of the Charmed Apple

Any commander with a passive lifegain ability has the potential to be a very powerful pillow fort, and Eriette of the Charmed Apple scores fairly high in that measure. You can always choose to go the route of overloading the deck with goading auras like Vow of Duty, or you can play beneficial auras on your opponents’ creatures like Lifelink or Spirit Link. Each turn, you can freely use your life as a resource on spells like Bolas's Citadel, safe in the knowledge you’ll recover most if not all of it during your end step.

#5. Karona, False God

If you see a lot of typal decks around in your pod, perhaps Karona, False God is the commander for you. As you pass Karona around the table, it gives each player their choice of creature type to get +3/+3, incentivizing them to attack each other. +3/+3 is usually enough to tempt them to attack with even their lowly Llanowar Elves, meaning they can overextend into potentially disastrous consequences. This is even more effective if you’ve built your Karona deck with pillows like the cycle of Vow auras Vow of Duty, etc.) and the usual suspects of attack-preventers like Ghostly Prison.

#4. Angus Mackenzie

Angus Mackenzie is one of the original legendary creatures from Legends, and it has a fairly simple ability. By paying , you get a Fog. Having the option to Fog each turn, and perhaps multiple times per round if you use any untapped effects like Sword of the Paruns, means you can effectively shut off combat for as long as Mackenzie’s in play and you have the mana to pay. This allows you to perfectly protect yourself from creatures until the time has come to assemble an infinite mana combo and dump it all into a Helix Pinnacle.

#3. Zedruu the Greathearted

The most fun you can have with Zedruu the Greathearted is by donating detrimental effects like Steel Golem or Aggressive Mining to your opponents. The next most fun you can have is donating beneficial effects to them, disincentivizing them from attacking you while you gain life and draw cards from Zedruu’s triggered effect. Zedruu requires a little bit of political acumen if you plan to build it this way, but it’s not at all difficult to determine which effects you’ll keep for yourself (the Propagandas, etc.) and which you’ll pass around the table (your Fervor once Zedruu’s made use of it already, your Akroan Horse to benefit the other two opponents, etc.).

#2. Zur the Enchanter

Many of the best pillow fort pillows are enchantments, and nobody gets enchantments on the field faster than Zur the Enchanter. Often built as a Voltron commander that fetches auras from your library, you can also build Zur to fetch those Ghostly Prisons and Aurification effects to quickly assemble your pillow fort. Plus, there’s usually room leftover for a few powerful auras, letting you end the game with three one-shot commander damage kills one after another.

#1. Oloro, Ageless Ascetic

Oloro, Ageless Ascetic is one of the original pillow fort commanders. Hailing from the first Commander-specific expansion, Oloro gains you 2 life during your upkeep pretty much no matter what. Is Oloro in the command zone? Gain 2 life. Is Oloro on the battlefield? Gain 2 life. Is Oloro in exile or the graveyard? That’s on you. Why’d you let it go there?

Esper is probably the best color combination for a pillow fort deck, giving you access to the best lifegain effects, all the Ghostly Prisons, and spells like Teferi's Moat. This easily mitigates the 1 life tax for its second triggered ability, and it keeps your deck’s engine rolling as you gain life, draw cards, and then place more pillows around yourself. I mostly see Oloro decks winning with the Exquisite Blood plus Sanguine Bond combo, or by simply blasting their opponents away with Aetherflux Reservoir.

Commanding Conclusion

Zedruu the Greathearted | Illustration by Mark Zug

Oloro, Ageless Ascetic’s dominance as the best pillow fort commander isn’t surprising – its proto-eminence effect was a warning sign of things to come in Commander 2016 with Edgar Markov and The Ur-Dragon. These famously intractable effects are just plain broken; anything that starts the game already benefitting you is sure to become a pain for your opponents before long, and turtling up around Oloro’s passive ability while it’s still in the command zone is a surefire way to become untouchable for the rest of the game.

What are your favorite pillow fort commanders? And what are the best pillows to go along with them? Let me know in the comments or over on the Draftsim Discord!

Thanks for reading!