The 33 Best Ramp Commanders in Magic Ranked

Ashaya, Soul of the Wild | Illustration by Chase Stone

It’s almost impossible to settle down at a Commander pod and see no ramp. Whether it’s mana dorks, rituals, or mana rocks, everybody plays at least a little acceleration. Because you have three opponents with such high life totals, the format rewards amassing resources and requires big, explosive plays to outpace the others.

Since ramp is such a critical part of EDH, it’s only natural that you’d consider making your commander a source of ramp. If you want to ensure you have your mana acceleration in your opening hand every game, read on to learn about the best ramp commanders in Magic!

What Are Ramp Commanders in MTG?

Selvala, Heart of the Wilds | Illustration by Tyler Jacobson

Ramp commanders are legendary creatures, vehicles, and spacecraft that can be your commander and produce mana in some form. They might put lands into play, tap your permanents for mana, let permanents tap for mana, produce Treasure, or even prevent you from losing mana. For our purposes, commanders with cost reduction abilities like Grand Arbiter Augustin IV don’t count.

Running a ramp commander comes with pros and cons. The biggest pro is consistency: When you have ample mana, your deck is more likely to function every game, which makes it easier to play and maybe win. The biggest downside is that ramp commanders often don’t act as win conditions, though power creep has seen plenty of commanders that bundle inevitability with acceleration. Commanders that rank highly on this list do so because they offer more than just mana, and the absolute best offer both mana generation and card advantage—Magic’s two most important resources.

#33. Ruby, Daring Tracker

Ruby, Daring Tracker is the most honest mana dork on the list. You cast it for 2 mana and get 4 mana the following turn. This is a great candidate for consistency: You’ll always be able to cast high-impact 4-drops turn 3. Whether you go deeper into ramp with Explosive Vegetation variants or reach for threats like Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes, you’ll do it almost every game like a well-oiled machine.

#32. Giada, Font of Hope

Giada, Font of Hope’s heavy restrictions prevent it from being the best ramp commander, but it’s still a significant entry; white rarely gets ramp like this, and few archetypes crave mana acceleration like angels. The type is defined by battlecruisers like Avacyn, Angel of Hope and Bruna, the Fading Light, so it loves the consistency Giada offers.

#31. Soul of Windgrace

Soul of Windgrace treats the graveyard like your personal plant nursery. The activated abilities are a nice touch that both fuel the land reanimation and mitigate flood. The abilities are rather over-costed and keep this creature shy of greatness, but it’s still a respectable ramp commander for casual players.

#30. Karametra, God of Harvests

Karametra, God of Harvests is on the slower side in 2020s Magic, but this classic commander still has merit. Adding lands to the board while you play creatures lets your landfall synergies run amok and offers significant deck thinning over the course of a game. You’ll need cheap creatures and decent interaction, but this god still has a slot in a Commander table near you.

#29. Grand Warlord Radha

Grand Warlord Radha converts a wide board into plenty of mana for a more aggressive build. The primary reward for this strategy is Aggravated Assault—with a few creatures and a card like Bedlam that prevents creatures form blocking, you win the game straight away.

#28. Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle

Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle has immense power for its cost, even if it takes a while to unearth the 12/12. It can be an excellent Voltron commander since you only need to give it double strike to take out a player in one combat, but don’t overlook the ramp. If you play this with all the Rampant Growth variants, you have 6 or 7 mana on turn 4, which sounds like a great start to winning a match.

#27. Karn, Legacy Reforged

Most colorless commanders are big Eldrazi that ask you to fill your deck with ramp, but Karn, Legacy Reforged is a little different. It goes for big artifacts rather than big Eldrazi (though those are certainly an option), which gives it a combo feel. Maybe you still go big and use Karn to cheat out Portal to Phyrexia, or perhaps you take a Voltron route, or even go hard into eggs. However you do it, this has more character than ramping into a spaghetti monster, which few other colorless commanders can claim.

#26. Bonny Pall, Clearcutter

Bonny Pall, Clearcutter effectively casts Growth Spiral whenever it attacks, except it’s even better since you can exploit fetch lands and cards like Strip Mine that sacrifice themselves for value. Paired with the formidable Beau, Bonny Pall often ends the game quickly and is devilishly hard to remove since it does so much the turn it hits play.

#25. Roxanne, Starfall Savant

Roxanne, Starfall Savant plays like a balanced version of Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy since it costs mana and doesn’t work with every mana dork. Any commander that makes a permanent mana source is notable as it pays for half its own commander tax, so you’re a land drop away from replaying Roxanne after it dies. This is another way to exploit all those Treasures you can make for nothing.

#24. Omnath, Locus of Mana

Omnath, Locus of Mana has a fairly unique ability that stores mana for as long as you like. It isn’t the only example of this, but it’s one of the oldest and easiest to cast. Omnath is frequently played as a powerful Eldrazi commander that helps titans like Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre come down much quicker than is reasonable, though you could also whip up an intriguing Voltron brew built around Doubling Cube.

#23. Azusa, Lost but Seeking

You need a way to break Azusa, Lost but Seeking. Pair it with cards like Crucible of Worlds and fetch lands or Case of the Locked Hothouse to get the most land drops possible from it.

It also deserves a special shout-out for the Brawl players as the best way to maximize Strip Mine.

#22. Jolene, the Plunder Queen

If you want to make mana and get aggressive, you want Jolene, the Plunder Queen on your side. Increasing your Treasure production and providing a source of said Treasure makes this a nasty threat, but one that might stick around if your opponents are allured by their own chance to get rich quick. This works best with cards like Reckless Fireweaver and Biotech Specialist that turn all that Treasure into damage.

#21. Inga and Esika

Inga and Esika makes up for its restrictive mana generation in potential. This card has a huge ceiling, especially with cards like Intruder Alarm or Chakram Retriever that untap your creatures. It pairs beautifully with Future Sight effects to flood the board.

#20. Lord Windgrace

Lord Windgrace ramps by dumping lands into play. It’s yet another card that’s great with fetch lands, but it also works well with mass land destruction and stax cards like Obliterate and Jokulhaups. All you need is a means of breaking parity, and Windgrace fills that role admirably. I also appreciate that those wraths—and many similar ones—don’t destroy planeswalkers, so Windgrace can stick around and do its thing.

#19. Hazel of the Rootbloom

Quite a few commanders turn an army of tokens into mana. Hazel of the Rootbloom is on the weaker side because you have to use all the token-mana up in one phase, but the end step trigger makes up for this. It works best with cards that create massive tokens, like Arboreal Alliance, or those that make token copies of real creatures, like Abyssal Harvester. Imagine making a Hornet Queen every end step!

#18. Neheb, the Eternal

Neheb, the Eternal offers incredible mana production if you build around it with plenty of burn. Cards like Flame Rift and Fiery Confluence become the greatest rituals ever printed while X-spells like Crackle with Power become your favorite outlets. This is perfect for players who wish they could jam Lava Spike in Commander without being laughed out of the LGS.

#17. Teval, the Balanced Scale

Though Teval, the Balanced Scale was clearly designed for spells that care about cards leaving the graveyard, we must respect its potential as a ramp commander. Reanimating lands lets you break fetches and other lands that sacrifice themselves for value, like Nurturing Peatland or Wasteland. That mana advantage plus the army Teval makes ensures you have plenty of resources to grind your opponents out of the game.

#16. Helga, Skittish Seer

Green has so many 1-mana dorks that you can expect Helga, Skittish Seer to hit the table turn 2 almost every game. Then you snowball into the lead as your mana dork produces additional mana and draws extra cards while you take basic game actions. Toss in some cards that untap Helga like Fatestitcher to take the game over even faster.

#15. Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff

Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff is a great ramp piece that happens to be a potential commander. Cards your opponents can trigger always scale well in Commander. Since Lotho doesn’t ask anything of you, you can build the deck with whatever win conditions you find appropriate. It also happens to be the perfect mana cost to companion Lurrus of the Dream-Den.

#14. Belbe, Corrupted Observer

Belbe, Corrupted Observer turns combat into mana. Black has lots of cheap creatures that damage all your opponents when you attack, like Night Market Lookout and Mardu Shadowspear, so you can often have 6 colorless mana on turn 2 to spend on artifacts like God-Pharaoh's Statue and Conduit of Ruin. Whether you go for Eldrazi or stax, it’s one of the most unique ramp commanders in the game.

#13. Chulane, Teller of Tales

Chulane, Teller of Tales tacks a Growth Spiral onto every creature you cast, which lets you establish a massive board state terribly fast with cards like Whitemane Lion and Shrieking Drake that bounce themselves. It only takes a few mana dorks and an Intruder Alarm to turn that into infinite mana with your deck in hand.

#12. Birgi, God of Storytelling + Electro, Assaulting Battery

Birgi, God of Storytelling and Electro, Assaulting Battery are extremely similar commanders: They’re consistent sources of mana for storm decks that want to end the game in a flurry of spells. Both have merit; Electro ramps up to a big turn since you don’t lose mana while Birgi has more general mana production, which is notably strong with 0-mana plays. Though I lean towards Birgi, both are great options for players interested in mono-colored combo.

#11. Jaheira, Friend of the Forest

Since Jaheira, Friend of the Forest doesn’t discriminate between creature and noncreature tokens, it plays best Food and Clue decks that pump out Mox Emeralds by the dozen. For backgrounds, I recommend Street Urchin, Agent of the Iron Throne, or Clan Crafter.

#10. Dihada, Binder of Wills

Dihada, Binder of Wills was clearly meant to be a legends-matter commander, but it’s much stronger as a treasure commander. Since you choose how many cards you mill with the -3, you can just… not draw any and make four Treasures. That makes this mana-neutral and one of the best ways to get a burst of Treasure in the game. Milling four is also pretty significant in black.

#9. Selvala, Heart of the Wilds

Selvala, Heart of the Wilds leads to explosive turns thanks to its immense mana generation. Green has no shortage of massive creatures to fuel it, like Ghalta, Primal Hunger and Kogla, the Titan Ape. There are also plenty of cards like Quirion Ranger and Scryb Ranger that untap Selvala to enable turns that would make a Yawgmoth's Will player blush.

#8. Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait

At 6 mana, Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait verges dangerously close to a ramp target rather than a ramp enabler, but it only takes a few turns with this beast in play to increase your mana faster than your opponents can hope to compete with. That coupled with its incredible landfall ability takes over the game awfully fast for a creature you can play as early as turn 4.

#7. Ashaya, Soul of the Wild

Ashaya, Soul of the Wild breaks the game in so many ways. Landfall is the easiest option, of course; it gets out of control fast when every creature you play triggers Springheart Nantuko and Scute Swarm. You can also go infinite very easily with cards like Argothian Elder. This elemental gives you plenty of ways to end the game.

#6. Magus Lucea Kane

Magus Lucea Kane has become the de facto X-spells commander for many because doubling big spells is just broken. It’s not even broken in the sense that you can build around it; you just get twice the value from your spells by playing the game. The mana it produces isn’t even restricted to X-spells, so you can do whatever you like with it. It’s almost frustrating how much this card does for so little investment.

#5. Prosper, Tome-Bound

Prosper, Tome-Bound has that ever-busted combination of card advantage and mana acceleration. Producing Treasure whenever you cast spells from exile makes it easy to storm off and take massive turns, especially since Prosper fuels itself. Wizards has continually expanded the impulse draw archetype with new tools like Inti, Seneschal of the Sun and Evendo Brushrazer, so Prosper ages like a fine wine.

#4. Omnath, Locus of Creation

Omnath, Locus of Creation needs work to get to the ramp, but making two land drops is hardly an issue these days—we have so many Crucible of Worlds variants for fetch lands, not to mention ramp spells that put a land into play. When your Rampant Growth becomes a ritual, you’re doing something right. Omnath has the perfect colors to take advantage of the best landfall cards, from Valakut Exploration to Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait.

#3. Urza, Lord High Artificer

A recent escapee of the Game Changers list, Urza, Lord High Artificer gives you a real reason to play mono-blue. All your artifacts become Mox Sapphire with Urza around, but it goes even further since it combos with artifacts like Winter Orb and Howling Mine that you want untapped on your opponents' turns but tapped on yours. Thanks to its Constructs and the activated ability, Urza is both mana accelerant and win condition—an ugly combination.

#2. Vivi Ornitier

The latest legendary creature to break a Constructed format because Wizards pushed its design for Commander, Vivi Ornitier offers absurd amounts of mana. And damage, for some reason; Wizards really thought a creature that produces more mana than Gaea's Cradle wasn’t good enough on its own. The incessant pinging opens the door to combos with cards like Curiosity and Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph. You can really do whatever you want with Vivi due to its mana production.

#1. Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy

Mana doublers are incredibly powerful; access to twice as much of Magic’s critical resources is rarely bad. I don’t understand why Wizards thought it would be a good idea to staple it to a 2-mana commander! Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy takes it even further by serving as a mana sink, just in case you didn’t have 8 mana's worth of cards on turn 3. It’s an incredibly powerhouse because it makes already-excellent cards like Birds of Paradise and Arcane Signet even better.

How Good Is Ramp in the Command Zone?

Ramp in the command zone has a ton of potential. The way Magic works—especially fair, casual Magic—the player who spends the most mana generally wins the game. Ramp commanders enable this since they give you extra mana ahead of your opponents. They also add a lot of consistency to your deck. If you’re playing Helga, Skittish Seer, you can easily build your curve around the need for a 1-mana dork turn 1 and strong 4-mana plays turn 3. Ramp in the command zone mitigates the chance of slower draws, too.

How Do You Beat Ramp Commanders?

The first option is interaction. Most ramp commanders need to stick around to accrue value, so interaction to keep them off the table mitigates their impact. Slowing your opponents down this way gives you breathing room to finish things. If you can’t remove the ramp commander, the next best thing is to remove card advantage engines like Up the Beanstalk and Elemental Bond.

Another option is to win faster. Ramp decks often need time to play their ramp spells before they get to the big threats. If you can establish a fast board presence and sprint past those threats or assemble a combo while your opponent’s engines warm up, you can beat the ramp commander before they become a big threat.

The final and potentially best option is to talk to the table and encourage your opponents to help you beat up on the ramp player. Commander’s ruleset heavily rewards ramp strategies that amass lots of resources. In most cases, you should be most afraid of the Kinnan player, the Aesi player, the Lucea Kane player. Making the rest of the table aware of this so you can pool your resources to stop the ramp commander before they overtake the rest of you is a great strategy.

Commanding Conclusion

Inga and Esika | Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

Though running a ramp commander decreases the odds that your commander is your primary win condition, it provides your deck with explosive potential and great consistency: When you have ample mana, you’re more likely to play the game.

What’s your favorite ramp commander? Do you enjoy having ramp in the command zone or do you prefer finishers? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!