The 31 Best 7-Mana Commanders in MTG Ranked

Mister Negative | Illustration by Thanh Tuan

Commander has always been defined by its pace, which welcomes playing massive creatures that would be too slow for any competitive format. While battlecruisers often find themselves in the 99 of decks, there’s no reason to keep them out of the command zone.

Seven-mana commanders take time to come down, but they often make up for it with explosive power. Them arriving from the command zone is like the main character showing up to a fight; things are about to get serious.

What Are 7-Mana Commanders in MTG?

Ovika, Enigma Goliath | Illustration by Antonio José Manzanedo

Seven-mana commanders are what they say on the tin: They’re legendary creatures, vehicles, or spacecraft that cost 7 mana. Any color can have a 7-cost legend that does anything, so there’s no defining mechanical identity like you might find for more niche commanders.

A good 7-mana commander needs to be impactful. You’re spending lots of mana on these things, so they need to hit like Garruk and preferably offer a concise path to victory once they hit. You don’t want to piddle around with a 7-mana brick.

#31. Agent Frank Horrigan

Agent Frank Horrigan has a pretty sick ability. Proliferating twice speeds up so many clocks, whether you want to win with infect or planeswalkers or generic +1/+1 counters. Try pairing Frank with cards like Saw in Half and Malakir Rebirth to retrigger that enters ability as often as possible.

#30. Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis

Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis as a commander is far from the dominant threat it was in Modern, but it’s still pretty good. Altar of Dementia and a few token generators still tears through your deck, especially with gravebreak cards being fleshed out more and more.

#29. Kefka, Dancing Mad

Kefka, Dancing Mad just casts a lot of spells. Since it’s indestructible on your turn, you often get at least one trigger to cast some spells. Try pairing Kefka with targeted graveyard hate like Ghost Vacuum to make it more likely you hit good spells. As for filling your opponents’ graveyard, Rakdos () is excellent at making your opponents draw cards. They wouldn’t have kept their hands if they weren’t good.

#28. Gandalf, Shadow's Foe

Though very expensive, Gandalf, Shadow's Foe has a great enters ability. It draws three cards when it enters, so it’s a prime flicker target, though you can also mess around with mono-blue landfall cards like Roil Elemental and Retreat to Coralhelm. Good Gandalf decks often blur the line, using the flicker effects to draw into infinite landfall combos to draw their deck and find a win.

#27. Mister Negative

Mister Negative is a weird little commander that works off life inversion. You’ll typically want to force your life total low with cards like Wall of Blood and Plunge into Darkness, then give your opponent your low life total. Importantly, trading life totals counts as gaining/losing life. That means if your life total goes from 3 to 30, you’ll enable a card like Enduring Tenacity.

#26. Akroma, Vision of Ixidor

Akroma, Vision of Ixidor works best with a red or green partner. You want to be aggressive and assemble a decent board, then deploy Akroma as a finisher to buff your team into oblivion. Ideally, you win within a combat or two.

#25. Dargo, the Shipwrecker

Dargo, the Shipwrecker shows up in cEDH more often than casual EDH because it’s a combo engine. There are many ways to make it go infinite. You’ll often see it partnered with Tymna the Weaver for combos in Mardu () colors, but feel free to experiment with other colors like Silas Renn, Seeker Adept for Grixis (); most of Dargo’s combos are mono-red, so you don’t miss much.

#24. Gisela, Blade of Goldnight

Gisela, Blade of Goldnight’s age is showing, but a damage doubler in the command zone still hits hard. Twice as hard as others, even. You only need to add 1 point of power for Gisela to take an opponent out in two hits, which can be done on the same turn with an extra combat effect. Since it makes your opponents damage each other more, it even incentivizes them to attack each other, not you.

#23. Sephara, Sky's Blade

Sephara, Sky's Blade should never cost 7 mana because of how easily you can flood the board with cheap fliers. Since your board gets indestructible to protect it from most board wipes, you can rebuild fast, too.

#22. Koma, World-Eater

Koma, World-Eater focuses on tokens more than its early printing because it makes them in such large numbers. You want cards like Adrix and Nev, Twincasters that double up on your tokens plus typal support like Raise the Palisade and Spawning Kraken to drive those serpents home.

#21. Prismari, the Inspiration

Prismari, the Inspiration gives storm to everything. It’s a great way to scale up in Commander: A Grapeshot is unlikely to win the game with such high life totals (unless you produce an infinite storm loop, but where’s the fun in that?) but Lightning Bolt scales much further, or you can pump a few rituals into Crackle with Power.

#20. Omnath, Locus of Rage

Despite its age, Omnath, Locus of Rage holds up well because 5/5s are still pretty large. Especially when you get them for playing lands or ramp spells. It also offers great inevitability: If your opponents don’t nip it early, your board of elementals still produces damage through a board wipe.

#19. Grizzlegom, Hurloon Hero

I adore Grizzlegom, Hurloon Hero as a rulebreaker because it digs into new ground while offering flexibility to the pilot. Domain never really worked in Commander because it was low-impact and none of the domain commanders had all five colors in their identity; Grizzlegom clears that with rulebreaker.

Since it rewards each instance of a basic land type, not just racing to five, it also offers flexibility: You can build a hyper-aggressive version slanted towards swamps and mountains, something more controlling with islands and forests, and so on.

#18. Lord Xander, the Collector

Lord Xander, the Collector was supposed to kill Commander, but it seems to have gotten lost somewhere along the way.

Xander’s typically played as a mill commander thanks to the attack trigger, which makes sense—you can mill out an opponent with a card like Fraying Sanity. But it also has legs as an odd control commander when paired with clones. Most clones invoke the legend rule, so you can spend 3 or 4 mana to make your opponent discard half their hand and sacrifice half their board multiple times. It never handles every threat, but it makes it tough for opponents to maintain steady card advantage or board presence.

#17. Myrkul, Lord of Bones

If you want an easy win with Myrkul, Lord of Bones, know that it goes infinite with Devoted Druid for an easy infinite mana combo. For more casual play, focus on amassing a board of enchantments that were creatures. It’s an easy way to double up on solid enters abilities or make threatening text boxes like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse harder to remove.

#16. Morophon, the Boundless

Morophon, the Boundless is popular as a catch-all commander. Any creature type can find support under Morophon's wonky gaze, even the most obscure and under-supported. Since you can draw on all five colors, you get the best typal support of any color. Even the weeniest creature type looks threatening when backed by cards like Shared Animosity, Kindred Dominance, and Distant Melody.

#15. Ghalta and Mavren

While I don't think this is the best Ghalta, or even close, Ghalta and Mavren is still pretty frightening. I prefer using it as a token commander that spews a bunch of bodies onto the board for cards like Cathars' Crusade or Elspeth, Storm Slayer, but the battlecruiser path is fine, too. Try to exploit power doublers to make the biggest tokens and end the game in a couple of combats.

#14. Maular, the Next Evolution

Maular, the Next Evolution lets your battlecruiser deck break all the rules… or at least those restraining you from playing every big creature of your dreams. Doubling the power of expensive creatures is useful because the biggest creatures, like different flavors of Ghalta, can two-tap an opponent with ease. Even Maular doesn't need to the biggest boost to reach commander damage status.

#13. Millicent, Restless Revenant

Though Millicent, Restless Revenant technically meets the standard for this list, I'd be surprised to ever see it cast for 7 mana thanks to affinity for spirits. Spirits aren't the most supported creature type, which might be why Wizards juiced this commander up. It comes down for little mana, and you probably make a bunch of tokens when it lands. While it's a little fragile, blue and white have the best possible tools to fight through board wipes.

#12. Toxrill, the Corrosive

Toxrill, the Corrosive is mostly annoying, but annoyances in Commander have a way of being powerful. If you can land and protect Toxrill, you can destroy any player on a creature deck. Which is most decks when you're playing in lower brackets, where a sluggish win condition like Toxrill thrives. Once you start to pick off creatures and make Slugs—potentially aided by board wipes like Massacre Wurm and Toxic Deluge that don't impact Toxrill—your opponents will regret that low-salt diet.

#11. Koma, Cosmos Serpent

Koma, Cosmos Serpent is one of the scarier battlecruisers in the command zone because it represents so much… well, everything. Koma's Coils provide board presence, you can use cards like Elemental Bond and Mister Fantastic, Reed Richards for card draw, and Koma probably doesn't die because it keeps making itself indestructible.

#10. Ovika, Enigma Goliath

Ovika, Enigma Goliath takes a common idea, a creature that makes tokens when you play noncreature spells, and elevates it by making many, many tokens. These can provide unexpected fodder for a storm deck with cards like Kindred Discovery and Battle Hymn to provide the card draw and mana, and Impact Tremors effects to provide the damage.

#9. Beledros Witherbloom

A mana doubler in the command zone offers incredible potential. Sure, you can't activate Beledros Witherbloom too often, but you shouldn't need to when you can double your mana. The Pest tokens don't offer enough lifegain to offset the 10 life paid, but it gives you a synergy to focus on: sacrifice effects. Cobble together the Pest with a few Blood Artists and you might get an extra activation over several turns.

#8. Nissa, Leyline Tamer

Reality Fracture’s multiverse-warping nature gave us a nongreen Nissa that somehow still focuses on big creatures. Nissa, Leyline Tamer flips great creatures into play just for playing lands. And these are the perfect colors for banger creatures: Archon of Cruelty, Absolute Virtue, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite… casting battlecruisers is for chumps.

#7. Smaug the Impenetrable

Smaug the Impenetrable often pushes you towards high-bracket play because it enables so many two-card combos that are really the reason to run it. Toss in a Chain Lightning or Pestilence or Mayhem Devil (and more!) to end up with infinite Treasure faster than you can spend it.

#6. Sin, Spira's Punishment

Sin, Spira's Punishment often brings a friend with it, and maybe a land. The trick to breaking this is to sculpt your graveyard to mitigate the variance of exiling a random card. You can mill a bunch of cards, then cast a delve spell or even use cards like Relic of Progenitus and Phyrexian Reclamation to pull chaff away so Sin hits your Archon of Cruelty.

#5. Ureni of the Unwritten

Ureni of the Unwritten causes problems because it almost always puts another threat in play, so one removal spell is never enough to deal with it. It almost demands a board wipe, which is pretty hard to handle since your opponent can always recast it. Also, there are plenty of dragons it can cheat into play that are just as terrifying as it is.

#4. Raph & Mikey, Troublemakers

The trick to breaking Raph & Mikey, Troublemakers is to stack up all the extra combat creatures you can, specifically ones like Raphael, Tag Team Tough and Port Razer that trigger when they deal combat damage so R&M gets to attack again, hopefully flipping another extra combat creature. You can also just look for Eldrazi or other large creatures.

#3. K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth

Phyrexian mana has never been fair, so you can imagine the headaches that comes from K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth making all black symbols Phyrexian. It leads to explosive starts, especially since it comes down for 4 mana itself most games, potentially followed by another spell or two. It's excellent at many power levels and even boasts a cEDH deck that can win turn 1.

#2. Etali, Primal Conqueror / Etali, Primal Sickness

If you want an example of power creep, compare Etali, Primal Sickness to its predecessor, Etali, Primal Storm. No potential to whiff, no hoping it survives a turn to attack. Etali decks typically ramp extremely hard to get Etali out then rely on red copy effects like Cursed Mirror and Twinflame to make copy after copy, casting enough spells for 7 mana to have a dominant board on the spot.

#1. Atraxa, Grand Unifier

Atraxa, Grand Unifier is one of the most disgusting battlecruisers ever printed. The card advantage is better than practically any card but the legendary Griselbrand, and it's on an enters ability so you get to combine it with Teleportation Circle and other flicker effects. Oh, and the body's pretty much impossible to race or handle in combat thanks to the slew of keywords. What pushes this over Etali is the colors: More colors are always better and, with red being the weakest in Commander, these are perfect for pretty much any strategy you want.

Commanding Conclusion

Toxrill, the Corrosive | Illustration by Simon Dominic

Seven-mana commanders are inherently risky. You might not reach 7 mana, and a well-timed counterspell can ruin your plans. But the explosive power they offer is often worth it, especially when they enable play patterns that end the game shortly after they enter.

Which 7-mana commanders are your favorite? Do you play any of these? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord! If you want more Draftsim, check out our YouTube channel, The Daily Upkeep!

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!