The 15 Most Underrated Mardu Commanders in Magic Ranked

Ghen, Arcanum Weaver | Illustration by Kieran Yanner

Wizards prints so many legendary permanents that could be commanders these days that keeping track of them is incredibly hard, no matter how much time you dedicate to the game. Inevitably, some of the less attention-grabbing commanders slip through the cracks.

Even in 3-color wedges and shards, you can lose cool points due to the sheer mass of cards. The Mardu () wedge boasts incredible aggressive and powerful token potential. Let’s check out some of the forgotten commanders and partner pairs to give them the love they deserve!

What Are Underrated Mardu Commanders?

Kaalia, Zenith Seeker | Illustration by Yongjae Choi

Underrated Mardu () commanders are legendary creatures, vehicles, or spacecraft with a red-white-black color identity that can be your commander and have fewer than 3,200 decks registered on EDHREC.

These commanders fall into the typical Mardu strategies: There’s lots of aggression, some sacrifice/aristocrats potential, and token synergies, the normal stuff for these colors.

#15. Tariel, Reckoner of Souls

Tariel, Reckoner of Souls is one of the game’s few true reanimation engines, but it’s relatively slow: You need to cast Tariel, get around summoning sickness, and still stock opposing graveyards. At least the high cost gives you time to mill with cards like The Master of Lake-town and Mesmeric Orb.

Try pairing Tariel with board wipes to buy time and graveyard hate like Relic of Progenitus and Ghost Vacuum to exile insignificant creatures like Llanowar Elves from opposing graveyards.

#14. Squall, Gunblade Duelist

While Squall, Gunblade Duelist gives you the choice of number for its trigger, I recommend 2. White has many synergies for creatures with power 2 or less like Delney, Streetwise Lookout and Assemble the Players that benefit from access to red and black cards like Raid Bombardment and Alesha, Who Smiles at Death. You’ll end up with an aggressive yet synergistic deck in no time.

Alternatively, you could lean into a token strategy; most token outlets make 1/1s, so you can choose one and flood the board with appropriately sized bodies.

#13. Jirina Kudro

A commander like Jirina Kudro that wants you to recast your commander often is tricky without access to green’s ramp, but not impossible. While this wants to be a human typal commander, I can’t help but be curious about using it as a sacrifice commander that uses cards like Ashnod's Altar and Pitiless Plunderer to produce mana to recast Jirina, which in turn produces additional sacrifice fodder.

#12. Piru, the Volatile

Piru, the Volatile has an easily triggerable wrath, but the trick to making it work as a commander is doing it over and over. This commander wants you to play all the Malakir Rebirth variants so you can trigger Piru over and over and retain dominance over the board. I’d supplement that strategy with sacrifice outlets and creatures with good enters/leaves the battlefield effects like Highcliff Felidar and Anticausal Vestige to jury-rig a flicker shell.

#11. Jeska, Thrice Reborn + Tymna the Weaver

Jeska, Thrice Reborn plus Tymna the Weaver leans into Mardu’s more aggressive tendencies. Tymna encourages playing lots of cheap, aggressive creatures like Ocelot Pride and Selfless Spirit to chip away at opposing life totals during the mid-game while Jeska comes in as a late-game finisher to dish out lots of damage.

#10. Wernog, Rider’s Chaplain + Sophina, Spearsage Deserter

Mardu excels at artifact generation and using artifacts. Wernog, Rider's Chaplain and Sophina, Spearsage Deserter produce tons of artifacts, with the 99 finding ways to make them a win. Think Reckless Fireweaver, Marionette Apprentice, Academy Manufactor, and so on.

#9. Mathas, Fiend Seeker

Mathas, Fiend Seeker makes excellent and intriguing use of bounty counters. An important wrinkle with this commander: Mathas gives the creature the bounty counter and the death trigger, so adding bounty counters to opposing creatures with cards like Bounty Hunter doesn’t result in card draw.

Mathas often ends up as a political group slug sort of deck; since the bounty counters encourage your opponents’ infighting, the deck can maximize that with cards like Curse of Opulence and Breena, the Demagogue, or resort to straight goad from Taunt from the Rampart and Disrupt Decorum.

#8. Neriv, Crackling Vanguard

Neriv, Crackling Vanguard always leans into token strategies, but it doesn’t pay you off in extra bodies or damage or any of those more conventional rewards; you get card draw!

Card draw and aggression work well together because the card advantage makes it harder for your opponents to slow you down because you always have more threats, and you (ideally) kill them faster than they find their own card advantage. Mardu is the perfect wedge for this, too; white’s token production paired with direct damage from red and black is lovely.

#7. Tsagan, Raider Warlord

Making start your engines! work in Commander is tricky because there are so few cards with the mechanic and you need to get started early since it takes three to four turns to reach max speed. That means these decks lean heavily on the commander, and Mystery Booster Commander Edition gave us a paper version of an existing Alchemy one: Tsagan, Raider Warlord!

This is another aggressive commander that wants you to reach max speed so Tsagan becomes a finisher, giving your team first strike and a large enough power boost that any block your opponents make is a chump, and you can only chump so long.

#6. Dargo, the Shipwrecker + Tymna the Weaver

Dargo, the Shipwrecker and Tymna the Weaver have enjoyed time at cEDH tables because of the potent pairing: Dargo enables infinite combos while Tymna the Weaver provides card advantage. But you don’t need to go full-blown infinite combo; a simple midrange brew with lots of cheap creatures for Tymna plus Treasure production to land a cheap Dargo establishes a nasty threat quite quickly.

#5. Kaalia, Zenith Seeker

Kaalia, Zenith Seeker lacks the raw strength of Kaalia of the Vast, but I don’t think it’s a bad commander. I highly value card advantage in the command zone because it makes your deck function better, and it’s easy to see a flicker deck arise from this: Play Kaalia, play a Teleportation Circle, draw a couple demons, dragons, or angels, then start flickering Rune-Scarred Demon or Smaug, Wicked Worm. Frankly, I prefer this Kaalia design because it offers a good advantage without being absolutely feast or famine.

#4. Ghen, Arcanum Weaver

Few commanders dabble with enchantment reanimation, so you get unique points for running Ghen, Arcanum Weaver in addition to a powerful ability. The general idea is to fill your graveyard with busted enchantments, then cheat them into play. Think turning Spirited Companion into Overwhelming Splendor. Black even has enchantments designed to be sacrificed, like Demonic Lore and Demonic Pact.

#3. Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful + Vial Smasher the Fierce

For another aggressive partner pair, look no further than Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful and Vial Smasher the Fierce. Yoshimaru starts the aggression early, smacking your opponents with lots of power backed by cards like Merry, Esquire of Rohan and Skrelv, Defector Mite. Vial Smasher provides finishing pressure with direct damage to burn your opponents out, plus it’s a cheap legend to get a counter on Yoshimaru. This is a great commander pair for aggressive backgrounds like Cultist of the Absolute and Flaming Fist.

#2. Kroxa and Kunoros

Kroxa and Kunoros more or less escapes creatures as a form of reanimation, so it requires lots of fuel. But cards like Mesmeric Orb, Altar of Dementia, and Ripples of Undeath get you there very quickly. Having a repeatable reanimation engine that’s a threat in its own right is very scary; how do you handle this and the Valgavoth, Terror Eater it entered with?

#1. Shanid, Sleepers’ Scourge

I’m kind of surprised to see Shanid, Sleepers' Scourge so low on the ranking; I suppose the power of Dihada, Binder of Wills as another Mardu legendary-matters commander has something to do with it. While Dihada is stronger, I don’t think the discrepancy is that high.

Legendary-matters gets better with every set because Universes Beyond encourages Wizards to print more legendary creatures. There’s a legendary parallel to practically any effect these days, though Shanid is most aggressive with cheap, aggro legends like Yoshimaru and Merry. Low-cost legends let you trigger Shanid early and often, plus you get lots of bodies to maximize what menace does for you.

Commanding Conclusion

Piru, the Volatile | Illustration by Greg Staples

It’s a shame that these Mardu commanders have slipped through the cracks. Sure, not everything can be played, especially with hundreds of new commanders coming out each year, but I hope this list has at least introduced you to a new idea of two.

Which of these Mardu commanders would you build? Do you prefer playing underrated commanders or do you stick to the big leagues? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord! And check out The Daily Upkeep newsletter to stay up to date on all the latest MTG news.

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!