Highlights
- Jeweled Lotus is an expensive but powerful card that can generate three mana for free, making it a valuable addition to many decks, particularly monocolour builds.
- Kozilek, The Great Distortion has a strong ability to draw cards and counter spells, making it a formidable presence on the battlefield, despite its high mana cost.
- Sol Ring is a popular and essential card in Commander decks due to its mana ramp capabilities, providing a significant advantage early in the game.
Commander Masters probably holds the record for most colour-fixing cards in any one Magic: The Gathering product, and includes a huge number of multicoloured cards to leverage that, but it embraces the less vivid end of the spectrum just as tightly. From unassuming artifacts to Eldrazi titans, grey gets its day in the sun in this set.
But just because these colourless cards have less restrictive mana requirements than their kaleidoscopic cousins, it doesn’t mean they don’t bring just as much power to the Commander table. If you’re looking to play on a budget, or gather staples that can slot into several strategies, these are the colourless cards from Commander Masters you’ll want to collect.
10 Jeweled Lotus
A rare case of a card being as expensive in real life as it looks on its artwork, Jeweled Lotus is undoubtedly one of the chase cards in the set from a financial perspective. Its price tag is well-earned, however, as the card does an incredibly convincing impression of Magic’s most iconic artifact: the banned-in-Commander, banned-in-Legacy Black Lotus.
While it’s much more restrictive than its source material in terms of what you can spend the three mana it produces on, it still gives you three mana for nothing, which is more than enough to earn it a place in a wide variety of decks. In particular, it excels in aggressive monocolour builds, where it can power out your commander on turn one to get your momentum going.
9 Kozilek, The Great Distortion
A Control player’s dream, and an eldritch nightmare for anyone who just wants to play cards and have fun, Kozilek’s Oath of the Gatewatch incarnation makes a welcome return in Commander Masters. When you cast him and, crucially, not when he enters the battlefield, Kozilek draws you a full hand of cards, and turns those cards into zero-mana Counterspells for cards that match their cost.
This makes dealing with Kozilek incredibly difficult for your opponents, which is a shame, given that his 12/12 menace body can easily erase a player from existence in just a couple of combat steps. He may not be the most powerful Eldrazi titan, but Kozilek is more than capable of carrying a game by himself if you can pay his steep mana cost.
8 Sol Ring
The unofficial mascot of the Commander format, Sol Ring has been reprinted into oblivion over the years, including a range of thematic variants in The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth. It’s a good thing, too, since it’s a must-include in the vast majority of Commander decks due to its incredible mana ramp capabilities.
Playing a turn one Sol Ring in Commander is akin to kindling a campfire with gasoline: you’re going to get results much, much faster if you do. The mana advantage it gives you can be put towards more mana rocks, such as Mind Stone, or just powerful threats two turns ahead of your opponents. Though Commander is typically a slower format than most, an early Sol Ring can easily snowball into a quick victory.
7 Lightning Greaves
Since many decks require their commanders to be in play to function properly, protecting your commander is a key priority for most builds in the format. That’s where Lightning Greaves come in, providing a sheltering shroud to your creature of choice for just two mana, with a zero mana equip cost.
This is the best rate you’ll find for this type of effect, and it even throws in haste as an added bonus. You won’t want to rush your precious commander into combat with this effect, but you can make use of its activated abilities immediately, which is a game-changer for certain decks. Not every colour gets reliable access to haste and shroud, which makes Lightning Greaves both powerful and rare.
6 Medallion Cycle
In a cheeky five-for-one special, we’re spotlighting all of the reprinted Medallion cards here. Each functions the same: they’re all two mana artifacts which reduce the cost of spells you cast of a specific colour by one generic mana.
On the surface, these look like more restrictive mana rocks, but when you consider the fact that their discount can apply to multiple cards per turn, they become much more attractive. Particularly in decks that aim to chain together lots of cheap spells in a turn, this static discount effect can be abused to effectively generate upwards of three mana a turn, putting each Medallion on par with the likes of Thran Dynamo or Mana Vault.
5 Idol Of Oblivion
Token decks, and go-wide strategies in general, face a bit of a feast-or-famine problem in Commander: and no, we don’t mean the Sword. When they’ve assembled big boards and are swinging for the fences, they feel unstoppable, but a single board wipe can undo all of their progress in one fell swoop. And in Commander, board wipes aren’t exactly rare.
To prepare for this scenario, token decks need reliable sources of card advantage, and Idol of Oblivion is one of the best options out there. For just two mana, it can consistently draw you an extra card every turn, and it can even become a 10/10 token itself later on if you desperately need a finisher.
4 The Immortal Sun
Like a gourmet burger, The Immortal Sun’s high cost may put you off, but when it arrives, stacked higher than you ever expected, it’ll be more than worth it. The toppings of choice here are four separate abilities, three of which are universally useful: extra card draw, cost reduction, and a board-wide Anthem effect.
The last ability is largely just flavour text, establishing the Sun as a key artifact in Nicol Bolas’ spark-stealing master plan, but it can have fringe applications in some games, particularly if you come up against a Superfriends deck. Six mana is a lot to pay, but The Immortal Sun earns its keep, bringing the heat to your opponents on multiple axes at once.
3 Hammer Of Nazahn
Equipment cards have a bit of a bad reputation in Magic, owing to their oft-restrictive price tags when you consider their mana costs and equip costs together. Hammer of Nazahn lets you circumvent this issue, granting one free equip to every Equipment you drop while it’s in play.
This includes the Hammer itself, which grants indestructible, making it a great way to protect your commander from harm. It also speeds up some of the Equipment cards that have their costs backloaded in their equip costs, such as Colossus Hammer and Argentum Armor. Similar effects exist elsewhere, but for redundancy, and for a colourless option any deck can play, Hammer of Nazahn hits the nail on the head.
2 Ulamog, The Ceaseless Hunger
Woefully undervalued by an impossibly jaded Magic community upon release, the second coming of Ulamog turned out to be earth-shattering, pairing up with Aetherworks Marvel to terrorise Standard once Kaladesh hit the format. The latter was eventually banned, but the genie was out of the bottle on Ulamog, both in Standard and in formats beyond.
Commander is a natural home for our famished friend, since you can easily ramp up to ten generic mana with a basic suite of mana rocks. Once you do, his targeted exile effect can get rid of any problems in play, even lands, and his attack trigger can get rid of your opponents, in just a few short turns.
1 Ashnod's Altar
Arguably the best combo enabler in the entire Commander format, the fact that Ashnod’s Altar has never been banned is a minor miracle. Not only is it a free, instant-speed sacrifice outlet, which is powerful by itself without any additional reward, but it also provides two colourless mana per sacrifice, opening the gates to Shenanigan City.
There are innumerable ways to create infinite loops with Ashnod’s Altar, many of which only require one other card to function, but beyond that it’s also just an incredible tool in ‘fair’ Aristocrats or Graveyard-Matters decks. As long as there are creatures that do things when they die, Ashnod’s Altar will stand firm in the Commander format.