Art: Dockside Extortionist
by Forrest Imel
This list serves as a great resource for new players to gain some familiarity with cards they may be seeing frequently!
Commander staples are cards in every color that are just universally good and played in most decks that can play them todays list focuses on very common white spells and permanents you will encounter throughout your EDH journey! Please note that this list is definitely meta / playgroup dependent although these cards are played heavily this list may not be totally accurate to your EDH environment!
Red is a color is Magic that represents cheap costs, destruction and Chaos. Red does all of these things very well, just like in the last article when we covered white, Red is a great supporting color but no the strongest on its own. The cards we are going over today to chaotic things that change the game and the board as well as help you gain some advantage without further adieu lets get into it!
10. Vandalblast
Vandalblast is a great card that in nearly every game can hit a bunch of artifacts. Being able to cast this in a pinch with a single target is great but it shines when you can spend the 5 and overload and just blow up all of your opponents artifacts. This card is great against Daretti, Scrap Savant
or really any artifact deck or commander. Overall Vandalblast is an efficient to cast great hate spell for red and can have a devasting effect on any deck that wants to cast artifacts!
9. Impact Tremors
Impact Tremors is a an absolutely amazing card in commander for only 2 mana you can deal 1 damage to each opponent every time a creature enters, with commanders like Purphoros, God of the Forge
and Krenko, Mob Boss
we can deal huge amounts of damage with Impact Tremors on the battlefield. Overall Impact Tremors is a great enchantment that can come down super early and have a huge impact all game!
8.Anger
Anger is the red Concordant Crossroads
well kind of, Anger is a great 4 mana creature that has an amazing effect when it dies giving all of your creatures haste. This card is great in really any red deck whether you are discarding it to a Faithless Looting
or putting it on the battlefield and letting it die Anger is a just a great card. The biggest weakness of Anger is any kind of graveyard hate basically invalidates it. Overall Anger is a great card for any aggressive strategies!
7. Zealous Conscripts
Zealous Conscripts is a great card that allows you to steal one of your opponents permanent for a turn. The best application for it is stealing attack trigger permanents like Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
or an infect game ender like Blightsteel Colossus
. While creatures are great targets since you can steal any permanent for one turn the possibilities are pretty much endless steal an opponents Mirari's Wake
for some double mana and a buff or an opponents Planar Bridge
to grab a permanent of your own. Another great thing about Zealous Conscripts is that you also untap the stolen permanent. Overall Zealous Conscripts is a great card that can really be a game-changer!
6. Faithless Looting
Faithless Looting is an absolutely amazing draw spell for red, not only is it a discard outlet but you can also cast it for its flashback cost and do it again. This card is great with cards / commanders that care about discarding such as Feldon of the Third Path
or Daretti, Scrap Savant. Faithless Looting is not a draw spell that you would put into every red deck but is a great spell for decks that want to discard / have cards in there graveyard! Overall Faithless Looting is a great draw spell with nothing but upside in the right deck
5.Chaos Warp
Chaos Warp is a very cool and interesting card letting you exchange any permanent for whatever you shuffle to the top of your deck. It is a great piece of removal as needed and can even be used to target yourself if you need a switch up or to get rid of a permanent you want to protect. Chaos Warp feels very much like a red card adding a bit of chaos and randomness to what you or an opponent gets. Sometimes you can exchange a huge creature for a land and sometimes a land for a huge creature this card is just a ton of fun and great in so many red decks!
4. Gamble
Now this is a red card, a cheap efficient one mana tutor with a twist randomly having an opponent choose a card to discard, this card is great with 7 in hand since there is overall a low percentage that the card you wanted gets discarded but it absolutely still can happen. Gamble is a great tutor for red and sometimes doesn’t even have a downside in a deck that cares about putting stuff into the graveyard or discarding!
3. Jeska’s Will
Jeska’s Will is a great card that even without having your commander out still can be great, but when combined you get three new cards to cast and a bunch of mana! If you control your commander and can target an opponent with 7 cards in hand, you can get three new cards to cast and get 7 red mana to do so. Jeska’s Will is just an amazing card and works well with commanders like Faldorn, Dread Wolf Herald
and Jaheira, Friend of the Forest
with Passionate Archaeologist
. Overall Jeska’s Will has very few situations where it is a dead card or not optimal to cast just an amazing card!
2.Blasphemous Act
Wow this board wipe is good, Blasphemous Act is a high cost board wipe that deals 13 damage to each creature but has the great ability to reduce its cost for each creature on the field. In a four person commander game it is extremely easy to cast this card for only 1 mana and completely wipe the board. Now this is not the most powerful board wipe since it does not kill indestructible creatures but this can be a great way to reset the game at any time. Just a great card for pretty much any red deck and is played in pretty much all of them, I cant think of many reasons you wouldn’t want to run it!
1. Dockside Extortionist
Normal EDH or CEDH this card is great, while it cares about what artifacts and enchantments your opponents have since it is in red there are a ton of ways to bounce Dockside back to your end and continue to gain the triggers and keep getting mana. Getting more Mana is never a bad thing and being able to return dockside and keep getting triggers is awesome since he can produce a bunch of treasure he is also great in red artifact decks as well. Overall Dockside is one of the most played red cards for a great reason it is efficient easy to cast and can give a big advantage pretty early!
Thanks for Reading to the end!