Time to Suit Up
Equipment has a bigger role to play in Commander than in almost any other format of Magic. When you think about it, that makes a lot of sense - every deck is guaranteed to have at least one creature in the form of their commander, and board presence is so important in a multiplayer format where you face threats on multiple sides.
Our format even has a unique way to win that rewards getting swole and beating down - commander damage offers a massive discount of 20 to the amount of damage needed for the kill. 'Voltron' commanders can benefit hugely from getting properly kitted out with some serious equipment, particularly if it gives them some protection, evasion or major stat boosts for combat.
Our list this week isn't just a list of the best gear for the Voltron playstyle though. These are our picks for the absolute best all-round equipment in the format, whether that be for your huge combat-focused commander, to boost the creatures in your 99, or to offer some extra utility that your deck needs. So check out our top 10, and let's find out which is the best of that sweet sweet gear for you to get your hands on.
Honorable Mention - Basilisk Collar
Falling just short of the top ten because of its niche usefulness, Basilisk Collar still had to make our list because of the sheer fun – and fury – it generates.
Adding deathtouch and lifelink to most creatures is a useful effect, particularly on large, trampling creatures. Because of the interaction between deathtouch and trample, the trampling creature will only have to assign a single point of damage to its blocker, allowing all of the rest to trample over. So no matter the size of the blocker, your creature is guaranteed to do almost its full damage to your opponent’s face.
That’s a cute interaction, but what gives this card its real playability is its unholy alliance with ‘ping’ abilities. Any creature wearing a Basilisk Collar that can direct targeted damage at another creature – let’s say a Cunning Sparkmage – will instead of doing a single point of damage just outright kill that creature. Oh, and gain a point of life into the bargain just to rub more salt into the wound. And be in no doubt that there will be a lot of salt. Basilisk Collar is as much hated as it is loved because of its ability to machine gun down multiple targets in combination with ping, particularly in decks that can use cards like the new Kelpie Guide to untap pingers and increase their rate of fire. Use irresponsibly.
10. Blackblade Reforged
Number 10 on our list doesn’t offer any fancy keywords or abilities, but boy does it know how to go big.
Blackblade Reforged is a very simple card at its core, an equipment that can make a single creature enormous if you have a good number of lands in play. That’s a very strong offering, but there’s a cap on its usefulness since it doesn’t offer any protection, utility or (crucially) ability to overcome chump blockers like some of the other equipment later in our list. With that said, it does what it does very well, and is particularly at home in EDH for two key reasons.
Firstly, EDH is a naturally ramp-heavy format. and a lot slower than formats like Modern where games are often over long before a land-count-matters card like this has chance to shine. Secondly, and even more importantly, Blackblade Reforged’s main downside – its absurd equip cost on nonlegendary creatures – is naturally negated in EDH because you will always have access to your commander. This makes it an excellent pairing with commanders that want to suit up and swing personally, particularly ones that can get round chump blockers with natural flying or trample.
9. Commander's Plate
The newcomer in our top 10, Commander’s plate shares some things in common with Blackblade Reforged in that it is very much focused on equipping and growing your commander directly rather than other supporting creatures in the deck. The equip cost on a Commander is exactly the same, and the +3/+3 is nice to have, but of course pales in comparison to the huge boosts that Blackblade Reforged can offer.
The reason this card pips the Blackblade on our list is because of the incredibly useful protection that Commander’s Plate offers. Of course, if your commander is five colour, that ability does nothing and you will never run this. But in a deck headed by a mono colored commander that wants to swing in – and even some that don’t but just want to stay in play reliabily – this equipment makes an excellent case for inclusion. There will be games where your commander has protection from two or even all three of your opponent’s entire decks, making it untargetable by all their spells and unblockable unless they can muster artifact creatures. And best of all, for Eldrazi decks led by colorless commanders like Kozilek, they will always have protection from every colored creature and spell that could hope to answer them.
8. Shadowspear
Shadowspear is a more subtle, more flexible version of another much-loved equipment in Commander, Loxodon Warhammer. We think this newer alternative is going to be better in most games. While it offers less raw power than the Wahammer, it still provides that all-important trample and lifelink while being far cheaper to play and a little cheaper to equip, giving it a clear edge in most games. Its activated ability is also useful more often than you might expect, piercing through the most troublesome protections in the game, and doing so against all your opponents permanents for a tiny cost. It’s so cheap there will be situations in which you can reasonably hold open the single mana in anticipation of another player using a wrath effect to remove indestructability from opposing threats in response.
Attached to any big vanilla creature, Shadowspear makes your threat impossible to chump effectively while generating life swings that can be really significant even on the scale of commander life totals. This equipment is particularly good in the hands (or tentacles) of huge Eldrazi that usually lack trample but have massive power and toughness that can be put to much better use with Shadowspear.
7. Whispersilk Cloak
The first equipment in our main list to offer no power/toughness enhancement whatsoever, Whispersilk Cloak instead makes the equipped creature incredibly difficult to interact with. Shroud and unblockable combine to make a creature that can only really be answered with a board wipe effect or by first removing the cloak itself, making it an excellent choice for decks with a commander or set of creatures that want to be sure they can connect with an opponent.
Its best uses are likely to be for commanders like Gishath, Sun's Avatar that depend on reliably dealing combat damage for powerful triggered abilities.
Whispersilk Cloak is held back only by the fact that it has shroud instead of hexproof, which can matter when you want to target your creature with protective or enhancing spells or abilities but can’t. It does make the card at least a little more fair though, which is a mercy considering how frustrating it can be to deal with.
6. Helm of the Host
Expensive to cast and even more expensive to equip, Helm of the Host nevertheless packs enough power and explosive potential to justify its cost.
This equipment has a really well-designed and unique effect, allowing you to repeatedly make hasty permanent copies of the original equipped creature on each of your combat steps, getting round the legendary rule into the bargain. Note that although this is a combat phase trigger, the equipped creature doesn’t even have to attack, meaning you can use this on utility creatures that never need to go into harms way.
This card can generate exceptional value just by sitting in play for a few turns, and is obviously exponentially better the more expensive and powerful the equipped creature is. Best of all, there are some pretty ridiculous infinite combos to be had, many of which are enabled because the equipped creature has haste and escapes the legend rule. The easiest of these is probably with Aurelia the Warleader which generates infinite combat steps and infinite hasty Aurelias. You can make this pretty achievable too by making Aurelia your commander, giving you access to half of the combo every game.
If you’re not looking for a two card commander combo, given that high equip cost, Helm of the Host will benefit more than any other equipment on our list from equipment-cost-reducing commanders like Syr Gwyn, Hero of Ashenvale or Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist to allow it to be moved around when the situation requires it or when the original target is removed.
5. Sword of the Animist
Every commander deck needs ramp, but there are so many non-green color combinations that struggle to produce it. Sword of the Animist for our money is the best equipment for handling that problem.
The attack trigger on this equipment makes it essentially an infinitely repeatable Rampant Growth, so long as you have one creature to throw into combat each turn. The creature doesn’t actually need to connect with the opponent to generate its value, but if it does you’re pushing damage while ramping and fixing at the same time, and what more could you want than that?
The sword even offers a minor boost to the equipped creatures stats, very handy for helping it to swing in even if doesn’t naturally line up well against your opponents’ blockers. Green decks will usually have better ways to ramp, but it’s a clear include for creature-focused decks that struggle to build their mana bases.
4. Sunforger
An equipment so powerful it can single-handedly take over the game, this is held back from our top three only because it is limited to decks that can produce Boros colours.
The base +4/+0 is already a very hefty damage boost, but Sunforger is all about that activated ability.
For RW (and the additional future cost of having to reattach Sunforger to in order to use it again) you get a repeatable tutor for any red or white instant in your deck costed at up to 4 mana that lets you instantly cast that card for free. That is some extraordinary value. Even given the total five mana cost to use and re-equip each time, the effect gives you unmatched access to any answer you need, from targeted removal to wraths.
Most obnoxiously of all, the activation itself is available at instant speed, meaning you can hold up any protection spell in your deck in order to save the Sunforger itself, or the rest of your board at the same time in the case of spells like Teferi’s Protection. Boros is lucky indeed to have access to an equipment as powerful as this.
3. Sword of Feast and Famine
The dual colour sword cycle offer some of the best equipment options in EDH, and we were excited to see a new entry in Modern Horizons 2 in the Sword of Hearth and Home. But there’s only one OG, and it’s Sword of Feast and Famine, the strongest of them all.
Like its brethren, Sword of Feast and Famine offers +2/+2 and two colour protections, including Black which has some of the best removal in the format and green which has its best blockers. Its combat damage ability to force the damaged player to discard cards is useful too, and can particularly set back decks that struggle for card draw.
Its other ability though is clearly what makes this sword an all-star, untapping every land you control and potentially generating huge amounts of additional mana every time you can successfully damage an opponent. In its best games, a Sword of Feast and Famine reliably connecting turn after turn can put you so far ahead it can be extremely difficult for your opponents to recover, particularly if you have access to bounce lands that untap for two mana each, or god forbid something like a Gaea’s Cradle or Cabal Coffers. A weapon not to be underestimated, and a prime target for removal whenever you see it on the other side of the table.
2. Skullclamp
If Sword of Feast and Famine is equipment’s king of mana advantage, Skullclamp is the king of card draw. A truly evil design that feeds on weak creatures to refuel your hand, Skullclamp is massively impactful if you can give it the token support it needs. Any deck that can generate a decent number of X/1 targets for the clamp will quickly have more cards than you’ll know what to do with, especially given its tiny casting and equip costs.
This is one of those frustrating one mana artifacts that demands very little mana investment but nevertheless represents so much card advantage in the right deck that it really demands removal. Put this in all of your token decks and you will never be disappointed, particularly in decks that get extra advantage from your own creatures dying. Teysa Karlov is particularly strong with Skullclamp, triggering not only the clamp itself an additional time whenever a creature dies, but also retriggering every other 'on death' trigger among permanents you control.
1. Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots
Our top spot is shared by two iconic pairs of footwear that are played in over a quarter of known Commander decks at the time of writing, making them the most played artifacts in EDH by far. That’s because they are exceptionally useful to so many creature-based decks, and even in decks that just want that bit of extra protection for their Commander.
They shine brightest in decks that can take advantage of the haste they offer as well as the protection, mostly decks that use Commanders with powerful abilities triggered by attacking. Etali, Primal Storm and Yenett, Cryptic Sovereign are great examples of Commanders who offer fantastic value when they get to attack, but won't do much good if you give your opponents an entire turn cycle to remove them. They and other commanders like them can usually be disrupted either by targeted or by a wrath effect cast while they have summoning sickness or by permanent sorcery speed answers to commanders like Darksteel Mutation. Either of these magical booties immediately eliminate targeted removal as an option while giving the hast needed trigger your commander’s combat ability for value before wraths become an option, at which point they’ve already done their job.
Which is best? That will depend on the deck. Lightning Greaves are stronger in most situations because of that exceptional 0 equip costs that allows you to move them around with impunity during your turn so that they are always protecting the most relevant creature. Swiftfoot Boots though will be stronger in decks like Feather, the Redeemed where you want to target your creatures, making shroud a serious problem. In any case, these cards are so powerful that many decks will run both just to have as much access to their effects as possible.
Jonathan Widnall
- Jon Widnall