Finding your first Commander can be difficult. If you’re like me, you might try to have a Commander for every card type or color combination. Today we’re talking about the best Simic Commanders of all time.
Notably, this only applies to Commanders that are exclusively a Simic color identity, even after including partners. This means that Thrasios, Triton Hero, as good as he is, is left out because his partner expands the color identity of your Commander deck.
Let’s take a look!
Galadriel of Lothlorien
- Mana value: 1GU
- Rarity: Rare
- MTG Set: Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth
- Statistics: 3/3
- Card Text: When the Ring tempts you, and you chose a creature other than Galadriel of Lothlorien as the Ring-bearer, scry 3. When you scry, you may reveal the top card of your library. When a land is revealed this way, put it onto the battlefield tapped.
This is the oddest choice on the list. Galadriel of Lothlorien isn’t generally considered a particularly strong or popular commander. If you want to play one of the strongest characters from Lord of the Rings, Galadriel’s other cards are more popular options. However, I’m willing to bet that this is the strongest, and that opinion is based on personal experience.
Much like a certain bird you’ll find on this list, Galadriel can drop all of your lands in just one turn. All you need is a landfall card that creates creatures and a scry engine that triggers when a creature enters. A classic example of this three-card combo uses Scute swarm And Elrond, Lord of Rivendell. Once it’s in play, you can theoretically play any land in your deck as early as turn three.
This powerful combo works by scrying a land onto your deck that puts Galadriel of Lothlorien onto the battlefield. Once the land enters the battlefield, Landfall triggers, creating a creature token with Scute Swarm. This in turn triggers Elron, causing you to scry and potentially find another land.
Unfortunately, this combination is far from guaranteed, as a single Scry trigger has only so much effect. Still, it can work. In many games, Galadriel will be a killing machine by turn four. With a healthy dose of tutors, protection, and additional enablers, this deck can be disturbingly consistent.
Tatyova, Benthic Druid
- Mana value: 3GU
- Rarity: Uncommon
- MTG Set: Dominaria, Modern Horizons 3 Commander, Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander, Commander Masters, Dominaria Remastered
- Statistics: 3/3
- Card Text: Landing – Whenever a land under your control enters the battlefield, you gain a life and draw a card.
When MTG players are asked to think of a broken Simic Commander, Tatyova, Benthic Druid probably regularly comes to mind. This card has been terrorizing Commander tables for years and is fairly accessible since it’s only an Uncommon.
Tatyova’s landfall trigger is probably more impressive than it looks. The weakness to ramping is that if you only draw your ramp and not your payoff, you’ll run out of things to do. Tatyova ensures that your ramp is also converted into card advantage, meaning you’ll never run out of things to do. You can do as many fetch lands and land ramps as you want without worrying about drawing the wrong half of your deck. Instead, you just keep drawing cards.
This unstoppable card machine makes Tatyova, like many of the Commanders on this list, a kill-on-sight player. You don’t want the Tatyova player to start making 4-5 land drops per turn and drawing that many cards. Not only did they put in five extra mana, but they almost certainly have a nasty card making your life difficult.
Hakbal of the Surging Soul
- Mana value: 2GU
- Rarity: Mythically Rare
- MTG Set: Commander of the Lost Caverns of Ixalan
- Statistics: 3/3
- Card Text: At the beginning of combat on your turn, each Merfolkk creature you control explores. Whenever Hakbal of the Surging Soul attacks, you may put a land card from your hand onto the battlefield. If you don’t, draw a card.
Hakbal of the Surging Soul is the second most popular Simic commander on EDHREC, just behind our #1 pick, commonly known as a threat in the Commander format. Notably, Hakbal is a front-line commander from a pre-constructed Lost Caverns of Ixalan deck, making building a deck around this commander extremely easy.
Hakbal encourages you to play Merfolk, which is one reason alone why this Commander is probably so popular. Otherwise, this card gives you everything you need. A combination of polishing your board, drawing cards, and ramping means this card can do everything you need to win a game of Commander.
Nadu, winged wisdom
- Mana value: 1GU
- Rarity: Rare
- MTG Set: Modern Horizons 3
- Statistics: 3/4
- Card Text: Flying, creatures you control have “Whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or ability, reveal the top card of your library. If it’s a land card, put it onto the battlefield. Otherwise, put it into your hand. This ability only triggers twice per turn.”
In terms of play patterns, Nadu, Winged Wisdom is not a great choice for a casual Commander. This card encourages long rounds that often end in non-deterministic win attempts. This slows down the game tremendously and forces your opponents to watch you play extended solitaire rounds that, for the most part, don’t really go anywhere.
While the gameplay experience isn’t something we’d recommend to players trying to put together a simple Commander deck, it’s a very strong cEDH commander. Even if you don’t like the type of gameplay Nadu, Winged Wisdom tries to create, it’s undeniably one of the strongest Simic commanders out there.
Combine this with Shuko or Lightning Greaves and Springheart Nantuko or Scute Swarm, and you can generally create an endless army of creature tokens while flipping your entire deck. Ultimately, a lot fewer people play Nadu, Winged Wisdom than our top pick, and both are disgustingly strong kill-sight commanders, so we put Nadu at number two, but it could really be interchangeable.
Kinnan, Bonder prodigy
- Mana value: GU
- Rarity: Mythically Rare
- MTG Set: Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths
- Statistics: 2/2
- Card Text: Whenever you tap a nonland permanent for mana, add one mana of any type that permanent produced. (5GU): Look at the top five cards of your library. You may put a nonhuman creature card from them onto the battlefield. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.
Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy is an absolute menace in cEDH and by far the best and most popular Simic Commander of all time. This card levels up absurdly quickly and threatens to cast some of the nastiest spells in the game after just a few turns.
Even if you don’t have any nasty spells in your hand, Kinnan can help you find them, as long as they’re non-Human creatures. Fortunately, many nasty creatures are non-Human. Think of cards like Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger, and Craterhoof Behemoth. That’s the kind of nastiness you should expect when you see someone come to your table with Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy. This is an instant kill commander, and one that your entire table needs to keep under control.
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