Elementals in Commander

Elementals were first introduced in Alpha, the very first set of Magic.

True to early Magic, they focused primarily on being representations of real-world mythology over being tied to the mechanics of their appropriate colors, leading to two pairings of the four elements entirely within two colors. Air and water were while earth and fire were .

These early Elementals featured very few abilities or mechanics, much like many of Magic's early creatures.

As further sets were released, Elementals were printed in alignment with colors of mana over the four elements, incorporating other manifestations and specific representations of their color. These Magic-specific Elementals often reflect their core color or colors in mechanics, ranging in power and toughness wildly. Many are quite expensive but have synergy with other Elementals or lands in order to make them more accessible.

Modern Elementals can feature either as a standalone creature type separate from the race-class dualism most creatures possess or as a modifier to another creature type such as Sorcerer or Shaman or Knight. Therefore, they often have minor synergies with such creature types due to having slight overlap with them.

Making More

Elementals are readily accessible both as spells to cast as well as tokens to produce. Effects allow you to create Elementals of varying power and toughness, sometimes with keywords such as haste or trample.

These Elemental-creation methods tend to align with strategies already core to the color they're a part of, with creating them as a result of casting noncreature spells while triggers from landfall. They function great as blockers or extra attackers to supplement an already existing force, but don't have the token generation to act as a standalone force without external assistance.

Any Color

Elementals are a part of every color, including colorless! They certainly have their leaning toward and , but a fair number of Elementals appear across every color and combination. This means they can allow for a very flexible playstyle, in part due to their natural reliance on whatever color they're a part of, but also with their keywords and abilities.

There are a number of legendary Elementals with four or five colors, granting access to a great range of options for commanders. Elementals can therefore allow you to dip into colors and grab specific spells to sharpen your strategy or mitigate its weaknesses.

Active Agents

Many Elementals have methods of being direct threats, be it in numbers or high statlines. Some have access to keywords such as flying, haste, or trample to increase their aggression while others have abilities to strengthen themselves over time.

In addition to this, many Elementals can create mana, help you play additional lands, deal direct damage as a triggered ability, or otherwise contribute beyond participating in combat. Some even have an enters-the-battlefield (ETB) effect as well as the evoke keyword, allowing you to cast it for a cheaper cost than its mana value by sacrificing it immediately after it enters.

This turns some Elementals into what are effectively sorceries, letting you either benefit from playing an additional creature with an ETB or just get the effect out for cheap.

External Reliance

While many Elementals are strong in their own right, they lack the internal creature type synergies that many other typal decks can rely upon. Each Elemental tends toward having an effect to support a generic playstyle of its color, meaning they all contribute toward a cohesive end state, but they don't have many effects that benefit specifically other Elementals.

There are other creature types which can reasonably build toward stacking a series of effects that all benefit creatures of that type, such as Dragons or Elves or Phyrexians. Elementals don't have the same support to do that with the same consistency, meaning it's better to build for a strategy supported by Elementals rather than a strategy to support Elementals generically. Though there are certainly creatures that can do that.

Sunk Cost

Many Elementals are quite expensive, particularly those that require multiple specifically colored mana as part of their cost. This adds up quickly to restrict which Elementals you can play in a turn, even if you have enough lands, depending on what colors of mana you have access to. Even token generation relies on consistent casting of other, non-Elemental spells.

This can be mitigated by any amount of colored mana production, which most decks will be running anyway. Alternatively, staggering Elemental castings turn by turn can work out for you depending on how aggressive you're trying to be, given you're not missing much by taking your time. Elementals don't stack upon one another as much as other creature types, meaning you won't be punished for patience.

Ashling, the Limitless

Ashling, the Limitless is a 2/3 which grants all Elemental spells in your hand evoke . It also has you create a token of any nontoken Elemental you sacrifice with haste that is sacrificed at the beginning of your next end step unless you pay .

This ability triggers off of evoke activations, meaning any of your powerful Elemental ETB can be triggered twice for only . It also allows you to rush down an opening for cheap, casting one or more Elementals for and granting their token haste until end of turn. Even if you can't afford the on your end step, this can allow you to capitalize on a board state you otherwise would miss.

Horde of Notions

Horde of Notions is a 5/5 with vigilance, trample, and haste. You can pay to play an Elemental from your graveyard without paying its mana cost.

This is a great means of graveyard reclamation for Elementals, given how they tend toward being quite expensive. So long as you have varied mana production this will be less taxing than a large skew toward one specific color, particularly when paired with something like Morophon, the Boundless. Assuming you have the mana, you can do this repeatedly in a turn or save it to gain the benefits of ETB when most appropriate.

Omnath, Locus of the Roil

Omnath, Locus of the Roil is a 3/3 with an ETB to deal damage to any target equal to the number of Elementals you control. It also has a landfall effect to put a +1/+1 counter on an Elemental you control each time a land you control enters. Each time this triggers, you also draw a card if you control eight or more lands.

Once you start building up your number of Elementals, this ETB can be an incredibly heavy hitter. It can crack tough blockers, take a chunk out of an opponent's life, or just remove a high-value utility creature. This can be doubled or otherwise repeated via graveyard retrieval or just by casting Omnath again from the command zone, potentially after you've built up more Elementals. Omnath's landfall effect helps with scaling, at worst bring it up to a 4/4 and beyond, but provides late-game value by allowing you to draw a card after playing a land.

This offsets the "dead draw" a land can function as once your mana production is up and running.

Omnath, Locus of Rage

Omnath, Locus of Rage is a 5/5 with a landfall effect to create a 5/5 Elemental. Whenever it or another Elemental you control dies, it deals 3 damage to any target.

This incarnation of Omnath is incredibly expensive, meaning the landfall effect won't be very impactful unless you can cheat it out early. If you can, though, a 5/5 each turn in the mid-game is a great effect to rely upon. However, Omnath shines when you have the ability to create many smaller Elementals that you either sacrifice or purposely have die in combat, given Omnath's damage effect is a flat 3 damage independent of the dead Elemental. This also triggers off of evoking Elementals, allowing you to cast them, gain their ETB, then immediately sacrifice them and deal 3 damage.

Omnath, Locus of Creation

Omnath, Locus of Creation is a 4/4 with an ETB to draw a card. It has a multi-tiered landfall effect triggering off of how many lands you play in a turn. The first trigger gains 4 life, the second adds , and the third deals 4 damage to each opponent and each planeswalker you don't control.

This Omnath's ideal is a heavy landfall deck, allowing you to consistently play exactly three lands in a turn to gain 4 life, , and deal a ping of damage across the board. However, it can still provide you card draw if you utilize Elemental ETB repeating and life gain without any landfall synergy. It can offset mana costs of your more expensive Elementals with any amount of support to play more than one land per turn, and if you're ambitious you can get off consistent pings before you swing.

Bello, Bard of the Brambles

Bello, Bard of the Brambles is a 3/3 Raccoon Bard that, on your turn, converts all of your non-Equipment artifacts and non-Aura enchantments with mana value 4 or greater into a 4/4 Elemental with indestructible, haste, and which draws you a card whenever it deals combat damage to a player.

Bello provides you the ability to focus on artifacts and enchantments independent of your focus on Elementals. In an Elementals typal deck, you'll still be relying on key noncreature permanents that you can benefit from Bello's ability and has access to a good amount of Elementals. Haste and indestructible give you the safety to use these noncreature permanents for active aggression without consequence while card draw from dealing damage provides an incentive to keep swinging.

Omnath, Locus of All

Omnath, Locus of All is a 4/4 which causes any of your unspent mana to instead become . Each turn, you look at the top card of your library and may reveal the card if it has three or more colored mana symbols in its mana cost, put it in your hand, and gain three mana of any combination of its colors. If you don't reveal it, put it in your hand.

The ability to "store" your mana as eases the burden your other Elementals will put on your mana production. But free card draw each turn will also mean your hand will be incredibly well-stocked so long as you possess Omnath. Putting aside that if it's a three-or-more colored Elemental you get additional mana to help cast it, you still get to add a card from the top of your library to your hand each turn. Omnath doubles your standard draw while simultaneously giving access to more mana.

This Omnath also features Phyrexian black mana in its cost, allowing you to either pay or 2 life. This means that, outside of being at very low life, Omnath will effectively always be cheaper.

Animar, Soul of Elements

Animar, Soul of Elements is a 1/1 with protection from and from . Whenever you cast a creature spell, put a +1/+1 counter on it. Creature spells you cast cost less to cast for each +1/+1 counter on Animar.

Animar wants to be cast early and sit on the board, slowly growing more powerful while making your Elementals cheaper. Its protections keep it safe from two of the most removal-oriented colors while its colors of provide plenty of options for cheap creature spells. This cascades into itself by casting more creatures allowing you to cast more creatures while growing Animar stronger, meaning all you have to worry about is having enough creatures to cast and keeping Animar on the board.

Mass of Mysteries

Mass of Mysteries is a 5/5 with first strike, vigilance, and trample that grants myriad to another Elemental you control until end of turn each combat. When a creature with myriad attacks an opponent, you may create a copy of that creature tapped and attacking each other player or a planeswalker they control, then exile those tokens at the end of combat.

Mass of Mysteries is itself a power Elemental, but assigning myriad to your other Elementals allows you to do things like stack ETB effects. Alternatively, you can just get the value of having high-power creatures attacking every opponent at once. In either case, Mass of Mysteries allows you to be more aggressive and even recursive with your already set-up Elementals.

Sunderflock

Sunderflock is a 5/5 with flying that costs less to cast, where X is the greatest mana value among Elementals you control. It also has an ETB where, if you cast it, return all non-Elemental creatures to their owners' hands.

Sunderflock's mana cost is offset by its ability to pair with another expensive Elemental, making it quite reasonably-priced given the standard curve of the creature type. While its ETB precludes it from copy-shenanigans, it's an effective board wipe that's particularly effective against token swarms, counter masses, and expensive creature types such as Eldrazi. Its best use-case is once you already have access to other Elementals to seize the advantage it creates, but that doesn't always have to be offensive.

If you have non-Elemental support creatures or those with ETBs, Sunderflock can let you get them out again.

Smokebraider

Smokebraider is a 1/1 that can tap to add two mana in any combination of colors which can only be spent to cast Elemental spells or activate the abilities of Elementals.

This is tailor-made to ease the pain that Elemental mana costs bring, paying for itself in two activations while being useful in any combination of colors. It particularly adds value to shore up a mana color you're lacking in from lands, alongside mana artifacts.

Panharmonicon

Panharmonicon triggers your artifact and creatures' ETBs an additional time.

Elementals have quite a few ETBs, some of which only produce value from their ETBs in the case of Elementals you evoke. This doubles your value of those creatures, which can be pushed to even greater extremes when copies and tokens and myriad are taken into account.

Ashnod's Altar

Ashnod's Altar allows you to sacrifice a creature to add two colorless mana.

Your Elementals are expensive, though you'll be able to create enough tokens or low-impact creatures that sacrificing them won't be a concern. Being able to remove a low-costed Elemental who you already got the benefit of an ETB from opens the door to fasting casting of larger creatures. Even your more mid-range Elementals might be worth sacrificing if you can get out a high-impact Elemental early.

Zendikar's Roil

Zendikar's Roil has a landfall effect to create a 2/2 Elemental each time a land ETB under your control.

This provides you consistent Elementals in a way that synergizes with Elemental playstyles, given how much Elementals lend themselves towards landfall. These Elementals can be used as sacrifice fodder, blockers, or to increase the effects of cards like Omnath, Locus of the Roil.

Exploration

Exploration allows you to play an additional land each turn.

This not only has the direct benefit of synergizing with landfall decks, but it also allows you expedite how quickly your more expensive Elementals. Your largest gate to Exploration's value will be how many lands you have in-hand, though even if it only has an impact in an early game that's fine. This early ramp opens the door to later creature casting, giving you the ability to field your creatures early.

Ashling's Command

Ashling's Command allows you to choose two of the following:

• Create a token that's a copy of an Elemental you control. This doubles its ETB, provides a high-power creature, or mimics a powerful effect.
• Target player draws two cards. Card draw is rarely a bad thing.
• Ashling's Command deals 2 damage to each creature target player controls. This clears out most tokens and can allow you to finish-off mid-range creatures with an additional damaging spell or effect.
• Target player creates two Treasure tokens. One of your largest bottlenecks for Elemental casting is mana, where this helps overcome that.

Cultivate

Cultivate searches your library for up to two basic land cards, reveals them, then puts one on the battlefield tapped and the other in your hand.

This is a great two-turn set-up for playing lands, allowing you to get more landfall triggers or just more mana. Alternatively, if you didn't play a land that turn you can play two in a turn and set yourself up to get back on the mana curve. And searching your deck to remove cards from it allows you to thin your deck, increasing the likelihood of drawing what you need.

Elemental Spectacle

Elemental Spectacle creates a number of 5/5 Elementals equal to the number of colors among permanents you control, then you gain life equal to the number of creatures you control.

Given how multicolored Elementals tend to be, it's entirely reasonable to have permanents hitting each color to create five 5/5 Elementals alongside gaining at least five life. Vivid abilities allow you to really lean into the color diaspora Elementals find themselves in, benefiting from going wide when many other archetypes are punished. The life gain will help sustain you a bit, but is most useful only if you have a series of other token Elementals created.

Nissa, Who Shakes the World

Nissa, Who Shakes the World begins at 5 loyalty counters and passively grants an additional each time you tap a Forest for mana. Its loyalty abilities are:

• +1. Put three +1/+1 counters on up to one target noncreature land you control, untap it, and it becomes a 0/0 Elemental with vigilance and haste. This gives you the opportunity to have decently-powerful Elementals which are also lands, protecting them from any effects or abilities that target "nonland permanents." At a baseline 3/3 with Vigilance, they can very easily be improved through other effects to act as a devastating wall.
• -8. You get an emblem that makes your lands indestructible, then search your library for any number of Forest cards and put them on the battlefield tapped. This is worth the loss of Nissa by activating at 8 loyalty counters, given you likely have at least three indestructible 3/3 Elemental lands with vigilance. If you have the option to push Nissa past 8 loyalty counters to continue converting more lands to Elementals that's great work, but that shouldn't be your priority given there are other ways to convert lands into creatures such as earthbending.

Wrenn and Realmbreaker

Wrenn and Realmbreaker begins at 4 loyalty counters and passively gives all of your lands the ability to tap for one mana of any color. Its loyalty abilities are:

• +1. Up to one target land you control becomes a 3/3 Elemental with vigilance, hexproof, and haste until your next turn. This is a more short-term and powerful version of Nissa's +1, allowing you to pursue openings rather than forming a wall over time.
• -2. Mill three cards, where you may put a permanent card from among the milled cards into your hand. This is a good way to thin your deck a bit and get a card you need into your hand, particularly if you have any way to use those other milled cards in your graveyard.
• -7. You get an emblem that lets you play lands and cast permanent spells from your graveyard. Because the emblem persists past Wrenn and Realmbreaker, it's actually more efficient to activate this ability at 7 loyalty and recast it from your graveyard than to try and keep it on the field, allowing you to begin activating the -2 ability each turn without fear.

Flamekin Village

Flamekin Village enters tapped unless you reveal an Elemental card from your hand. It can also tap for to grant a creature haste.

You'll have access to a lot of Elementals and will likely have at least one in-hand, particularly if you draw Flamekin Village early. The ability to grant your Elementals haste can really help if you have any that have activated abilities, be it producing mana or anything else. It's great for securing value from a high-costed creature which might not survive until your following turn.

Raging Ravine

Raging Ravine enters tapped and allows you to spend to convert it into a 3/3 Elemental until end of turn that gains a +1/+1 counter each time it attacks.

Elementals need mana flexibility, so being able to produce or already supports two of the most-common Elemental colors. But because lands are so comparably difficult to remove to other permanent types, a building Elemental that gets stronger each time it attacks is a great thing to have in your back-pocket. If you have any ability to give it keywords or enhancements, it will snowball faster than your opponents will prepare around.

Elementals need setup in some capacity.

This might be via getting out token generators and then casting a lot of noncreature spells to create many different tokens. It might be amassing large amounts of mana to cast one powerful Elemental each turn. It might be casting a weak Elemental early and allowing it to grow over the course of the game into a threat.

Either way, your main priority in the early and mid-game is to survive while setting up. This means investing in cheap protection enchantments, token blockers, and counters that can allow you to sustain until you're able to be a threat. Early-game aggression can work, but that isn't a priority unless you can shut down an opponent's gameplan.

Elementals lean into whatever color they're based in, allowing you to have landfall Elemental decks or spellslinging Elemental decks without ever compromising the typal nature of your deck. This allows you the flexibility to do another strategy to win, such as direct damage or overrunning opponents with tokens.

ETB activations via a combination of Ashling, the Limitless, Omnath, Locus of the Roil, and Mass of Mysteries allows you to repeatedly ping damage on an opponent, scaled to how many Elementals you control. These can be increased in how many times they activate via Yarok, the Desecrated and Panharmonicon, meaning you can deal incredible damage without a high-number of Elementals.

But even a minor amount of token generation would scale that damage up even higher.