My Top 10 Nonlegendary Angels for Commander
Angels are some of my favorite creatures in Magic. I’ve been collecting them since I first started playing back in 1995 and I continue to enjoy any visits to planes known for their presence and story significance. As one of white’s most iconic creature types, I’ve also played with them a lot in the Commander format, both in decks based around angels and in the 99 of other decks for support.
Many angels excel in combat through the use of flying, vigilance, and other abilities that allow them to play both offense and defense effectively. Others provide protection or other powerful and disruptive effects that can allow them to turn the tide of games in your favor. Some even do both. In this article, I’ll be showcasing some of my favorite angels and highlighting what they do best.
The reason that I’ve opted to not include legendary angels is that it would be all too easy to fill up the list with popular commanders such as Giada, Font of Hope or Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice. There is certainly no shortage of powerful legendary angel cards, but I definitely think that it’s more interesting to avoid listing a bunch of commanders. With that out of the way, we should get to the list!
Karmic Guide
For the uninitiated, this card seems pretty awkward. 5 mana to get a 2/2 with flying and protection from black that lets you reanimate a creature as an enters-the-battlefield (ETB) trigger and then you have to pay 5 more mana on your next upkeep if you want it to stick around? Why would anyone play this card? It’s only after you look at it more closely that you realize that this card is just ripe for abuse and shenanigans.
With all of the ways to flicker and reanimate creatures out there, you can easily reuse Karmic Guide’s ETB again and again. You’ll see this card as part of combo lines in various decks where its unique design allows you to use it again and again in concert with cards such as Saffi Eriksdotter or Reveillark. Of course, it’s definitely not the worst reanimate spell in white when played fairly either…
Blinding Angel
Combat is a mainstay in most casual Commander tables, which means that a card like this one can put in some serious work. Whether you spread attacks around politically or you use it to lock down an opponent who has an intimidating board state until you can deal with their creatures, this angel can go a long way towards helping you outlive your opponents by depriving them of the ability to attack in key situations.
You can even use cards like Duelist’s Heritage or Lizard Blades to give Blinding Angel double strike and take away multiple combat phases. While it doesn’t feel good to be on the receiving end of this type of punishment, it’s definitely pretty satisfying to dish it out. Considering white’s ability to restrict enemy combat, I’m honestly surprised that we haven’t seen this ability printed on other creatures over the years.
Maelstrom Archangel
This is a card that many Commander players would like to see as a legendary creature because they’d like to see 5-color angels. While I don’t personally think that deck archetype’s existence is a priority because there are very few angels outside of Mardu colors, I am a big fan of this card. As far as 5-color card designs go, this is one of my favorites because the ability is powerful but limited. It ultimately feels very fair.
So what are you casting when Maelstrom Archangel deals combat damage? Coalition Victory isn’t an option, so maybe we’ll just have to settle for casting Omniscience to make all of the other spells in our hand free. If that doesn’t sound particularly fun, you can always use her to just cast other angels and big creatures to continue to put the beat on your opponents in combat. After all, you have plenty of options in 5-color.
Restoration Angel
With flash and the ability to flicker another creature on ETB, this angel is always ready to protect another creature from targeted removal or other dangerous situations. This is both flavorful and powerful, exactly like a good angel should be. Much like the aforementioned Karmic Guide, this card can be played in a totally fair way or you can opt to break it as part of various combos with other cards.
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker can famously create infinite copies of Restoration Angel with haste, since you can use the ETB to flicker him and bring him back in untapped. You can also use Felidar Guardian to create a loop of infinite ETB triggers that can help you win the game with other cards as an outlet. Flash allows it to come in at unexpected times, making these combos less telegraphed than they might typically be.
Archangel of Thune
Life gain often feels underwhelming in Commander because most of the payoffs simply aren’t that great. Fortunately, this angel is an exception. If you’re gaining a lot of life, she’ll gladly buff up your entire team very fast and allow you to swing for lethal before you know it. It’s easy to see why future cards that added +1/+1 counters when you gain life tend to be restricted to putting a counter on a single creature at a time.
There are a lot of different ways to repeatedly gain life and put counters on your creatures. One of the easiest is using cards like Soul Warden to add counters when creatures enter the battlefield, but you can also just give your entire angel team lifelink using Lyra Dawnbringer if you’re playing a deck based around angels. You’ll get a counter for each angel that deals damage. Yikes.
Emeria Shepherd
On Zendikar, even the angels have landfall. Being able to return any nonland permanent to from the graveyard is very strong, especially if you have ways to trigger it multiple times per turn. In particular, fetchlands are an easy way to return something to your hand and something else to the battlefield. In the right deck, it’s easy to get tons of value out of this card. This is especially true if you add a second color such as green.
In comparison to a card like Reya Dawnbringer, Emeria Shepherd benefits from a cheaper mana cost, the ability to reanimate things that aren’t creatures, and the lack of waiting until your next upkeep to start bringing things back. It’s almost a shame that a plains version of Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth hasn’t been printed yet, but maybe we’ll see that someday since it won a Twitter poll that Gavin Verhey did a while back.
Angel of Destiny
Gaining a lot of life in Commander usually only goes so far. You can still lose to commander damage, a combo, or various alternate win conditions that don’t care about your life total. Angel of Destiny is here to try to give you a tangible payoff for life gain in casual Commander that doesn’t feel like an “I win” button, but still allows you to progress your gameplan and eliminate opponents.
In comparison to cards like Felidar Sovereign, this card’s conditions have been updated to always require you to have at least 15 more life than your starting life total and only allow you to eliminate one player at a time. This makes Angel of Destiny feel very safe for casual tables. I’ve enjoyed seeing this card in action with commanders such as Celestine, the Living Saint that provide other strong payoffs for life gain.
Serra’s Emissary
Be not afraid…of the card type of your choice. This card has quickly become one of my favorite curve-toppers in mono-white, because it’s so easy to cast it and just win the game by choosing creatures. If that’s not what you need, you can always choose something else. For decks that want to flood the board with creatures, this card can feel like a bargain at 7 mana.
While I’ve enjoyed this card in mono-white angels, I think that it would definitely also be an excellent inclusion to decks that include green. This gives you plenty of ramp to make sure that you can cast it early, while also giving you access to the underplayed Archon of Valor’s Reach as a card that works great in concert with Angel of Destiny. In mono-white, I have to settle for melding Brisela, Voice of Nightmares. I’ll take it.
Battle Angels of Tyr
12 damage per combat on a flying body that only costs 4 mana? Sign me up! While you definitely won’t consistently get the card draw, treasure, and life gain all at once, odds are that you’ll at least be able to get at least 2 of them regularly. It helps to look at it as a bonus rather than the sole reason to play the card. As far as aggro angels go, Battle Angels of Tyr can deal a ton of damage versus your mana investment.
White in Commander has come a long way since Herald of the Host, with this card being an eye-opening example of the current rate for creature that want to attack in a format where you start at 40 life. Tools like this are exactly the thing that white needs to stay relevant on the combat front. Of course, you can make Battle Angels of Tyr even better with a commander like Mondrak, Glory Dominus to double the myriad tokens.
Serra Paragon
I feel like I’ve been praising this card almost non-stop since it first came out. Being able to play lands and cast spells out of your graveyard is such a great way to give white some of the card advantage that it’s been lacking and I can’t praise this design space enough. Given how powerful it can be, I wasn’t surprised that this card is seeing lots of play in multiple different formats including Commander.
There’s been no shortage of discussion about how to get the most mileage out of Serra Paragon, but my personal favorites have been playing it alongside Sword of Forge and Frontier as a way to play an extra land out of my graveyard in the post-combat main phase or as a way to reuse valuable lands such as Wasteland that sacrifice themselves to activate abilities. I expect the utility of this card to only increase over time.
Honorable Mentions
We’ve reached the end of my top 10. It was extremely difficult to narrow this list down to just 10 cards, so I’d like to leave you with some other angels that nearly made the list. Every card shown here could easily have made the top 10 on a different day. Whether you’re playing a deck built around angels or just using them in the 99, this creature type has a lot to offer. I’m looking forward to other exciting new angels in the future.
Thank you for sticking with me until the end. I hope that you’ve enjoyed this article. I’d love to hear about your top 10 nonlegendary angels for Commander. Feel free to reach out on Twitter! If you’d like to check out more PlayEDH content, you can find more articles here or tune into the PlayEDH Radio 903.1 podcast here.
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