Commander Spotlight: Galadriel, Light of Valinor
Author’s note: If you’re looking for a full decklist, you can find it at the end of the article!
In case you haven’t been following closely with the busy Magic release schedule, The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth Holiday Release is a supplemental product for the summer tentpole set that brought the world of J.R.R. Tolkien into Magic: The Gathering. This set features reprints in new styles and new cards for the main set and Commander, including panoramic Scene Boxes consisting entirely of new cards.
In today’s Commander Spotlight, we’re going to look at Galadriel, Light of Valinor. We’re trying to use this commander make a bunch of mana, buff up our team with +1/+1 counters, and scry and draw cards. It’s hard to find fault with a commander that does all of these things when creatures enter the battlefield, especially in Bant colors where it will be trivial to enable her ability multiple times per turn!
Rather than offering a full deck tech, this article aims to highlight some great options for this commander. After all, there are plenty of ways to build any deck and Commander has plenty of room for self-expression. I’ve still taken the liberty of creating a sample decklist for this commander, which you’ll find at the end of the article. This deck has been checked for PlayEDH Low Power, so you can play it there without any changes!
Why should you play Galadriel, Light of Valinor?
You can already play an Elf commander that makes mana and draws you cards when creatures enter the battlefield by building around Selvala, Heart of the Wilds. A commander like Chulane, Teller of Tales rewards you for casting creature spells by ramping you and drawing cards. In comparison to these commanders, Galadriel offers the ability to focus strictly on making sure creatures enter the battlefield to generate value turn over turn rather than relying on storming off with a bunch of creature spells.
She also differentiates herself from commanders such as Yarok, the Desecrated and Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines because she’ll trigger when other creatures enter the battlefield, rather than looking to double up the enters-the-battlefield triggers (ETBs) of those creatures. This means that you can use effects like token generators to get value out of her abilities without relying on creatures with ETBs of their own to fuel our deck’s strategy. You’ll see why this is important when we go through the card highlights.
Enablers
Having our commander on the battlefield is great, but what if we could have more than one? With cards like Spark Double and Double Major, we can create multiple copies of Galadriel in play all at once. The sheer amount of value that we can generate through ETBs is pretty incredible. We’ll definitely want to be prepared to do a bit of bookkeeping with all of the different triggers that will be going off, but it’s worth it when we’re practically drowning in mana, card advantage, and +1/+1 counters.
We’ve seen how copying our commander can be powerful, but what about making copies of every creature that enters the battlefield? Bramble Sovereign will let us copy our own nontoken creatures with an ETB trigger that’s easy to pay for using the mana that Galadriel makes. We can also rely on our opponents to provide us plenty of passive value with Faerie Artisans, especially if they’re playing creatures with powerful ETB triggers of their own.
Generating tokens on each upkeep means that we’ll be triggering Galadriel on each upkeep. This means that we can quickly refill our hand or significantly buff up our board presence without investing additional resources once we have Tendershoot Dryad on the battlefield. I’d be remiss to not mention that Lost Caverns of Ixalan also includes a colorshifted version of this card in Illustrious Wanderglyph, so I’d definitely make it a priority to include both of these in the deck.
Even with all of the resources that our commander can generate, we’ll still want to include more engines that generate card draw and creatures. Lifecrafter’s Bestiary can help us draw a few extra cards and conveniently works with the green mana that Galadriel generates. Nadir Kraken can put more bodies into play, which can lead to more triggers as well. Both of these cards work great when Galadriel is on board, but they’ll still put in work even if we play them early or if she gets removed.
Answers
We don’t want anybody to mess with our plans, which means that we’re packing in a few good spells to disrupt anything problematic that our opponents might cast. We don’t want all of our hard work to go to waste when an opponent wipes the board or removes our commander. While we probably won’t be playing a control deck with Galadriel at the helm, there’s definitely room for a handful of counterspells. Efficient answers such as Swan Song and Fierce Guardianship would be my first choices here.
How about answering our opponents while advancing our own gameplan? Sundering Growth can destroy an artifact or an enchantment while also creating a copy of a token that we already have. This could even wind up being another copy of Galadriel under the right circumstances! If an opponent is trying to overwhelm us in the creature game, we can use Theoretical Duplication to keep the pace. This spell is also absolutely brutal against mass reanimation or flicker spells.
Board wipes happen in Commander, so we’ll want to make sure that we have ways to avoid getting sent back to the stone age. Clever Concealment is one of the best protection spells around, especially because you’ll have so many creatures that you’ll probably always be able to cast it using convoke. Inspiring Call also feels like an auto-include. Galadriel’s ability to put +1/+1 counters on all of your creatures means that you should be able to draw tons of cards while protecting your creatures.
Threats
Who doesn’t love a good threat that also generates value? Big, nasty creatures like Koma, Cosmos Serpent and The Watcher in the Water do an excellent job at tapping things down and opening the way for attacks while also generating tons of tokens to trigger Galadriel. Your opponents can quickly be overwhelmed if they don’t find a way to deal with these creatures. I also particularly enjoy the synergy between Watcher and the aforementioned Nadir Kraken.
Cards that fill multiple roles can be valuable in a deck like this one. Kodama of the West Tree can provide us a lot of early land ramp while growing into a major threat in the late game as Galadriel puts more +1/+1 counters on our army of creatures. This feels like a steal at just three mana. Akroma’s Will is probably the best finisher in the entire deck, but you might also use it to protect your creatures from a board wipe or surprise someone who thinks that their board can punch through your side of the battlefield.
There is one more card that I wanted to highlight. While I omitted Glen Elendra Archmage from the sample decklist at the end of this article, it’s an incredibly powerful card alongside Galadriel because she has the ability to easily refresh the persist ability by putting a +1/+1 counter on it. This nullifies the -1/-1 counter and allows you to keep sacrificing Glen Elendra Archmage to counter noncreature spells. When building for PlayEDH Low Power, it seemed prudent to leave this one out.
The environment that we've curated in this power level on our server doesn't typically include these types of locks, especially when we only need our commander and one other card in order to put them together. In a higher power table where this type of thing would be more expected, Glen Elendra Archmage feels like an all-star include that can make it pretty difficult for your opponents to resolve noncreature spells without you allowing it to happen.
I hope that this article inspires you to give Galadriel, Light of Valinor a shot in Commander. There are plenty of great ways to build a fun and synergistic deck with her at the helm, even if you don’t want to take the same approach that I did. Bant has many ways to profit off of her ETB triggers, so I’m really excited to see what other people do with her. I tried to do a little bit of everything in order to show off how powerful and versatile she could be, but you also have the option of focusing on one particular strategy.
You can find this deck and plenty more on the PlayEDH Low Power Hub that’s hosted by our good friends at Moxfield. All of these decks are ready to play right away in our curated power levels, but you can also use them for inspiration when brewing new decks of your own. We’re always on the lookout for new decks to feature in this collection with credit to the original brewers, so your deck might even be the next addition!
Articles like these are made possible and kept ad-free due to the support of all of our Patreon, Twitch, and Discord subscribers. Come check us out on Discord to chat about all things Commander and play curated games with people from all over the world! We’d also love to hear from you on Twitter where you can find all of our latest news!
“This article is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards.
Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.”
