Magic: The Gathering - The 5 Best Saga Commanders

Summary

• Sagas in Magic: The Gathering are powerful with a built-in timer, making them a strategic choice for a deck.
• Legendary creatures like Narci, Fable Singer can maximize the potential of Sagas and help close out games efficiently.
• Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice and Sigurd, Jarl of Ravensthorpe bring different strategic elements to Saga-based decks, offering unique abilities.

Among all the subtypes of Magic: The Gathering cards out there, one that has been exceptionally popular among players is Sagas. These enchantments are only around for a short amount of time, with a built-in timer for how long they can stay on the battlefield.

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Even so, these cards can be exceptionally powerful, especially with the right Commander at the helm. If you’re looking to build your own Saga-based deck, these legendary creatures are your best bet.

5 Narci, Fable Singer

Sing Me A Song

Losing a Saga never feels good. You have to sacrifice it when the final chapter resolves, removing a bit of your presence from the battlefield and leaving your board state a little less threatening. That’s where Narci, Fable Singer steps in, turning your sacrificing Sagas into cantrips and helping to take down your opponents at the same time.

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Anytime you sacrifice an enchantment of any kind, Narci draws you a card. As you keep sacrificing things, you can easily keep your hand full with cards, especially if you have some sort of engine to keep returning sacrificed enchantments back to play.

Narci helps close the game out with her final ability, where once the last chapter of a Saga resolves, Narci has each opponent lose life equal to that Saga’s mana value, and you then gain that much life. While it might not be a ton of damage, losing three or four life every turn or so can quickly add up.

4 Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice

She Speaks For Phyrexia

A slight step down in colors for a Saga deck, losing out on access to red, Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice brings a different type of power to your match. While Atraxa doesn’t do anything directly with Sagas, she has a triggered proliferation ability that gives you free chapter progressions each turn.

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The way Sagas work is they put a lore counter on themselves when they enter the battlefield, and then anytime a lore counter is put on a saga, the corresponding triggered ability will resolve. Atraxa’s proliferation effect at the start of your end step means you can add more lore counters to your Sagas, artificially forcing them to the next chapter. This does mean you will burn through your Saga much faster than with other decks, but you also get their abilities more frequently, likely spelling trouble for your opponents.

You can pair Atraxa with any number of other counter-based strategies to accelerate your victory. Popular ones include planeswalker strategies since they deal with loyalty counters, and poison, since proliferate can tick up a player’s poison counter count.

3 Sigurd, Jarl Of Ravensthorpe

They Will Tell Your Story

Straight from the Universes Beyond: Assassin’s Creed expansion, Sigurd, Jarl of Ravensthorpe gives you a more combat-focused strategy to your Saga-based deck. A 3/3 for three mana, with three keyword abilities is already pretty solid, but Sigurd comes with two more abilities to make him even better.

His first is a Boast trigger, one that costs one generic mana but you can only activate if Sigurd has attacked this turn. When you do activate it, you get to put a lore counter on a Saga you control, or if you want, you can remove a lore counter. Removing a lore counter doesn’t mean you get a trigger of the previous ability, but instead lets you use that next ability another time. Since the way Sagas work, you could theoretically, keep triggering any chapter of a Saga over and over again, except the final one, since you have to sacrifice it once the third chapter triggers.

The other part of Sigurd that makes him particularly good is that anytime a lore counter is added to one of your Sagas, you can put a +1/+1 counter on another creature you control. Thematically, you’re building up the story of another character, taking a lowly Llanowar Elf up to a massive 10/10 creature, and now you can tell their exploits throughout time (or at least until you win the battle).

2 Go-Shintai Of Life’s Origin

Enchantment Creatures Abound

A five-color commander gives you all the best spells at your fingertips, and Go-Shintai of Life’s Origin gives you one of the best ways to keep your Saga’s around. For five mana, one of each color, you can return an enchantment from your graveyard back to the battlefield.

Since Saga’s auto sacrifice once they hit the final chapter, generally only sticking around for three or four turns, you need some sort of engine to keep the Sagas on the battlefield. The downside is that Go-Shintai is a bit of a mana commitment, as well as a time one. You need all five colors to activate, and it also requires you to tap it to use the ability. If you wanted to do it on the same turn as you cast it, you’ll need at least nine mana available, two of which have to be green, and some sort of way to give it haste.

The nice thing about Go-Shintai is that it also lets you build it as a Shrine deck, another enchantment subtype, and they all work together with other Shrines for bonus effects. Go-shintai makes additional 1/1 Shrine creature tokens when it or another Shrine comes into play, which can help generate a small army and boost your other Shrine cards and their effects.

1 Tom Bombadil

A Pseudo God For Your Travels

Jolly Tom Bombadil, he’s a merry fellow you know. Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow, and his Saga-based design is quite possibly the strongest in the game. This legendary God Bard becomes indestructible, but only under certain conditions. If there are four or more lore counters spread among all your Sagas, Tom Bombadil gains hexproof and indestructible.

This becomes easier than you think thanks to his second ability. When the final chapter of a Saga resolves, you get to reveal cards from the top of your deck until you find another Saga. You can put that card directly into play, triggering that Saga’s first chapter ability, and ensuring you always have at least one Saga in play.

Tom Bombadil becomes better and better the longer Magic releases Sagas, since you want a high density of Sagas in your deck when you’re playing Tom.

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