Magic: The Gathering - The 5 Best Energy Commanders

Summary

• Build a powerful energy-themed deck with legendary creatures like Rex, Cyber-Hound, Atraxa, and Liberty Prime, for game-winning combos.
• Generate and keep ticking up energy counts with Atraxa's proliferation effect, allowing you to use them for other effects.
• Dr. Madison Li is an energy-based commander that continuously produces energy counters and can turn artifacts into energy for various powerful abilities.

With all the different Magic: The Gathering cards and mechanics out there, you’re bound to come across a strange theme to build a deck around. With a recent influx of legendary creatures that deal with energy mechanic, your options are better than ever when it comes to building an energy-themed deck.

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Even so, there are only a few commanders who excel at generating and using energy, so if you are brewing a Commander deck, you’re going to want to take a look at these powerful creatures.

5 Rex, Cyber-Hound

Big Brain Plays

Starting off the energy commanders is the best boy on the list, Rex, Cyber-Hound. This Robot Dog from the Universes Beyond: Fallout set is a white and blue creature that puts those energy counters to good use. Anytime he deals combat damage to a player, they mill two cards and you get two energy.

At any time you want, you can pay two energy to pick a creature card in any graveyard, exiling that card and putting a special brain counter on it. Rex then gains all abilities of all cards in exile with a brain counter on it. Through this ability, you can continuously buff up Rex with all sorts of abilities while at the same time permanently removing problematic cards from your opponent’s graveyard.

4 Atraxa, Praetors' Voice

Can’t Keep A Good Phyrexian Down

Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice has been an absolute powerhouse since her introduction in Commander 2016. While you can often find her at the head of a planeswalker-themed deck, it turns out that a free proliferation effect at the end of your turn is great when it comes to energy counters too.

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With Atraxa out, you can continuously gain and keep ticking up your energy count, letting you use them for other effects with less of a chance of running out.

The other nice thing about Atraxa is that she lets you run every color in Magic except red, giving you more choices when it comes to building your deck. So long as there’s no red, you have complete access to any other energy card in the game.

3 Liberty Prime, Recharged

Embrace Energy, Or You Will Be Eradicated

Another commander from the Universes Beyond: Fallout set, Liberty Prime, Recharged is a blue, red, and white legendary artifact creature that has tons of power behind it’s relatively light mana cost of just five mana total.

Liberty Prime comes with vigilance, trample, and haste, which is great on an 8/8 body. The downside comes from the fact that if you want to use it to attack or block, you have to pay two energy. Thankfully, Liberty Prime has a built-in feature that lets you sacrifice any artifact to gain to energy and draw a card.

There’s likely not going to be much of a need for that though, since Jeskai is a pretty easy color combination when it comes to generating massive pools of energy. You can still make use of Liberty Prime in all sorts of game-winning combos, especially once you get infinite or near-infinite mana and you can repeatedly cast and then sacrifice Liberty Prime to itself to draw your whole deck.

2 Dr. Madison Li

Turn Your Artifacts Into Energy

The last of the Universes Beyond: Fallout commanders is Dr. Madison Li, an energy-based commander that is a continuous engine that produces tons of energy counters over the course of the game. Anytime you cast an artifact spell you get a single energy counter. Since it’s a cast trigger, that spell doesn’t have to resolve to get the energy, but that means you can’t get it from other artifacts just entering the battlefield.

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Once you have a few energy counters built up, you can start spending that energy for the good of mankind. By tapping Dr. Madison Li and paying either one, three, or five energy, you get one of three abilities. The first ability gives a creature +1/+0, trample, and haste for the turn, letting you swing right in with a creature you just played.

Then, for three energy, you can just use Dr. Madison Li to draw a card. Not amazing, but definitely impactful, especially later in a game. Finally, when you spend five energy you get to return an artifact from your graveyard to the battlefield. This ability only targets artifacts in your own graveyard, but putting any number of powerful cards isn’t too terribly difficult and lets you turn your graveyard into a toolbox.

1 Satya, Aetherflux Genius

Tokens And Energy Never Looked So Good

Coming from the Modern Horizons 3 Commander deck is Satya, Aetherflux Genius. This legendary Human Artificer has both menace and haste, letting you swing away as soon as he comes into play.

Anytime Satya attacks, you get to make a token copy of any other creature you control, through the token comes in also tapped an attacking. The downside is that you have to spend energy equal to the mana value of the original creature you copied. That is less of an issue if you have some power enter the battlefield effects, or have spare energy lying around you can easily pay for the mana cost for a turn or two.

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