Magic: The Gathering - The 10 Best Mobilize Cards

Summary

• Strong Mardu cards like Stadium Headliner and Venerated Stormsinger enhance the speed and power of your mobilize decks.
• Avenger of the Fallen generates massive tokens; pair it with Venerated Stormsinger for life drain.
• Zurgo, Thunder's Decree and Zurgo, Stormrender excel as Mardu mobilize commanders f

Debuting in Magic: The Gathering's Tarkir: Dragonstorm, mobilize is a disarmingly powerful keyword. Tied to the black/white/red Mardu clan, it lets youplay aggressively, go wide with lots of tokens, and have plenty of sacrifice fodder left over, provided you play your cards right.

Magic: The Gathering - Zurgo, Thunder's Decree Commander Deck Guide

You Mardu, Bro?

If you're wanting to build a token deck, a Warrior kindred deck, or even just something that goes smashy-smash, mobilize cards are a great way to make it go that little bit quicker. All you need to do is pick the best ones.

10 Shock Brigade

Common, But Not Muck

At first glance, Shock Brigade doesn’t look like much. It’s only a 1/3 with menace that costs two mana – it’s hardly a big, game-winning mythic rare. However, mobilize makes it rather fantastic.

Menace means there’s a good chance this will slip past your opponents, giving you free rein to trigger mobilize. Even if they do block, three toughness is enough to avoid a lot of early game threads (albeit not enough to put it out of range of a Lightning Bolt). It’s a common, but it certainly gets the job done.

9 Stadium Headliner

Blast Something In The Face

Stadium Headliner is likely going to be your turn-one play in a deck heavily with mobilizing. It may be a way to get swinging by the second turn, but that second ability is the much more interesting part of this card.

Once you’re later in the game and have bigger and better mobilize enablers, you can sacrifice Stadium Headliner to deal damage to any creature. Make sure you activate this just after blockers are declared to ensure all your tokens are out and you’re dealing the maximum damage. There’s also nothing saying you can’t target your own creatures, which makes this yet another cool piece for Stuffy Doll to play with.

8 Dalkovan Packbeasts

Don’t Let The Zero Power Fool You

Dalkovan Packbeasts could fit as neatly into a Mardu deck as it would a white/black/green Abzan one, thanks to its large toughness. That zero power might make it seem like a bit of a stinker, but don’t forget about the mobilize trigger.

This Ox has a hefty mobilize 3, which means it makes three 1/1 red Warriors whenever it attacks. This effectively turns it from a 0/4 to a 3/4, and with vigilance it’ll stay open to blocking with its big booty. It’s even better if you’re running a card like Assault Formation of Felothar the Steadfast, as that 0/4 will suddenly be throwing around 7 damage each turn.

7 Venerated Stormsinger

Real Payoffs For Your Mobilize Triggers

One of the big downsides of mobilizing is that the tokens you create are sacrificed at the beginning of your next end step. Of course, there are ways to avoid this, like ending the turn early or preventing the sacrifice with a Master, Multipliede, but with Venerated Stormsinger, why would you want to?

This turns that downside into a massive advantage, as every token you sacrifice will drain your opponents for one life. If you’ve achieved critical mass or mobilize triggers, you could be taking dozens of life each turn – especially if you pair it up with something like Bastion of Remembrance of The Meathook Massacre.

6 Avenger Of The Fallen

Go Big With Mobilizing

Most creatures with mobilize only make one or two tokens at most. The biggest aside from Avenger of the Fallen would be Dalkovan Packbeasts with three. Avenger of the Fallen can instead make a metric tonne of tokens with very little effort.

Each attack, you’ll make tokens equal to the number of creatures in your graveyard. Any self-respecting graveyard player will likely have somewhere between ‘a lot’ and ‘frankly too many’, allowing the Avenger to throw out dozens of tokens in a single turn. They’ll all go away, but with things like Venerated Stormsinger, that could just be game over for your opponents.

5 Zurgo, Thunder’s Decree

Keep Your Tokens

Alternatively, you could just hold on to your tokens and snowball your board bigger and bigger with Zurgo, Thunder’s Decree. This is the go-to Mardu mobilize commander, as he not only makes two tokens each time he attacks, but also completely turns off the sacrifice part of the ability.

Zurgo only prevents sacrificing during the end step, when mobilize would normally get rid of them. That means you can still throw them into a blender for other sacrifice outlets, like Blood Artist or Phyrexian Altar if you need to.

4 Bone-Cairn Butcher

Force That Damage Through

Bone-Cairn Tyrant is perfect for when your opponent has managed to build their own board up enough for your tokens to otherwise be useless. By giving them all deathtouch, dealing with your onslaught of Warriors becomes so much more difficult to deal with.

On top of that, the Butcher himself has mobilize 2, and decent power and toughness. It’s out of range of being bolted with four toughness, so swing away and keep those deathtouching tokens coming. The only downside here is the cost requiring three colours of mana.

3 Infantry Shield

Go Big With Mobilizing

The biggest mobilize on a creature may be Avenger of the Fallen, but with Infantry Shield you could make so much more. This Equipment makes the creature it’s attached to mobilize equal to its power – which may lead you to putting it on a big swinger like Death’s Shadow, Worldspine Wurm, or Ancient Stone Idol.

Another great use is that, as mobilize is a triggered ability, it can stack. Equip Infantry Shield onto something already with mobilize, and you’ll be getting even more of them. Probably the best creature to equip it to would be Zurgo’s Vanguard, whose power is based on the number of creatures you control. Stack the mobilize triggers for Zurgo’s Vanguard resolves last, and you’ll be doubling the number of creatures twice.

2 Zurgo, Stormrender

Stick Your Opponents Between A Rock And A Hard Place

As the face of the Mardu Surge Commander precon, you’d expect Zurgo, Stormrender to be a generically good mobilize-matters commander, and he absolutely is. This card may not be as immediately impressive as his main set version; Zurgo, Thunder’s Decree; but Stormrender offers absurd amounts of value.

If your opponents kill your attacking tokens in combat, you draw a card. If they don’t, they get sacrificed and they lose one life anyway. No matter what they do, you’ll come out on top in way or another.

1 Voice Of Victory

The Mobilizing Is Almost Secondary

Mobilizing is all about going wide and hitting fast, which makes Voice of Victory somewhat out of character. Mobilize almost feels tacked on here, as the real power comes in the second ability of preventing your opponents from casting spells on your turn.

With a few major exceptions, like not preventing activated abilities, Voice of Victory is very much like the staple Grand Abolisher. It has higher toughness and a more forgiving mana cost as well, which makes it easier to play. Sure, it does make tokens and that’s all very well and good, but stopping counterspells or removal from messing up your plans is far more powerful.

Magic: The Gathering