10 Most Overrated and Overplayed Equipment in Commander

If you like to play Equipment in Commander, chances are you’ve encountered tips for underrated cards to try in your deck. Rather than cover that same ground today, I want to flip the script and cover the Equipment cards that are the most overrated and overplayed. These Equipment are at most fine, and often worse than other similar effects.

TOP 10 OVERRATED EQUIPMENT IN COMMANDER

10. KUSARI-GAMA

Kicking things off, it’s Kusari-Gama. This makes the tenth spot on this list because I am forever seeing it on underrated lists as some kind of amazing tech card that people are sleeping on. You’ve got to be playing in the most relaxed Bracket 2 games for this to ever do what you want – which is basically asking for magical Christmasland. You firstly need to pay three mana to play it and potentially three to equip (which is a lot). You then need to have a large enough creature to swing with (with at least five power) and have an opponent dumb enough to block and lose their board.  This is not happening until they absolutely must block or lose the game, right?

At which point you’re way better off with using Brotherhood Regalia or Silver Shroud Costume for unblockable, Embercleave for trample and double strike, Celestial Armor for Flying, and other better ways to ensure a kill. Hell, you’re better off with a Kazuul’s Fury // Kazuul’s Cliffs in your manabase to literally fling your attacker at face. The time spent on building up to a Kusari-Gama kill is better spent investing in a better board. 

9. UMEZAWA’S JITTE

Staying on Kamigawa, let’s talk about one of the strongest Equipment ever printed… for 1v1 Magic. And that there is the rub, because Jitte just isn’t good in multiplayer. You’re plonking down a removal engine on the table and asking three players to have an answer, or they’ll lose their setup pieces. You’re doing so by spending a total of four mana to play and equip it while not advancing your board, and you’re about to eat creature removal on your own setup creature if they don’t find a Shatter to hit the Jitte. 

This card is just not as good as you think it will be in the average game, and keeping a hand with it likely means losing out on an equipment that’ll draw you cards or make you mana.

8. LAVASPUR BOOTS

Folks love Lavaspur Boots and let me just make one thing clear: if you’re running Urza’s Saga, this thing gets a little more attractive, as a way to find haste. That said, there are far better targets off of Urza’s Saga, and when the competition is Sol Ring, Colossus Hammer, Mox Opal, Commander’s Plate, Masterwork of Ingenuity or Shadowspear, are you really happy to go and get these Swiftfoot knock-offs? 

Ward {1} is fine, but it’s so far behind hexproof, shroud, or protection from common removal colors. I’d much rather take Tarkir: Dragonstorm’s Dragonfire Blade here, to get the hexproof from monocolored and +2/+2 buff. 

7. LEYLINE AXE

When Leyline Axe was first revealed in Foundations, I’ll admit that it did look pretty hot. An Embercleave you can start the game with, in play? That’s pretty hot. But in practice, unless you have a two or three mana Commander sure to draw you plenty of cards, going down a card just isn’t where I want to be when playing an Equipment deck. You’re hard-pressed to pull together a gameplan in Voltron decks, needing card advantage, ramp, evasive bodies, and buffs, and going down a card to drop a late-game buff onto the table is not only risking a bad mulligan – it’s signaling the table to more readily spend removal on you, which is card disadvantage in more ways than one. 

6. THE AETHERSPARK

I’ve seen The Aetherspark in play quite frequently and let me be frank – it never seems to really do anything. You need to use the {+1} loyalty ability to even equip it most of the time, and a +1/+1 counter is pretty forgettable. Drawing two cards is something you can do cheaper (with less of a threat level) with Mask of Memory, and as for adding ten mana? The table gets a whole turn cycle to take you off of that plan, and if you have a small hand, they’ll likely not even care if you add it. The very definition of Mid. 

5. MITHRIL COAT

Speaking of Mid, how about Mid-thril Coat? An instant speed equipment that saves you from a wrath is good, but arguably you only need  that effect for one turn – making Celestial Armor much better, as it also gives hexproof and leaves you with flying, which long-term will help you win much more than indestructible will. In a deck that’s needing to max-out Equipment to hit boundaries like Gilgamesh or Nahiri, Forged in Fury I can see it being a higher pick, but I don’t even bother with it in my own Nahiri deck. If she dies to a wrath she’s super cheap to recast, and hexproof, protection and redirects are always a little better than indestructible.

It’s good in a Legendary-matters deck like Dihada, but so are 500 other cards. 

4. LIGHTNING GREAVES

Lightning Greaves is bad in Equipment decks because it can lock you out of attaching more equipment to your creature if you only have one in play. Outside of those decks, I only like to run it in certain builds – ones where I’m tapping out frequently with an expensive Commander I want to protect. The issue with Lightning Greaves is that it draws out removal, as players will feel like the window is closing.  In essence, that makes it sorcery speed protection, which is… not the best when you’re in a high-interactivity meta.

Greaves can also be a pretty dull top deck, where a red redirect or protection spell is much more flexible and can even help you gain tempo by rerouting a removal spell to an opponent.

Is Greaves bad? No. Is it massively overplayed? Yes. 

3. BLACKBLADE REFORGED

Are you telling me you have time to ramp out a billion lands in 2026 and not win with a big-mana effect that jumps your whole board, which is safer than putting all of your eggs into one basket? Are you telling me you will get ten lands into play quicker than just dropping Excalibur, Sword of Eden and being done with things? Because if you are, I want to play at those tables. Blackblade was good when it dropped back in Dominaria, but these days it’s a little long in the tooth. It’s a lot worse than other effects and will likely only grant you a +6/+6 or +7/+7, which makes it worse than Excalibur or Wrecking Ball Arm. 

2. DARKSTEEL PLATE

How is Darksteel Plate in nearly 150,000 decks on EDHRec? How are a bunch of those Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER, Syr Gwyn, Hero of Ashvale, Kaalia of the Vast and Ardenn & Rograkh?

Darksteel Plate is mostly outclassed by Mithril Coat now, and you’ve already read why I think that one is overrated. Indestructible just doesn’t cut the mustard when the most popular wraths these days either grant -X/-X, exile, or bounce the board. You need phasing as your protection these days to get around that – or mass flicker – and Darksteel Plate is a relic of the past. It’s time to leave it there. 

1. SWORD OF FIRE AND ICE

The most overrated and overplayed card in the format goes to Sword of Fire and Ice. I sold my copies years ago and haven’t looked back since. This card was crucial back in the day when card draw was scarce, but these days? You’re really going to spend all of the mana to draw a card and Shock something? Most of the good setup creatures these days inexplicably have an x/4 statline, and are too thick for a Shock. “Sofi” doesn’t protect you from Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile or let you swing into big green board states.

The card advantage on it is so mediocre that it ranks cleanly below Sword of Hearth and Home on tier lists.  I’d even argue that putting Sword of Forge and Frontier lower than this is bonkers. The Explore and impulse draw two on Forge and Frontier is leagues ahead of Fire and Ice, and I’m tired of people saying it isn’t. Fire and Ice just ain’t all that.

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That’s the most overrated and overplayed Equipment in Commander. If you’re after some actually good Equipment to put in your decks, head here or here instead for some insight. Still a Sword of Fire and Ice die-hard? Sound off to us on Socials.