5 Underrated Spell-Slinger Commanders

Magic’s next set is Secrets of Strixhaven, which releases on April 24th. While we’ve only gotten a few glimpses of the set so far, the 2021 set Strixhaven: School of Mages was very much focused on Instants and Sorceries. It’s a safe bet to assume we’ll see the same thing this time around, as the set takes place largely at the eponymous school of magic, where students learn to sling spells!

Our return to Magic’s most spell-heavy plane got me thinking about spell-slinger Commanders – that is, Commanders who pay you off for casting Instants and Sorceries. 

While everyone knows Commanders like Vivi Ornitier and Niv-Mizzet, Parun are great spell-slingers, there are some other interesting Commanders out there that are being overlooked.  In this article, I’m going to look at five off-the-beaten-path spell-slinger Commanders who are surprisingly powerful.

MAVINDA, STUDENTS’ ADVOCATE

Let’s start things off with a card from original Strixhaven – Mavinda, Students’ Advocate. When you think “spell-slinger” you probably don’t envision a mono-white Commander, but in true Strixhaven fashion, Mavinda loves spells. She lets you cast a spell from your graveyard, effectively giving it flashback provided it targets one of your creatures.

That may sound a little too narrow at first, but White has several spell payoffs that Mavinda can go wild with. The most notable of these is Monastery Mentor, who not only has Prowess – it will also spit out a token with Prowess any time you cast a non-creature spell.

White also has several creatures who love being targeted, fitting in nicely with Mavinda’s limitations. When you’re doubling your targeting spells, Phalanx Leader will quickly buff your board to the moon, Whiskervale Forerunner can draw you lots of cards, and Illuminator Virtuoso can rip through your deck while growing at an alarming rate.

White has no shortage of good, cheap targeting spells either to get all of this stuff going. You’ll get the most mileage out of Instants too, because you can use Mavinda’s ability once per turn, including during your opponents’ turns.

For example, you can blink more stuff with Ephemerate, and protect more creatures and draw more extra cards with Shelter.

WORT, THE RAIDMOTHER

While Red/Green isn’t quite as strange as a Mono-White spell-slinger deck, it’s still not a color combination that gets a lot of attention with this archetype. However, Wort is incredibly good at doubling spells with conspire. While she requires you tap red or green creatures to copy a spell, she happens to bring two of them along with her, making it pretty easy to pull off.

She can get especially interesting if you lean into spells that make creature tokens, since you’ll be able to copy them and have even more fuel for Conspiring at the same time. Even cards as simple as Dragon Fodder and Scatter the Seeds becomes a powerhouse when you can copy them for free and turn those bodies into more copies later.

Meanwhile, already powerful spells like Pest Infestation, Song of Totentanz, and For the Common Good become absolutely absurd when you get an extra copy.

SEVINNE, THE CHRONOCLASM

Sevinne’s starting stats would hold most creatures back, especially without any sort of “enters” trigger. However, his ability to just shrug off all damage makes it a lot harder for your opponent to blow you out with cheap removal. And that’s good, because you want Sevinne to stay on the battlefield to copy spells you cast from the graveyard.

The fact that he can only copy spells from that zone does him back a little bit, but it’s not like there aren’t a plethora of instants and sorceries that come with built-in ways to be cast from the graveyard, with Flashback being the most common. There are also plenty of ways to cast things from the graveyard using external effects like Snapcaster Mage or Mavinda.

While Sevinne can thrive with any spells, you can get the most out of him by using graveyard spells that help you load the graveyard – like Faithless Looting and Desperate Ravings.

Sevinne’s ability to prevent damage can also be leveraged to a big advantage. It means you can run typical Red mass damage effects and you can easily break the symmetry on them thanks to the fact that your Commander will always still be standing once the dust settles after a Blasphemous Act or Earthquake.

NOYAN DAR, ROIL SHAPER

Noyan Dar’s ability to animate and/or buff land lands any time you cast an Instant or Sorcery is really strong. I mean, it’s basically like he’s a Monastery Mentor that spits out 3/3s! Obviously that’s hyperbolic, as animating a land isn’t quite as valuable as getting an entire token out of nowhere, but getting a land creature is closer to the Mentor’s trigger than you think.

It also makes Noyan a really unique Commander, as he cares about instants, sorceries, and lands, and there’s not another card out there that overlaps into all three areas. Battle for Zendikar even features a few cards to help you maximize this theme. The most notable of these is Planar Outburst, which lets you animate another land and destroy all nonland creatures. Noyan will go down, unfortunately, but it’s well worth it when he’s already animated all your lands.

Similarly, combining Noyan with various symmetrical instants and sorceries that only affect nonland permanents is pretty nasty, as you can quite easily make those effects more one-sided.

Consuming Tide even lets you keep Noyan Dar in play alongside all of your animated lands, while bouncing almost everything else and likely drawing a few cards, and Hour of Revelation will also leave your land creatures unscathed. Blue and White seriously have a critical mass of such cards, and that’s enough to make Noyan Dar into a real threat.

ZEVLOR, ELTUREL EXILE

Zevlor is the most popular Commander in this article by a fairly wide margin, but he’s so powerful that I still think he’s being overlooked. 

Sometimes in Commander it’s a real problem that your spell can only let you go after one player at a time, but Zevlor lets you get around that. Any time you cast a spell that targets only one opponent or one permanent they control, for two mana he can give you a copy for each of your other opponents too! In other words, he can give you up to three extra copies of those types of spells. You haven’t lived until you’ve hit all of your opponents with Cruel Ultimatum, Bribery, or Leadership Vacuum. 

There is one hurdle you have to clear to really make Zevlor work, though. You’re going to need a lot of mana and/or cost reduction effects to always be able to copy your spells. Luckily, there are plenty of cards that can help you on that front.

While Storm-Kiln Artist is a staple for any spell-slinger deck, it’s extra good here. That’s because Magecraft triggers when spells are cast or copied, and that means he’s going to spit out extra treasure every time you use Zevlor’s ability – often netting you mana when you do so. Meanwhile, Goblin Electromancer and Baral are just a couple of the cost reduction effects that Zevlor has access to.

It’s really not hard to construct a deck that can do absolutely absurd things with Zevlor, as there’s simply a critical mass of all the different elements you need to go off with him.

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I hope you try out one of these cool underappreciated spell-slinger Commanders. Who do you think I left out? Let me know over on X or Bluesky.