Sun Titan turned 15 this year, and despite its age, it’s still a fantastic card. Sun Titan is truly the sun that never sets, and we’re all still playing the hell out of it.
SUN TITAN: CORE POWER
Sun Titan was first printed in Magic 2011, back when Core sets were a thing each year. It was part of a cycle with four other Titan cards, and looking back on how they’ve aged over the years, Sun Titan has definitely aged well compared to the likes of Frost Titan and Grave Titan. Inferno Titan is still seeing play, and can be good with the right enablers, and Primeval Titan is good enough to be banned in Commander. Sun Titan is just quietly ticking along, featuring in precon after precon, and cementing its place as a mainstay in white.
What makes Sun Titan such a fantastic card is that it acts as a tempo swing and an imminent threat. When you slam it down, you immediately get a 6/6 Vigilance creature, which is ideal for attacks and blocks. It brings back a permanent mana value three or less to play, and threatens to do so again each time it can attack.
This could be a creature, which gives you more board presence and potentially another strong EtB, or it could be a strong enchantment that provides card draw or even removal. It could even be a land, which allows you to ramp in white (repeatedly, if you have a Fetchland!). This is why Sun Titan and similar effects are at the core of the Boros Advantage Engine, and it’s why I’d argue that white decks are second to green when it comes to land based ramp.
Sun Titan’s big tempo swing means it has earned its spot as a playable even into 2025 when many six and seven drops are starting to drop off and be replaced by younger, fancier models. Bishop of Rebirth just wasn’t good enough to see much play, and while Redemption Choir is fantastic – and a card I also can’t get enough of playing – it doesn’t command the board presence that Sun Titan does, and some amount of the time you won’t be able to get that Coven trigger satisfied.
Sun Titan is even punching above his weight when it comes to unconditional repeatable effects. The closest Sun Titan analogues in black – the primary graveyard color – are the likes of Phyrexian Delver (only on EtB, and you lose life); seven drops like Sepulchral Primordial which do something different on EtB; or the more recent Metamorphosis Fanatic, which, while strong, still only functions on EtB and not attack.
In fact, the closest we’ve come to Sun Titan recently is Queen’s Bay Paladin (only vampires, and with finality counters) or Carnage, Crimson Chaos, which is only on EtB, and temporarily. It’s partly for this reason that Sun Titan refuses to accept the passage of time. If there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that the sun will rise again tomorrow, right?
VERSATILITY & SYNERGY
The other thing Sun Titan has going for it – which makes it such a strong card – is the different ways you can abuse that ability. You can play it in Flicker or reanimator decks and get that EtB multiple times. You can give it haste and enjoy two triggers immediately that turn. You can take an extra combat, and get multiple triggers as well.
Heck, if you combine these effects by granting Sun Titan haste and then flickering it each combat with Sword of Hearth and Home, you can get potentially five triggers in one turn. Imagine if you also had Windcrag Siege or Panharmonicon in play. I doubt you’d even have enough stuff in your graveyard to take advantage of all of those triggers, to be honest.
BLACK HOLE SUN
Did you know that the art for Animate Dead also features Sun Titan? It’s a clever nod from the designers to toward the fact Sun Titan is a combo monster. If you look on Commander’s Spellbook, you’ll find a whopping 58 different combos that feature Sun Titan in a myriad of different decks.
One of the oldest combos is with Saffi Eriksdotter for infinite EtBs. Saffi can target Sun Titan, which you then sacrifice, and then Sun Titan returns, bringing Saffi. It’s such an iconic combo that it was referenced in the 2024 Secret Lair printing of Sun Titan. Of course, you need a sacrifice outlet for Sun Titan (preferably one that helps you win the game) but that’s not so hard to do.
The easiest ways to make it a win are to use Altar of Dementia to mill opponents out, or Goblin Bombardment to ping them to death. You even have cards like Fiend Hunter that can do the job of Saffi if you aren’t in green. And, of course, you can opt for Animate Dead with Sun Titan too, as it can help to enable other combos given Sun Titan can return the Aura to play.
THE FUTURE OF COMMANDER
Sun Titan’s place as a Commander mainstay makes me happy, as it does everything I love to do in Commander. But what about the future? Fifteen years is a lot of time to be relevant and not powercrept, after all. Well, as long as Commander plays the way it does right now, Sun Titan will remain a relevant curve topper. It stabilizes the board, and manages to be a tempo swing. If it stays in play, it becomes a value engine. What’s more, you can bake in combos into your deck that use Sun Titan, meaning you’re never unhappy to see it.
While Terminate prophesizes that “All suns must set”, I’m not convinced. Unless they come out with a five mana version of exactly Sun Titan, I can’t see it happening any time soon. Sun Titan remains a fantastic card, and for as long as it remains playable, I’d say Commander is a format worth playing.
Kristen is Card Kingdom’s Head Writer and a member of the Commander Format Panel. Formerly a competitive Pokémon TCG grinder, she has been playing Magic since Shadows Over Innistrad, which in her opinion, was a great set to start with. When she’s not taking names with Equipment and Aggro strategies in Commander, she loves to play any form of Limited.