You might have noticed friends or other players talking about how their Commander deck has a “Secret Commander”. Let’s dig into what a “Secret Commander” is, why people have them, and the art of building your deck to take advantage of playing a “Secret Commander”.
WHAT IS A SECRET COMMANDER
When you build a Commander deck, you build it around a creature in the Command Zone. For the most part, you’re picking cards that synergize with what starts the game in the Command Zone. Some decks want to leverage a card in the 99 – like an Enchantment or non-Legendary creature, or basically any card that didn’t start the game in the Command Zone – and therefore they have to find it and get it into play.
One example of this is playing with Polymorph effects. By keeping your 99 devoid of filler creatures, you can ensure polymorph spells only fish out deadly haymakers or other cards designated your “Secret Commander”.
Casting Chaotic Transformation on Kykar’s Spirit tokens in order to churn out Eldrazi or other big threats is one thing, but if you were to dig out Lorehold Apprentice instead during a storm turn, that would be closer to the concept of a “Secret Commander”. Your Secret Commander synergizes with how you’ve built your deck, and is a key part of winning the game. It just doesn’t live in the Command Zone.
THE ART OF HAVING A SECRET COMMANDER
Having a Secret Commander is great, because if you build your deck in such a way as to synergize with your Commander and your Secret Commander(s), you end up with way more outs to winning a game than the average deck. You bake in a backup plan, essentially.
My current Equipment deck is Nahiri, Forged in Fury. The goal of the deck is to deploy cheap creatures that cheat equip costs, and cheap Living Weapon/For Mirrodin!/Job Select creatures with evasion. Once you can swing with 2-3 creatures, you deploy Nahiri, and try to hit more equipment. With any luck, you then snowball advantage by cheating more and more equipment into play. I say with a bit of luck – but more than luck, the power of math has been used to give us the best possible odds to hit what we want.
With a whopping 36 Equipment, the deck has a really obvious choice for a “Secret Commander”: Eivor, Battle-Ready.
Because the main gameplan of the deck is getting as many Equipment into play as fast as possible, we’re more than likely to get a higher equipment count than an actual Eivor deck by the time we get to deploy her. What’s more, she acts as something of a finisher for the deck. She gets bonus points for being tutorable with Raven Clan War-Axe, too, which is a quality that all Secret Commanders should have, should you want to reliably see them.
PIVOTING TO PLAN B
Sometimes Secret Commanders are the main gameplan, but sometimes they’re about the “Pivot”. The Pivot is when your deck changes gears and switches to Plan B.
Take Henzie, for example. Henzie’s main gameplan is to Blitz Jund value creatures, removing things, gaining mana advantage, and drawing cards. Unless you’re playing combo, though – or trying to stick a Terror of the Peaks – you’re amassing a pile of corpses without the “oomph” to finish a game in a convincing way.
In this way, the Secret Commanders of my Henzie deck are Bringer of the Last Gift and Living Death. Neither care about Henzie being play – and quite often Henzie will die when these are resolved. These cards are pivotal to the deck’s win in a lot of games, and I’m always taking game actions with the knowledge and expectation that I’m working towards one of these cards.
WHEN YOUR COMMANDER ISN’T EVEN PLAN A
Some decks make it very clear that you have a Secret Commander. Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer is essentially a tutor in the Command Zone for any part of a combo or engine that you want. Most Rocco decks want to grab Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and other cards that combo with it. The 99 is full of “Secret Commanders” that perform vital roles or provide win conditions.
What if you wanted to play a Dimir version of Orvar, the All-Form? Well, you’d play Sivitri, Dragon Master, and have Orvar as your “Secret Commander”. It opens up some really interesting lines of play, that’s for sure.
A SECRET COMMANDER AS AN EXTRA COPY OF YOUR COMMANDER
You can also have a Secret Commander as an extra copy of your Commander. When you find a card that does exactly what you want your deck to do without needing your Commander in play to “do the thing”, then you’ve potentially got extra copies of your Commander hidden in the 99.
A really obvious example of this is if you’re playing an Isshin, Two Heavens as One deck. Your deck is built around getting value off of attack triggers, so putting a Windcrag Siege in the 99 gives you an extra copy of your Commander. It helps when your Commander is taxed out of play, and it’s magical Christmas-land if you get both in play at once. The same goes for playing a copy of Aurelia, the Warleader. Either way, you’re going to have additional options for “anchor” cards that your deck thrives off of having in play.
The same can be true when you have a Commander that lets you do infinite or even non-deterministic combo lines. I’ve played games with my Hofri deck where Valkyrie’s Call does the majority of the work, and I’ve never even needed to deploy Hofri at all in order to win the game. The enchantment does functionally the same thing for the moving pieces in my deck: it provides a way to “go again” on EtB and leaves triggers. In this way, Valkyrie’s Call is something of a Secret Commander too.
END STEP
Most often, Secret Commanders are cards that we tutor for and that our decks are built around. I’d like to encourage folks to think about the potential of any of their decks to include one, though. Whether it’s backup copies of your Commander, or a way to pivot the gameplan to a Plan B, having a Secret Commander pays dividends. What’s your favorite Secret Commander in your decks?
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.