If you're a Magic: The Gathering player looking to take your Commander games to the next level, Competitive Commander, or cEDH, is the way to go. With a focus on the best cards in the game, cEDH plays extremely powerful tutors, artifacts, and creatures to help them take the win.
In Commander, white cards are often relegated to a support role. There are plenty of great Stax cards, board wipes, and exiling effects to help control the board and keep your opponents in check. These white commanders often embody these concepts, helping to keep your opponent’s cards off the table so you can position yourself on top.
10 Ardenn, Intrepid Archeologist
This partner commander lets you shift around how your Auras and Equipment are attached to players and permanents in play. Because of this, Arden fits naturally into Stax and Equipment-based decks, stalling the game and working to lock out your opponents from interacting with your board.
As a partner commander, Arden pairs well with cards like Rebbec, Architect of Ascension who offers your artifacts protection from spells of the same mana value among artifacts you control, or Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh to give you access to red and a powerful creature when loaded up with Equipment.
9 Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward
There are plenty of Commanders in Magic that enable all sorts of wild combos, but white rarely gets a chance to use them. Abdel Adrian helps bring some infinite combos to your white deck. Abdel Adrian lets you exile other nonland permanents, creating a 1/1 Solider token for each, and then bringing all those permanents back into play.
This mass blink effect can net you tons of enter the battlefield triggers. When paired with a black Background like Agent of the Iron Throne, you can set up reanimate triggers with cards like Animate Dead and Necromancy.
8 Ao, The Dawn Sky
Anytime there’s a card that grants you more cards for free, it's hard to say no to playing it. With looping death triggers and catering your deck to allow for Ao’s first ability to hit often, you can accrue tons of value from this white Dragon.
With Ao, you’re going to need tons of sacrifice outlets, like Ashod’s Altar, to help trigger it's dying ability. Once it dies, you don't necessarily want to return it to the Command Zone. Instead, using cards that repeatedly bring Ao back, like Nim Deathmantle, can ensure you can keep grabbing free four-cost cards or less from the top seven cards of your deck.
7 Heliod, God Of The Sun
Heliod often finds himself at the head of Stax-based Commander decks, particularly in cEDH. With the extremely powerful indestructible ability slapped onto the Enchantment God, Heliod can only be stopped by countering it, exiling it, or sacrificing it, which are not always as readily available as regular removal spells.
Another powerful component of Heliod, God of the Sun is that it has a built-in token engine, taking your spare mana and turning it into a win-condition. This ability gets around cards like Rule of Law that limit the number of cards you can play. Heliod lets you cast your one spell a turn and still utilize any spare mana you might have.
6 Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful
With Yoshimaru as one part of your Commander partners, you have the making of a powerful deck. Yoshimaru gains counters every time a Legendary permanent enters the battlefield, and since it only costs one mana, you can cast it early and let it grow. Since Yoshimaru is just one mana to start, you can cast it on your first turn and watch it grow.
Yoshimaru, tragically, pairs nicely with Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools, who can sacrifice Yoshimaru to draw three cards off of it, and you can easily recast it again for cheap. If you can repeatedly bring it back from the graveyard, however, you’ll have a powerful draw engine in your white and black Commander deck.
5 Oswald Fiddlebender
Oswald Fiddlebender is effectively a mono-white artifact-specific Pod commander. With Oswald’s ability, you can pay one white mana and sacrifice an artifact to go grab another Stax piece from your deck and put it directly into play. Oswald is a little slow compared to other cEDH commanders, but with a little setup and help from artifacts that can untap it, you can get multiple artifacts in a turn.
With Oswald, you can tutor up tons of infinite mana combos too, like Basalt Monolith and Rings of Brighthearth to net yourself tons of extra mana. Oswald can also circumnavigate common Stax cards like Rule of Law to help get more cards into play than your opponents.
4 Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle
A very consistent cEDH commander, Teshar, Ancestor’s Apostle can close games in just a few turns or can help secure a grindy game. With Teshar, you can recur a creature card with mana value of three or less back to play when you cast an artifact, Legendary, or Saga card. This lets you set up powerful sacrifice engines to get tons of enter the battlefield triggers or to help along sacrifice-based cards like Altar of Dementia.
Teshar also acts as a combo piece if you're looking to generate infinite mana with cards like Lion’s Eye Diamond. With the Diamond in play, sacrifice it for the mana and then bring it back with a card like Restoration Specialist. When you recast Lion's Eye Diamond, Teshar lets you bring back Restoration Specialist to the battlefield. Continue this sequence for with your infinite mana and sink it into any number of cards like Walking Ballista to knock out your opponents.
3 Myrel, Shield Of Argive
Surprising no one, Myrel, Shield of Argive makes a powerful Stax commander. With a built-in ability to lock players out of all actions during your turn, Myrel gives you the freedom to do whatever you want on your turn. Since Myrel doesn't have an activatable abilities nor does she rely on enter the battlefield effects, you're able to play Stax pieces like Cursed Totem and Torpor Orb to shut down your opponents.
While not as explosive as other Human-based Stax decks, Myrel can also grow out of control with the number of tokens it can quickly put into play. Since other popular Stax cards like Esper Sentinel and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben are also Soldier creatures, they will help your army of tokens grow.
2 Heliod, Sun-Crowned
This Heliod is cheaper than its predecessor and enables some powerful combos by throwing +1/+1 counters everywhere. The easiest and fastest combo is to get a Walking Ballista into play with two counters on it to start.
With Heliod, you must give Walking Ballista lifelink, then remove one of those counters to deal one damage to anything. Every time you deal damage this way, you gain life and put more counters on Walking Ballista. There's a lot of consistency in Heliod since cards like Ranger-Captain of Eos and Enlightened Tutor can find your Walking Ballista or even Triskelion to complete your combo.
1 Light-Paws, Emperor's Voice
Tutoring is incredibly important in Commander, and with Light-Paws, your commander lets you tutor up any Aura you want. Each Aura you put on lets you get another with the same mana value or less from your deck. Light-Paws can shut down your opponent's damage-based combos with just two enchantments, Pariah and Timely Ward. Pariah forces Light-Paws to take all the damage you would normally take, while Timely Ward gives it indestructible.
Light-Paws takes a different approach from other Stax decks in that, once Light-Paws is loaded up with Auras, you have an extremely powerful creature to attack with. With only a few Enchantments, you can give Light-Paws protection from all colors and a massive boost in power to take out your opponents through Commander Damage.
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