Quick Links
is one of the most well-known and loved trading card games out there, in no small part thanks to the popularity of the Commander format. Around four players, each💎 with 40 life, 99 unique cards in their libraries, and one lege𝄹ndary creature to lead the charge.
The beauty of th༺is setup is the sheer number of deck types, playstyles, and colour combinations available to choose from, including having no colour at all. Given the sheer number of colourless cards i🦹n Magic, we’re using this guide to cover the staple cards you’ll want to have in most colourless commander decks.
Land Ramp
Having strong mana generation is key. The basic lands for a colourless deck are Wastes, which is great for two reasons: First, like any mono-coloured deck, you’ll always draw the right coloured land for the job — as opposed to a five-colour deck, where you can end up with a hand ful✤l of green spells and no f꧙orests to tap for green mana.
Secondly, many utility lands with special abilities only produce colourless mana, which means we can stack our decks with non-basic lands and not worry about ruining the mana base — somethiꦦng that isn&r✤squo;t possible in a coloured deck.
The downside here is that colourless cards tend to be more expensive to cast, especially powerful artifacts and creatures, which makes ramp even more important for these deck types.
Starting with lands, one of the most iconic combinations is the Urzatron set (Urza’s Tower, Urza’s Mine, and Urza’s Power Plant). Each one alone gives you one mana, but on the board together, they generate a hefty seven colourless mana between them. The Brother’s War also brought Urza’s Workshop, which adds colouꦡrless mana for each U🌜rza’s land you control, meaning you can make a whopping 11 mana from just four lands.
Urza’s Workshop does require you to control three or more artifacts before you can use its special ability, but given this is a c🧔olourless deck, we’ll have plenty of artifacts to make that work.
Speaking of lands that get better with other lands, Shrine of the Forsaken Gods is excellent for the mid-game. You can add two colourless mana but only to cast colourless spells — so no problems there — but you can only tap it this way if you control seven or more lands.
This card is very similar to Temple of the False God, which also gives you two colourless mana, but can only be activated if you control five or more lands. Still, it’s worth having one of these since it’s a Commander stap𒅌le that’sᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ perfect in any deck.
The other ramp land we’ll mention is Eldrazi Temple. You can tap it for two colourless mana, but only to cast colourless Eldrazi spells or activate their abilities. While this seems niche, cards from the Eldrazi tribe are monstrous threats on the battlefield, worthy of their extremely high mana costs. This means it's a land great for casting win conditions and sewing dread in your enemies alike.
Nonland Ramp
Since you can typically only play one land a turn, you’ll need other ways to generate mana. Next, we’ll talk about your non-land cards tha💎t create mana.
You might’ve heard or seen terms like mana dork, mana rock, or mana ritual in the MTG community. Simply put, they all produce mana. But a mana dork is a creature, a mana rock is an artifact or enchantment, and a mana ritual is an instant or sorcery.
These cards tend to be more vulnerable than lands since many cards exist that can counter, destroy, or exile them. But they also tend to produce more mana across all colours. As we’re building a colourless deck, we can just focus on the fꦬormer.
Thran Dynamo is a classic mana rock. A four-cost artifact that can tap for threꦿe mana is nothing to be sniffed at — especially if it’s paying for itself in two turns.
Moving on, Everflowing Chalice is a zero-cost artifact that comes with a kicker — meaning when you cast the spell, you can ‘kick’ it by paying extra mana for another effect. In this case, each two colourless mana will put a charge counter on Everflowing Chalice, where tapping it will add colourless mana equal to the number♒ o♒f counters on it.
If you combine Everflowing Chalice with Rings of Brighthearth — which copies an ability — and something that untaps artifacts — such as Voltaic Key or Galvanic Key, you can generat꧙e infinite🔯 colourless mana each turn.
However, the card that’s made for colourless commanders is Forsaken Monument. Not only does it give you life for casting colourless spells, and buff your colourless creatures, but it also gives you an extra colourless whenever you tap a permanent for colourless mana. Combine this with Basalt Monolith — ꧃a three-mana rock for three-cost — and you’ve got infinite mana💙.
Even if you get stuck with regular mana ramp, cards like Unwinding Clock, which untap all artifacts in each player’s untap st♑ep, give you plenty of resources to work within your opponent’s turns.
Draw
You’re not going anywhere in a hurry if you haven’t got the fuel to burn, an🃏d this is where your ꦬdraw abilities come into play.
The place to start is Mind Stone. It's a two-cost artifact that can be tapped for one generic mana, or can be paid one generic mana, tapped, and sacrificed to draw a card.
It also has two bigger brothers: Hedron Archive is a four-cost variant that adds two generic mana or can be paid two mana and sacked to draw two cards. Dreamstone Hedron is a six-cost card that (you guessed it) adds three generic man✅a or can be paid three and sacrificed to draw three cards.
These mana rocks are good because they also function as ramp; you’ll notice that because colourless cards tend to be very mana-expensive, the best ones are both strong and adaptable, such as Tamiyo's Journal — a five-cost legendary artifact that produces tokens which give us draw, or we can use its tutor ability to search for the cards we want, without revealing it to our opponents.
Finally, Mind’s Eye is a five-cost artifact that lets us pay one generic manܫa to draw whenever our opponents draw — even in your average Commander game, that’s an extra🅰 three cards between your turns.
Tutors
You can’t always rely on drawing into what you want; sometimes you have to find it yourself. Tutors (named after the card Demonic Tutor) let you search for a card and place it somewhere more convenient, usually your hand, but also into you🔴r graveyard or onto the battlefield.
Planar Bridge is a six-cost artifact which brings cards from your library onto the battlefield for eight mana. This makes it difficult to counter, and lowers the cost of more expensive permanents. The con is you won’t get any abilities that activate on cast.
Conduit of Ruin gives you a 5/5 for six mana, lets you search for a creature card of seven mana or greater — putting it on the top of your library — and makes the first creature spell you cꦍast each turn cost two generic 💞mana less. This is brilliant for grabbing an Eldrazi titan, but you’ll have to reveal it for everyone to see, and it still risks being milled from the top of your library.
If a creature does end up in the graveyard, Artisan of Kozilek is a nine-cost 10/9 Eldrazi that can bring it onto the battlefield for you. This happens on cast too, meaning a regular Counterspell won’t stop the tutor from going off.
Spot Removal
Removing specific threats is key to gaining the advantage — after all, finding the Achilles’ heel in your opponent’s deck is both necessary and extremely satisfying. Unfortunately, there aren’t many instants and sorceries in colourless, so we’ve little choice in what we use. On the plus side, most cards will exile instead of destroy, getting around indestructible and a🌺nyꦉ graveyard shenanigans.
Introduction to Annihilation is a five-cost sorcery that exiles any nonland permanent, making it very flexiღble, but it also lets the 🗹controller draw a card.
However, for two mana more, Scour from Existence exiles any target permanent —including lands, is cast at instanꦆt speed, and doesn’t give our op𓆏ponent any draw.
Yet with all the big creatures in colourless, our pièce de resistance is Gruesome Slaughter, a six-cost sorcery that lets you tap any creature you control, dealing damage equal to its power to a creature of your choice. This has the potential to destroy all your enemies’ creatures, particularly if it’s coupled with a Voltaic Key. Speaking of which…
Group Removal
If the odds become stacked against you, sometimes it’s better to clear the battlefield and start fresh. Th🐼ese bo෴ard wipes can give you the space to breathe, or push you to victory, so it’s important to have at least a few.
As a four-mana artifact, Nevinyrral’s Disk is a cheap board-wipe-in-waiting that destroys all artifacts, creatures, and enchantments. The downside is it enters the battlefield tapped and costs one m♏ana to activate, but the presence of it on the board might be enough to hold your opponents’ bigger threats at bay.
Still, why not just remove everyone else’s pieces and keep our battlelines intact? All is Dust forces each player to sacrifice all coloured permanents they control, which leaves our colourless deck unscathed whilst getting around abilities like indestructible, hexproof, and shroud.
Meanwhile, Portal to Phyrexia is a nine-cost artifact that forces each opponent tꦗo sacrifice three creatures and lets us tutor a creature from our graveyard each turn, without paying its mana cost.
A special mention should be given to Scavenger Grounds, which sacrifices any desert land (including itself) to exile all cards from all graveyards. That’s all 🌄graveyards though, including yoℱur own, so be careful.
Combat Tricks/Aggro
Being able to act fast is vital in all formats of MTG, as it lets you nip problems in the bud before they get out of hand, as well as keeping your opponents on🧸 their toes.
As a three-cost aritfact creature, Liberator, Urza’s Battlethopter lets us cast colourless and artifact spells as though they had flash. In other words, it allows us to cast all our spells at instant speed.
On the other hand, Spacial Contortion is a 🍷cheap instant that can give one creature +3/-3 until the end of the turn. This means we can push through some extra combat damage or finish off an opposing threat.
However, Endbringer is a creature that costs five generic and one colourless, and comes with great versatility. It can deal one damage to a creature or player, draw a card, and most interestingly of all, it can stop creatures from attacking or blocking. It's perfect for throttling your opponents’ plans and pushing ahead with your own
If you want to protect your most powerful creatures, always take a pair of Lightning Greaves or Swiftfoot Boots with you. These two-cost equipment artifacts provide shroud or hexproof respectively, and give you haste to get around summoning sickness.
Counters/Denial
These are the cards which stymy your opponents’ plans before they can begin. Blue is the go-to for any counters, denial, and taxes, but all colours dabble in this mechanic in one way or another, and there&r♏squo;s more than one way to mess with th🐽e board.
Stonespeaker Crystal, for example, is a four-cost mana rock that can exile any number of graveyards. This can deal with anyone whose library is starting to dwindle and can be lethal to any deck that plays out of its graveyard.
For a more original counter, Not of This World is an expensive seven-cost counter for any spell or ability that targets a permanent you control but is free if it targets a creature with power seven or greater, which most of your big threats will be.
With regards to safeguarding those threats, Homeward Path is a land that returns all creatures to their owners' control. People might not steal your creatures regularly, but when🍌 they do, you’ll be happy to have this.
Win Conditions
Eventually, you’ll need to close out the game🧔, and given that you’re wielding some very big threats already, it’s better to win before anyone can react.
With that in mind, Blightsteel Colossus can knock out any opponent in one hit. As a 12-cost indestructible artifact creature, it has infect, which stacks poison counters on both creatures and players — where anyone with ten poison counters on them is out of the game. Combined with its trample ability, this ꦅiron giant is a nightmare to💮 deal with.
Speaking of nightmares, how could we talk colourless decks without mentioning the Eldrazi Titans — Ulamog, Kozilek, and Emrakul. These ten-to13-cost legendary titans have massive consequences for your enemies, ranging from sacrificing permanents to exiling swathes of their libraries. Even better is that almost all their abilities activate on casting the cards, making the text itself difficult 𝕴to counter.
Finally, Desolation Twin creates two 10/10 Eldrazi for ten mana, but with a Mirrorpool land, you can pay an extra four mana and sacrifice it to create another 10/10 creature. That’s 30 power on the board, for 14 mana, in one turn.