EDH: 5 Great Female Commanders You Should Try Out

Do you know many female commanders?

Magic: the Gathering lore is full of women who stand out, and many of them are represented as legendary creatures that can be good commanders for your deck.

This is another special article to celebrate International Women's Day and in it, you'll find 5 female commanders you need to know and, who knows, an inspiration for your next deck.

To avoid repetition, the commanders chosen for this list work with different themes.

1. Counters with Halana and Alena, Partners

The story describes Halana and Alena as partners in love and life.

The Werewolf Slayers of Innistrad is a commander card with a relatively simple effect that people often take for granted or need to read twice to understand what it actually does.

The effect is simple: this card will grant X +1/+1 counters and haste to another target creature you control, where X is our commanders' power. This ability happens at the start of each combat, and as the text is written, you don't have the option to don't grant these counters.

The fun is: how big can you make this commander for them to power up other creatures?

With a Scrounging Bandar on the battlefield, for example, at the start of upkeep you can add a counter to Halana and Alena, Partners, and on the turn of combat she will add three +1/+1 counters to the monkey cat.

In addition, there are many cards that double the power and toughness of creatures, such as Unnatural Growth, Zopandrel, Hunger Dominus and Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider, allowing you to double the commander's power before it adds counters to another creature.

The Ozolith is a welcome addition to “save” the counters in case your creatures die and depending on how it is used, Chandra's Ignition can be a nice sweeper.

Check out an example deck with Halana and Alena, Partners:

If you prefer, you can read the article Commander Deck Tech: Halana and Alena, Budget Partners here at CardsRealm to check out all the details and build a budget version of the deck.

2. Artifact Voltron with Ayesha Tanaka, Armorer

Ayesha Tanaka was an armorer with the ability to destroy artifacts and enchantments, but in the card Ayesha Tanaka, Armorer, she became a great commander for an equipment-focused deck.

Whenever she attacks, you may look at the top four cards of your library and put any number of them onto the battlefield that have mana values equal to or less than Ayesha's power on the battlefield tapped.

With this trigger, you can drop mana rocks such as Sol Ring or Azorius Signet, or equipment that will help protect and increase Ayesha's strength, such as Maul of the Skyclaves, Commander's Plate and Winged Boots. Remembering that she is a blacksmith, so playing with lots of equipment seems like the right thing to do with this commander.

Since it can't be blocked by opponents who control three or more artifacts, you can be generous and set aside a few slots to "ensure" your opponents have artifacts with cards like Akroan Horse, Basalt Golem and Liquimetal Coating.

Cards like Sigarda's Aid, Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist and Puresteel Paladin will help you equip artifacts faster.

Check out an example deck with Ayesha Tanaka, Armorer:

3. Dragon Tribal with Tiamat

Tiamat was a dragon goddess known as the Dragon Queen with five heads capable of functioning completely independently of each other in the colors black, blue, green, red and white.

Our dragon goddess was featured in the Forgotten Realms-based set that brought to Magic several famous characters from the Dungeons & Dragons books and stories, such as The Tarrasque, Xanathar, Guild Kingpin and Zariel, Archduke of Avernus.

Just like the famous The Ur-Dragon, Tiamat is an excellent commander for a five-color dragon deck – you can read our deck tech for The Ur-Dragon by clicking here.

When it enters the battlefield, Tiamat tutors up to five Dragon cards from your library into your hand. As we are talking about a tribe known for their high mana cost, artifacts like Fist of Suns and Quicksilver Amulet will help you summon these powerful creatures from your hand to the battlefield for cheap.

Creatures like Morophon, the Boundless and Klauth, Unrivaled Ancient are great options as well, as they help you lower the cost of creature spells or generate mana to cast them.

Check out an example of a Tiamat deck:

4. Tokens with Maja, Bretagard Protector

Maja is a human warrior from Kaldheim well respected on and off the battlefield for her ability to lead and resolve disputes.

Because she creates tokens when lands enter the battlefield and has the effect of giving +1/+1 to other creatures you control, Maja is a good commander for a deck focused on cards with landfall that create different creature tokens.

Cards like Scute Swarm, Emeria Angel, Zendikar's Roil and Rampaging Baloths fit well for the deck, as they will populate your board as you play lands.

Furthermore, Selesnya is one of the best combinations for token-focused decks and allows running cards like Doubling Season, Anointed Procession and Mondrak, Glory Dominus to double the amount of tokens you create.

Check out an example deck for Maja, Bretagard Protector:

5. Spellslinger with Mizzix of the Izmagnus

Mizzix is a galvanic goblin hunter in the Izzet League on Ravnica, who used her natural talents and political moves to rise to the position she holds today.

In addition, this creature works with a very interesting and unusual keyword: experience counters. As of this writing, only 8 creatures that interact with these counters have been released.

What are experience counters?

Mizzix has a triggered ability that gives you an experience counter when you cast instants or sorceries and helps you get a "discount" to cast the next spells.

Like planeswalker emblems, you keep experience counters even if the card is no longer on the battlefield.

With Mizzix as commander, even if she returns to the command zone at some point, you can continue your run through the experience counters as soon as she returns to the board.

With Mizzix helping you accumulate experience counters, X-cost spells like Gridlock, Mirrodin Besieged and Multiple Choice canbe cast “only” for their colored mana costs.

Example: If you have four experience counters, and you cast Multiple Choice, you can only pay one blue mana for the spell because the counters will "pay" the four mana of the X in the spell's cost.

The effect is quite fun and allows for a lot of creative play with everything an Izzet deck has to offer.

Check out an example deck with Mizzix of the Izmagnus:

These are the commanders we chose to introduce you to and, as you might have noticed, there's a huge variety of commanders that will help you build decks with super fun themes to play with your friends.

We hope you enjoyed the content. Also, what are your thoughts on checking out more articles like this one? Leave your theme suggestion in the comments for us!

Which of these commanders did you enjoy the most?