Commander Color Identities: Which Two-Color Combination Should You Play?
By MTG Master EditorialPublished Updated 7 min read
Choosing your commander’s color identity is one of the biggest decisions when building a Commander deck.
It determines which cards you can play, obviously, but it also has a huge influence on how the deck feels.
Do you want to sacrifice your own creatures for value?
Play huge creatures and attack?
Keep mana open and control the table?
Fill your graveyard?
Create an army of tokens?
Cast twelve spells in the same turn and somehow still have mana left?
Every color combination can be built in many different ways, and none of these are strict rules. That’s part of Commander. You can build a Rakdos deck that doesn’t sacrifice anything or an Azorius deck that barely plays counterspells.
But each color combination naturally pushes you towards certain mechanics and playstyles.
If you’re trying to decide which one fits you, this is a good place to start.
Azorius — White / Blue
Control, blink, flyers and having an answer.
Azorius combines white’s removal, protection and board wipes with blue’s card draw and counterspells.
It’s naturally one of the strongest combinations for control, but that’s far from the only way to build it. Blink decks can reuse ETB abilities repeatedly, flyers can create surprisingly aggressive decks, and Azorius also has plenty of artifact, token and Voltron strategies.
If you like playing patiently, protecting your board and deciding which threats actually deserve an answer, Azorius is worth a look.
Popular strategies: Control, Blink, Flyers, Artifacts, Tokens, Voltron.
Dimir — Blue / Black
Control, graveyards, mill and stealing things that aren’t yours.
Dimir combines two of the best colors in Magic for card advantage and interaction.
Blue gives you counterspells and card selection while black adds removal, tutors, reanimation and plenty of ways to use the graveyard.
You can mill opponents, build Zombie or Rogue decks, reanimate creatures or simply steal the best cards everyone else brought to the table.
Dimir is particularly good if you like having options and keeping your opponents guessing.
Popular strategies: Control, Mill, Reanimator, Zombies, Rogues, Theft, Combo.
Rakdos — Black / Red
Sacrifice, chaos and getting value from things dying.
Rakdos doesn’t mind losing resources as long as it gets something better in return.
Sacrifice a creature.
Discard a card.
Pay some life.
Create a Treasure and immediately spend it.
Black gives Rakdos recursion, sacrifice and card advantage while red adds aggression, damage, haste and explosive turns.
It’s a great combination if you like decks where creatures dying is usually part of the plan rather than something you’re trying to avoid.
Popular strategies: Aristocrats, Sacrifice, Reanimator, Group Slug, Discard, Treasures, Demons.
Gruul — Red / Green
Big creatures, big mana and hitting people.
Gruul has a fairly simple proposition.
Make lots of mana.
Play something enormous.
Preferably give it haste.
Attack somebody.
Green provides excellent ramp and huge creatures while red adds haste, damage and ways to make combat much more dangerous.
Gruul can also build excellent landfall, +1/+1 counter, Dragon and Dinosaur decks.
If solving problems by attacking them sounds reasonable to you, Gruul is probably worth trying.
Popular strategies: Big Creatures, Ramp, Landfall, +1/+1 Counters, Dragons, Dinosaurs, Combat.
Selesnya — Green / White
Tokens, counters and building an enormous battlefield.
Selesnya is extremely good at putting permanents onto the battlefield and making them increasingly difficult to deal with.
You can create huge armies of tokens, pile +1/+1 counters onto creatures, build around enchantments, gain ridiculous amounts of life or simply play efficient creatures and make them bigger.
It often plays fairly straightforward Magic.
The problem for your opponents is that “straightforward” can eventually mean attacking with twelve creatures that are all 15/15.
Popular strategies: Tokens, +1/+1 Counters, Enchantments, Lifegain, Creature Toolbox, Go-Wide.
Orzhov — White / Black
Lifegain, sacrifice and slowly draining the entire table.
Orzhov is excellent at turning small advantages into engines.
A creature enters and you gain life.
You sacrifice it and everyone loses life.
Its death creates another token.
Later you bring the original creature back.
Nothing needs to be wasted.
White provides tokens, protection and excellent removal while black adds sacrifice, card draw, tutors and graveyard recursion.
If you enjoy aristocrats, lifegain or decks where ten tiny triggers eventually kill everyone, Orzhov is a natural fit.
Popular strategies: Aristocrats, Lifegain, Sacrifice, Tokens, Reanimator, Taxes, Life Drain.
Izzet — Blue / Red
Spells, card draw and turns that get completely out of control.
Izzet is the classic spellslinger combination.
Blue gives you card draw, counterspells and spell manipulation while red adds damage, impulse draw, Treasures and plenty of ways to copy things.
The result can be a deck that starts a turn by casting one harmless instant and ends it ten spells later with six triggers on the stack and everyone asking what exactly is happening.
If casting spells is more interesting to you than simply playing creatures on curve, Izzet has a lot to offer.
Popular strategies: Spellslinger, Spell Copying, Storm, Artifacts, Wizards, Card Draw.
Golgari — Black / Green
Graveyards, recursion and refusing to let anything stay dead.
Golgari treats the graveyard less like a place where cards disappear and more like another resource.
Green gives you ramp, creatures and self-mill while black provides sacrifice, tutors and reanimation.
Together they create some of the best graveyard decks in Commander.
Creatures die, generate value and come back.
Lands go to the graveyard and come back.
Sometimes half your deck ends up there and that’s exactly where you wanted it.
Popular strategies: Graveyard, Sacrifice, Reanimator, +1/+1 Counters, Lands, Elves, Value.
Boros — Red / White
Combat, equipment and making attacking actually worth it.
Boros has traditionally been associated with aggressive Commander decks, but modern Boros can do much more than simply turn creatures sideways.
White provides protection, removal and equipment support while red adds haste, damage, Treasures and aggressive card advantage.
Boros is excellent for Equipment and Voltron decks, token armies, extra combat strategies and commanders that reward you for attacking.
And yes, sometimes the correct strategy really is just attacking again.
Popular strategies: Equipment, Voltron, Tokens, Combat, Extra Combats, Auras, Aggro.
Simic — Green / Blue
Ramp, card draw and turning value into even more value.
Simic combines two things Commander players generally enjoy:
Having lots of mana and having lots of cards.
Green provides ramp, creatures and land strategies while blue gives you card draw, interaction and ways to manipulate or copy your permanents.
That naturally creates some extremely powerful value engines.
Simic is also one of the best homes for +1/+1 counters, landfall, sea creatures, tokens and strategies where simply playing your cards creates more resources to play even more cards.
Things can snowball very quickly.
Popular strategies: Ramp, Card Draw, +1/+1 Counters, Landfall, Tokens, Sea Creatures, Value Engines.
So Which Color Combination Should You Play?
There isn’t a best one.
There isn’t even necessarily a best one for you.
A lot depends on what part of Commander you actually enjoy.
If you want huge creatures and combat, Gruul is an obvious place to look.
If you like sacrifice and death triggers, try Rakdos or Orzhov.
For graveyards and recursion, Golgari is difficult to beat.
If you enjoy spells and explosive turns, Izzet makes sense.
For tokens and building enormous boards, look at Selesnya.
If you prefer reacting to the table and keeping answers available, Azorius or Dimir will probably feel more natural.
Boros is a great home for combat and Equipment while Simic is perfect if your definition of fun involves having twelve lands and nine cards in your hand.
But these are starting points, not rules.
Commander decks get interesting when you take what a color combination is naturally good at and then build it in your own way.
Pick the colors you like.
Pick a commander that makes you want to build around it.
And go from there.
That’s usually more important than choosing whatever somebody tells you is the “best” color combination.
Ready to build around your colors?
Analyze your Commander list to see how its mana, card draw and interaction support the strategy you want to play.