Ares, God of War
CommanderAres, God of War pushes a Rakdos combat-and-sacrifice plan where your attackers can die on purpose and still come back to hand for another swing.
Public decks: 1Bracket: 1
Card text
Legendary Creature — God Warrior Villain
Ares attacks each combat if able.
Whenever an attacking creature you control dies, return that card to its owner's hand.
Building around this commander?
Use MTG Master to build or analyze a Commander deck around this card, check consistency, and find weak spots before your next game.
Overview
- Wants lots of expendable nontoken creatures to attack, trade off, and get rebought via Ares's death trigger
- Leans into combat math: force blocks, then use sacrifice or removal to turn trades into value
- Turns post-combat rebuild into a feature by recasting returned creatures and keeping pressure high
- Often plays like a grindy aggro deck: chip damage early, then pivot into attrition and drain-style finishes
- Ares attacking each combat is both a clock and a liability, so you typically plan your combats around protecting your commander
Common lines
- Deploy a couple creatures, land Ares, then attack to encourage trades and start looping creatures back to hand
- Attack with multiple bodies, then sacrifice a threatened attacker to convert it into cards (e.g., Altar's Reap, Deadly Dispute, Corrupted Conviction) while still getting it back
- Use a free sac outlet (e.g., Carrion Feeder) to control when attackers die and to dodge exile-based interaction where possible
- Stabilize with a sweeper when behind (e.g., Blasphemous Act), then reload by recasting the creatures you managed to loop earlier
Strengths
- Strong at profiting from combat trades; blocking you can be awkward when your creatures effectively refund themselves
- Resilient to spot removal on attackers during combat, since deaths can translate into extra cards-in-hand
- Flexible angle of attack: pressure life totals, then transition into sacrifice-value and incremental damage
- Rakdos interaction suite supports forcing through games via creature removal and catch-all answers (e.g., Chaos Warp, Feed the Swarm)
Weaknesses
- Ares must attack each combat if able, which can expose you to bad attacks, crack-backs, and tempo loss
- Main-phase board wipes and exile effects can blank the commander’s recursion line
- Token-heavy plans don’t pair well with the trigger (tokens can’t meaningfully return to hand)
- Can struggle into pillow-fort, combat taxes, and repeated Fog-style effects that invalidate attacking
- If the table removes Ares repeatedly, your deck can feel like fair Rakdos creatures without the refill engine
Rule zero notes
- This commander is mandatory-attack; games can get scrappy and combat-centric quickly
- Decks can lean into sacrifice-for-value and on-death damage engines (e.g., Bastion of Remembrance, Garna, Bloodfist of Keld) depending on build
- If you run lots of haste enablers (e.g., Anger, Fervor, Hammer of Purphoros), the deck can pressure life totals earlier than typical Rakdos midrange
- Expect frequent creature churn and recasting; the deck often plays a longer grind than it looks
Matchups
Best into
- Creature-heavy midrange pods where trading in combat is common
- Tables that try to stabilize with blockers rather than sweeping the board
- Slower value decks that give you time to turn recursion into long-game inevitability
Struggles against
- Fast combo pods that don’t care about combat pressure
- Control shells with frequent sweepers and exile-based answers
- Pillow-fort and combat-tax strategies that punish mandatory attacks
FAQ
Do tokens come back to hand if they die while attacking?
Not meaningfully—tokens can’t exist in hand, so Ares’s trigger won’t give you a reusable token loop.
If I sacrifice an attacking creature, does Ares return it?
Yes, if it was an attacking creature when it died, Ares will trigger and return it to its owner’s hand.
What happens if Ares would make a terrible attack?
Ares still has to attack if able, so you typically build and play to mitigate that with good combat setups or ways to profit if Ares dies.
Is this a reanimator commander?
Not in the usual graveyard sense—Ares returns dead attackers to hand, so the engine is more about recasting and repeatable combat value.
How does Ares usually close games?
Most wins come from repeated combat steps backed by sacrifice value, sometimes finishing with steady drain effects like Bastion of Remembrance or combat-trigger damage like Brazen Cannonade if included.