Rankings for All 37 Assassin’s Creed Commanders

Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad | Illustration by Axel Sauerwald

The Assassin’s Creed franchise spans 16 years and around 25 individual videogames and spin-offs. The new Assassin’s Creed x MTG crossover set brings a total of 37 brand-new legendary creatures representing some of the series’ most iconic characters. From Altaïr to Desmond Miles, these new legends bring with them the new freerunning mechanic, as well as support for a historically under-served creature type.

This opens up a world of new possibilities for Commander deck building. Which of these new Assassins make the best commander? And which are better served in the 99? Let’s take a leap of faith into these new Assassin’s Creed commanders!

How Many Commanders Are There in Assassin’s Creed x MTG?

Ezio, Brash Novice | Illustration by Elizabeth Peiro

There are a total of 37 new commanders in Assassin’s Creed x MTG. This is a pretty hefty number of new legendary creatures for a single Universes Beyond set (although the Commander-specific Fallout added 53, and Lord of the Rings added over 100 across both the main set and Commander precons). Named characters are better for brand recognition though, so I think we should expect a ton of legendary creatures in UB sets from here on out.

#37. Senu, Keen-Eyed Protector

Senu, Keen-Eyed Protector is really cool! But not a great white commander. Its mono-white color identity means you’re hurting for the best legends to include in the deck, and its ability requiring it to remove itself from the field is a bit counter-intuitive. Senu’s return to combat when a legend attacks isn’t even that exciting; it's just a 2/1 with flying.

#36. Layla Hassan

Layla Hassan is a fairly basic assassin card you can use to recur historic cards. It’s a mono-white card, and the only mono-white assassin in the game, meaning Layla literally can’t run a deck of entirely assassins without some heavy use of changelings. Locked into a bad color with a boring effect, Layla is definitely not built for the command zone.

#35. Ezio, Brash Novice

A cute early-game play with an effect reminiscent of Figure of Destiny, Ezio, Brash Novice “levels up” as it attacks and generates +1/+1 counters. After its second attack, it’ll gain the assassin type and first strike, making it at least a 3/3. This Ezio is probably fine in some low-power Modern decks, but doesn’t do much as a Boros commander and is in the wrong colors to make an assassin deck.

#34. Aveline de Grandpré

Aveline de Grandpré is one of the more puzzling designs from Assassin’s Creed. Its abilities make enough sense; the potential to buff your board while also being an unfavorable block target is reminiscent of some classic Magic design a la enchanting a Whirling Dervish with Venom.

However, Aveline’s Golgari-costed disguise ability seems counter-intuitive to its intended use. If this set isn’t ostensibly just a Commander set, why does this card have black in its disguise cost? It’s not like it's a particularly steep gate to meet in a format like Modern or Legacy, so it's not particularly prohibitive in that aspect. MaRo has said it’s for drafting purposes, except this set isn’t for drafting. Is it just to hint at how green and black share deathtouch? Functionally, this card doesn’t seem to make much sense except as a deathtouch-themed Golgari commander. It can’t even slot into a Fynn, the Fangbearer deck!

#33. Achilles Davenport

Achilles Davenport is a true assassin typal lord, granting +1/+1 to all of your assassin creatures. It’s nice that we got an anthem effect for this creature type, but Achilles’s freerunning ability sort of forms some anti-synergy with the typical anthem-lord play pattern. Usually, I like to build up a board of creatures and drop an anthem in my first main phase to increase the power I can swing with. But the freerunning ability implies you’ll cast this Dimir commander after combat damage, instead of before. Even though it cuts Achilles’s cost in half, I’d prefer the buff pre-combat if I’m going to invest any mana into it.

#32. Alexios, Deimos of Kosmos

The mono-red Alexios, Deimos of Kosmos has an ability similar to cards like Xantcha, Sleeper Agent. Players pass Alexios around the board each turn, and it gets stronger each turn as it's forced to attack players besides its owner. Alexios could be a fun build-around red commander, where you lean into a chaos-style deck and goad opponents’ creatures into each other with Bloodthirsty Blade and Hot Pursuit. Remember that auras and equipment you attach to Alexios will stay attached when it changes controllers, and backgrounds like Popular Entertainer will still affect it, even when your opponents are declaring Alexios as an attacker.

#31. Adéwalé, Breaker of Chains

Adéwalé, Breaker of Chains is a Dimir-aligned 4/1 that bridges the gap between assassins and pirates. There’s no denying Adéwalé’s abilities are useful and fun to build around, but it just doesn’t make for a great Dimir commander. While Adéwalé’s ETB effect is fairly effective at digging through your library, even at its best it won’t win you the game. Adéwalé’s second ability further convolutes the problem: Meeting that Vehicle-based combat damage prerequisite isn’t a given, and even then you’ll have to pay a whole 3 more mana to recast Adéwalé. Adéwalé is useful, but definitely in the 99 rather than the command zone.

#30. Ezio, Blade of Vengeance

Ezio, Blade of Vengeance is 5 mana for a 5/5 with menace that should see you drawing quite a few cards per turn in an assassins-heavy deck. That said, it’s expensive, slow, and only two colors, so it makes a better “in the 99” card than as our commander.

#29. Haytham Kenway

Just in case your friends all built assassin decks, Haytham Kenway is here to be the silver bullet to the newly supported creature type. As a 4-mana 3/3 with a potentially three-target Oblivion Ring, Haytham makes for an interesting Azorius commander if you feel like being a pain to your assassin-pilled friends.I It’s Knight anthem alone isn’t really enough to build around, especially when it can slot into the 99 of almost any other Knights deck.

#28. Surtr, Fiery Jötun

Surtr, Fiery Jötun is a great commander for fans of the Magic: The Gathering staple Lightning Bolt. Shooting a bolt out of every historic spell you cast is way more valuable than you’d initially expect; tons of cheap and 0-mana artifacts become direct damage anywhere you want. Besides that, Surtr’s just a 5/5 with trample for 5 mana.

#27. Shao Jun

Shao Jun is about what you’d expect from an Izzet-aligned legendary uncommon. It has some built-in evasion that only works on your turn, and you can tap artifacts to turn them into sub-optimal pingers. Probably a fun Izzet commander to build around, but definitely not the best in the set.

#26. Shaun & Rebecca, Agents

Shaun & Rebecca, Agents are entirely themed around fetching up The Animus to the field and then using it to change creatures on the field into copies of the legendary creatures it exiles. That’s a lot of hoops to jump through just to get a legend onto the field, but at least it lasts until your next turn, so cards like Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant have a whole round to punish your opponents before they revert back to whatever they were.

Honestly? The Animus is better off in an Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad deck. It’d be sweet if Shaun & Rebecca were the right colors to go with, but alas, they are Bant-aligned and therefore a little difficult to slot into other assassin decks.

#25. Cleopatra, Exiled Pharaoh

I don’t think we’ve ever had a legendary-matters commander creature in Golgari colors before, so Cleopatra, Exiled Pharaoh sets an exciting precedent. There’s a lot of exciting +1/+1 counter synergy in Golgari, obviously, not least of all Reyhan, Last of the Abzan and any number of the counter-doublers. My only criticism is it feels like Cleopatra was originally designed to trigger when historic permanents died, to keep theme with the rest of the set, but then they realized drawing three or more cards off of every dying Saga would be way too strong.

#24. Desmond Miles

Desmond Miles would be great for an entirely assassins deck, if it was more than a mono-black commander. Unfortunately, even though Desmond really wants you to control and kill a lot of assassin creatures, there just aren’t enough good ones in mono-black to justify building around them. Specifically, we’re locked out of all the great assassin support cards in the Assassin’s Creed set!

#23. Eivor, Wolf-Kissed

A Naya commander, Eivor, Wolf-Kissed is a 7/6 hasted trampler with a milling effect, rare for its colors. Eivor is one of the only Naya-aligned options for a sagas deck, alongside another ACR commander Sigurd. Once again, the “from among them” clause really hurts Eivor, since we can’t use them as plain old recursion without putting the saga back on top of our library somehow.

#22. Roshan, Hidden Magister

There’s been some interesting support for face-down creatures lately, first the new disguise mechanic from Murders at Karlov Manor and now with Roshan, Hidden Magister and its ability that changes your face-down creatures into assassins with menace. Roshan also turns all of your creature spells and cards that aren’t on the field into assassins as well, making it a great include in the 99 of an Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad deck, or as the commander in an all-assassins deck if you like the deckbuilding challenge of being in mono-black.

#21. Sokrates, Athenian Teacher

Sokrates, Athenian Teacher takes group hug strategies in a new direction, incentivizing attacks and then negating the damage and turning it into card draw. Probably best played with lots of goad cards like Psychic Impetus and Renegade Silent.

#20. Shay Cormac

I really like effects that turn off hexproof/shroud/ward/indestructible, so having consistent access to that in your command zone rocks. This Orzhov commander also rewards you for targeting and then destroying those creatures, gaining +1/+1s for each dead bounty-countered foe. Finally, Shay Cormac gives me a reason to run my Seizan, Perverter of Truth.

#19. Ratonhnhaké꞉ton

Ratonhnhaké꞉ton is the only Esper-aligned assassin from the set, and plays into a graveyard and equipment theme similar to other Esper commanders (I’m thinking Sharuum the Hegemon artifact-recursion style). Ratonhnhaké꞉ton is great for an equipment deck because it creates its own targets for your equipment, and skips any prohibitive equip costs on weapons like Colossus Hammer or Blackblade Reforged. The fact that those tokens come standard with menace means they’ll be much more threatening than if a basic Saproling chose to take up the Blackblade.

#18. Mary Read and Anne Bonny

Ohhhh hey! Rewards for discarding land cards when you're flooding is kind of a cool effect! Mary Read and Anne Bonny is a loot effect on-a-body with an upside to create Treasure if you can discard one of three specific card types. It’s a little funny that none of those card types are assassin when they come from the Assassin’s Creed set, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t one of the coolest new vehicle commanders or pirate commanders to hit the scene. While they’re great on their own, they’re much better alongside Edward Kenway.

#17. Lydia Frye

I see two ways you can build around Lydia Frye. The first involves tapping and attacking with unblockable assassins each turn to maximize the surveil trigger at the beginning of your end step. Or, we focus on assassins with tap abilities like Royal Assassin or Cruel Sadist. Either of these builds are valid, but don’t expect Lydia to win you games all on its own.

#16. Evie Frye

Evie Frye is one half of the partner pair with Jacob Frye. Together, the two of them create a fun minigame where you get to discard assassins with freerunning and then cast them from exile. Evie’s half of the minigame involves tapping itself to loot an assassin into your graveyard. Unfortunately, Evie is kind of a worse trade-off than a basic Merfolk Looter. It has 1 extra power and can make something unblockable, but unless you have a board presence with other assassins, your unblockable trigger gets wasted on a tapped Evie.

#15. Jacob Frye

Jacob Frye is the other half of the partner pairing with Evie Frye. While Evie is a poor looter, Jacob acts as recursion for our assassins with freerunning. Sadly, there’s no way to guarantee a freerunning creature will be in our graveyard, and the selection of freerunning assassins to pull from is slim. Many of the best freerunning spells aren’t creatures, so Jacob and Evie are just not that hot together in the command zone.

#14. Basim Ibn Ishaq

Turning all of your historic spells into one-time cantrips isn’t all that bad, and it does guarantee you’ll connect with Basim Ibn Ishaq and get a +1/+1 counter on it. That’s about where Basim’s utility expires, though. Without a real outlet besides combat damage, and the limited amount of draw you’ll actually get off of Basim, you’re better off using Basim in the 99 rather than the command zone.

#13. Aya of Alexandria

It's fun to consider a historic deck built around Aya of Alexandria. Besides its own impressive statline and relevant combat abilities, I love that its assassin-creation ability doesn’t specify “one or more,” and instead chunks out a 1/1 Assassin creature for each historic creature that dealt damage. Aya plays very well with Bayek of Siwa, almost like they were meant to be partner commanders.

#12. Bayek of Siwa

Bayek of Siwa is the perfect pairing with Aya of Alexandria (no surprise, their flavor texts are literally connected). Bayek works best with Aya on the field to double up on the number of instances of combat damage, generating twice as many Assassin tokens. On its own, casting and sticking enough historic creatures for Bayek of Siwa to be relevant is easier said than done, and like Arno Dorian, its disguise effect isn’t too useful from the command zone.

#11. Arno Dorian

Arno Dorian is another assassin lord, but this time with a +2/+0 anthem instead of Achilles’s +1/+1. Arno’s option to be cast facedown as a disguised creature is fine in an environment with other face down creatures, but it's basically useless if Arno's your Rakdos commander. Everyone already saw your commander when we started the game! Unless you have some “turned-face-up” synergy in Rakdos that I don’t know about, Arno is better off in the 99 of your Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad deck.

#10. Arbaaz Mir

Arbaaz Mir is a Boros-aligned 2/2 that pings your opponents whenever a nontoken historic permanent ETBs. This lifelinked-Impact Tremors is a surefire way to ping your opponents, and can definitely be built around to great success. A “cheerios” deck built around casting as many 1- and 0-mana artifacts as possible for maximum pinging sounds fun, but you really want Arbaaz Mir in the 99 of another historic-based commander, like Jodah, the Unifier or Dihada, Binder of Wills.

#9. Kassandra, Eagle Bearer

Kassandra, Eagle Bearer takes the traditional Boros equipment deck style and focuses it on legendary equipment specifically. Kassandra tutors The Spear of Leonidas to the field, and you should see some card draw off of it. Lots of legendary equipment grant ways to evade or trample through your opponents, so Kassandra could be a fairly interesting “go-wide” commander. Plus, running only legendary equipment is a fun restriction to build around.

#8. Sigurd, Jarl of Ravensthorpe

Sigurd, Jarl of Ravensthorpe has a super high ceiling in terms of value. My only nitpick about this Naya commander is that I wish it could give itself those +1/+1s. But, having the ability to just run through your saga’s chapters for 1 mana makes Sigurd super valuable. On top of that, Sigurd’s a 3/3 with vigilance-trample-lifelink for 3 mana, making it a favorable attacker in the early game.

#7. Edward Kenway

Yar-har! Edward Kenway is the newest Grixis commander for pirates, and a damn fine one at that. Ed’s ability creates a Treasure for each tapped assassin, pirate, or vehicle you control. Edward’s second ability incentivizes you to attack with your vehicles, which in turn requires you tap your creatures to crew them. Edward Kenway’s internal synergy means it’ll generate advantage for you without risking your creatures in combat. You can’t use your mana as if it were any color to cast your opponents’ exiled spells, though, so you’ll only be effective when swinging at other red/blue/black decks.

#6. Eivor, Battle-Ready

Eivor, Battle-Ready gives Boros equipment decks a facelift that they’ve needed for a few years now. Where Wyleth, Soul of Steel and Akiri, Line-Slinger used to reign supreme, Eivor, Battle-Ready actually gives you a win condition built right in. All you’ve got to do is drop equipment on the field. Don’t even bother attaching them to Eivor if you don’t want to; it’s already a 5/5 with vigilance and haste, and really what we want is that sweet direct damage to our opponents. There are 123 1-mana equipment spells out there, and seven 0-mana equipment. An entire deck filled with these turns Eivor into a Fireball before it even picks up a Bone Saw.

#5. Havi, the All-Father

It was at this point I realized I have no clue what is happening in the Assassin’s Creed franchise anymore. Havi, the All-Father is an Odin-like god warrior that becomes indestructible so long as there are four or more historic permanents in your graveyard. As a 6/6 for 6 mana, this makes them a fairly formidable opponent, but Havi’s real value lies in the recursion of legendary creatures. Regular access to the graveyard is hard to come by in Naya colors, so Havi slots into a unique role in that color identity.

#4. Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci churns out Thopter token copies of discarded artifacts to great effect. Imagine, if you will, a world where we can pay to loot a Darksteel Forge into our graveyard, making a 0/2 Thopter copy of it.

Leonardo is the perfect way to cheat expensive artifacts into play, and gives you a built-in win condition by buffing those Thopter tokens massively if you can swing in with a full hand. Excellent design on this blue commander, both flavorfully and mechanically. As one of the only non-assassin commanders on the list, Leo ranks surprisingly high despite not playing a super key role in the story.

#3. The Capitoline Triad

I swear this card was designed by AI. The Capitoline Triad is a 10-mana colorless creature that wants to lead a deck full of historic permanents. If you can exile 30 mana’s worth of historic permanents from your graveyard, all your creatures will be 9/9, forever. This is a pretty cool emblem, and the first time we’ve seen both the number 30 and an emblem in the rules text on a creature.

My only beef with The Capitoline Triad is most colorless Commander decks are running lots of Eldrazi as their top-end, and those are traditionally creatures with huge power and toughness already. It could make a cool colorless commander for a modular deck running lots of creatures than enter with +1/+1s, making those little artifact creatures into huge beaters.

#2. Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad

Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad is a 3-mana 3/3 with first strike and one of the best abilities of any of the Assassin’s Creed commanders. Altaïr’s second ability exiles one assassin card from your graveyard each time it attacks, then makes a tapped-and-attacking token for each card it’s exiled so far. Altaïr’s effect isn’t just great for getting consistent access to your other assassin creatures: This Mardu commander is perfect for running a gimmicky type-changer deck where you can exploit any creatures you like with cards like Conspiracy and Ashes of the Fallen.

#1. Ezio Auditore da Firenze

Possibly the most famous of the Assassins from the Assassin’s Creed games (or maybe he’s just the only one I remember), Ezio Auditore da Firenze is your number one choice for building an assassin deck. Not only does it grant the new freerunning ability to assassins in your hand, its second ability to pay to insta-kill an opponent is very good. Granted, they have to be at 10 or less life, but that last 10 is often the hardest.

Ezio being a 5-color commander means you can run any of the 122 assassin-type creatures in MTG, and any of the changelings and type-changing spells you’d like. Sneaking some big creatures in for just can be game-changing, especially since Ezio’s built-in evasion means you’re more than likely to connect with an assassin each turn. Sneaking Thraximundar and Vein Ripper into play for cheap is no joke!

Commanding Conclusion

Leonardo da Vinci | Illustration by Wangjie Li

Assassin’s Creed x MTG brought with it support for an under-utilized creature type, as well as a new flavorfully consistent ability from the series in the form of freerunning. While many of the Assassin’s Creed commanders have a lot of internal synergy with the other cards in the set, many fall flat at reaching outside their boundaries to play well in the Commander format more broadly. That said, we should expect to see more and more Universes Beyond sets as the basis for experimenting with new design space, and as long as they aren’t irrevocably changing the meta landscape (I’m looking at you, The One Ring), I’m excited to see them!

What are your favorite new assassin cards? What are the best sagas to run alongside Havi, the All-Father and Eivor, Battle-Ready? Is there a Senu, Keen-Eyed Protector build that works? Let me know in the comments, or over on Draftsim's Twitter/X.

Thanks for reading!