Is Magus of the Moon good in Commander?

Magus of the Moon in Commander — Combos, Decks & Price

Magus of the Moon turns every nonbasic land into a Mountain, which shuts off the majority of Commander manabases the moment it resolves. At three mana in a mono-red shell, it's one of the cheapest ways to strand greedy three- and four-color decks — ask Winota, Joiner of Forces players why they run it at a 41% clip.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01

Winota, Joiner of Forces

41.7% of decks · synergy 0.39

Winota, Joiner of Forces wants to end games before opponents can establish their mana, and Magus of the Moon denies the nonbasics that multicolor piles depend on to cast interaction — buying exactly the window Winota needs.

02

Zo-Zu the Punisher

40.2% of decks · synergy 0.32

Zo-Zu the Punisher punishes every land drop, and Magus of the Moon forces opponents to fetch basics or eat Mountains that produce nothing useful, compounding the damage-per-land gameplan.

03

Slicer, Hired Muscle

35.0% of decks · synergy 0.27

Slicer, Hired Muscle is a Boros beatdown commander that thrives when opponents can't cast their spells on curve, and Magus of the Moon's nonbasic lockout is one of the cleanest ways to make that happen.

04

Norin the Wary

28.0% of decks · synergy 0.20

Norin the Wary decks are built almost entirely on basics and Mountains anyway, so Magus of the Moon is virtually asymmetric — opponents lose their colored mana while Norin's engine hums along unaffected.

05

Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer

19.1% of decks · synergy 0.11

Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is built to move fast and disrupt early, and Magus of the Moon extends that disruption plan by hosing the fetchland-shock infrastructure that lets opponents stabilize after early pressure.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

Format	Verdict
commander	legal
legacy	legal
modern	legal
pioneer	not legal
standard	not legal
vintage	legal
pauper	not legal
oathbreaker	legal

In Commander, Magus of the Moon is a staple disruptive threat rather than a true lock piece — four-player tables mean opponents can gang up to remove it, but landing it on turn three against a greedy five-color pile is often enough to eliminate one player from the game entirely. Legacy and Vintage see it as a redundant copy of Blood Moon for strategies that want the effect on a creature for synergy reasons, though the creature type makes it softer to removal than the enchantment. Modern runs it in sideboard slots for land-destruction and prison shells, where the three-mana body occasionally matters for blocking or going wide. Formats like Pioneer, Standard, and Pauper don't have access to it — in Pauper's case because of rarity, in the others because it simply hasn't been reprinted into those card pools.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

Ruination does roughly the same work at sorcery speed for around $1, hitting all nonbasics without the creature vulnerability — it's a one-shot rather than a sustained lock, but it often destroys more total mana than Magus of the Moon would before getting killed. Blood Moon itself is the non-budget version of the same effect; if you want the enchantment instead of the creature, that's the upgrade rather than a replacement.

Price Context

Current price

$7.24 mid tier

At $7.24, Magus of the Moon sits in the mid tier — cheap enough to slot into most red Commander builds without real budget friction, expensive enough to reflect genuine demand from Legacy and Modern sideboards alongside Commander play. Multiple reprints have kept the price from climbing higher, so $7 is close to its floor.