Is Wake Thrasher good in Commander?

Wake Thrasher

Creature — Merfolk Soldier

Whenever a permanent you control becomes untapped, this creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.

CMC: 3
Mana cost
Color identity: U
Rarity: rare
Set: Jumpstart 2022
Price: $0.23
EDHREC rank: #15980

Wake Thrasher can end games by itself — every untap trigger during your turn stacks a permanent +1/+1, and in dedicated untap shells like Basalt Monolith loops it becomes an arbitrarily large threat before the turn ends. The cost is real: no built-in protection means it dies to any removal spell before it swings, so it earns its slot only in decks that can land it and attack the same turn or protect it reliably. Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca decks are the natural home, where tapping and untapping merfolk is already the entire game plan.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca

13.4% of decks · synergy 0.13

Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca's tap-to-untap-all-merfolk ability is a built-in Wake Thrasher engine — one activation can stack five or more counters before combat, turning Wake Thrasher into a one-shot threat as early as turn four.

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

Commander is where Wake Thrasher actually does work: the format's abundance of untap synergies, tap-based tribal payoffs, and multi-step combo turns give it the repeated triggers it needs to become a genuine threat. In Legacy and Vintage it's legal but irrelevant — the format is too fast and too hostile to three-mana vanilla-ish creatures that need a full turn cycle to matter. Modern is the same story: Wake Thrasher has never found a competitive slot there, and dedicated untap shells in that format have better options. Treat it as a Commander-only card in practice.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

212 decks