The Commander
When Iroh enters, create a Food token.
At the beginning of combat on your turn, you may have target opponent gain control of target permanent you control. When you do, create a 1/1 white Ally creature token. Put a +1/+1 counter on that token for each permanent you own that your opponents control.
Guide
Gameplan
Iroh is a politics-and-donate commander that turns your permanents into weapons by handing them to opponents. Each combat you 'gift' a permanent away and bank a growing Ally token that gets +1/+1 for every permanent you own under opposing control. You either give away things that actively punish the new owner (Bronze Bombshell, Steel Golem) or simply feed expendable permanents to balloon a single huge attacker, while leveraging deals and pillow-fort defenses to survive politically.
Strengths
- Generates free value every turn: a body, +1/+1 counters, and political goodwill from gifting permanents.
- Can weaponize donated cards (Bronze Bombshell, Steel Golem) to damage or hose specific opponents.
- Cheap three-mana commander that immediately replaces itself with a Food token and a combat trigger.
- Excellent at table politics—players are happy to take your 'free' permanents, buying you time.
Weaknesses
- The big payoff lives on a token Ally, not the commander, so it's vulnerable to spot removal and board wipes.
- Donating permanents permanently weakens your own board unless you can reclaim them.
- RW lacks deep card draw and tutoring, so it can run out of gas.
- Slow clock—needs several turns of donating to build a threatening Ally, and a single Wrath resets everything.
Key Cards
- Bronze Bombshell — When the opponent you gifted it to can no longer keep it, it deals 7 damage—reusable removal/burn via Iroh's donation.
- Steel Golem — Gifting it locks an opponent out of casting creatures while still counting toward your Ally's counters.
- Anointed Procession — Doubles every Ally token Iroh makes, giving you two large bodies instead of one.
- Doubling Season — Doubles both the Ally tokens and the +1/+1 counters they enter with, snowballing the payoff.
- Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer — Copies your big Ally onto your whole token board for an explosive alpha strike.
- Assemble the Legion — Floods the board with tokens you can donate or buff alongside the Ally plan.
- Smothering Tithe — Premier RW ramp/card advantage to fuel a color pair that otherwise struggles for resources.
Upgrade Path
Add token and counter doublers (Doubling Season, Anointed Procession, Parallel Lives) to multiply the payoff, plus donate-and-return enablers so you keep your best permanents while feeding the trigger. Lean into reusable 'cursed gift' artifacts and ways to flicker or recur Iroh for extra Food and triggers, and shore up the deck's weaknesses with RW ramp/draw like Smothering Tithe, Dockside Extortionist, and Wheel of Misfortune. Finish faster by giving the Ally evasion (Rogue's Passage, Whispersilk Cloak) or copying it with Brudiclad for surprise lethal.
Core Cards
The most-played cards for this commander, built from aggregated deck data (the Mythic Graph). Build public decks to seed it.
Win Conditions
- ▸Beat down with one or more oversized counter-laden Ally tokens, ideally given trample or double strike.
- ▸Loop Bronze Bombshell-style donations to repeatedly burn opponents out.
- ▸Copy the giant Ally across a token swarm (Brudiclad) for a lethal alpha strike.
- ▸Go wide with token doublers plus anthem effects and overrun the table.
Archetypes
- Donate / Group Slug — Iroh's combat trigger lets you repeatedly hand opponents harmful permanents like Bronze Bombshell and Steel Golem.
- Tokens / Go-Wide — The Ally tokens plus doublers and anthems build a wide, growing board to swing with.
- Politics — Gifting 'free' permanents makes you the table's favorite trade partner and buys defensive time.
- Voltron-ish Beatdown — Stacking counters via repeated donations creates a single oversized attacker you can suit up with evasion.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (RW), by popularity.
