The Commander
Horsemanship (This creature can't be blocked except by creatures with horsemanship.)
Liu Bei gets +2/+2 as long as you control a permanent named Guan Yu, Sainted Warrior or a permanent named Zhang Fei, Fierce Warrior.
Guide
Gameplan
Liu Bei is a mono-white evasive beater built around the Oath of the Three Brothers flavor, leaning on horsemanship to deal hard-to-block combat damage. Turn to turn you ramp into a fat enchanted/equipped commander, suit him up for voltron, and connect through the near-unblockable horsemanship keyword while the rest of mono-white grinds value. He becomes a 8/8 once you control Guan Yu or Zhang Fei, making commander damage a very real clock.
Strengths
- Horsemanship is functionally unblockable in nearly every modern game, making him a reliable voltron/commander-damage threat.
- Cheap to recast at 5 mana and gets free +2/+2 from the other Three Kingdoms brothers.
- Mono-white gives access to the format's best protection, equipment, and recursion for a voltron general.
Weaknesses
- Mono-white struggles with card draw and ramp compared to other colors.
- Relies on a single attacker; spot removal, edicts, or fogs slow him dramatically.
- No inherent card advantage or recursion baked into his text—he's a vanilla evasion package.
- Building around Guan Yu/Zhang Fei is cute but fragile and rarely worth the deck slots.
Key Cards
- Guan Yu, Sainted Warrior — Names a permanent that pumps Liu Bei to an 8/8 and is itself a horsemanship beater.
- Zhang Fei, Fierce Warrior — The other named permanent that triggers the +2/+2 buff and adds redundant horsemanship pressure.
- Swiftfoot Boots — Hexproof plus haste protects your unblockable commander and lets him swing the turn he lands.
- Sword of Fire and Ice — Adds damage, card draw, and protection to an already evasive body—near-ideal voltron equipment.
- Shadowspear — Cheap trample/lifelink that also strips opposing hexproof and indestructible.
- Sigarda's Aid — Flash equipment onto Liu Bei at instant speed to dodge removal and gain combat tricks.
Upgrade Path
Lean fully into voltron: add the best protection (Lightning Greaves, Whispersilk Cloak for redundancy) and the Swords cycle, plus double-strike enablers like Grafted Exoskeleton or Berserkers' Onslaught to halve the kill clock. Shore up mono-white's weaknesses with card advantage (Esper Sentinel, Welcoming Vampire, Mangara, the Diplomat) and ramp (Smothering Tithe, signets, Land Tax). Add a few cheat-out-of-removal tools like Flawless Maneuver and Teferi's Protection to keep your single threat alive through interaction.
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
- ▸Commander damage via an equipped, near-unblockable Liu Bei (21 comes quickly as an 8/8 with horsemanship).
- ▸Going wide with horsemanship creatures and white anthem effects.
- ▸Doubling combat damage with effects like Fireshrieker/extra-combat enablers for a one-shot kill.
Archetypes
- Voltron — Horsemanship makes him almost unblockable, so loading him with equipment and auras closes games fast.
- Mono-White Aggro — His evasion supports a wide soldier/horsemanship beatdown plan backed by white anthems.
- Stax/Hatebears — Mono-white can deploy taxing pieces to protect a slow voltron clock while Liu Bei chips in damage.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (W), by popularity.
