RakdosLegendary Creature — Minotaur PerformerMagar of the Magic Strings
Mana value3Rank#11,041
The Commander
: Note the name of target instant or sorcery card in your graveyard and put it onto the battlefield face down. It's a 3/3 creature with "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, you may create a copy of the card with the noted name. You may cast the copy without paying its mana cost" and "If this creature would leave the battlefield, exile it instead of putting it anywhere else."
Guide
Gameplan
Fill your graveyard with high-impact instants and sorceries, then use Magar's activated ability to reanimate them as 3/3 face-down 'disguised' creatures. Connect with combat damage to free-cast copies of those spells, ideally hitting players with X-burn, Time Walk effects, or board wipes. You're essentially turning your graveyard into repeatable, mana-free spellcasting attached to bodies.
Strengths
- Turns one-shot spells into recurring threats with no mana cost on the copy
- Strong synergy with self-mill and graveyard-loading to build a deep toolbox
- Combat damage triggers can chain devastating spells like Time Warp or big X-burn
- Cheap commander (3 MV) that comes down early and provides repeatable value
Weaknesses
- Activated ability is fragile—removal exiles the face-down creature, costing your spell
- Requires combat damage to a player, so it's vulnerable to chump blockers and fog
- Needs setup turns to fill the graveyard before generating value
- Doesn't protect itself; Magar dies easily to spot removal and stalls the engine
- Heavy reliance on connecting attacks makes it weak against go-wide token defenders
Key Cards
- Time Warp — Reanimated and connecting lets you copy and free-cast an extra turn, chaining attacks.
- Fireball — Copying an X-spell with the cost already paid lets you fling huge damage for free on hit.
- Faithless Looting — Cheap card filtering that dumps your best instants and sorceries into the graveyard for Magar.
- Cruel Ultimatum — A backbreaking spell becomes a repeatable free-cast bomb when copied via combat damage.
- Rhystic Study effects aside—Anger — Haste enablers like Anger let the face-down 3/3 attack the turn it's made.
Upgrade Path
Add evasion and haste enablers (Rogue's Passage, Fervor, trample sources) so face-down creatures connect reliably, and protect Magar with cheap interaction and recursion. Lean into self-mill and high-ceiling spells—extra turns, big X-burn, and tutors like Demonic Tutor to stock the perfect target. Cut narrow combat tricks for impactful one-card payoffs that justify the free copy.
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
- ▸Repeatedly copying X-burn like Fireball or Comet Storm to finish players
- ▸Chaining extra-turn spells (Time Warp, Temporal Mastery) into lethal swings
- ▸Free-casting a board wipe or Cruel Ultimatum each combat to grind opponents out
Archetypes
- Spellslinger — Magar reuses your best instants and sorceries by copying them off combat damage.
- Reanimator — The ability literally reanimates spells from the graveyard as creatures.
- Combo — Copying extra-turn spells or tutored bombs can create explosive, repeatable loops.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (BR), by popularity.
