BlackLegendary Creature — Elemental BirdMaha, Its Feathers Night
Mana value5Rank#1,934
The Commander
Flying, trample
Ward—Discard a card.
Creatures your opponents control have base toughness 1.
Guide
Gameplan
Maha turns every opponent's creature into a glorified 1-toughness blocker, so you pair it with cheap, repeatable pingers and -1/-1 effects to sweep boards while keeping your own creatures intact. Deploy mana ramp into Maha around turn 5, protect it with the discard ward, then chip in for 6 evasive damage each turn while your removal engines erase enemy boards. You grind the game into a one-sided wasteland and close with commander damage or a sacrifice/drain finish.
Strengths
- Asymmetric board control: any 1-point ping or -1/-1 effect becomes a one-sided wrath against opponents.
- Strong evasive clock with flying and trample that pressures life totals on its own.
- Ward—discard a card is meaningful protection that taxes spot removal.
- Mono-black gives deep access to tutors, reanimation, and recursion for consistency.
Weaknesses
- Color-locked to black means no red/white access to the best symmetrical pingers like Pyrohemia.
- Removal-heavy strategy stalls if Maha is answered and you lack ping payoffs in hand.
- Indestructible, ward-style, or toughness-boosting opposing creatures can dodge the static effect.
- Five-mana commander that does little by itself without supporting damage effects.
- Mass toughness reduction doesn't stop noncreature threats, combos, or commander-less aggression well.
Key Cards
- Pestilence — With Maha out, each activation wipes every opposing creature for one black mana while your team survives.
- Crypt Rats — A repeatable X-damage pinger that becomes a one-sided board wipe under Maha's static ability.
- Massacre Girl, Known Killer — A single point of damage chains into a cascading wrath when every opponent's creature has toughness 1.
- Black Sun's Zenith — X=1 destroys all opposing creatures and shuffles back for repeat use as a flexible sweeper.
- Bontu's Last Reckoning — Cheap board control, but Maha makes even minor -X/-X or damage spells lethal to enemy boards.
- Toxic Deluge — Costs only enough for -1/-1 to clear the table while sparing nothing on the other side.
- Whispersilk Cloak — Grants unblockable and shroud, turning Maha into a reliable evasive commander-damage threat.
- Cabal Coffers — Mono-black mana doubler that fuels repeated pinger activations and big X-spells.
Upgrade Path
Add fast mana and rituals (Dark Ritual, Jet Medallion, Cabal Coffers/Cabal Stronghold) so you land Maha early and immediately activate a pinger. Tutors like Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, and Diabolic Intent let you assemble the Maha-plus-ping lock consistently, while reanimation (Reanimate, Animate Dead) recovers it through sweepers. Tighten the curve with cheap protection like Lightning Greaves and Imp's Mischief, and lean into a deterministic finisher such as a Pestilence loop or an aristocrats drain engine.
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
- ▸Repeated commander damage through flying and trample, boosted by equipment or evasion enablers.
- ▸Lock opponents out of creatures with a pinger plus Maha, then grind them down over time.
- ▸Drain the table with aristocrats payoffs like Blood Artist or Bastion of Remembrance after mass wipes.
- ▸Cast an X-spell or extort/drain finisher once the board is one-sidedly clear.
Archetypes
- Pinger Control — Maha converts every recurring 1-damage source into a one-sided sweeper, locking opponents out of the board.
- Stax / Control — Permanent board denial plus discard ward lets you grind the game while opponents can't keep creatures alive.
- Voltron — 6 evasive flying-trample damage with built-in ward makes commander-damage kills realistic with minimal support.
- Aristocrats — Free sacrifice triggers and ping-based drains pair naturally with mono-black's recursion to win after the wipes.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (B), by popularity.
