The Commander
Trample
When Maximus enters, you may search your library for an Equipment card with mana value 2, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle.
, Sacrifice an artifact: You get 
(two energy counters).
Guide
Gameplan
Suit up Maximus with cheap equipment to swing for trample damage as a Voltron threat, using his ETB tutor to grab a key 2-mana Equipment every time he re-enters. Sacrifice spent or token artifacts to bank energy, then convert that energy into payoffs while attrition-grinding through removal with cheap recast and protective gear.
Strengths
- Built-in equipment tutor that recurs every time Maximus enters or re-enters the battlefield
- Trample makes equipped damage hard to chump-block, enabling fast commander-damage kills
- Energy generation gives mono-red a flexible secondary resource and rewards sacrificing artifacts you no longer need
- Mono-red keeps the deck cheap, consistent, and aggressive with strong equipment support
Weaknesses
- Classic Voltron fragility: removal, bounce, and 'can't be blocked'-irrelevant fogs set you back to square one
- Energy ability is mana-hungry and needs strong payoffs to matter, or it's just filler text
- Single-target damage struggles against go-wide and high-life-gain pods
- Mono-red lacks card draw and interaction compared to multicolor decks
Key Cards
- Embercleave — Cheap to cast with multiple attackers and turns Maximus into a one-shot commander-damage threat through trample.
- Sword of Fire and Ice — A premium equipment that the deck can't tutor but provides protection, card draw, and reach.
- Colossus Hammer — The ideal 2-MV tutor target, slamming +10/+10 onto a trampling Maximus for instant lethal swings.
- Sigarda's Aid — Lets you flash equipment in and equip for free, ambushing blockers and dodging sorcery-speed removal.
- Aspect of Manticore — Energy payoff that fits mono-red, rewarding the sacrifice ability with combat damage and tempo.
- Goblin Engineer — Tutors and recurs equipment while supplying artifact fodder for the energy sacrifice ability.
Upgrade Path
Tighten the equipment curve around 2-MV tutor targets like Colossus Hammer and Shadowspear, then add free-equip enablers (Sigarda's Aid, Puresteel Paladin, Sram) and protection (Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots). Improve card flow with Stoneforge Mystic-style finders and red rummaging, and lean into either a focused energy payoff suite or cut it for more raw aggression and haste enablers to land kills before removal catches up.
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 from a heavily equipped, trampling Maximus
- ▸Embercleave or Colossus Hammer enabling one-shot lethal swings
- ▸Going wide with equipped tokens and pushing trample damage
- ▸Energy-fueled combat tricks and burst to close out a stalled board
Archetypes
- Voltron — Maximus stacks equipment and trample to deal lethal commander damage quickly.
- Equipment Aggro — His ETB tutor builds a low-curve equipment package that suits up multiple creatures.
- Energy — The sacrifice ability banks energy counters to fuel artifact-energy payoffs.
- Aristocrats-lite — Sacrificing tokens and spent artifacts for value pairs with treasure and clue generators.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (R), by popularity.
