EsperLegendary Creature — Avatar WizardSaruman of Many Colors
Mana value6Rank#11,578
The Commander
Ward—Discard an enchantment, instant, or sorcery card.
Whenever you cast your second spell each turn, each opponent mills two cards. When one or more cards are milled this way, exile target enchantment, instant, or sorcery card with equal or lesser mana value than that spell from an opponent's graveyard. Copy the exiled card. You may cast the copy without paying its mana cost.
Guide
Gameplan
Saruman is an Esper value engine: cast a cheap first spell, then your second spell each turn mills opponents two and lets you exile-and-copy an instant, sorcery, or enchantment from their yards for free. You snowball card advantage by stealing their best spells while they fund your library through milling, eventually overwhelming the table with copied bombs and your own spell density.
Strengths
- Generates free spells every turn from opponents' graveyards, often netting two-for-ones or better
- Ward—discard a spell card is a cheap, repeatable protection that keeps your engine online
- Three colors give access to the best card draw, removal, counterspells, and recursion in the format
- Self-sufficient value engine that doesn't require a huge build-around to function
- Punishes graveyard-reliant tables by both feeding and exiling their best cards
Weaknesses
- Needs you to reliably cast two spells per turn, which is mana-intensive at six mana for the commander
- Copy ability is gated by what opponents have in their graveyards—can whiff against creature/permanent-heavy decks
- Six-mana, three-color commander is slow and vulnerable to early aggression
- Mana value cap means you can only copy spells equal to or below your second spell's cost
- Little inherent board presence or fast win, so it can stall against decisive combo decks
Key Cards
- Mystic Remora — Cheap repeatable card draw that triggers as an early first or second spell while drowning you in value.
- Rhystic Study — Premier card advantage engine that fuels the constant flow of cheap spells Saruman needs.
- Snapcaster Mage — Flashing it in as a second spell stacks value with Saruman while flashing back your own instants.
- Brainstorm — Ultra-cheap cantrip that easily enables your second-spell trigger every turn for almost no mana.
- Mind Funeral — Cast as a second spell, it mills opponents hard, deepening the pool of spells Saruman can steal and copy.
- Teferi, Time Raveler — Lets you cast spells at sorcery speed flexibly and stops counterspell interaction against your engine.
- Archmage Emeritus — Turns every spell into extra cards, helping you chain into your second cast each turn reliably.
Upgrade Path
Tighten the curve with more one- and two-mana cantrips (Opt, Ponder, Consider) so the second-spell trigger fires every turn, and add cost reducers and rituals to enable multi-spell turns. Lean into Bruvac the Grandiloquent and Fraying Sanity to weaponize the mill while filling graveyards, and include a couple of compact wincons like Thassa's Oracle or Underworld Breach loops. Round out with premium Esper interaction—Force of Will, Swords to Plowshares, Cyclonic Rift—to protect the engine and stabilize against faster decks.
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
- ▸Out-value the table and copy a game-ending spell (Torment of Hailfire, Expropriate, big X-spells) from a graveyard
- ▸Grind everyone out with relentless card advantage then close with copied removal and counters
- ▸Mill-based wins via enablers like Bruvac the Grandiloquent doubling Saruman's triggers
- ▸Assemble a spell-based combo (e.g., copy a tutor or extra-turn spell) into a decisive turn
Archetypes
- Spellslinger — Saruman rewards casting multiple cheap instants and sorceries each turn with free copied spells.
- Mill — His trigger mills opponents and you can lean into graveyard hate and self-fueling mill payoffs.
- Control — Esper colors plus a steady value engine let you counter, remove, and grind opponents out.
- Theft/Steal — Copying opponents' best spells from their graveyards turns their cards into your win conditions.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (BUW), by popularity.
