RedLegendary Creature — Human Rogue VillainShocker, Unshakable
Mana value6Rank#18,006
The Commander
Guide
Gameplan
Cast Shocker, beat down with first strike on your turn, and abuse his enters-the-battlefield trigger to ping creatures and chip players for 2 every time he re-enters. You stitch together flicker, recursion, and the occasional sacrifice-and-recast loop to grind out incremental damage while a low mono-red curve closes games with burn and combat.
Strengths
- Repeatable removal-plus-burn that hits both a creature and its controller, making each recast genuinely impactful
- First strike on your turn lets a buffed Shocker dominate combat and survive blocks
- Mono-red consistency: cheap mana rocks, rituals, and impulse draw keep the gas flowing
- Low color requirements make splashing efficient ETB-recursion and damage doublers easy
Weaknesses
- Six mana for a commander is slow and invites repeated tax via Commander Tax after removal
- Mono-red lacks reliable card advantage and struggles against heavy lifegain and fogs
- The ETB only deals 2, so it picks off small creatures but rarely answers big threats
- No built-in protection; targeted removal or board wipes reset your engine constantly
Key Cards
- Conjurer's Closet — Blinks Shocker each end step to re-fire the ETB for free recurring damage.
- Thousand-Year Elixir — Untaps and grants haste so a flickered or recast Shocker can attack immediately.
- Goblin Bombardment — Lets you sacrifice Shocker for value and recast him to loop the enters trigger.
- Torbran, Thane of Red Fell — Turns Shocker's 2/2 ping into a 4/4 split, sharply scaling the damage clock.
- Fiery Emancipation — Triples all of Shocker's combat and ETB damage for explosive finishes.
- Sundial of the Infinite — Combos with blink effects and end-step shenanigans to maximize ETB value and protect Shocker.
Upgrade Path
Add damage doublers (Torbran, Fiery Emancipation, Furnace of Rath) and reliable flicker/haste enablers (Conjurer's Closet, Thousand-Year Elixir, Cloudstone Curio with cheap creatures) to make every recast count. Improve the mana base with fast rocks (Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Ruby Medallion) and add impulse-draw engines like Theater of Horrors and Outpost Siege to fight red's card-advantage problem. Finally, slot in protection such as Lightning Greaves and recursion like Feldon of the Third Path to keep the engine online through removal.
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
- ▸Beating down with a first-striking, equipment-buffed Shocker
- ▸Looping ETB damage via blink or sacrifice-and-recast to burn out the table
- ▸Amplifying his triggers with Torbran or Fiery Emancipation for lethal pings
- ▸Closing with mono-red burn spells once life totals are low
Archetypes
- Blink/Flicker — Repeatedly flickering Shocker re-triggers his ETB to grind creatures and players down.
- Aggro/Voltron — On-turn first strike plus pump and equipment makes him a fast, hard-to-block beater.
- Burn/Pinger — His ETB doubles as direct damage that scales with red damage amplifiers.
- Aristocrats — Sacrifice outlets recast Shocker for value and feed reanimation-style loops.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (R), by popularity.
