The Commander
Flying
When Starling enters, another target creature you control gains flying until end of turn.
Guide
Gameplan
Starling is a mono-white evasion engine: deploy a wide or tall board, then use her ETB to push a key threat over the top through the air. You play a fair white midrange game with efficient creatures and anthems, blink her to repeatedly grant flying, and close by turning a beefy or token-laden board into unblockable damage.
Strengths
- Repeatable evasion granting that turns ground stalls into lethal swings
- Mono-white gives access to the format's best taxes, hatebears, and recursion (Sun Titan, Reveillark)
- Cheap to recast and abuses blink/flicker to retrigger her ability
- Flexible commander that supports tokens, voltron, or pure beatdown
Weaknesses
- The ETB only affects one creature, so it's a slow evasion source against go-wide blockers
- Mono-white card advantage and ramp remain the format's worst
- No inherent protection—she dies to any removal and the buff is fleeting
- Low individual ceiling; relies on the rest of the 99 to do the heavy lifting
Key Cards
- Sun Titan — Recurs Starling and cheap white permanents while blocking the ground, pairing perfectly with the flying plan.
- Skullclamp — Mono-white's premier card-advantage engine, essential to keep the gas flowing.
- Smothering Tithe — Best ramp/treasure engine in the color, fixing white's mana problems.
- Eldrazi Monument — Gives your whole team flying and indestructibility, overlapping with and amplifying Starling's evasion.
- Conqueror's Flail — On a flying carrier it pressures life totals while shutting off interaction on your turn.
Upgrade Path
Lean into white's best engines—Smothering Tithe, Mangara, the Diplomat, and Skullclamp—to fix the color's card and mana deficits. Add blink pieces (Flickerwisp, Brago, King Eternal) to abuse Starling's ETB every turn, and team-wide evasion or finishers like Eldrazi Monument and Approach of the Second Sun for redundancy. Top with efficient interaction (Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Generous Gift) and protection like Teferi's Protection to defend your board.
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
- ▸Suit up a voltron threat and swing in unblockable through the air
- ▸Build a wide board with an anthem, then push one big flyer or pump the team for lethal
- ▸Repeated evasive commander damage from a buffed carrier
Archetypes
- Voltron — Strap auras and equipment onto one creature and use Starling to make it unblockable in the air.
- Tokens — Go wide with white token makers and grant evasion to a pumped attacker for the alpha strike.
- Blink — Flicker effects retrigger her ETB to grant flying every turn and rebuy other ETBs.
- Hatebears — White's stax creatures slow opponents while you grind out flying damage.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (W), by popularity.
