The 42 Best Warriors in Magic Ranked

Last updated on September 30, 2025

Glistener Elf | Illustration by Steve Argyle

Magic typing follows a similar scheme as roles in D&D, with the first creature type generally representing race—elf, human, beast, what have you—while any subsequent types describe their role or job.

While druid or soldier or noble might seem like nothing more than flavor, and often are, these creature types often come with true mechanical identities, and warriors have one of the strongest.

But what is that identity, and which warriors use it the best?

What Are Warriors in MTG?

Elvish Warmaster | Illustration by Alexander Mokhov

Warrior is one of the more common creature types in Magic, represented in all colors—though blue has the fewest. While there’s a great diversity in what warriors do given their prolific nature, warriors generally care about combat and the battlefield.

That could be by rewarding you for attacking, stopping your opponents from blocking, making tokens, killing creatures… there’s great depth here, but it all comes back to impacting the board and applying some form of pressure.

#42. Accursed Marauder

Accursed Marauder is an excellent edict creature; not only is it the cheapest (to date), but the nontoken clause skirts the greatest weakness of these effects. It’s a great example of power creep making an effect stronger without necessarily breaking it.

#41. Iraxxa, Empress of Mars

Iraxxa, Empress of Mars provides a powerful payoff to your cast-from-exile deck—though it works with graveyard synergies—alongside a stout body. You need to build around it too much for it to be exceptional, but the right deck gets a lot of value from Iraxxa.

#40. Searslicer Goblin

Searslicer Goblin has excellent Cube potential as a powerful 2-drop that propels aggro decks forward. You need a decent curve, but this provides tons of pressure for performing your base game plan.

#39. Hamza, Guardian of Arashin

Hamza, Guardian of Arashin provides a neat little +1/+1 counter payoff. These decks want to be creature-heavy anyway and the cost reduction eats into the commander tax, making it an appealing counter commander for Commander brackets 2-3.

#38. Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist

Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist performs best in decks that go wide with big creatures. Counters decks or equipment decks quickly spring to mind; throwing three 10/10s at a player who can only make one block ends games quickly. Heck, even 10 3/3s sounds scary! I appreciate the defensive ability, as well.

#37. Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar

If you find Grand Abolisher underperforming, you might consider Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar, which provides slightly less protection in favor of a powerful card-draw ability. Selesnya () tends to buff creatures in EDH anyway, so you won’t have trouble.

#36. Rundvelt Hordemaster

Rundvelt Hordemaster’s a surprisingly robust goblin lord with a powerful secondary ability. While it synergizes with goblins like Skirk Prospector and Sling-Gang Lieutenant, I’m most interested in it to help rebuild after a wrath, but that might just be the Commander player in me.

#35. Brutal Hordechief

Brutal Hordechief gives aggressive decks incredible reach, along with a little lifegain to make those close races easier.

The activated ability’s quite interesting in Commander since you can activate it to mess with opposing combats, which sounds especially enticing with goad cards. Note that the Boros hybrid mana () gives this a Mardu color identity ().

#34. Celestine, the Living Saint

As much as I hate on lifegain, I like Celestine, the Living Saint as the kind of lifegain payoff I want to see more of: something that meaningfully impacts the game. It’s also a perfectly fine threat in its own right; I can see this white creature being the top-end of a white-weenie style Cube deck that focuses on low-curve creatures.

#33. Gruff Triplets

Gruff Triplets dominated the Wilds of Eldraine Draft format, but it does interesting stuff beyond that Limited scope. Generating a bunch of bodies from one card works well with commanders like Inga and Esika and Galadriel, Light of Valinor, and token doublers love these fools.

#32. Lae’zel, Vlaakith’s Champion

Counter doublers are just good. Lae'zel, Vlaakith's Champion has a notable boon in that it doubles counters put on yourself, which is relevant for experience and energy decks.

#31. Devilish Valet

If you’ve ever wanted to show off your mental math skills and love creating tokens, Devilish Valet is your card. This red creature hits ludicrously hard with just a little effort and it can be quite funny to watch a player take lethal from your 3-drop.

#30. Nadier’s Nightblade

Treasure players, unite around this deadly win condition! Nadier's Nightblade exists solely as a win condition for token strategies, often in the context of combos with cards like Chatterfang, Squirrel General or any of the many, many ways you can make infinite Treasure tokens.

#29. Herald of Secret Streams

Herald of Secret Streams is among the best +1/+1 counter payoffs in the game thanks to its ability to simply end it when this card hits the board.

#28. Champion of Lambholt

Champion of Lambholt runs rampant across many EDH tables thanks to its unblockable ability. You don’t need to care about +1/+1 counters to leverage this as a cheap way to push damage; anything that dumps loads of creatures into play will do (though a Beastmaster Ascension doesn’t hurt).

#27. Goblin Bushwhacker

There’s no feeling in Magic worse than thinking you have your opponent’s board of tokens under control, then losing to a kicked Goblin Bushwhacker. Power creep might have left this little guy behind, but it still steals wins in the occasional Pauper Cube game.

#26. Marneus Calgar

Marneus Calgar is a very powerful Esper commander () with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. You make tokens, you draw cards. There’s no “once a turn” limit, nothing that restricts it to your turn. It takes very little effort to establish an engine that draws multiple cards a turn cycle, and it even benefits from all the anthems that token decks want to play with its double strike.

#25. Goblin Rabblemaster

Goblin Rabblemaster is among my favorite Cube cards. One of the most iconic examples of an army in a can, this little goblin unleashes a horde while becoming a fierce threat itself. In aggro or midrange decks, it represents a continuous chain of value with which you can overrun your opponents.

#24. Nettle Sentinel

Nettle Sentinel is a staple in Elf decks across all formats, largely for the synergy with cards like Birchlore Rangers. It also makes its way in a fair number of Pauper aggro decks off the back of being a 1-mana 2/2, which is an excellent stat line.

#23. Moraug, Fury of Akoum

Extra combats give aggressive decks the momentum necessary to end games and work particularly well with cards that reward you for attacking, like Brutal Hordechief. Moraug, Fury of Akoum excels in this space, in part because it rewards you for taking extra combats due to its power buff, and in part because you can get quite a few combats from it with fetch lands and Exploration effects.

#22. Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate

Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate reanimates a bunch of powerful creatures from your graveyard to the battlefield, all for the low price of attacking. An early Alesha’s an excellent piece of pressure given how hard it is to block a steadily growing first strike creature, and I really appreciate that this Alesha doesn’t need to be the one attacking to fulfil the raid condition.

#21. Emberheart Challenger

I can hear the groan of a thousand Standard players as I put Emberheart Challenger before them once more. This is such a fantastic aggro card, and it really benefits from valiant being better than heroic to exploit cards like Manifold Mouse and Innkeeper's Talent. Even beyond Standard and Pioneer red decks, drawing cards when targeted makes this a valuable card.

#20. Jaxis, the Troublemaker

Jaxis, the Troublemaker ensures you throw some of the biggest creatures around without worrying about the original dying. I don’t really understand the flavor of a boxer flinging an Overlord of the Boilerbilges, a copy no less, but blitz offers a lot of flexibility on the individual card, and sustained card advantage if you cast this regularly.

#19. Zealous Conscripts

Zealous Conscripts might be my favorite way to close out a Cube game. It’s also easily exploitable; like most cards, it goes infinite with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and also greatly benefits from a variety of flicker and copy effects.

#18. Elvish Warmaster

Elves basically do two things in Magic: They go very, very wide, and they produce obscene amounts of mana. Elvish Warmaster is a fantastic inclusion for pretty much any elf deck due to going wide and providing an outlet for all that mana produced by Circle of Dreams Druid and whatnot.

#17. Abaddon the Despoiler

Aggro decks in Commander can suffer from sustainability; it’s really, really hard to kill three players at 40 life! You can’t just dump your hand onto the board and blitz through your opponents. You need card advantage.

Abaddon the Despoiler does precisely this; making all your spells into two spells is a great reward for applying early pressure while giving the deck impact in the mid to late game, as other players begin deploying big threats.

#16. Setessan Champion

Setessan Champion is one of the stronger enchantresses in Magic thanks to the +1/+1 counters; it becomes a significant threat in short order, while most enchantresses are nothing more than card advantage engines.

#15. Professional Face-Breaker

Professional Face-Breaker excels in creature-centric decks as a potent source of card draw and ramp via Treasure. As long as you regularly connect with your opponents, you can run it as a self-sustaining engine; no additional Treasure production necessary!

#14. Usher of the Fallen

Usher of the Fallen is consistently among the best white creatures in Cubes of all power levels. A Savannah Lions that creates a small army punishes any player who isn’t prepared to handle an aggressive curve and supplies plenty of power for cards like Adeline, Resplendent Cathar later down the line.

#13. Rhys, the Redeemed

Rhys the Redeemed has been a staple of token EDH decks for some time, largely due to the potent second ability; it’s a mana sink and goes way over the top of your opponents, play patterns heavily encouraged by EDH. There are also a ton of benefits to having a commander that costs just 1 mana; you can play this three times before The Scarab God hits the table once.

#12. Alesha, Who Smiles at Death

Alesha, Who Smiles at Death provides excellent value as a grindy Mardu commander with lots of fun little combos with cards like Master of Cruelties and Delney, Streetwise Lookout. As Delney illustrates, “creatures with power 2 or less” has seen some steady support over the past year, so this commander even ages well.

#11. Undermountain Adventurer

Taking the initiative is very good in 1v1 formats, to say the least; the bans of many cards featuring the mechanic demonstrate this. It's very good even in Commander, and Undermountain Adventurer’s an excellent card to get the initiative going.

Simply having a large mana dork that replaces itself is pretty good, but vigilance does a lot of work here, allowing the Adventurer to fight over and defend the initiative. If you ever complete a dungeon, that mana ability goes pretty hard, as well.

#10. Glistener Elf

The heyday of infect has passed us by, as Magic gets faster and interaction gets sleeker to match. Glistener Elf still deserves recognition for the explosive starts it enabled, and the utter fear it inspires when your opponent plays this on turn 1 and you don’t have a Fatal Push.

#9. Kappa Cannoneer

Kappa Cannoneer is one of the least reasonable but still fair designs we’ve seen in a while. It becomes massive with next to no effort, and the combination of the mostly unpayable ward 4 cost and unblockable cuts off most means of interacting with this beast. It kind of just kills you if you can’t race it.

#8. Fynn, the Fangbearer

Fynn, the Fangbearer is one of the best budget commanders you can build since it often pulls cards from the Draft chaff bin to fuel its toxic gameplan. But don’t mistake that for it being weak! This creature effectively allows you to play a traditional aggro game where you swarm the board with cheap creatures and finishes things while your opponents fiddle around with Talismans and such, and green’s deep pool of proliferate abilities gives the deck late game “burn.”

#7. Krenko, Mob Boss

Krenko, Mob Boss is one of the most threatening mono-color commanders you can face. It doesn’t take much for this to build an insurmountable board state, and cards like Purphoros, God of the Forge and Goblin Bombardment mean it doesn’t have to attack to kill you.

#6. Najeela, the Blade-Blossom

Najeela, the Blade-Blossom’s made a name for itself in cEDH circles thanks to the ease with which you can generate infinite combats and tokens with the activated ability.

Even if you ignore the combo potential, this card makes an insane board state as the primary’s most prominent warrior-typal commander. The lack of a nontoken clause is what really pushes this past strong and into obscenity.

#5. Seasoned Dungeoneer

Seasoned Dungeoneer is one of the best initiative creatures due to its protection ability, which makes it impossible for your opponents to maintain the initiative after stealing it; the best they can hope for is passing it back and forth, with you always being a room ahead. There’s also something to be said for repeatedly exploring to smooth your draw, but most of its power rests within the dungeon itself.

#4. Chatterfang, Squirrel General

Chatterfang, Squirrel General is the total package. A simple token doubler that chills in the command zone would be plenty powerful in its own right, but that activated ability makes it a powerful combo piece, either directly because of the ability, like with Pitiless Plunderer, or simply for the inclusion of black.

Even when you avoid the combos, this little 3-drop generates enough of a board advantage to be a monster at lower power levels.

#3. Winota, Joiner of Forces

Winota, Joiner of Forces simply ignores one of Magic’s fundamental rules: You have to pay for your spells. Throwing out an Agent of Treachery or Tovolar's Huntmaster provides an uncomfortable amount of value; even when constrained to the Boros colors in Commander, Winota offers an overwhelming advantage that allows it to grace cEDH tables and makes it hard to build at lower power levels.

#2. Laelia, the Blade Reforged

Laelia, the Blade Reforged is a beautifully designed card. The combination of card advantage and pressure makes it a potent threat, the synergy with cascade makes it a combo card, and exiling cards generally makes it a strong combo piece. Yet it’s still very interactable and doesn’t just warp a game around itself. I love this design.

#1. Ajani, Nacatl Pariah / Ajani, Nacatl Avenger

Ajani, Nacatl Pariah has shown itself to be a wildly busted card. Why we got a 2-mana flipwalker that comes with a free token is beyond me; this is a ludicrously powerful creature that punishes opposing creature decks; how can you ever attack into a 2/1 that dies into a powerful planeswalker?

Best Warrior Payoffs

If you want to go really deep and build a deck around warriors, there are a handful of synergies you can draw upon for a typal deck; cards like Aurora Champion and Blood-Chin Rager make attacking easier, and don’t forget the classic Boldwyr Intimidator.

There are also general typal cards, like Molten Echoes and Reflections of Littjara to lean on. But, it must be said, warriors aren’t the most developed creature type.

Given the warrior type’s proclivity for combat, you can look for very broad synergies that help there. Cards like World at War and Aggravated Assault grant you extra combats, Brutal Hordechief and Backdraft Hellkite reward you for attacking, and cards like Sundering Eruption impede blocking. They all come together to reward you for getting into the red zone, which is where this creature type wants to be.

Wrap Up

Abaddon the Despoiler | Illustration by Johan Grenier

Warriors have been around Magic for a long time and retained a strong identity, even as they traverse colors. From hyper-narrow threats to generally powerful bombs, the spectrum of warriors is well worth exploring.

What’s your favorite warrior? Did I miss any sweet payoffs? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe, and keep fighting!