Magic: The Gathering’s Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate brought more of D&D monsters and heroes into the cardboard realm. Unbeknownst to players at the time, it also added playable versions of the soon-to-be-iconic party members from 2023’s Baldur’s Gate 3.
From Astarion to Wyll, pretty much every companion character got a dedicated card here, including Minthara, the ruthless Drow Cleric. If she was a personal favorite of yours, and you’re ready to let her lead your next Commander deck, then these ten cards will serve you well.
Minthara, Merciless Soul
The Elf Herself
Before we discuss cards for her 99, let’s take a quick look at Minthara herself. For four mana, Minthara is a 2/2 Elf Cleric who grants you an experience counter at the end of your turn if any permanent you control left the battlefield. Those experience counters then do two things: raise Minthara’s ward value, and buff the power of all of your creatures, Minthara included.
Naturally, any Minthara deck is going to want to be able to trigger her experience gain reliably, while also producing enough tokens or small creatures to take advantage of the power buff. For the most part, this encourages a classic black/white Aristocrats playstyle, but there are some surprising synergies if you look beyond that.
10Daxos The Returned
Are You Experienced?
Any good Minthara deck will live or die largely based on how many experience counters it can amass, making the few cards that interact with the mechanic absolute gold dust. Daxos is one such card, giving you an alternate source of experience counters as well as another outlet for using them.
Instead of buffing a wide board, Daxos creates tall tokens, with stats equal to your total experience. It’s a nice way of diversifying your strategy, giving you a chance ofsurviving a board wipewith some kind of board presence intact. He also encourages the use of Auras, which work nicely with Minthara’s power-boosted hordes anyway.
9Hidden Stockpile
It Slices, It Dices, It Stocks, It Piles
Hidden Stockpile is one of those cards that fits a Minthara deck so perfectly you won’t believe it doesn’t hail from the same set. This Aether Revolt banger is both a sacrifice outlet, which can enable Minthara’s experience trigger cheaply every turn, anda token generator, which lets you take advantage of the power boost.
At the bare minimum, you can just sacrifice the Servo Stockpile generates every turn to trigger Minthara’s ability, scrying one and setting off your sacrifice synergies in the process. This is the floor of the card, but the ceiling is a grindy value engine and combo enabler.
8Feral Ghoul
A Great Way To Fall Out With Your Friends
This Zombie Mutant comes from Universes Beyond, packing two abilities that can really shine in a Minthara list. Gaining counters with every creature death works well with the deck’s natural inclination towards sacrifice, but the real kicker here is the rad counter ability.
Rad counters translate to both direct damage and cards milled, so stacking a lot of them on a single opponent can have potentially devastating effects. And with Minthara’s passive ability and Ghoul’s own counter generation driving his power up double-time, you’ll be able to drop a veritable A-bomb on the table before long.
7Shadowheart, Dark Justiciar
Draw On The Power Of Shar
While her ‘Choose a Background’ text is literally useless outside of the command zone, Shadowheart’s other ability is an absolute slam-dunk in a Minthara deck. High-power creatures are your stock and trade in such brews, meaning Shadowheart can fully refill your hand for just two mana in most cases.
In a deck built around disposable creatures and sacrifice outlets, an ability like this is essential to keep you from running out of gas in the mid-to-late game. Not only is Shadowheart a huge flavor win for the deck as a fellow Baldur’s Gate 3 companion, she’s a perfect fit mechanically too.
6Grateful Apparition
A Little Gratitude Goes A Long Way
There aren’t many ways to gain experience counters outside of the abilities of commanders that rely on them, so the few that do exist should be auto-includes in a deck like this one. Proliferate is one such method, sneakily letting you increase the number of counters on each player, yourself included.
Grateful Apparition is, by far, the best source of proliferate available to a Minthara deck. Not only is it just two mana to cast, but it can proliferate every turn provided you can sneak it through. With a few experience counters built up, it even becomes a sizable flying threat in its own right while Minthara is in town.
5Mirkwood Bats
Always Have A Backup Plan
Though the main objective of a Minthara deck is to overwhelm your opponents with a swarm of high-attack creatures, sometimes you’ll find yourself stonewalled by board wipes or passive effects that limit your attacks. In such scenarios, a card like Mirkwood Bats can give you a welcomealternate route to victory.
Converting not only your token deaths, but also your token creations, into table-wide damage, Mirkwood Bats provides a way for a Minthara deck to go over the top in a tight situation. And if the extra chip damage from its ability doesn’t win you the game, its evasive body paired with Minthara’s power boost just might.
4Lae’zel, Vlaakith’s Champion
The Counters Are Mounting
Another buddy from Baldur’s Gate, Lae’zel gives you something any RPG fan would kill for: double experience. Gaining two counters a turn, and giving all your creatures +2/+0, with Minthara is powerful enough, but it’s also just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Lae’zel’s potential.
Everyone’s favorite Githyanki also works with your creatures and planeswalkers, letting you reach critically high stats or powerful ultimates all the sooner. She’s flexible enough to work in most white decks, but the extra experience synergy really makes her a must-have party member in this one.
3Call For Unity
Tokens Of The World, Unite!
In a handy coincidence, the trigger condition for Minthara’s ability is exactly the same as the trigger condition for the revolt keyword. This makes powerful revolt cards ideal picks for the deck, particularly when they’re as synergistic with your game plan as Call for Unity.
While it’s pricey at five mana, this isan Anthem effectthat scales up every turn, making your Minthara-buffed creatures all the more terrifying. It also works off of counters, which complements the proliferate cards you’ll want to be including in the deck anyway.
2Rapacious Guest
An Inevitable, Inexorable End
Creatures who scale their usefulness based on their power fit right into a Minthara deck, and Rapacious Guest is one such creature. When she leaves the battlefield, whether it’s through death, bounce, or exile, she burns an opponent for an amount equal to her power: a value which can easily hit double-digits once Minthara really gets rolling.
The fact that this is a ‘leaves the battlefield’ trigger makes the damage impossible to avoid, turning Rapacious Guest from a happy-go-lucky Hobbit into a ticking time bomb. The card also has some niceinternal Food synergyand evasion, making it a welcome Guest in any Minthara deck.
1Nested Shambler
The Secret Fifth Plague: Squirrels
Nested Shambler is the perfect card for a list like this: a niche little Common from Modern Horizons 2, with no real success to speak of in any format, that just so happens to slot perfectly into exactly a Minthara deck.
Scaling its token generation ability off of its power is a great start, allowing Shambler to easily produce 10 plus tokens upon death. Minthara’s ability will affect those tokens too, essentially squaring your on-board power in an instant. It swarms the board, it provides ample sacrifice fodder, it’s just one mana, and it belongs in your Minthara deck.
