Birds in Commander

Birds in Magic depict a broad categorization of creatures possessing avian features such as feathers, beaks, and talons. Early Birds were usually just animals, sometimes with a mythological spin such as being absurdly large or possessing an unnatural intellect.

They typically had the keyword flying, were cheap, and possessed low power and toughness. They also were quite varied in their colors, showing up with decent frequency in and .

The first cards printed as Birds were Roc Hatchling and Circling Vultures in Weatherlight, though the first creatures printed that would later become a Bird through errata was Roc of Kher Ridges and Birds of Paradise in Alpha.

As further sets were released, Birds retained the flying keyword as their primary attribute. They also took on an association with and and expanded in scope across the various planes to include humanoid Birds called Aven.

Much like how the Leonin are considered Cats as a creature type, Aven are not distinct from other Birds and are mechanically identical. However, they fit the race-class dual creature typing typical of humanoids, allowing them to be Scouts or Knights or Clerics.

Flight

Birds fly, at least typically. And while certain Birds in Magic don't possess the ability to fly, most do!

This leads to a creature type which has exceptional offensive and defensive capabilities innately, allowing them to bypass the majority of blockers your opponents will have. This doubles as a defensive feature, allowing you to protect yourself from opponents who have flyers themselves.

There are also some spells that specifically target creatures with flying or don't affect creatures with flying, meaning you are immune to spells that punish ground creatures, but are susceptible to things like Hurricane.

Uppy Downies

Many Birds have an effect that triggers upon their entering the battlefield (ETB) or upon their death. This means the cycling of creatures onto and off of the battlefield benefits you, triggering their abilities through standard play.

Some Birds also have abilities that allow you to return creatures from the graveyard to the battlefield or otherwise play a Bird again, allowing you to multiply the value of your triggers. This also opens you up to increased aggressive play, as your flying creatures will be able to attack and potentially be blocked by flying defenders without significant consequence, because those deaths fuel your recursion.

Birds with such triggers also function as good targets for sacrificing.

Value

Birds provide noncombat value. The most stereotypical example is Birds of Paradise, a one-mana creature with flying that can tap to produce mana of any color. That's better than Llanowar Elves on its face, even if Elves have more in-type support.

Birds will draw you cards, they'll increase the cost of your opponents' spells, they'll exile your opponents' spells. The utility of a Bird is its greatest strength, even more so than the fact you can have an entire flock of them take to the skies and divebomb an opponent.

As you're using flyers to attack opponents directly, you'll also have the ability to improve your hand, mana, and board state.

Frailty

Most Birds struggle with their stats, with many being only 1/1 or 2/2. This is, of course, mitigated by the fact they have flying and can bypass most blockers. But if you encounter another flying-centric creature type such as Angels or Dragons, or even a deck with reach, you'll lose most exchanges.

Luckily, there are Birds that have great stats or are built to scale over time. Some Birds increase the stats of your creatures with flying or your Birds while others provide them with keywords. The main strength of Birds isn't in getting your Birds to high power and toughness, but you do have some options to overcome obstinate opponents that get in your way.

Removal

While Birds excel at setting themselves up and interfering with the strategies of your opponents, outside of a few like Aerial Extortionist, they struggle with removing threats. They have access to counters, but they don't really have a built-in answer to a tough defender or overwhelming attacking force like other creature types do.

The way around this is typically to allow the threat to remain on the board, but to work around it. This might mean making your creatures tougher to target with spells, giving them keywords to gain an edge in combat, or otherwise making progress despite the threat.

And you can always use in-color removal, be it bouncing or exiling, as determined by the board.

Kastral, the Windcrested

Kastral, the Windcrested is a 4/5 with flying. Whenever one or more Birds you control deal combat damage to a player, you can choose one of the following:

• Put a Bird creature card from your hand or graveyard onto the battlefield with a finality counter, which means it's exiled when it dies. This is a great way to replay particular Birds with ETB or death triggers you want to get extra value from, where any return-to-hand or bounce effects will allow you to remove the finality counter.
• Put a +1/+1 counter on each Bird you control. This solidly strengthens your Birds, increasing in value the more Birds you have.
• Draw a card. This becomes less valuable the more Birds you have on the field due to opportunity cost, but this is always a safe option to choose.

The fact Kastral triggers on Birds dealing combat damage is an incentive to attack, rewarding you for more active play while being easy to achieve due to their in-type flying keyword. Kastral's flexibility allows you to adapt to whatever state the field is in, while its graveyard reclamation and cheating from hand allow you to keep what Birds are best suited to the board on the battlefield.

Choco, Seeker of Paradise

Choco, Seeker of Paradise is a 3/5. Whenever one or more of your Birds attack, look at that many cards from the top of your library. You may put one into your hand, any lands onto the battlefield tapped, and all others into your graveyard. It then has a landfall trigger to gain +1/+0 until end of turn.

Choco self-synergizes by attacking with many other Birds, cycling through the top of your deck and putting multiple lands onto the battlefield tapped to get a big boost of power. This is limited by how many attacking Birds you control but is a temporary bonus, so you'll want to balance fully committing to an attack to maximize Choco's power gain versus leaving yourself vulnerable.

Derevi, Empyrial Tactician

Derevi, Empyrial Tactician is a 2/3 with flying. It has an ETB to tap or untap target permanent, which is also triggered when a creature you control deals combat damage to a player. You can also pay to put Derevi onto the battlefield from the command zone.

Derevi's activated ability is cheaper than Derevi would be normally after its first casting, staying consistently low throughout the remainder of the game. It also is at instant speed, meaning you can effectively cast Derevi with flash to tap or untap target permanent. Just keep in mind that this is not "casting" Derevi, it is putting Derevi onto the battlefield.

Rendmaw, Creaking Nest

Rendmaw, Creaking Nest is a 5/5 Scarecrow artifact creature with menace and reach. It has an ETB that also triggers whenever you play a card with two or more card types to have each player create a tapped 2/2 Bird with flying that is goaded for the rest of the game. Goaded creatures attack each turn if able and must attack a player other than you if able.

Rendmaw is very good at immediately filling the board with goaded 2/2 Bird tokens and forcing your opponents to get into fights with one another. The fact they enter the battlefield tapped while being goaded means all of the tokens will be "out of sync" with one another, where they will only ever be untapped on their turn until they are forced to attack.

This means they won't be able to block your flyers and should cause consistent damage across the table.

Zinnia, Valley's Voice

Zinnia, Valley's Voice is a 1/3 with flying that gets +X/+0, where X is the number of other creatures you control with base power 1. It gives all of your creature spells offspring , which allows you to pay an additional to make a 1/1 copy of that creature when it enters.

Zinnia gaining power from the offspring copies it creates allows it to grow into a sizable threat, though the main utility it provides is as a token generator. So long as you have the ability to pay the , you're primed to double your creature production alongside any ETBs or abilities they may have.

Tawnos, the Toymaker

Tawnos, the Toymaker is a 3/5 Human Artificer which copies any Beast or Bird creature spell you cast, except the copy is an artifact in addition to its other types.

Much like Zinnia, this doubles the value and presence of your Birds cast while having the additional effect of granting an artifact synergy. It triggers automatically without cost, meaning the cost bottleneck is avoided.

The main thing to consider with Tawnos is which Birds you want to include in your deck to ensure you're making the most of your copies, as this commander is entirely reliant on your deck supplying the Birds.

Hermes, Overseer of Elpis

Hermes, Overseer of Elpis is a 2/4 Elder Wizard that creates a 1/1 Bird with flying and vigilance whenever you cast a noncreature spell. Whenever you attack with one or more Birds, scry 2.

Hermes wants to marry spell slinging and Bird spam, bringing out a flock of flyers supported by noncreature spells. Being mono-, Hermes isn't actually concerned with dealing direct damage to your opponents with your noncreature spells. Instead, you'll prioritize counters, card draw, deck sculpting, and other utility options that keep your strategy sharp while building up your Birds.

So long as you attack with at least one Bird a turn, you get consistent scrying to ensure you're drawing what you need.

Momo, Friendly Flier

Momo, Friendly Flier is a 1/1 Lemur Bat Ally with flying that reduces the cost of the first non-Lemur creature spell with flying you cast on each of your turns by . Whenever another creature you control with flying enters, Momo gets +1/+1 until end of turn.

Momo loves Birds, making the first one cast each turn cheaper (as long as it flies) and growing stronger each subsequent ETB. Because there's no scaling based on the number of Birds you control, just how many entered the battlefield in a turn, you can be as cautious or aggressive as you'd like as determined by what your opponents can do.

Momo should be attacking when scaled up to a decent power and toughness, but the rest of your Birds can function as blockers, utility, or join in on the attack as you see fit.

Traveling Chocobo

Traveling Chocobo is a 3/2 that allows you to look at the top card of your library at any time and play lands or cast Bird spells from the top of your library. Additionally, it causes abilities triggered by a land or Bird ETB to be triggered an additional time.

This doubles landfall triggers, which is where Traveling Chocobo finds most of its use. But Bird ETBs are also common and impactful enough that doubling them can change the course of games.

This is in addition to the ramping of being able to cast your Birds and play lands from the top of your library, effectively extending your hand by one.

Jackdaw Savior

Jackdaw Savior is a 3/1 with flying. Whenever it or another creature you control with flying dies, return another creature with lesser mana value from your graveyard to the battlefield.

This death trigger allows you to cycle through your Birds, recycling and reclaiming your cheapest ones easily. It doesn't have a use case for tokens, given they have no mana value — unless they're token copies of Birds, like those created by Zinnia — but Birds follow a healthy mana curve ranging from to .

Even your lower-costed or mid-costed Birds will likely still be higher than one of your Birds in your graveyard, allowing them to cycle effectively.

Mockingbird

Mockingbird is a 1/1 with flying with an cost. It enters as a copy of a creature with mana value less than or equal to the amount of mana spent to cast it. This copy is a Bird with flying.

Given Mockingbird's total mana cost is , it's actually a quite cheap copy. The benefits of adding the Bird creature type allow it to synergize with your other creatures while gaining flying can turn high-power creatures or those with abilities that trigger on dealing combat damage to a player into absolute monsters.

Bident of Thassa

Bident of Thassa allows you to draw a card each time a creature you control deals combat damage to a player. You can also tap it by paying to force creatures your opponents control to attack this turn if able.

With flying, your Birds will consistently be able to attack opponents directly and give you incredible card draw. Their biggest hurdle is other flying creatures or those with reach, which is why the Bident of Thassa allows you to force your opponent's hand and have them go on the offensive. You'll be able to block any flyers, so you're avoiding opening yourself up to free damage. Instead, you're controlling how damage is divided before attacking uncontested the following turn.

Whip of Erebos

Whip of Erebos gives all of your creatures lifelink. You can also tap it by paying to return a creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield, give it haste, and then exile it if it removes the battlefield or at the beginning of the next end step.

All of your Birds gaining lifelink allows you a fair bit of sustain, potentially letting you ignore your own defenses to capitalize attacking with a series of flyers. Four mana for a one-turn return to the battlefield can allow you to retrigger an ETB or gain the effects of a powerful ability in a dire circumstance, so long as you respect its sorcery-speed restriction.

And it also functions as a late-game mana-sink, giving you the ability to spend excess mana at a point in the game where you've already lost many powerful creatures and aren't going to draw more.

Soulcatchers' Aerie

Soulcatchers' Aerie gains a feather counter whenever a Bird is put into your graveyard from the battlefield and grants all Birds (not just yours) +1/+1 for each feather counter it has.

This leads to a positive reinforcement of sacrificing weaker Birds to strengthen the rest of your Bird squad, making them harder to kill. Then if they do get killed, your other creatures grow even stronger.

The most important synergy here is that if a single creature dies multiple times, such as being killed, returning from the graveyard, then being killed again, it produces multiple feather counters. This can lead to massive gains in power and toughness across your entire battlefield.

Favorable Winds

Favorable Winds grants creatures you control with flying +1/+1.

This is a flat stat increase to all of your Birds, most impactful on the 1/1 tokens that get their power and toughness doubled. It's cheap enough as an early-game support piece that you can change the tempo of your strategy. Even later, it still supports your aggressive strategy of bypassing blockers by increasing power.

Dazzling Denial

Dazzling Denial counters a spell unless its controller pays , though if you control a Bird they must pay instead.

Mana taxes associated with counters are annoying to deal with, forcing your opponent to make the determination if what they want to cast is worth the additional cost, assuming they can afford it.

Outside of spells intended to change the flow of the game, simply is too much to justify as an increase for most spells. And if your opponent ends up paying it, they likely can't capitalize on the opening they just made due to lacking mana.

Flurry of Wings

Flurry of Wings creates X 1/1 Bird Soldiers with flying, where X is the number of attacking creatures.

This is intended as a defensive option, allowing you to block incoming attacks no matter if they have flying or not. However, you can easily use this to bolster your own forces by casting it during your own combat phase.

These Bird Soldiers won't be able to attack, but will be able to defend you until your next turn. This is really only useful if you are attacking with more creatures than your opponents would, which is entirely possible given how many Birds you can produce.

Airborne Aid

Airborne Aid allows you to draw a card for each Bird on the battlefield.

In all likelihood, you'll be the main player with Birds. This can net you quite a few cards, but when paired with Rendmaw, Creaking Nest or even just an opponent with Birds of Paradise, you can use your opponents' creatures against them.

The cost of the card limits your options with what you can cast that turn, but even if you have to discard down to your hand size that's still a good problem to have.

Mu Yanling, Sky Dancer

Mu Yanling, Sky Dancer begins with 2 loyalty counters and has the following abilities:

• +2: Until your next turn, up to one target creature gets -2/-0 and loses flying. This allows you to protect yourself from flying threats, either by preventing them from favorably attacking you or neutralizing them as blockers.
• -3: Create a 4/4 Elemental Bird with flying. An admittedly expensive 4/4 flyer is a good option to get an additional creature if you need it, particularly one with higher base stats than most Birds have.
• -8: Gain an emblem allowing your Islands to tap to draw you a card. This gives your lands with the Island type the ability to pull double-duty on two of the most important resources in the game: mana and cards.

Mu Yanling allows you to focus on your normal strategy, minimizing threats as you build up to get a powerful emblem. Once you have the ability to create mana or draw cards, you'll find your ability to get exactly what spells you need will be catapulted forward.

Even more so if you have any tutors to search your library, scrying/surveilling, or other forms of library sculpting.

Restless Anchorage

Restless Anchorage enters tapped and can tap for either or . You can also pay to have the land become a 2/3 Bird with flying, where you create a Map token whenever it attacks.

Map tokens can be sacrificed at sorcery speed for to have a creature you control explore, revealing the top card of your library and either putting it in your hand if it's a land or putting a +1/+1 counter on the creature otherwise.

Its cost of is effectively increased by due to you being unable to tap Restless Anchorage for mana that turn. However, Restless Anchorage allows you the ability to have a land creature with flying, a surprisingly durable 2/3 that creates Map tokens consistently.

These Maps allow you to strengthen your Birds or sculpt the top cards of your deck, making additional card draw all the more impactful.

Chocobo Camp

Chocobo Camp enters tapped unless you control a legendary creature. It can tap to add and also grant a +1/+1 counter to the next Bird you cast this turn. Or you can spend to create a 2/2 Bird with a landfall effect granting +1/+0 until end of turn.

Chocobo Camp is versatile in improving the Birds you're casting, strengthening your position while you're already doing well. Alternatively, it gives the option of fairly potent token generation, even outside of decks that can play more than one land per turn.

Effectively 3/2 attackers most turns, they lack flying but can otherwise enhance your battlefield.

Seaside Haven

Seaside Haven can tap for one colorless mana, or can be activated by paying and sacrificing a Bird to draw a card.

You'll have enough Birds that you can comfortably sacrifice some for cards. In particular, some will have death triggers that you'll want to proc and this gives a cheap way to do so while getting another benefit.

Birds want to win by attacking opponents directly, bypassing their blockers to reduce their life to 0. And they're pretty good at it!

You don't need dozens of Birds to take down an opponent, since with flying even a single-digit number of 1/1 tokens can deal significant damage. This is made even more potent with creatures such as Steel-Plume Marshal that provide a power bonus to all attacking creatures or any Bird that gains temporary stat bonuses as a result of ETBs.

Certain Birds lend themselves toward "going tall," becoming incredibly powerful in their own right without the need for external support. Something like Soulcatcher can defeat an opponent single-handedly if allowed to grow.

This can be due to natural attrition over time or by spiking its stats with sacrifice effects. Even hopping a Skullclamp around a series of tokens would work.

You can also use certain Birds to set up an infinite combo, such as with Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle. One example is with Myr Retriever and Blasting Station, where if Myr Retriever is in the graveyard while Teshar and Blasting Station are on the battlefield, playing a -cost artifact creature will allow you to return Myr Retriever to the battlefield with Teshar, untapping Blasting Station.

In response to the -cost artifact creature ETB, you can tap Blasting Station to sacrifice it and deal 1 damage to your opponent, then untap it from that very same ETB. You can then tap it again to sacrifice Myr Retriever, dealing 1 damage to your opponent and returning the -cost artifact creature to your hand.

This combo can then be repeated so long as it isn't interrupted.