Top 10 Planeswalkers... on Average

Welcome to Too-Specific Top 10, where we're going to rank everything. However, why use the broad categories you see everywhere like "Best Planeswalker Card"? The narrower the scope, the better! And if there isn’t a category to rank our pet cards, well, we’ll make one up! (Did you know that out of every planeswalker, Tibalt would look the best in a bow tie?)

This week, with all the talk of multiple Chandra cards in one set, I figured, why not look more at how planeswalkers rank as a whole? That's right, this week on Too-Specific Top 10, we're gonna broaden out our scope to see how planeswalkers rank across every card they're depicted in!

To make sure we're comparing all of our favorite interdimensional friends and overlords fairly, we're going to tabulate the average amount of decks each of them is played in, then average that amount with every other instance of the specific planeswalker. Given she's the reason we're doing this in the first place, let's use Chandra Nalaar as an example to walk you through the process of how we'll rank each planeswalker.

There are ten total Chandra Planeswalker cards. Looking at each of them here on EDHREC, all the instances combined are played in a total of 14,084 decks as of the time of writing this article. Taking the average of all of them, then, we can just move a decimal point over (AKA, dividing by 10, the total number of Chandras) and see that the average number of decks that a version of Chandra appears in is 1,408.4.

But does every Chandra count? Given that there have been 49 total planeswalkers represented on cards in the history of Magic, and only 13 of them have had "baby" versions of themselves made for lower-powered planeswalker preconstructed decks, it doesn't seem quite fair to include those printings in the overall average. So, with Chandra, Pyrogenius and Chandra, Bold Pyromancer removed, we average them out by dividing by 8 instead of 10. The number therefore jumps substantially to 1,686.9 decks.

The real question is whether 1,700 decks will be enough to get Chandra into the top 10?

Before we get to that, we should note that only planeswalkers that have had at least three cards total were considered here. I love Xenagos, the Reveler as much as the next guy, but giving him credit for 4,288 decks as a standalone planeswalker seems a bit unfair when the Gatewatch members all have 10 cards printed at various rarities across multiple sets to take into consideration.

And finally, we're not including the Core Set 2020 planeswalkers in our data yet, because there isn't really any data on them at time of writing. So, with all the caveats and excuses out of the way, let's take a look at our Top 10 Average Planeswalkers!

Elspeth Tirel

• Total Instances: 3
• Total Decks Played: 19,192
• Average Decks Played: 6,397.3

If you've never experienced an Elspeth, Sun's Champion hitting the board in an Atraxa, Praetor's Voice deck, take my word for it, it makes your stomach drop. That said, the cheaper versions aren't a walk in the park to deal with, either. The powerful thing about Elspeth is her ability to immediately protect herself from attacks with a wall of Soldiers, followed up by pumping those Soldiers or making them some of the only creatures on the board. This combination leads to a single-card aggro-control strategy where you can continuously both protect your assets and swing in for some damage. That's a lot of utility for a single planeswalker!

Liliana Vess

• Total Instances: 10
• Total Decks Played: 30,307
• Average Decks Played: 3,030.7
• Average Without Babies: 3,626.3

Liliana doesn't have quite the same unifying theme as Elspeth, but that doesn't mean that she hasn't been extremely powerful over the years. Whether she's popping out Zombies or removing creatures, she always seems to be able to protect herself when you need her to, a sure sign of a powerful planeswalker. Add in Liliana's penchant for also controlling the game via discard, and she becomes that much harder to deal with. Finally, Liliana doesn't just control the game, she moves you forward as well, with all sorts of tutoring abilities and creature recursion options, accrusing value until it's difficult not to win!

Nissa Revane

• Total Instances: 9
• Total Decks Played: 25,371
• Average Decks Played: 2,819
• Average Without Babies: 3,499

Speaking of value, here comes Nissa! Whether it be extra mana, extra cards, or counters on permanents, Nissa is there to ensure that you keep moving forward, turn after turn. Nissa is all about awakening your lands, often while simultaneously untapping them for an extra boost. Outside of her duties as an alarm clock for your lands, however, she also just cares about lands in general. Drawing cards when you play lands, searching your deck for all of your basic lands, or gaining life and drawing cards equal to the amount of lands you have are all options with fully-ticked-up Nissa planeswalkers, and it's not uncommon to look around the board at your local commander table and see exactly that.

Jace Beleren

• Total Instances: 11
• Total Decks Played: 30,987
• Average Decks Played: 2,817.6
• Average Without Babies: 3,385.8

Dread it, run from it, it doesn't matter: Jace still arrives. There are a lot of opinions when it comes to Magic's resident mind mage, but whether or not he's powerful is generally not contested. Generally structured around the rawest of card advantage techniques, Jace is sure to leave you with more cards in hand than you started with. Outside of the card draw, however, Jace's other abilities tend to vary a lot more widely. Some instances will have him bouncing creatures, others will have him lowering a creature's power, and then somewhere around his third mind wipe he forgot that he generally dealt with creatures more directly and started making Illusions instead. Perhaps more on-theme, Jace is also known to mill opponents out with his ultimates, providing a win condition in addition to ensuring that you have all the options in the world while your opponents deal with headache after headache.

Garruk Wildspeaker

• Total Instances: 5
• Total Decks Played: 16,019
• Average Decks Played: 3,203.8

Much like our top contenders Elspeth Tirel and Liliana Vess, Garruk's power comes in part from his ability to protect himself. Relentlessly on theme, Garruk makes creatures. Even in his darker versions that had him switch from mono-green to Golgari, Garruk is still pumping out Wolves and Beasts, adding sacrifice and destroy effects to doubly protect himself even after making a blocker. Finally, you'll see various Garruks in all sorts of creature and token strategies because of his ability to pump up your Overwhelming amounts of creatures and swing in for the win, or just draw you some more creature cards to make sure you have enough when the time to Overrun arrives.

Tamiyo

• Total Instances: 3
• Total Decks Played: 9,564
• Average Decks Played: 3,188

While Tamiyo may have been a bit wishy-washy over the years about what exactly her color identity is, what she hasn't been vague about is how powerful her effects are. In one way or another, she is going to slow down your opponents while drawing you a bunch of cards. That may mean that she will need some extra protection along the way, but if she can stick around for any reasonable amount of time, that won't be difficult with all the card advantage you'll accrue.

Sorin Markov

• Total Instances: 5
• Total Decks Played: 15,036
• Average Decks Played: 3,007.2

Sorin is a bit all over the map when it comes to being on-theme, but in general he's going to Drain Life from something or someone for you, then do other Vampire things. Given how powerful Vampires tend to be, that's generally an okay kind of deal that can be played in a multitude of strategies, tribal or otherwise. Whether it's making tokens with lifelink or flying, giving your creatures a power boost and lifelink or flying, or just making someone go to 10 life with no questions asked, Sorin provides a lot of power for your lifegain strategies. Given that lifegain is the second most popular strategy on EDHREC, and that Vampires are the third most popular tribe, that really just translates to some great numbers for our favorite Vampire Lord.

Tezzeret

• Total Instances: 7
• Total Decks Played: 14,504
• Average Decks Played: 2,072
• Average Without Babies: 2,737.4

Speaking of popular themes, you may have noticed that artifacts are the most popular deck archetype in EDH. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that the planeswalker who cares about artifacts as a hard and fast rule is making it into the top 10. Whether it's untapping artifacts, drawing cards based on the amount of artifacts you control, having opponents lose life equal to the amount of artifacts you control, making artifact tokens, or just plain searching for the best artifact in your deck, Tezzeret is your guy. While Daretti, Scrap Savant may make a dent someday, for now there is only one artifact king, and he just got himself a power vacuum to fill with the sudden absence of Nicol Bolas. If anything, I would count on Tezzeret continuing to climb the ladder, rather than falling off of it.

Kiora

• Total Instances: 3
• Total Decks Played: 7,840
• Average Decks Played: 2,613.3

As usual, Simic has no chill, and Kiora is right there in the middle of it all, being ridiculous. Would you like to draw more cards, make more mana, and make more large creatures? If so, does she have a deal for you! The inherent power level of blue and green smashed together is not to be denied, and Kiora perhaps displays it best in her simplicity. She's going to come down, immediately let you do more things in that turn than you would've been able to otherwise, and then draw you a bunch of cards until she can be ticked up high enough to also make you an army of sea monsters. In other words, she's going to do everything you want to do in a game of EDH from start to finish, all on one card.

Karn

• Total Instances: 3
• Total Decks Played: 7,309
• Average Decks Played: 2,436.3

I personally expected the only colorless planeswalker eligible for the competition to rank much higher, given that he can be played in any deck. Perhaps the average price tag of $37.00 has something to do with him being this low on the list. Hopefully as Karn rotates out of standard that pricetag will drop a bit, but I wouldn't count on it. The ability to be thrown into any deck at will can lead to a lot of demand, and that's before you even get to the fact that Karn's abilities are just plain good. Exiling things may seem like an odd shtick, but the fact that he can also get them back from their exile is an effect that is just really not seen in Magic, and as a result can be quite powerful. Add the fact that he's typically just very hard to kill due to his high initial loyalty, and Karn has the kind of resilience and power that makes him in demand totally aside from his colorless nature.

Honorable Mentions

I mean... I've got the whole list, why not give it to you?

11. Ob Nixilis

• Total Instances: 3
• Total Decks Played: 7,258
• Average Decks Played: 2,419.3

12. Teferi

• Total Instances: 3
• Total Decks Played: 7,423
• Average Decks Played: 1,855.8
• Average Without Babies: 2,375.3

13. Nicol Bolas

• Total Instances: 5
• Total Decks Played: 10,103
• Average Decks Played: 2,020.6
• Average Without Babies: 2,308.3

14. Vraska

• Total Instances: 6
• Total Decks Played: 7,818
• Average Decks Played: 1,303
• Average Without Babies: 1,867.5

15. Ajani

• Total Instances: 10
• Total Decks Played: 15,595
• Average Decks Played: 1,559.5
• Average Without Babies: 1,864.3

16. Chandra Nalaar

• Total Instances: 10
• Total Decks Played: 14,084
• Average Decks Played: 1,408.4
• Average Without Babies: 1,686.9

17. Saheeli Rai

• Total Instances: 3
• Total Decks Played: 4,460
• Average Decks Played: 1,486.7

18. Nahiri

• Total Instances: 3
• Total Decks Played: 4,411
• Average Decks Played: 1,470.3

19. Gideon Jura

• Total Instances: 8
• Total Decks Played: 8,534
• Average Decks Played: 1,066.8
• Average Without Babies: 1,328.2

20. Ral Zarek

• Total Instances: 4
• Total Decks Played: 4,031
• Average Decks Played: 1,007.8
• Average Without Babies: 1,299.7

21. Sarkhan Vol

• Total Instances: 8
• Total Decks Played: 6,636
• Average Decks Played: 948
• Average Without Babies: 1,056.5

22. Dovin Baan

• Total Instances: 4
• Total Decks Played: 4,177
• Average Decks Played: 1,044.3

23. Domri Rade

• Total Instances: 4
• Total Decks Played: 3,814
• Average Decks Played: 953.5

24. Huatli

• Total Instances: 4
• Total Decks Played: 3,214
• Average Decks Played: 803.5
• Average Without Babies: 875.7

25. Kaya

• Total Instances: 3
• Total Decks Played: 2,439
• Average Decks Played: 813

26. Captain Angrath

• Total Instances: 3
• Total Decks Played: 1,712
• Average Decks Played: 570.7

And there you have it, every planeswalker with 3 or more printings, ranked on the merits of their total contributions! In the comments below, let us know which planeswalker you think will next end up at the top of the list, and we'll see you over at the Superfriends table!

DougY

Doug has been an avid Magic player since Fallen Empires, when his older brother traded him some epic blue Homarids for all of his Islands. As for Commander, he's been playing since 2010, when he started off by making a two-player oriented G/R Land Destruction deck. Nailed it. In his spare time when he's not playing Magic, writing about Magic or doing his day job, he runs a YouTube channel or two, keeps up a College Football Computer Poll, and is attempting to gif every scene of the Star Wars prequels.