The Modal Commander Servitor
An approach to a Magic: The Gathering servitor subtype. This is one of my UPG-filled personal projects.
There are many approaches to making a servitor. There are ways to advance that servitor straight to thoughtform. There are even ways to make an egregore with other magic practitioners. So that’s not what this post is about, though I will leave resources at the bottom for that [1]. This post is about using pop culture in tandem with magic to make a servitor even more powerful. I’m warning you now, we get well into the mechanical weeds of Magic: The Gathering in this one.
The thought came to me a while back in a Discord server with some magic-practicing pals. I got the idea to use my Magic: The Gathering Commander decks as modal spells (more on this term later), which then turned into ideas for making them servitors. To quote myself,
But more to the point, the idea of a Commander deck is that you have a central Guy in charge of particular Things and you typically build the deck around that, so why not treat the central Guy as a servitor empowered by the tools built into the deck (in the form of supporting cards) to accomplish a goal, and it’s empowered every time you play the deck.
It’s basically outsourcing magic bullshit to eldritch monsters from between the planes, a toddler cactus person, several pirates, the gods’ most unfortunate bisexual, and a lawyer.
And then I put the idea aside for a while. Summer, my fallow period, happened. But when I came back to my practice near the start of autumn, I found myself revisiting servitor/thoughtform ideas, which prompted me to return to my old notes on Modal Commander Servitors, the Hireling Sliver Hivemind Linking Sigil System (SHILLS), and Echo Summoning. We’ll only be focusing on the first in this post.
But let’s start at the beginning. The crux of this servitor is that it is the Commander of your Commander deck, so let’s talk about the Commander format.
The Commander format (as officially known by Wizards of the Coast aka WOTC) is also called Elder Dragon Highlander or EDH. It is a casual multiplayer format with a competitive form known as cEDH. You have a deck that is 100 cards strong, and with the exception of basic lands, you can only have one copy of a card in your deck. Commander is centered around a Legendary Creature (or, more rarely, a Planeswalker) who exists in the “command zone” separate from the main deck but that still counts towards that 100-card limit. Under certain circumstances, you can have two Commanders (such as with the Partner, Partner With, Friends Forever, Choose a Background/Background, or Doctor’s Companion mechanics). You start at 40 life, and if you end up at or below 0 life, or you take 21 points of Commander damage from a single Commander, you lose the game. Your deck’s available colors are restricted only to your Commander’s color identity – every color that appears in their card, not just the ones in their initial mana cost. [2]
There’s a lot more to it than that, but for the purposes of this post, we’ll be focusing on your Commander itself rather than its format.
Depending on your approach to pop culture entities (PCEs), you may already see them as faces of existing entities (such as Karametra being a face for Demeter) or as embodiments of archetypes (such as Bertram Graywater embodying the “corrupt lawman” of the Western genre). However, these are far from the only approaches. My personal approach is “everything is already so goddamn weird, so why wouldn’t they exist”. Luckily, when creating a servitor, we’re not drawing on an existing PCE. Instead, we’re forming our energy into the shape (and sometimes personality) of one!
In the meta sense, a player of Magic: The Gathering is a planeswalker (a mortal with a spark in their soul that allows them to travel to other planes and access the magic of other planes even if they aren’t there), battles with other players are duels with other planeswalkers, and their deck represents their allies – other planeswalkers they can call in favors for aid with, creatures and allies they can summon for help, and spells and other resources they have at their disposal. [3] Therefore, your Commander is your greatest ally who can help you in this duel, one whom you can keep resummoning easier than others (as seen by the command zone being a separate zone from the graveyard). The crux of this format, in a meta sense, is that your Commander wants to help you. So why not make it into a servitor, a type of energyform, so it can help you for more than merely games?
Okay, so we’ve covered the Commander, and you presumably already read up on servitors and thoughtforms recently. But what about that other word, modal? Modal is an MTG mechanic that gives you the choice of two or more effects of a spell or ability when it’s cast or otherwise put on the stack. Modes are the different effects you may choose on a modal spell or ability. There are keywords that add onto it (escalate, entwine, and spree) that allow you to pick more or all of the options at once. [4] If you’re worried about what “the stack” is, don’t, it’s not actually relevant for what we’re doing with this servitor. Not even MTG players understand the stack. The point is, modal means options, and the only thing better than good stuff is options for good stuff.
So let’s put all of these definitions and mechanics together. A Modal Commander Servitor is an energyform stored in a Legendary Creature (or Planeswalker) card in charge of a Commander deck who uses the cards and resources in the deck (or otherwise given to them) in order to adapt to whatever you need it to do. They’re created like normal servitors and can draw on the same energy sources as normal servitors, but they can also draw power from the lands in their Commander deck. They can be empowered by both magical and in-game usage. The deck theme and archetype (such as an Otter Typal deck for Bria, Riptide Rogue or a Ninjutsu Theme deck for Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow [5]) also tie into and empower the Commander as both a Commander and a servitor. Sure, you can build a deck completely divorced from its Commander, but you’re kneecapping yourself and your Commander by doing so.
Let’s circle back to the Partner mechanic. It appears in multiple forms – Partner, Partner With, Friends Forever, Choose a Background and Background, and Doctor’s Companion. These abilities give you the ability to have two Commanders for your deck, with caveats.
Let’s start with Partner, the broadest form of this mechanic. Any Commander with Partner can team up with any other Commander with Partner. While most are monocolored (and there’s a colorless one that you get to choose the color of), there’s also quite a few that are dual-colored, meaning that your deck can have up to four colors with two Commanders. Of course, you could absolutely use two Partner Commanders with the same color identity to make a monocolored deck. There are definitely benefits to that approach, depending on which Commanders you choose. (Cough, Akroma, Vision of Ixidor partnered with literally anyone.)
“Partner With” is similar, but it restricts you to premade pairings. This was seen in the Battlebond set, the Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths set, and several Universes Beyond (aka, officially licensed crossover cards) sets like the Lord of the Rings Commander decks, the Doctor Who Commander decks, and the Assassin’s Creed set. “Partner With” is just a chunk of its keyword. Part of the keyword itself is the card that the Commander is...well, partnered with. “Partner With” is not the mechanic fully, because the full mechanic is “Partner With [specific card]”.
Choose a Background and its partner, the Background Enchantment subtype, were introduced in the Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate set that came out well before Baldur’s Gate 3, leaving most of us confused about all of these named Commanders like Shadowheart and Karlach and Wyll. Backgrounds were a new way to add something to the Command zone that wasn’t necessarily a Creature or Planeswalker – instead, they’re Enchantments that boost your Commander. Even better, they work as part of the normal Commander deck, so they can still boost your Modal Commander Servitor even if they’re not in charge of it!
Friends Forever is a type of Partner originally tied to the Stranger Things Secret Lair cards that was brought in-universe with the Innistrad re-workings of those characters into more lore-accurate cards; any card with Friends Forever can team up with any other card with Friends Forever, but this one can even give you access to all five colors of mana.
Doctor’s Companion is a Partner keyword from the Doctor Who Commander decks that allows the cards with that keyword to partner with any Commander who has the subtype line “Time Lord Doctor”. My coworker, who is way more into Doctor Who than I am but knows very little about Magic: The Gathering, was absolutely giddy when she saw how that worked.
I understand that this is a lot, so let’s circle back to the primary point: using Partner Commanders means that you essentially have two Commanders to try and deal with in a Modal Commander Servitor context. I can think of a few ways to handle this, personally. One way is to just have two servitors and allow them to work together or separately to accomplish goals. Another is to treat them as two sides of the same servitor, drawing on one side at a time. A third that I can think of is to just address them as one unit, since that’s what your Commander deck is – a fusion of their two abilities to create a stronger whole.
There are also the Companions to consider. The Companion mechanic debuted in Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths in 2020, and it was panned as a mechanic. Even being reworked for the Multiverse Legends in 2023 reprint didn’t help the mechanic much. Notably, Lutri, the Spellchaser was banned in Commander the moment it was previewed [6] and Yorion, Sky Nomad can’t be used in Commander because it requires your deck to have more than the 100-card limit the format has. [7] But the other eight Companions are able to function as Companions (provided you have that Rule 0 talk with your pod about allowing a sideboard) within the constraints of the Commander format [8], thus giving you a 101st card and, potentially, an additional servitor. While they may not necessarily be an additional Modal Commander Servitor, they can be crafted as an additional, lesser servitor to aid your Modal Commander Servitor.
And no, you can’t use it as both a Commander and a Companion. The “only one card” rule still applies, so you have to choose one. However, provided that both of your Commanders meet the Companion’s requirements, you can absolutely have two Commanders and a Companion.
Do you see what I mean about getting into the weeds?
So what about when you’re done with your Modal Commander Servitor? My approach is to use a built-in “kill switch” to dissolve the servitor and, since this is tied to a specific Commander deck, to dismantle the deck and cleanse the Commander card. Simple and to the point, because I like simple and to the point.
I also made it easy to activate and dismiss my Modal Commander Servitor. I build all of my energyforms with activation phrases that will pull them out of “hibernation” and dismissal phrases that send them back to it. This allows them to rest and regain energy without having to be actively used. I used this same method and theory for my own Modal Commander Servitor.
I am also in a pod that believes in using every card we own, so even if a card is officially banned in Commander by the Commander Rules Committee (before they recently disbanded) or Wizards of the Coast, we still use them. (I feel the need to mention that I primarily play against my mother, who was a Magic: The Gathering player from the early days and does not believe in mercy.) Naturally, if you play with a specific group, you can talk to them about in-pod bans and allowances, but if you play against random people, it’s probably best to listen to the existing banlist. Of course, with WOTC in charge of the bans now, there’s going to be a whole power scaling thing... Lowkey, this format is kind of a mess right now because people lost their ever-loving minds recently. [9] But this is a post about pop culture occultism, not...that mess, so let’s move on!
For the rest of this post, let’s step through a theoretical Modal Commander Servitor. We’ll pick Yorion, Sky Nomad [7] because I feel bad for it. Although it can’t be a Companion, it’s still entirely legal as a Commander! Yorion is a White and Blue Legendary Bird Serpent for five mana, getting up into the pricier side of a Commander. It has four power and five toughness, meaning it can hit your opponents decently hard and take a pretty big hit. It has the Flying keyword, meaning that it can only be blocked by creatures with the Flying and/or Reach keywords. When it enters the battlefield, you get to exile any number of other, nonland permanents that you both own and control; they then come back to the battlefield at the beginning of your next end step. This is commonly referred to in MTG as “blinking”.
So this is pretty good, at least to me. You can bring it into the battlefield and exile any number of things that also have “enters the battlefield” triggers to get them to pop off once more. And looking at Yorion’s EDHRec page, a lot of people had the same idea. As of writing this, there are over one thousand decks on EDHRec that focus around blinking with Yorion at the helm. But blinking isn’t the only thing Yorion can do. Plenty of deck themes also feature cantrips (cards that draw you cards in addition to doing something else), those damned Persistent Petitioners (who can make your opponents mill their deck until they die from running out of cards), cloning, Flying, and so on, though none of them have nearly the number of Yorion decks that blinking does. Personally, I’d build a Bird deck, because I’m predictable and like Typal decks. I would add cards like Skycat Sovereign, Watcher of the Spheres, Favorable Winds, and other cards meant to boost Birds or Flying creatures. Ultimately, I would focus on making this a functional Commander deck first and foremost, because I’m not going to keep a deck around if it sucks ass. That kind of defeats the point of the Modal Commander Servitor – in order to make it more powerful, you need to use it for both kinds of magic.
So that’s the “Commander” part figured out. Let’s shift focus to the “Servitor” section. I have a fairly quick yet simultaneously detailed approach to making servitors. [10] The important things to emphasize when building this Modal Commander Servitor are to name the servitor for the card (including any epithets or surnames on the card you’re using), to give them the ability to draw on the cards/resources in their Commander deck, and to specify that your Modal Commander Servitor is just that when you are speaking it into existence. Give them the ability to adapt and whatnot.
So now we’ve got a Modal Commander Servitor. Personally, I would focus on pouring energy into it and giving it simple tasks at first so it can get its feet under it. Being spontaneously brought into existence is disorienting, even for things that can’t think for themselves and aren’t sentient, so I give my servitors a chance to exist and hang out in their “dismissed”/hibernation state so they can get used to existing.
Now, let’s talk about potential specificity. Even though I keep my Modal Commander Servitors extremely vague and adaptable, you can outline the particular modes you need them to function in more specifically. For example, Yorion can be given different “modes” focusing on categories of magic typically aligned with White and Blue, such as protection, scouting, travel, and elemental air and water. This can help if you want the Modal Commander Servitor to be more specific than “do whatever”. If you follow the “all entities are ultimately facets of a bigger entity” approach, you could have Yorion channel parts of the Bird overspirit or the Serpent overspirit, if that’s your spiritual cup of tea.
Ultimately, the point of the Modal Commander Servitor is adaptation and flexibility. Sometimes, you just need to outsource a problem and you don’t have the time to make a more specific Guy for it, but if you already have one of these handy, you can just point them at the issue and wait to see what happens.
I hope you enjoyed this post! It got...pretty long, but I think that’s ultimately for the best, since it enabled me to pack more detail in. If you end up doing this, please let me know what you do and how it goes! I’m eager to see what other people experience with this deeply UPG-based approach to servitor creation and usage.
Citations, Resources, And Further Reading
[1] “Jasper’s Servitor/Thoughtform Resource Post”, compiled on Tumblr by jasper-pagan-witch: https://jasper-pagan-witch.tumblr.com/post/762988504970100736/jaspers-servitorthoughtform-resource-post
[2] “Commander (format)” on the MTG wiki, compiled by Fandom users, through a Breezewiki mirror: https://antifandom.com/mtg/wiki/Commander_(format)
[3] “Planeswalker” on the MTG wiki, compiled by Fandom users, through a Breezewiki mirror: https://antifandom.com/mtg/wiki/Planeswalker
[4] “Modal” on the MTG wiki, compiled by Fandom users, through a Breezewiki mirror: https://antifandom.com/mtg/wiki/Modal
[5] “Bria, Riptide Rogue (Commander) – Otter” and “Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow (Commander) – Ninjutsu” on EDHRec: https://edhrec.com/commanders/bria-riptide-rogue/otter and https://edhrec.com/commanders/yuriko-the-tigers-shadow/ninjutsu
[6] “Lutri” on the MTG wiki, compiled by Fandom users, through a Breezewiki mirror: https://antifandom.com/mtg/wiki/Lutri
[7] “Yorion, Sky Nomad” on Scryfall: https://scryfall.com/card/mul/64/yorion-sky-nomad
[8] “All Companions” on EDHRec: https://edhrec.com/companions
[9] “On the Future of Commander” on the official Magic: The Gathering website, by Wizards of the Coast: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/on-the-future-of-commander
[10] “Entity Creation Worksheet” adapted on Tumblr by jasper-pagan-witch: https://jasper-grimoire.tumblr.com/post/763362895377694720
Condensed Chaos: an introduction to chaos magic by Phil Hine: A good beginner primer on chaos magic, with a fairly extensive chapter on servitors/thoughtforms and a willingness to explain things that I just gloss over and build red string boards about.
Magickal Servitors: Create Your Own Spirits to Attract Pleasure, Power and Prosperity by Damon Brand: A very thorough book on servitor creation, though not necessarily from a chaos magic lens. I found it very funny to read how much the author was frothing at the mouth about chaos magic. Yet, it’s still hands-down the best book dedicated entirely to servitor creation that I’ve read thus far.
EDHRec, a website for comparing Commanders and seeing the most commonly used cards in particular decks: https://edhrec.com/
Scryfall, an MTG card searching database: https://scryfall.com/
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