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Blink is an archetype in Commander based around abusing enter and leave the battlefield triggers. There are a ton of options available in Commander, so you’ll have a lot to work with when you build a Blink deck. If you love tons of exiling and getting a bunch of effect triggers, then Blink is the perfect archetype to build a Commander deck around.
What Is Blink?
Blink is the unofficial name given to the game action of exiling a permanent you control and returning it to the battlefield. It is also occasionally called Flickering, both having gotten their names from Momentary Blink and Flicker respectively (and the names are interchangeable).
Since the name is unofficial, you won’t find any cards that directly call this mechanic “Blinking.” There are two types of Blink effects, instant-Blink or long-Blink. Instant-Blink, as the name might imply, refers to a card that is exiled and immediately returns to the battlefield (Ephemerate). Long-Blink refers to cards that are returned at the end step instead, such as Parting Gust.
What Colors Are Blink Effects In?
Blinking is something that is found in either White or Blue colors. The most common commanders for Blinking are generally Azorius . You won’t see this effect on any other color; it is exclusive to the Azorius colors. There are a few exceptions, as seen with Aminatou, the Fateshifter and Roon of the Hidden Realm, but you shouldn’t expect these to be common.
Blink Staples
Blink is a very popular archetype, so there are plenty of commonly played cards. Both permanents and spells help you Blink, with more than enough options to ensure you always draw them. You have effect doublers to make the most of all your Blinks, and cards that care about creatures entering.
Instant And Sorcery Staples
The most common way you’ll be Blinking your cards is with instants and sorceries. Instants are better since you can Blink a creature in response to it being targeted for removal which will “fizzle” the removal spell.
The best and most common Blink spell is Ephemerate and for good reason. You get two Blink effects for the price of one thanks to Rebound, while only paying one mana. Cloudshift is nearly identical; it’s just missing Rebound. Ghostly Flicker lets you Blink two cards instead of just one for more mana investment.
You have options for mass-Blink as well. Semester's End and Eerie Interlude both let you do this at instant speed, which gets you out of the way of a board wipe. With a high cost, Another Round can Blink a ton of creatures a ton of times.
Blinking Artifact and Enchantment Staples
The downside of spells is that you can only get one Blink out of them. However, with permanents, you can keep reusing them to constantly flicker your creatures without losing an engine piece. These aren’t too common, but are important to the Blink strategy so you want to make sure your deck always includes them.
Teleportation Circle hits both artifacts and creatures, although you’ll primarily be wanting to exile creatures. Conjurer's Closet and Thassa, Deep-Dwelling both have similar effects, but Thassa, Deep-Dwelling is much harder for your opponents to remove.
Blinking Creature Staples
In many cases, creatures are capable of blinking. Many are ones that Blink a creature when they enter the battlefield. These are important as they are often a part of infinite combos if you’re planning on including those in your deck. The best of these staples is Felidar Guardian. Other options include Flickerwisp, Restoration Angel, and Charming Prince.
Certain creatures can continuously Blink by investing mana into their abilities. Examples include Emiel the Blessed, Abuelo, Ancestral Echo, Niko, Light of Hope, and Roon of the Hidden Realm. They are a bit less consistent since the mana investment is on the higher side, but ones you can keep re-using so long as you have the mana to do so (except for Roon of the Hidden Realm which needs to be untapped).
Trigger Doublers
One of the main things Blink decks do is trigger enter the battlefield triggers. Some cards can make these effects trigger multiple times, gaining the effect multiple times. These effects do stack, so having multiple instances of trigger doublers means you get an extra trigger for each instance you have.
The best trigger doublers you want are Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines, Panharmonicon, Starfield Vocalist, and Virtue of Knowledge. If you have Starfield Vocalist and Virtue of Knowledge both on the battlefield, you’ll have three triggers when a creature enters (the one it normally gets and the two extra).
Best Blink Targets
There are plenty of ways to Blink creatures, but only some creatures are worth Blinking. The best ones are the ones that have powerful or useful enter the battlefield triggers. These can be ways to generate card advantage, or ways to respond to your opponents’ battlefields.
The most common creatures you’ll flicker are ones that draw you cards. This is useful for getting more Blink cards into your hands so that you never run out of tools. A big strength of Blink decks is how good they are at generating card advantage. The best ones include Mulldrifter, Cloudblazer, Spirited Companion, and Baleful Strix.
Another flavor of creatures you’ll be Blinking are ones that act as removal. This can either be for creatures or for artifacts and/or enchantments. The best options are Loran of the Third Path, Witch Enchanter, Reclamation Sage, and Ravenous Chupacabra.
Some creatures have a toolbox of effects, letting you pick from multiple options when they enter. When you Blink them, you can pick and choose the effect that’s most useful for the current gamestate. These creatures include Charming Prince, Aether Channeler, Ertai Resurrected, and Knight of Autumn.
Another common Blink target are cards that give you cards back from the graveyard. Archaeomancer gives you an instant or sorcery, Karmic Guide brings any creature back from the graveyard, and Sun Titan gets you any permanent with mana value three or less.
Finally, you have tools to ramp you. Cards like Solemn Simulacrum, Wood Elves, and Kor Cartographer all get you lands onto the battlefield quickly, and is an effect you can keep using by Blinking them to get a ton of mana available.
Blink Complimentary Cards
Not every card in a Blink deck is made to Blink other cards or be targets for Blinking. Instead, these are permanents that benefit from creatures entering naturally. Since you’ll have so many creatures enter, you’ll get a ton of these triggers by just playing your deck.
Lifegain effects commonly complement Blink strategies. Normally, gaining just a life when a creature enters doesn’t do much, but when so many creatures enter, it becomes very relevant. Soul Warden, Suture Priest, and Essence Warden are among the best options to include. There are many ways for Blink decks to create token copies of permanents, letting you gain even more instances of this effect. It’s not uncommon to gain life in the double digits from just one creature entering.
Cards that care about your permanents leaving the battlefield are also very relevent. Soulherder both Blinks cards itself while gaining counters from creatures being exiled. Dour Port-Mage nets you a card draw whenever a creature leaves the battlefield without dying. Reality Acid will cause the permanent it’s enchanting to be sacrificed when it leaves, and when you Blink it you can choose what permanent to put it on when it returns.
Some permanents have miscellaneous effects that Blink decks love to have access to. Most notable is Preston, the Vanisher which will essentially give you two copies of a permanent when they return from being Blinked. Altar of the Brood is a way to mill your opponents from all your Blinking, especially if you set up any infinite combos. Impact Tremors and effects like it can burn your opponents out of the game to take advantage of all your creatures constantly being exiled and entering.
General Gameplay
Blink decks shine at progressing their game states through building value from the various permanents entering the battlefield. They have a heavy focus on engine, as you often need a few specific cards in order to get max value. If you control a Panharmonicon, it isn’t going to do anything if you don’t have a way to Blink your Wall of Omens.
You need the following at all times: creatures worth Blinking and ways to Blink your creatures. Without these, your deck doesn’t really do anything. You get some minor benefits from some creatures, but with no Blinking, you’re just playing a slow deck with little action.
As such, card draw is vital in Blink decks. When you can loop powerful effects like Mulldrifter and Thought Monitor to keep drawing two cards with no downside. You can also gain benefit from cards such as Guardian Project and Tribute to the World Tree for some extra card draw.
How Blink Decks Win
Blink decks win by outvaluing all of your opponents, drawing cards that can answer whatever it is they do. Blink decks are known for how much they draw cards, and can stay in the game with how good they are at gaining life.
Once you have your Blink engine going, you have a few different routes to victory. The easiest way is with burn damage (assuming you have access to Red ). Impact Tremors, Warleader's Call, and Warstorm Surge are the best options for this. It’s a slow burn, but with trigger doublers and multiple Blink engines going, you can bring life totals down fast.
In decks that can’t utilize a Burn strategy, you can instead lean on effects that automatically win you the game. If you’re going the card draw route, Triskaidekaphile and Twenty-Toed Toad both automatically win the game if you have a certain number of cards in your hand. You can also use your draw power to get to Approach of the Second Sun to cast it twice quicker.
Alternatively, if you go the route that creates a ton of creature tokens, you can win with the likes of Halo Fountain or Epic Struggle. Or, if you don’t have access to this, you can go the lifegain route and win with the win conditions of Felidar Sovereign or Test of Endurance.
Combos
There are multiple ways to get infinite Blink effects. This can gain infinite life with any Soul Warden-like effects, or infinite mill with Altar of the Brood to win the game that turn.
The easiest two-card combo is Felidar Guardian and Restoration Angel. The combo is trivial; all you have to do is have one of them on the battlefield, and Blink the other one with the one that isn’t. Afterward, you keep looping their Blink effects with one another infinitely.
Another easy combo is with Felidar Guardian and Preston, the Vanisher. All you have to do is Blink Felidar Guardian by any means while Preston, the Vanisher on the battlefield. When Felidar Guardian returns, Preston, the Vanisher will create a 0/1 token copy that Blinks the original Felidar Guardian while the original can Blink whatever permanent you want. This includes lands, so you can do this to make infinite mana to use Preston, the Vanisher‘s effect to exile your infinite tokens to exile every nonland permanent your opponents control.
Blink Commanders
There are various options for a Blink commander. Azorius is the most common color combination for Blink decks, but have appeared in other colors such as Mono White or Bant . We won’t look at every single Blink commander, as there are tons of different options, but will look at three different Blink commanders.
Preston, the Vanisher
Preston, the Vanisher is the best option for a Blink deck if you’re looking to play a mono-colored deck. The deck gives you multiple token copies of your permanents, allowing you to take advantage of plenty of powerful effects. It’s easy to gain a ton of life with Soul Warden, draw a ton of cards with Spirited Companion, and make a bunch of tokens with Reverent Hoplite.
With how many ways you can Blink creatures and make copies of them, venturing through a dungeon is trivial. Generally, you’d want to start venturing through gaining the initiative, but venturing through a regular dungeon is fine too. The best options are White Plume Adventurer, Seasoned Dungeoneer, and Nadaar, Selfless Paladin. Even though
A Preston, the Vanisher Commander deck loves having token doublers to get even more enter the battlefield triggers. Anointed Procession, Mondrak, Glory Dominus, Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines, and Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation are all great ones to get the most out of all your abilities.
A sample decklist can be viewed here. This decklist is one meant for a higher bracket and includes multiple Game Changers. If you want a more budget/lower tier version, you can remove the game changers and token doublers.
Genku, Future Shaper
Genku, Future Shaper is a different flavor of Blink in that it is more creature-based, amassing an army of creature tokens while Blinking your utility creatures. Since Genku, Future Shaper‘s effect can make a max of three tokens per turn, instant speed Blinking is especially useful to make the best tokens on your opponents’ turns as well as your own. Ghostly Flicker, Hide on the Ceiling, and Semester's End are among the best, as they let you Blink multiple creatures at instant speed.
Creatures are much more important in a Genku, Future Shaper deck, so effects that give your creatures stat boosts are quite relevant. Cathars' Crusade is the best card (if you can handle the headache of tracking it), as you’ll wind up with a ton of counters on your creatures. Call for Unity slowly grows the stats of all your creatures so long as it sticks around. Starlight Spectacular can give huge stat boosts to a big battlefield, making it easier to close games out.
Your commander isn’t the only way to get creature tokens. Kykar, Zephyr Awakener can either blink a creature or make a 1/1 flying token when you cast any noncreature spell. Aether Channeler can make a token whenever it enters. Niko, Light of Hope makes Shard tokens that can then become copies of the creatures Niko Blinks.
A sample decklist can be viewed here. This deck fits comfortably in the bracket 3 range in Commander. If you cut out the better dual lands in favor of more basic lands or budget duals, you can build the deck for under $100.
Roon of the Hidden Realm
Roon of the Hidden Realm has access to a Blink effect in the command zone. Thanks to this, you can go a bit lighter on the Blink spells in favor of more creatures to Blink. Thanks to having access to Green , you have better permanents to Blink. Thragtusk gets you 5 life and 3/3 Beast tokens. Hornet Queen nets you four 1/1 tokens with flying and deathtouch. Gruff Triplets will make two copies of itself, and if the original ever dies, the rest will get counters.
You need ways to untap your commander in order to utilize its Blink effect as much as possible. Thousand-Year Elixir can untap any creature and also lets them tap for abilities as if they had haste. You also have Kiora's Follower to untap any permanent at the cost of tapping itself. Halo Fountain can be used to untap creatures for various effects, as well as acting like one of your win conditions.
Roon of the Hidden Realm has access to various utility effects. Both Frilled Mystic and Mystic Snake counter a spell when they enter, so you always have the threat of a counterspell through Blink. Coiling Oracle either ramps you or puts a card into your hand. There’s lots of ramping too, thanks to Wood Elves.
A sample decklist can be viewed here. The deck is in the bracket 3 range, though, due to being a tri-color deck,it can be pricey in the land department if you want an optimal mana base. To play Roon of the Hidden Realm on a budget, you can forgo some of the better dual lands in favor of basics and more green ramp cards.
In Conclusion
Blink decks are great at building value through card advantage. They tend to draw a ton of cards while getting value from the various enter the battlefield triggers available in the common Blink colors.
Blink decks can be a bit frustrating at times, as they need their engine going in order to perform well. Once you have a way to consistently Blink, you can run away with the games. If you don’t, however, you’ll find yourself struggling. Blink decks play most like a Midrange deck, so if you like that playstyle, it’s the perfect archetype for you.
