Wedge · Color Identity
Abzan (White-Black-Green): History, Playstyle and Best Commanders
Abzan is the attrition wedge. It ramps, removes anything on the battlefield, and brings back everything it loses: a deck that is very hard to beat with cards and very easy to beat with a combo.
Abzan is white, black and green, the three-color identity. Endurance and family: counters, recursion and a board that refuses to stay dead.
Also called WBG, Abzan Houses, Junk.
Where the Name Comes From
The Abzan Houses, a clan of Tarkir, named in Khans of Tarkir (2014).
Abzan is white's wedge (white plus its two enemy colors, black and green), and it is named for the Abzan Houses of Tarkir, a desert clan built around family, ancestry and endurance, whose dead are literally carried into battle as spirit-ancestors. Khans of Tarkir gave the clan Outlast and Fate Reforged gave it Bolster, both about grinding an advantage out slowly rather than seizing one.
The wedges are nine years younger than the shards as names, and that gap explains why a player who knows "Boros" and "Jund" often does not know "Abzan". Enemy-color trios had almost no support in Magic until Commander 2011 built five preconstructed decks around them, and no names at all until Khans of Tarkir in 2014. Dragons of Tarkir then rewrote the plane's history so the dragons won, and each clan became a two-color dragon brood (Abzan became Dromoka, green-white) before Tarkir: Dragonstorm restored the wedges in 2025.
All 32 color combinations and where each name came from →How Abzan Plays
Abzan plays the longest game in the format. Green ramps and rebuilds, black removes and reanimates, white removes and protects, and between the three there is an answer to every permanent and a way to bring back anything of yours that dies. The deck's plan is usually to be the last one with a board, which in a four-player game is a very achievable goal.
Its signature synergy is +1/+1 counters, which white, black and green all support and which Khans built the clan around. Counters plus recursion plus sacrifice outlets is a durable engine: the creatures come back, they come back bigger, and the deck converts them into drain or into an attack.
The weakness is speed and the stack. Abzan has no counterspells and no way to interact with anything before it resolves, and its removal is entirely reactive. It also takes a long time to actually kill anybody (the value is real, the clock usually is not), so the decks that work here pick a definite finisher and hold it, rather than assuming that accumulating advantage is the same thing as winning.
What It Does Well, and What It Doesn't
Strengths
- Complete permanent removal: white's exile, black's unconditional kill and green's artifact answers.
- The best recursion in the format paired with the best ramp, which is enormously resilient.
- Deep +1/+1 counter support across all three colors, plus proliferate and doublers.
- Real lifegain, which is what lets Abzan survive being attacked while it grinds.
Weaknesses
- No counterspells and no interaction with the stack whatsoever.
- Slow to close, so a deck built on value alone can grind forever and still lose.
- Card draw is board-dependent or costs life, so a sweeper hurts twice.
- Little evasion, which makes a stalled ground board hard to break.
Best Abzan Commanders
The command zones that define the identity rather than the ones winning this week: the pips beside each name are its color identity, which is what it lets you play in the other 99.
Commander Spotlight
Karador, Ghost Chieftain ↗
Costs one less for each creature card in your graveyard and lets you cast one from there every turn. The graveyard becomes a second hand, and the commander gets cheaper the longer the game runs.
Ghave, Guru of Spores ↗
Turns counters into tokens and tokens into counters, for free. A combo engine, a token engine and a sacrifice outlet in one card.
Anafenza, the Foremost ↗
Bolsters when it attacks and exiles creatures that would go to opponents' graveyards. A clock and permanent graveyard hate on the same body.
Doran, the Siege Tower ↗
Every creature deals damage equal to its toughness. Walls attack, and the deck's defensive creatures become its offense.
Nethroi, Apex of Death ↗
Mutates to return any number of creatures totalling ten power from your graveyard. One card that rebuilds a whole board.
Tayam, Luminous Enigma ↗
Removes counters from your creatures to mill three and return a small permanent from the graveyard. A recursion engine that runs on the counters the deck already makes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Abzan mean in Magic?
Abzan is the white-black-green color combination, named after the Abzan Houses, one of the five clans of Tarkir, introduced in Khans of Tarkir in 2014. It is a wedge: one color, white, plus its two enemy colors. Before 2014 the combination had no common name; some older players still call it "Junk", a nickname from earlier constructed formats.
What is the difference between a shard and a wedge?
A shard is a color plus its two allies and is named after a fragment of the plane Alara from 2008: Bant, Esper, Grixis, Jund, Naya. A wedge is a color plus its two enemies and is named after a clan of Tarkir from 2014: Abzan, Jeskai, Sultai, Mardu, Temur. Both are three-color combinations; the difference is which three, and which set happened to name them.
Is Abzan good in Commander?
It is one of the most resilient identities in the format and one of the slowest. Nothing beats it on attrition (the removal is complete and the recursion is the best available), but it has no counterspells, no reach and no natural clock, so it loses to decks that win without engaging with the battlefield. Build it with a definite finisher rather than relying on accumulated value.
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