Angels are one of Magic The Gathering's most famous creature types. Whether they're the holy dispensers of justice or the corrupted bringers of chaos, they fly through the air and can be a devastating force for your opponents to stand up against.RELATED: Magic: The Gathering - The Strongest Alternate Win Conditions In Commander FormatWhen building your angel deck, you'll only want the very best. Here are the top angel creatures for Magic to help you blot out the sky with a maelstrom of feathered wings.

10 Righteous Valkyrie

MTG: Righteous Valkyrie card

Righteous Valkyrie is an all-around excellent value card. A 2/4 flier for three mana is great, and on top of that, it can facilitate a lot of lifegain in your angel or cleric tribal decks. It even serves as a way to close out the game, thanks to its +2/+2 buff when you have seven life more than the starting total.

While it does see a lot of play in Angel Tribal decks in Commander, it's a beast in Standard. Clerics and angels are two of the most fun and powerful creature types in the current format, and Righteous Valkyrie supports both of them very well.

9 Emeria Shepherd

Emeria Shepherd

Graveyard reanimation is something that white can sometimes do if Wizards of the Coast feels generous that day, but it's rarely as good as Emeria Shepherd. Costing five generic and two white, it has the landfall ability to return a nonland permanent from your graveyard to your hand. If that land is a Plains, though, it returns the card straight to the battlefield instead.

Emeria Shepherd works fantastically alongside other angels that can give it indestructible, like Avacyn, Angel of Hope. If your opponent takes out Avacyn, they've got one turn at least to deal with the Shepherd before it brings her right back in a frightful bit of synergy. Emeria Shepherd also works well in white- and green-using decks that drop lots and lots of lands to keep the creatures always coming back for more.

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8 Valkyrie Harbinger

Valkyrie Harbinger

Gaining life in white is really easy to do, and with Valkyrie Harbinger, you can reward gaining a measly four life with a 4/4 Angel token with flying and vigilance.

This is another card, along with Righteous Valkyrie, that is a complete monster in Standard right now. With Righteous Valkyrie out, you can play this to get five life straight away, and then another four on your end step when the Harbinger makes an Angel token.

This card's a bit higher up on the list because it fares slightly better in eternal formats. Especially in Commander, four life is easy to get and having a 4/4 blocker out of it is the icing on the cake. It's a bit too overpriced for Modern, but it's very tasty in Commander.

7 Restoration Angel

Restoration Angel

Restoration Angel is a classic. It was intended to be a quick way to protect a creature about to die – blocked in combat? Flash in Restoration Angel, flicker the creature, and now it's safe again. Of course, flicker effects are powerful, and Restoration Angel quickly became a key combo piece for a lot of decks.

Probably the most well-known is with Felidar Guardian and Panharmonicon. With both of those on the battlefield, Restoration Angel and the Felidar Guardian can infinitely flicker each other and another creature you control to give you an endless amount of enters-the-battlefield triggers. It also does the same with Ephemerate and Lumbering Battlement, showing just how borderline-broken this card can get.

Restoration Angel is a respectable 3/4 with flying and flash for four mana, even without the ETB trigger. If you needed to just throw a body in front of something, there are worse options than this.

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6 Avacyn, Angel of Hope

Avacyn, Angel of Hope

Avacyn, Angel of Hope is the first Angel on this list to cross the line between "powerful" and "downright terrifying". Avacyn was the artificial angel protector of Innistrad, defending humanity from the monsters that lurk in the night. Whole religions, like the Church of Avacyn, were built up around her. That is, until she was corrupted by Nahiri and turned on those she was made to protect.

This card is from before her corruption, though, and shows just how powerful a protector she is. An 8/8 costing five generic and three white mana, she has flying, vigilance, and is indestructible. She also gives every other permanent you control indestructible as well.

Avacyn Commander decks can be incredibly tough to play against, as they make liberal use of board wipes to keep their opponents down. Even the controversial strategy of mass land destruction is used quite a bit with Avacyn, with cards like Armageddon effectively bringing a game to a close by making a massive disparity between each player's resources.

5 Liesa, Shroud of Dusk

Liesa, Shroud of Dusk

Although angels are a primarily white creature type, they have splashed into other colours in the past. One noteworthy example is the long-forgotten fourth archangel of Innistrad, the black and white Liesa.

Liesa, Shroud of Dusk is an exciting card because of how Angellically un-Angelic she is. Liesa was known throughout Innistrad for bargaining with the demons that threatened humanity, and that is represented in you being able to pay life instead of her Commander tax.

Speaking of tax, she is a fantastic taxing Commander, as players lose two life whenever they cast a spell. Instead of lifegain for lifegain's sake, which is a common theme among angels, Liesa takes the life you gain through cards such as Bishop of Wings or Righteous Valkyrie and pumps it right back into casting spells your opponents may be more hesitant to play. It's an interesting play pattern that feels consistent to the Angel tribe without being too tightly defined by it.

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4 Gisela, Blade of Goldnight

Image of the Gisela, Blade of Goldnight  card in Magic: The Gathering, with art by Jason Chan

Another of Innistrad's archangels, and the first of two red and white angels on the list, is Gisela, Blade of Goldnight. Costing four generic, one red, and two white, she is an incredibly expensive Commander whose ability absolutely justifies the price.

Any damage you deal to an opponent or an opponent's permanent is doubled, while any dealt to you or a permanent you control is halved instead. If that sounds broken, it's because it is. While you could build a reasonable aggro or burn deck, people generally use it to try and make one-shot kills that take out the entire game at once.

Thanks to cards like Dictate of the Twin Gods, Fiery Emancipation, and Brash Taunter, a humble Shock can become a devastating amount of damage. And, of course, you can't mention Gisela without mentioning Heartless Hidetsugu, which deals damage to each player equal to half of their life total. One tap from HIdetsugu in a Gisela deck, and the game's likely over.

3 Feather, The Redeemed

Feather, the Redeemed

One of Boros' (white/red) most popular Commanders is Feather, the Redeemed. A 3/4 angel with flying that costs one red and two white, her entire gimmick is that any spell you cast that targets a creature you control gets exiled once it resolves. Then, at the end of the next end step, you return those exiled cards to your hand.

She's a combat trick Commander. A lot of her strategies revolve around building her up with lots of equipment, and then using lots of cheap cards like Boros Charm, Temur Battle Rage, and Fight As One to buff her up more and more. Those cards all return to your hand on the next end step, ready to do it again on the next turn.

Feather is incredibly tough to deal with, especially when cards like Boros Charm and Blacksmith's Skill start giving her indestructible and/or hexproof. She's probably the best-known Commander to focus on the format's Commander damage rule, as she can efficiently deal 21 damage to each player in quick succession.

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2 Archangel of Thune

Archangel of Thune

As mentioned with Valkyrie Harbinger, white's entire thing is lifegain. Archangel of Thune takes that lifegain and turns into +1/+1 counters for every creature you control, making them all effectively Ajani's Pridemates.

It's an effect that is so powerful but so generic that it can fit in almost any deck. Angel tribal through Lyra Dawnbringer loves it, but so does more basic mono-white aggro with Linden, the Steadfast Queen. Cards like Soul Warden, Ajani's Welcome, Kor Celebrant, and Impassioned Orator can turn the smallest token into a big buff for your creatures, while it can combo with stuff like Spike Feeder, Fathom Mage, and Horizon Chimera for infinite lifegain.

1 Atraxa, Praetors' Voice

Atraxa, Praetors' Voice

If Liesa was kind-of-angelic-but-not-really, Atraxa is the anti-Angel. An angel 'compleated' by the Phyrexians, her capture and conversion is often considered the final defeat of Mirrodin and the start of New Phyrexia. She's also one of the scariest Commanders to have ever been printed.

Costing one green, one white, one black, and one blue, Atraxa is a 4/4 with flying, vigilance, deathtouch, and lifelink. At the beginning of your end step, you proliferate. Being able to put an extra counter on all of your permanents is great in and of itself, but consistently doing it every turn can make Atraxa very, very intimidating to play against.

+1/+1 counters are small fry for Atraxa. -1/-1 counters, Planeswalker loyalty, Saga lore, and even Poison counters can all be proliferated. Combine her with a Vorinclex Voice of Hunger and a Doubling Season, and you could be taking opponents of the game super-fast.

Atraxa is the single most popular Commander in the entire Commander format, with almost 500 more decks than the second place Kenrith, the Returned King. She's one of the big bad monsters of the format, and whenever she hits the battlefield it immediately becomes less a four-way game and more of a three-on-one. Scarily powerful and punishingly efficient, there's no other Angel that has had as much of an impact on the game as Atraxa.

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