Magic: The Gathering introduced the cascade mechanic in the Alara Reborn set from the ancient year of 2009. Almost immediately, cards featuring cascade as a mechanic flooded the game, and it’s easy to see why. This triggered ability generates a wild amount of value for players just by casting cards!
When you cast a spell with cascade, you exile cards from the top of your library until you exile a nonland card with a combined mana cost less than the first spell’s combined mana cost. You can choose to cast that card for free or put it and the revealed cards at the bottom of your library, effectively giving you two cards for the price of one.
10 Bloodbraid Elf
The original cascade queen, Bloodbraid Elf reigned supreme in Magic: the Gathering for years. Back in its prime, Bloodbraid Elf could cascade down to any number of value cards like Maelstrom Pulse or Terminate. While it doesn’t see much play nowadays, it was powerful enough to be banned from competitive play for a number of years.
9 Shardless Agent
What is better than a four-mana creature with cascade? A three-mana creature with cascade. This 2/2 creature became popular among competitive players by simply reducing the number of options available for it to cascade into. The key component in many of these decks is the unique interactions with cards with suspend.
Many cards with the suspend ability don’t have a mana cost, trading traditional casting methods for a set number of turns until the spell resolves. You can cascade into one of these spells without a casting cost and cast it without waiting. Shardless Agent can easily cascade into these spells, leaving space for other spells at or above 3-mana to safely cascade past.
8 Throes Of Chaos
This card does nothing other than cascading and coming back to cascade again. For three generic and one red mana, you can cascade for a card three-mana or less. But once Throes of Chaos resolves, nothing happens. There’s no other text. What makes Throes of Chaos so good is its retrace ability; you can cast it again from the graveyard by discarding a land and paying the mana cost again, getting you another cascade trigger.
7 Etherium-Horn Sorcerer
Etherium-Horn Sorcerer is great for a similar reason to Throes of Chaos; you can repeatedly trigger the cascade ability time and time again. At six-mana, Etherium-Horn Sorcerer can hit plenty of targets in your Commander deck, the format where this card shines. You can return it to your hand for another three mana and cast it again for another chance to cascade to something new.
6 Abaddon The Despoiler
Straight from the Warhammer 40,000 Commander decks, Abaddon the Despoiler doesn’t have cascade itself, but its Mark of Chaos Ascendant ability instead gives all spells in your hand cascade so long as their casting cost is less than or equal to the amount of life all your opponents have lost this turn. Giving all your cards cascade won’t be too difficult in a deck built around Abbadon the Despoiler and other cards that deal damage easily.
5 Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder
Similar to Abaddon the Despoiler, Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder grants all spells in your hand cascade, so long as he has dealt combat damage to an opponent. While this depends on Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder successfully dealing combat damage to an opponent to trigger this ability, there are plenty of sneaky ways of getting it through to connect with an opponent.
4 Maelstrom Nexus
Another card that doesn’t directly have cascade, the enchantment Maelstrom Nexus grants the first spell you cast each turn cascade. Giving anything in your hand cascade is great, more or less turning every spell a two-for-one.
Even better, the first spell with flash or instant spells you cast on your opponent’s turn also gain cascade, letting you gain double the value even when it’s not your turn.
3 Apex Devastator
This ten-mana creature loves cascade so much it does it four times. When you cast Apex Devastator, you’ll treat each cascade trigger separately, with each one searching for a nonland card that costs less than ten mana. The spell you reveal from the first resolving cascade trigger will go on the stack above the other cascade triggers, finish resolving, and move on to the next cascade trigger. Something to keep in mind when resolving multiple cascade triggers is you don’t have to cast the spell you reveal; you just have to reveal it.
2 The First Sliver
The First Sliver is the premiere sliver commander granting all your sliver spells cascade. Sliver decks are based around each card granting incremental bonuses or individual keywords until you have an army of creatures with haste, +1/+1, vigilance, poisonous, trample, reach, and more. The best part of The First Sliver is that when you find a spell with cascade after casting a spell with cascade, that new cascade trigger will happen, giving you the chance to chain multiple cascade triggers with one creature.
1 Maelstrom Wanderer
Another creature with multiple cascade triggers, what makes the Maelstrom Wanderer better is that it gives you access to Temur colors instead of just green, and it can be your commander. As your commander, you will likely get multiple chances to cast Maelstrom Wanderer, giving you tons of cascade triggers. As an extra upside, Maelstrom Wanderer grants all your creatures haste, so every creature you hit off of the eight-mana Maelstrom Wanderer can attack the turn it resolves.