We’ve also got a tier list of the best commanders, the most fun commanders, and a guide on how many lands you need to build a good deck. The Starter Commander Deck Bundle is an excellent way to break into the format for a group of friends on a budget. For about $100, you get five unique decks to play around with and learn the format with. Each Starter Commander deck takes on a different two-color combination. You’ll get to try out every classic synergy from Azorius fliers to Selesnya tokens. With every new set comes a new set of preconstructed Commander decks from WotC for us to pick from.

1. Reminder About Commander Damage

This means that gaining life doesn’t change the combos edh damage received from commanders. One of them is your commander, who starts the game in the command zone, and the other 99 make up the bulk of your deck. Commander is a singleton format, which means you can only have a single copy of any card that isn’t a basic land.

Modern Horizons 3 Commander Decklists

There are currently four official members of the Rules Committee. All of them are either judges or involved with WotC and competitive play. They were also all involved in the creation, polishing, and popularization of the format. Infinite combos are arguably a huge part of the format as a whole. The entire point of EDH is allowing for decks to be more personal, wilder, and to win in unconventional ways.

Magic The Gathering Material Legality

This means if your commander is a card like Morophon, the Boundless, then your deck can use any cards as all five color symbols are present on the card. A Commander deck must contain exactly 100 cards, including the commander. If you’re playing a companion, it must adhere to color identity and singleton rules.

If your commander has a converted mana cost of three, casting it a second time will cost a total of five mana, and then seven, and so on. I’ve mentioned that a Commander deck consists of 99 cards and a commander (or two) that gets its own special zone. Your commander begins the game in this zone and you can cast it from here as if it was in your hand. But keep in mind that you’re not actually casting it from your hand, a distinction that could be important when certain cards are in play, like Drannith Magistrate. The card’s color is also black and blue because those are the colors in its casting cost. This is relevant if a player uses any spells or abilities that need to check for specific colors like Display of Dominance.

This name has carried over as the jargon for any deck that focuses on regularly sacrificing creatures to trigger ‘on-death’ effects. Let’s say you’re looking to build an Azorius Flicker/Blink Commander deck and want to start from scratch. This simplicity is my most missed characteristic of the typical Constructed formats like the rotating Standard and eternal Modern. Not only do you have a more narrow range of cards but you also need to get up to four of each.

As such, “commander-ness” cannot be copied or overwritten by continuous effects. The card retains it’s commander-ness through any status changes, and is still a commander even when controlled by another player. No matter the way you plan on building your Commander deck, you’ll need some good resources to be able to do so. It’s not just buying the cards that can be tricky, but actually discovering some of the excellent cards you can use can be a trial too.

If you’re raising a concern about the format, please try to offer constructive feedback. He has been writing about tech & games for over a decade, specializing in PCs, hardware, and handhelds such as the Steam Deck. He also has bylines at Scan, WePC, PCGuide, Eurogamer, Digital Foundry and Metro UK. It eventually found its way to Sheldon Menery, who wrote an article for the popular trading card site and store, Star City Games. Eventually, Wizards of the Coast themselves found it being advocated for internally, and Commander, as it is known today, was born, with the first official products launching in 2011.

First is the part where I only need to buy one copy of Snapcaster Mage for my deck instead of four, and second is that it allows for interactions that simply don’t happen in any other format. Where else do you get to Cyclonic Rift an entire board of elves, dragons, and zombies in one turn? A commander deck has to be exactly 99 cards, plus your commander. When you started playing Magic, odds are that you were playing a deck that was just a combination of some of the cards you owned. Cards that you liked (and had enough of in the first place) to put in one big pile and call it your deck. Being a commander is not a characteristic [MTG CR109.3], it is a property of the card and tied directly to the physical card.

While occasional exceptions to this can be fun, when used regularly they often make games less interesting for most players, and are not allowed without prior approval. Commander’s history starts in the late 1990s when creator Adam Staley created the game for his Alaskan group. Originally dubbed Elder Dragon Highlander, it revolved around using one of the five legendary dragons as your ‘general’, or ‘commander’, to lead a 99-card singleton deck.

In terms of competitive viability, there are powerful mechanics to build around. Players already use Thrummingstone with Rats and Petitioners. There are plenty of cards that combo here, like Cathar’s Crusade or Impact Tremors. The points list means that each deck is allocated ten points to “buy” some of the most powerful cards in the game. As with anything Magic there exists both a casual and ultra-competitive sub-format.

There’s still lots of complexity and power at play, it leans less on individual card quality, and more on card synergies. As a six-player format, Emperor lands close to a casual game night, and is like an evolved form of Two-Headed Giant with two teams of three attacking the single opposing leader. Players follow range of influence rules in which they can only attack opponents within one seat of them. This gives the game momentum, includes all players, and helps avoid isolated three-person pods. The real fun begins once you have a theme and style established. There’s a near-infinite number of resources online about the best commander cards to include in any color, the best removal and board wipes, or the best tutors.