MTG Commander explained: Rules, banned cards & more

You’ll never have to pay the cumulative upkeep, so long as you have a permanent that lets you play cards from the graveyard and a permanent that lets you play two lands a turn. You’ll sacrifice Glacial Chasm to cumulative upkeep (or The Gitrog Monster). If one or two lands were milled, discard Dakmor Salvage as the Gitrog trigger goes on the stack and repeat the first two steps. This will put another Gitrog trigger on the stack, letting you commander deck save the one(s) from the milled lands for when you’re ready to draw your deck.

Outlaws of Thunder Junction Commander Decklists

It all depends on you and what you think will be the most fun for you. From its humble beginnings, Commander has undergone significant evolution. The introduction of preconstructed Commander decks and the annual Commander product releases have further solidified its status within the Magic community. Do you have any interesting house rules you think everyone should know about? Feel free to leave a comment and don’t forget to check out our blog for more content like this, Draft may be in our name, but we love Commander too.

Such deals balance the game by offering players who are behind an opportunity to catch up and pulling players who are ahead back in line with the rest of the table. It seems counter-intuitive, but restricting what you can play by establishing rules (to follow or break) actually makes it so the players have an increased opportunity for creativity. Since card advantage is pretty important, I think you should commit a good number of cards to it. Cards like Cyclonic Rift, Mizzium Mortars and Winds of Abandon often put you in a good position to win. The more mana you have, the more spells you can cast and activate more abilities. I talked a little bit about ramp in the last section, because it can be integrally tied to lands.

A cheap commander can be ideal sacrifice fodder that’s relatively easy to cast again. EDH stands for Elder Dragon Highlander and is essentially equal to Commander. Of course, there’s some history and more to unpack there, so we’ll leave the discussion for why Commander is called EDH for next time, for today, think of them as the same thing.

What Are the Rules for a Commander Deck in MTG?

A big part of the fun of Commander is in building a deck and finding obscure cards to include. Commander is different amongst Magic formats, as it only allows for one card of each type, except for basic lands. You also have to build around the colors of your chosen Commander. However, if a card states you can have as many in your deck as you like, you can have multiple of those cards. Commander’s history starts in the late 1990s when creator Adam Staley created the game for his Alaskan group.

This style allows you to draw a first hand of 10 cards and then select three to shuffle back into your library. If your commander keeps getting stolen by your opponents and they hit you with it enough to deal the necessary 21 points of damage, you lose. The same goes if you use your opponents’ commanders to attack them. The only condition is that the 21 damage is dealt by the same commander.

Actually, it doesn’t always have to be the commander – sometimes it can be a theme or a strategy. Let’s say you know you love dragons but you’re not sure which commander would best suit that love. Well then, you’ve got your theme, so you just need to find a commander. Likewise, sometimes you’ll see a legendary creature you adore but be unsure how to build around them, in that case, you need to find a theme. This also counts mana symbols that might be a different color than the casting cost but are used in abilities.

How To Play The Deck

You will make a significant amount of Vampire tokens thanks to Edgar’s eminence ability, which are then boosted up by other permanents. There’s a lot of draw power in the deck, making it easier to get to your key cards faster. With how quickly you can generate Vampires, you can reach victory rather quickly by simply casting Vampire spells. Once you have your whole deck in your hand, you can use a land, Gaea’s Blessing, Dakmor Salvage, and a Lotus Petal to generate infinite mana.

Commander presents unique challenges in mulligan decisions due to the singleton rule and the importance of having your commander in the opening hand. Considerations for mana sources, early-game interaction, and overall strategy play a crucial role. A well-constructed mana base is vital for a successful Commander deck. Mana fixing cards, such as dual lands and mana rocks, help ensure you have access to the right colors of mana, especially when dealing with multicolored commanders. Color identity extends beyond the commander, influencing the entire deck. Every non-land card in your deck must match the color identity of your commander.

Yes, you’re allowed to have two legendary creatures in your command zone as long as both commanders have the partner keyword. If you happen to gain control of an opponent’s commander, that card also counts as a commander while under your control. In the case of double-faced cards, the color identity for your deck is a combination of both faces if the front and back have different colors in their abilities or casting costs. A Valki, God of Lies / Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor deck has a color identity of black and red even if the front face of the card is mono-black.

Pauper Commander

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. Joining online communities and forums dedicated to Commander provides valuable insights, deck ideas, and a platform to discuss strategies with fellow enthusiasts. Platforms like Reddit, Discord, and dedicated Commander websites offer a wealth of information. Alliances and rivalries often form naturally during Commander’s games.

Since the official text on poison counters states that any player with 10 poison counters loses the game, there’s no reason for this to work any differently in Commander. If you go by official rules, 10 counters is enough to lose the game. A lot of groups change this to 15 or even 20 counters in an attempt to balance it. During gameplay, a player may choose to attack any other player, regardless of their position on the table, and can also choose to attack multiple different players during their attack phase.

MTG Card Types Explained: Everything You Ever Needed to Know

I just want to take a moment to go over the easier interactions and what some of these effects might look like. A permanent type is any card type that applies to cards that are able to exist on the battlefield. They’re only considered to be permanents while on the battlefield and are referred to as “permanent cards” when they’re elsewhere, like in the effect of Aether Helix. Permanent types include creature, land, artifact, enchantment, battle, and planeswalker. I’d say the vast majority of Magic players have never heard of this one.

The Four Card Types in an MTG Deck: What You Need to Know

What Size Should a Prerelease Deck Be?

Instead, figure out the essential cards of the strategy and build the deck to your liking. Budget considerations may also force you to use cheaper alternatives of more expensive cards. Surprisingly, the result was an easy Top 2 finish at a local tournament with a deck that hadn’t been fully polished and no sideboard. Not every strategy will be successful, which is why playtesting is important. Using and modifying pre-constructed decks may help you start your journey in building your own decks.

How many land cards does a Magic: The Gathering deck need?

For this reason, the creative team on R&D tends to avoid calling cards “Bob the Giant,” choosing the more evocative Hammerfist Giant or Bloodfire Colossus instead. Card names are important to remember because certain spells (like Cranial Extraction or Meddling Mage) actually need you to name something in order to play them. They are also important to remember because your friends will give you strange looks if you try to tell them you cast “the thingy on his whatsamajig, but he countered it with a canoodle” and that’s why you lost. The third large portion of a deck is usually used to either shield oneself from attempts by the opponent to halt the game plan or cards that do so to the opponent. The former is often employed on websites uniformly because not all of the following categories are featured in all decks. Cards within categories are usually listed alphabetically or from lowest to highest converted mana cost.

Cards gradually spread along the inland European trade routes during the 15th century as a favoured pastime of the upper classes. Even though Consecrated Sphinx is wildly powerful and a favorite among many cubers, I’ve been looking to cut it for awhile. It can take over a game unanswered, but occasionally eats instant-speed removal before your opponent’s first draw, which is blowout city. Nevertheless, I preferred it over the alternative big blue finishers. Unlike our other examples, Carnage Tyrant is quite a bit better than Hexdrinker as a six drop.

Cards to Play In an MTG Combo Deck

Some cards provide an alternate win condition which a deck may employ. The Limited format plays differently than the Constructed formats since building the deck is part of the gameplay and the challenge that a player signs up for when they play in a Draft or Sealed event. The Limited format runs decks at a 40-card minimum since players only get so many cards to choose from when building and they don’t always have the cards they set their sights for. The lower minimum compensates for the lack of consistency in the format when building decks, allowing players to consistently play the cards they plan around without waiting forever to draw their one copy. A typical midrange deck has an early game plan of mana ramp and control, but begins to play threats once it reaches four to six mana. A midrange deck will often seek to play a reactive, attrition-based game against aggro decks and a more proactive, tempo-based game against control decks.

Call the Cavalry may be weak in a vacuum, but it’s great on turn four when you have a Planeswalker to play on turn five that you need to protect. Similarly, scalable cards, even when cast for their least value, are sometimes exactly what you need. One colour will mean all of your lands will let you cast the spells you have, but adding a second colour dramatically increases the pool of cards you can choose from. This, in turn, makes it far easier to find more cards that fit your gameplan.

There would be no guarantee that I hit land drops and play cards until turn 6 or 7. What I can do, though, is build decks that maximize my chance to replicate option B in that game and any other. You can’t make yourself open better rares, but you can build decks that allow you to consistently cast your spells on curve by following fundamentals. Over your next 10,000 games, your focus should be to build draft decks that have a good chance to mimic option B. That’s all you have control over and, I would argue, what really determines most games of limited.You can win a lot of games by building boring, functional two-color decks with decent creatures and interaction.

The standard 52-card deck[citation needed] of French-suited playing cards is the most common pack of playing cards used today. The most common pattern of French-suited cards worldwide and the only one commonly available in English-speaking countries is the English pattern pack. In other regions, such as Spain and Switzerland, the traditional standard pack comprises 36, 40 or 48 cards. If the decks you draft consistenly have a good curve, a mixture of creatures and spells, and cards that impact the board, I promise you will have the opportunity to win more games, even if the cards you’re playing aren’t great. The minimum deck size for the Standard format is 60 cards, and that’s all you’ll see in other players’ lists most of the time.

People’s card evaluations are also influenced by a card’s performance in high-level competitive play. Scalable cards do show up in constructed formats, as Hydroid Krasis has demonstrated during its run in Standard, but I believe they generally underperform in this context relative to limited. Sixty-card decks have perfect control over their curve and a vast pool of cards at their disposal to fill any gaps. Even the most streamlined and powerful cubes are scrappy by comparison — you would need an open lane and some luck to draft anything close to a truly ideal curve. It may seem contradictory, but scalable cards help draft decks get closer to the consistency of sixty-card decks even though the scalable cards themselves don’t shine as brightly in constructed.

Just below the text box on the left hand side is the name of the artist who did the art on the card. Magic’s art has always been one of its most striking features and has only gotten better since the game started back in 1993. Given the incredible level it’s at now, Magic sports some of the coolest fantasy images available anywhere. In order to cast this beastie, you need to generate two red mana plus six generic mana.

Powerful, high mana value cards are one of the appeals of Cube for many people, but they are fundamentally narrow. It takes a specific deck to cast cards like Will Kenrith, Inferno Titan, or Craterhoof Behemoth, and as a result they often end up in the sideboard or left in the pack even if you’re playing their respective color. The average midrange deck can’t cast eight-drops and needs to carefully ration its six mana spells. For those reasons, I am always looking for opportunities to lower my curve without depriving the decks that want them of powerful win conditions — something that scalable cards help with. Many of them are suitable top-end finishers without the risks and commander combos narrowness inherent with expensive spells.

The conspiracy type has appeared only in the Conspiracy product while bounties are a self-contained format in the Outlaws of Thunder Junction Commander decks. These numbers change a little bit across the board whenever you run different play styles. But aggro runs a lower curve and doesn’t need as many lands, so they can afford to cut down to as low as 33% since they’ll usually never play anything that costs more than three or four mana.

Some people maintain that it’s a staple and others insist it’s downright unplayable. I’ve found the abundance of interaction I include in my cube makes fragile, slow value engines like this a bit of a liability, and much prefer the play pattern of a card like Voracious Hydra. On four mana, the Hydra can immediately kill an opposing X/2, and usually survive the encounter. Master, by contrast, has to wait a whole turn cycle and then tap itself down to remove the same X/2, and is likely to lose the wolf token in the process.