Why Play This Format?
- Multiplayer games
- Great to play with friends
- Cards don't rotate
Play Rules/Modifiers
The Commander format is all about picking your hero and building a deck around them. In this casual, multiplayer format, you choose a legendary creature or artifact to serve as your commander and build the rest of your deck around their color identity and unique abilities. Players are only allowed one of each card in their deck, with the exception of basic lands, but they can use cards from throughout Magic's history.
Color Identity
A card's color identity can come from any part of that card, including its casting cost and any mana symbols in its text. Every card in your Commander deck must only use mana symbols that also appear on your commander. Colorless cards are allowed as well.
Command Zone
This is where your commander resides during the game when they are not in play. At the start of the game, each player puts their commander face up into the command zone. A commander can be cast from the command zone for its normal costs, plus an additional two mana for each previous time it's been cast from the command zone this game. If your commander would be put into your library, hand, graveyard or exile from anywhere, you may return it to your command zone instead.
Commander Damage
A player that's been dealt 21 or more combat damage by the same commander over the course of the game loses the game. The commander is tracked across zone changes for this purpose (for example, if one player takes control of another player's commander, any damage that commander already dealt is still counted).
PLAY FREE-FOR-ALL MULTIPLAYER
If you're playing a game of Commander with three or more people, you play against each other in a free-for-all multiplayer format.
Each player starts with 40 life, places their commander face-up in their command zone, and draws a hand of seven cards. Players are seated randomly in a circle and turns progress one player at a time in clockwise order around the table.
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. Permanents, spells, and abilities can also target any player around the table (as long as they don't explicitly say they must be used on "you").
No matter the outcome, Commander gives players the tools to express themselves through strategy, skill, and a whole lot of deck building fun.
