Commander & EDH

Colour identity, the command zone, commander tax, 21 damage, and multiplayer turn order.

The rule is CR 903. Colour identity is 903.4, deck construction 903.5, commander tax 903.8, returning to the command zone 903.9, and the 21-damage rule 903.10a.

Commander uses all the normal rules of Magic, plus the additions below. This is the format our table actually plays, so these are the rules most likely to come up on a Friday night.

Deck construction

• Exactly 100 cards, including the commander. The minimum and maximum deck size are both 100 — it is not a floor.
• Singleton, except basic lands. Every other card must have a different English name (interchangeable names count as the same name).
• No sideboards at all.
• Starting life total: 40.

Your commander must be a legendary creature card, a legendary Vehicle card, or a legendary Spacecraft card with one or more power/toughness boxes. Separately, some cards carry an ability stating they can be your commander — that ability modifies deck construction before the game begins, and it's how planeswalker commanders exist. (Brawl, a Commander option with 60-card decks, allows legendary planeswalkers outright.)

Colour identity

A card's colour identity is the colour or colours of any mana symbols in its mana cost or its rules text, plus any colours from a colour indicator. So a colourless artifact whose text reads "{T}: Add {G}" has a green colour identity and can't go in a mono-blue deck.

Three details:

• Reminder text is ignored.
• The back face of a double-faced card is included.
• Alternative characteristics (an adventurer's, for instance) are included.

The deck legality test is a subset test: every colour in a card's identity must also appear in the commander's. A mono-white card is fine under a white-blue commander; a colourless card is fine under anyone. There's a matching rule for lands — a card with a basic land type is legal only if each colour of mana it could produce is in the commander's identity.

Colour identity is fixed before the game begins. An effect changing your commander's colours mid-game is an ordinary layer-5 effect and has nothing to do with identity; deck legality was settled before anyone drew a card.

The command zone and commander tax

Each player starts with their commander face up in the command zone. You may cast a commander you own from there — nobody else can, even if they've stolen it.

Commander tax is an additional {2} for each previous time you have cast it from the command zone this game. A {3}{G} commander cast for the third time costs {7}{G}. Two things people get wrong: it counts casts from the command zone specifically (casting it from hand doesn't add to the tally), and it's cumulative, not a flat surcharge.

Getting your commander back

There are two different mechanisms, and the asymmetry is worth knowing:

• Graveyard or exile — it genuinely goes there first, and then its owner may move it to the command zone as a state-based action. So it really did die and death triggers see it; and because the move is optional, you can choose to leave it in the graveyard for a reanimation plan.
• Hand or library — its owner may put it into the command zone instead, as a replacement effect. It never touches your hand, so nothing watching for a card entering your hand sees anything.

That replacement effect is unusual: it may apply more than once to the same event, an explicit exception to the rule that a replacement effect gets only one opportunity. This is what makes it robust against chains of effects that would otherwise shuffle a commander away.

Commander damage

A player who has been dealt 21 or more combat damage by the same commander over the course of the game loses.

All three conditions matter:

• Combat damage only — a commander's ability pinging you doesn't count.
• The same commander — two commanders dealing 11 each doesn't do it.
• Over the whole game, not in a single turn.

It's a state-based action, so it happens the moment the game next checks. No trigger, nothing to respond to.

Being a commander isn't a characteristic

It's a designation. It isn't a characteristic of the object, so:

• A token copy of your commander is not a commander.
• Effects that change types, colours or abilities can't grant or remove the status.
• It does follow the card through melding and merging — the resulting permanent is your commander.
• Effects referring to "your commander" can find it and see its current characteristics in every zone, library included.

Multiplayer defaults

A Commander game defaults to Free-for-All with the attack multiple players option on and limited range of influence off. That second part is why Commander feels the way it does: with no range limit, your spells and abilities can affect every player and every permanent at the table, wherever they're sitting.

Also note the turn-structure consequence: because Commander is a multiplayer game, nobody skips their first draw step. Skipping the first draw is a two-player rule.

Finally, Commander games can't bring traditional cards in from outside the game — there are no sideboards, and "choose a card you own from outside the game" finds nothing.

Want the real thing?

These training tracks are modelled on the judge path but are not a certification. If you want the actual badge, the programme to look at in Europe is the International Judge Program; in the US and Canada it's Judge Foundry.

29 questions in this track, checked against the 2026-06-19 Comprehensive Rules.

Rules covered: 614.5, 704, 712.8a, 801.1, 806.1, 903.1, 903.2, 903.3, 903.3a, 903.3b, 903.3c, 903.3d, 903.3e, 903.4, 903.4a, 903.4c, 903.4d, 903.4e, 903.4f, 903.5a, 903.5b, 903.5c, 903.5d, 903.5e, 903.6, 903.7, 903.8, 903.9, 903.9a, 903.9b, 903.10a, 903.11, 903.11a, 903.12c.