While you still play with 100 cards and have 40 life, some fundamental changes are made. The biggest ones are that your commander has to be a common or uncommon creature and doesn’t need to be legendary, and only 15 of your 99 cards can be uncommon. All other cards must have been printed as commons at some point in the game’s history. Some groups are more receptive to infinite combos than others. It’s good to mention if your deck has an infinite combo beforehand to give your opponents a chance to choose what they want to play or even open up the discussion of whether or not infinite combos are allowed. I think 10 counters works well enough since most infect creatures aren’t exactly overpowered, and having such an aggro strategy would paint a giant target on your head in a multiplayer game.

Are Infinite Combos Banned in EDH?

I’m sure I’ve made it clear that Commander is a format focused on fun. A lot of game groups impose their personal bans on different strategies, combos, or specific cards to make sure no one makes the game boring for everyone else. It reminds me a lot of session 0 in Dungeons & Dragons games.

We enjoyed the game however I have just found out about commander and was wondering how that differs to commander and can it be played 1v1. No; cards or effects which bring other cards in from outside the game, commonly known as “Wishes” do not function in Commander. Additionally, it is a strategy that does not build on what the other players are doing, requiring the infect player to do all the work themselves.

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 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. So you’re a more advanced player and want to go beyond the power of the precons. With over 2,300 unique legendary creatures to choose from and more than 60 partner commanders there are nearly infinite routes to take building a Commander deck in a single lifetime. If you can think of a strategy or theme, then there’s a commander that powers it.

Magic: The Gathering Commander

An extremely common way to do this is to create an infinite combo for mana through cards like Isochron Scepter and Dramatic Reversal paired with some mana rocks. They can then be used through outlets, like drawing your whole deck with Blue Sun’s Zenith and winning off of a Thassa’s Oracle or Laboratory Maniac. The theme of cEDH decks is using whatever means necessary to win. Eldrazi Unbound is colorless and headed by Zhulodok, Void Gorger with a strong emphasis on the cascade keyword ability. After six mana to cast your commander, you’ll get great card advantage as long as you use the mana rocks to accelerate to the 7+ costing cards.

While it is not part of the deck, it is effectively a 101st card. The Commander 2017 precon decks all had commanders with the eminence ability. This was a static ability that was active as long as that creature was either on the battlefield or in your command zone. It was eminence that got Edgar Markov banned in the Duel Commander format.

So if a card deals 20 damage, but then adds an additional 1 damage thanks to an ability after the fact, this doesn’t count. If it has an ability that causes other players to lose life or other damage that isn’t combat damage, this doesn’t count either. Commander is different amongst Magic formats, as it only allows for one card of each type, except for basic lands.

If you want our favourites though, do check-out our list of the best MTG Commanders. Instead of each card working together like an army of ants raising each other up, it’s usually a bit more like throwing giants at the enemy and seeing what sticks. Each card can end a game on its own, and the aim is often to have far more individual threats than anyone can deal with. When each card can win the game, you’re nearly always ahead of the curve. The commander damage rule can be simply taken out of the game.

I used to have an EDH deck that used mass land destruction as a win condition. It basically consisted of playing an absurd amount of planeswalkers and enchantments. Once I had a reasonable board set, I’d play Jokulhaups and get rid of everything except for planeswalkers and enchantments. Immediately after that, my friends would simply concede and we’d start a new game. I don’t mind playing against infinite combos, but that’s as long as it takes the player some effort and time to bring them together.

Modern Horizons 3 brings a heaping helping of exciting new cards to Modern. Rekindle your love for classic reprints including allied fetch lands and discover new power-packed cards like double-sided Planeswalkers you’re sure to flip for. Ready to play right out of the box, each deck contains 3 foil Legendary Creature cards.

The card has a green and a white mana symbol in its text, making its color identity green, white, and black. To repeat my example, Display of Dominance wouldn’t affect Kenrith at all. This is a clear example of the difference between color and color identity. Commander is a multiplayer format where most games have somewhere between four to six players.

Partner with itself

While cards may be banned or allowed by specific playgroups or tournament organizers, in most games, MTGCommander.net’s banned list is used as it mtg decks is considered the most well-known banned list for the format. This list is used by WotC when making their Commander-related products. There is no hard enforcement of this, however, due to the format not being DCI-sanctioned, leaving tournament organizers the option to make their own banned lists for events.

It’s not traditionally very competitive, allowing players a lot of flexibility in what kind of decks and strategies to use. Wish-type cards have always been a little bit controversial in Commander, and for good reason. The idea is that within your 100 card deck, you really ought to have plenty of room for a variety of cards. However, we’ve blown away that limitation, and demonstrated you have access to far more than 100 cards in modern Commander. That means that cards that reference even more cards from outside the game don’t make a whole lot of sense in the format.