What Is a Commander Deck in Magic: The Gathering?

A Commander deck is a 100-card Magic: The Gathering deck built around one legendary card, the commander, that starts the game in its own zone. Every card except basic lands is a single copy, every card must match the commander’s colors, and each player starts at 40 life. Commander is a multiplayer format, usually played four at a table.

The Commander deck building rules

The Commander deck building rules come down to three limits, all set out in the Comprehensive Rules and on Wizards of the Coast’s format page:

Wizards describes the format as “all about picking your hero and building a deck around them.” The commander sets the colors and usually the plan: a commander that rewards Dragons leads a deck full of Dragons.

Commander also lets you use cards from across the game’s history, so a deck can mix a card printed in the 1990s with one from the newest set.

How color identity limits a Commander deck

Color identity is the rule that decides which cards fit a deck. A card’s color identity comes from every mana symbol on it, in its cost and in its rules text. Each card in the deck may only use mana symbols that also appear on the commander, and colorless cards are always allowed.

A green commander therefore allows green and colorless cards only. A commander with white and blue symbols opens up white, blue, white-blue and colorless cards. This is why players pick the commander first and the rest of the deck second.

How a game of Commander plays out

A game of Commander starts with each player putting their commander face up in the command zone and drawing seven cards. Every player starts with 40 life, and turns go clockwise around the table. You can attack any opponent, or several opponents in one combat.

The commander can be cast from the command zone at any time you could cast it. Each time it returns there and you cast it again, it costs two more mana than the last time; players call this the commander tax. If the commander would go to your hand, library, graveyard or exile, you may return it to the command zone instead.

Wizards suggests about 20 minutes per player, so a four-player game runs about an hour and a half.

Commander Brackets for matching decks at a table

Commander Brackets are an optional system from Wizards for matching decks of a similar strength. There are five brackets: 1 Exhibition, 2 Core, 3 Upgraded, 4 Optimized and 5 cEDH. Brackets 1 to 3 are for casual, social games, and brackets 4 and 5 are for high-power and competitive play.

The brackets lean on a Wizards list of especially strong cards that can take over a game. Bracket 1 and 2 decks play none of the listed cards, bracket 3 allows up to three, and brackets 4 and 5 allow any number. Before a game, players simply say which bracket their deck is in.

Where a new player gets a Commander deck

A new player gets a Commander deck in one of two ways: buy a preconstructed deck or build one from single cards. A preconstructed deck, or precon, comes ready to play with 100 cards, tokens and a deck box. The Foundations Commander decks, released on October 2, 2026, are five one-color precons made to teach the format.

Building your own deck starts with picking a commander and checking its color identity. The step-by-step version is in how to build a Commander deck, and the decks made for new players are compared in Foundations Commander decks.

A sleeved 100-card deck is thicker than a 60-card one, so it needs a deck box sized for it.

More Commander guides

Every Commander guide on this site is collected in the Commander precon hub, which compares the current decks. To see how Commander sits next to Standard, Modern and the draft formats, read Magic: The Gathering formats explained.