Commander is a very popular alternative format that has spread on a wide range of players. Basically, Commander is a variant of Magic® that allows you to play with a legendary creature as your commander with a deck of 100 cards built around this legendary creature. The Commander format has become popular mainly because of its fun aspect and its strong appeal to deckbuilders.
History of Commander
Many years ago, a popular variant of Magic® was being played in some restricted circles of players, who were mainly Magic® judges. This variant was called Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH). The EDH format is Commander’s ancestor. The rules were globally the same as they are now : a legendary creature starting outside of the deck, color identity, 100 cards singleton decks.
EDH grew in popularity and spread to non-judges players. As the number of players increased, new decks were created, new legendary creatures were chosen as a general (which is the old name for the commander) and the community grew up noticeably through the use of Internet forums, specifically the official EDH/Commander forum.
EDH went so popular that Wizards of the Coast decided to release a product created specifically for this format in summer 2011. Wizards of the Coast renamed EDH into Commander and released five preconstructed decks with new legendary creatures.
Today, a lot of players enjoy playing Commander: at home, in stores, as a big tournament’s side event or sometimes in local tournaments.
Duel Commander
Commander is a multiplayer variant of Magic®. It has been created as a format specifically designed to promote social interactions between players. But some players did not have enough Commander players around to be able to play multiplayer Commander games, while some others wished to concentrate on two players for many personal reasons. That is why Duel Commander (which means Commander games between two players) developed a vast community of players throughout the world.
This website is dedicated to the “duel” variant of the Commander format. Indeed, Duel Commander requires specific decks and doesn’t use the same cards as those which are commonly played in multiplayer.
Here you will find information on the different variants of the 1v1 Commander format, a quick reference guide to their specifics and lists of banned cards, and links to sites where you will find more detailed information.
Note that if you wish to get more information on classic Commander, we recommend you to go to the MTG Commander website : http://mtgcommander.net/
The Philosophy of Commander
We believe in the Philosophy of Commander as mtgcommander.net develops it. We invite you to follow their advice for your 1v1 games.
Commander is for fun.
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Commander is designed to be a malleable format. We encourage groups to use the rules and the ban list as a baseline to optimize their own experience. This is not license for an individual to force their vision onto a play group, but encouragement for players to discuss their goals and how the rules might be adjusted to suit those goals.
The format can be broken; we believe games are more fun if you don’t.