EDH/Commander Deck Rules

Basic  rules for EDH or Commander for MTG. This is for anyone who is unfamiliar with how to play Commander as well as anyone who has questions about what is legal.

Deck Construction Rules
1-Players must choose a legendary creature as the “Commander” for their deck.

2- A card’s color identity is its color plus the color of any mana symbols in the card’s rules text. A card’s color identity is established before the game begins, and cannot be changed by game effects.
The Commander’s color identity restricts what cards may appear in the deck.

3-A deck may not generate mana outside its colors. If an effect would generate mana of an illegal color, it generates colorless mana instead.

4-A Commander deck must contain exactly 100 cards, including the Commander.

5-With the exception of basic lands, no two cards in the deck may have the same english name.

6-Commander is played with vintage legal cards, with some exceptions:
cards are legal as of their set’s prerelease

7-The following is the official banned list for commander games. These cards (and others like them) should not be played without prior agreement from the other players in the game.
Ancestral Recall
Balance
Biorhythm
Black Lotus
Coalition Victory
Channel
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Fastbond
Gifts Ungiven
Karakas
Library of Alexandria
Limited Resources
Metalworker
Sundering Titan
Primeval Titan (*New*)
Mox Sapphire, Ruby, Pearl, Emerald and Jet
Painter’s Servant
Panoptic Mirror
Protean Hulk
Recurring Nightmare
Staff of Domination
Sway of the Stars
Time Vault
Time Walk
Tinker
Tolarian Academy
Upheaval
Yawgmoth’s Bargain
Griselbrand
Worldfire (*New*)
Additionally the following legends may not be used as a Commander:
Braids, Cabal Minion
Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
Kokusho, the Evening Star

Play rules
The start of game procedure for Commander is as follows:

1-Players announce their choice of Commander and move that card to the command zone.

2-Players may then sideboard if the optional rules for sideboards are being used.

3-Each player draws a hand of seven cards.

4-Players may mulligan, using the modified ”Partial Paris” method.
Being a Commander is not a characteristic, it is a property of the card. As such, “Commander-ness” cannot be copied or overwritten by continuous effects, and does not change with control of the card.

5-If a player has been dealt 21 points of combat damage by a particular Commander during the game, that player loses a game.

6-While a Commander is in the command zone, it may be cast. As an additional cost to cast a Commander from the command zone, its owner must pay {2} for each time it was previously cast from the command zone. (ie: Olivia Voldaren costs 6BR to cast for the third time.)

7-If a Commander would be put into a graveyard or exile from anywhere, its owner may choose to move it to the command zone instead.If a card is put into the exile zone face down from anywhere, and a player is allowed to look at that card in exile, the player must immediately do so. If it’s a commander owned by another player, the player that looked at it turns it face up and puts it into the command zone.

8-Players begin the game with 40 life.

9-Commander are subject to the Legend rule; they will be put into the graveyard or command zone at the same time as any other Legendary creatures with the same name.

10- Abilities which refer to other cards owned outside the game (Wishes, Spawnsire, Research, Ring of Ma’ruf) do not function in Commander unless the optional sideboard rule is in use. If sideboards are used, wishes and similar cards may retrieve sideboard cards.

Sideboards
Rather than filling every deck with banal responses, it is preferable to allow some flexibility in the composition of a deck.

1-Players may bring a 10 card sideboard in addition to their 99 cards and 1 Commander.

2-After Commanders are announced, players have 3 minutes to make 1-for-1 substitutions to their deck.

3-Any cards not played as part of the deck may be retrieved by “wishes”.
Reasoning:
Highly tuned threats piloted by skilled opponents mandate efficient answers. The minimum number of response cards required to ensure they are available in the early turns can easily overwhelm the majority of an EDH deck’s building space.

4-Sideboards allow players to respond to the “best” strategies in a timely fashion . They should be strongly considered as a necessary defense against brokenness and degeneracy in an environment where no gentlemans agreement on style of play exists.