"Master of Commander" Tournament 2/27 NEXT WEEK

EDIT: When you come in Saturday, use the main church entrance to come in. There's a small hallway beside the chapel area that leads to a library. That's where we'll be.

If you read the first post of this blog, you know part of its purpose is to keep you informed of our attempts to set up tournaments for more casual players in the Hixson, TN area.

So here's a tournament for that crowd!


A couple of us here have wanted to try a 2-player version of EDH/Commander since we found the format. So we've basically taken the EDH/Commander rules and put them into a tournament for next week.


"Master of Commander" Tournament Rules

A. Deckbuliding

1. Singleton: Your deck can only have 1 copy of any card that's not a basic land or Relentless Rats.

2. 100 cards: Your deck must have 100 cards in it, counting your eventual Commander.

3. Legendary Creature as your Commander: As part of your 100 card Singleton deck, you must have at least 1 Legendary Creature in the 100 cards you use. You'll pick 1 Legendary Creature in your deck to be your Commander.
      *Braids, Cabal Minion and Kokusho, the Evening Star are banned from being Commanders. (You'll see why later in the rules)
      *As a matter of simiplicity, you may only designate 1 Legendary Creature as your Commander for the whole tournament; if you have multiple Legendary creatures, you cannot switch out which one is your Commander between games/matches.

4. No Cards Off-Color from Your Commander's: You may only use colorless cards and cards that share a color(s) of the Commander you end up using in order to pick the cards for your deck.
      * Hybrid and Split cards count as all their colors. So for example, if you use Agrus Kos, Wojeck Veteran (3RW mana cost) and want to use Marisi's Twinclaws in your deck, you're out of luck because Twinclaws is a Red, White, and Green creature, whereas Agrus Kos is only a Red and White creature.
      * EXAMPLES: If you use Sliver Queen, you may use any card you like as they'll all share a color with your Queen. If you use Wrexial, the Risen Deep you are confined to Blue and/or Black cards and/or colorless cards in your deck (i.e.: your cards cannot have White, Red, and/or Green in their mana costs).

B. Gameplay Rules

5. Commander in the Command Zone: Before each game, you'll take 1 Legendary Creature in your deck and put it in the "Command Zone." This is like a "really really removed from play" zone in that nothing can target that area and it's not considered to be an in-play area.

6. Summoning your Commander: You can cast your Commander at any time you could normally cast a creature (Flash abilities notwithstanding) by paying your Commander's mana cost.

7. Commanders don't "die" per-se: If your Commander would end up in your Graveyard or Exiled, you may instead move it back to the Command Zone. (so in a sense, your Commander never "dies").

8. Additional Payment after Death and "Resurrection": Each time your Commander is "resurrected" (sent back to the Command Zone), you have to pay 2 additional colorless mana to cast it for each time it's been sent back. So a General that normally costs 3RW would instead cost 5RW the first time it's "resurrected", then 7RW the second time, 9RW the third, etc.).
    * Just because a Commander is destroyed, exiled, etc., doesn't mean it stops being a Commander.

9. Mana Production Rules: You can only produce colorless mana or mana of the colors of your Commander only. Any mana produced that's not in your Commander's colors instead makes Colorless mana for that color.
    * EXAMPLE: Bartel Runeaxe (3BRG) is your Commander. You use an Orzhov Signet to try to make 1 Black and 1 White mana. You'll get the Black mana just fine since Bartel is Black, but because Bartel Runeaxe isn't White you'll get a single Colorless mana for the White portion, netting you 1B (1 Colorless + 1 Black) instead of WB (1 White + 1 Black).

10. Instant Loss Rule: If you're dealt more than 20 points of combat damage by a single Commander, you lose the game, no matter your life total.
    *Think of this like Poison, except it requires 21 counters instead of 10 and that 1 point of combat damage = 1 counter.

11. Specific Ban List: Commander does have its own separate ban list, found here: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Resources.aspx?x=magic/rules/100cardsingleton-commander
    * Any Legendary creature on that list is only banned from being a Commander; for example, you may use Kokusho, the Evening Star in your 100-card deck, but you can't use it as your Commander.

12. Clarifications:     * The Legend Rule does apply to Commanders.
     * No abilities of your Commander are active while in the Command Zone; the only time you get the benefits will be when your Commander is on the battlefield (or in the graveyard if it has a "while this is in the graveyard"-type ability, of course.

Aside from the ban list for Commander itself, we'll use the Legacy banned/restricted list.

We charge $2 for every Constructed tournament, and this will be no different. Prizes will be pack splits of Worldwake. ("Pack Split" is us taking a pack(s) of cards, opening the contents, and spreading them out on a table. The winner gets first choice of cards, second place gets second pick, and so on.)

Let us know what you think about these rules, what needs to be changed, if certain cards needs to be banned, and all of that. I usually ban auto-win/auto-loss cards, but I slipped a bit on remembering to do that so they're legal for this tournament.

We hope to see you next Saturday for this exciting format!