Commander League: League Rules
While you might think it's a simple thing to just start a league and play by the official EDH rules, in reality there are always going to be players pushing for changes and modifications for your league. It's easy to just tell your players to "git gud", but part of managing a community is listening to them and taking their input into account. I'll run through my own thoughts on various rules issues that come up when running a Commander League.
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Before I proceed, the most important thing to remember is that your rules must be clearly stated somewhere on your league's scoresheet, and you should always go by the letter of the law. I personally have our league vote on all rules changes but whether you run your league as a democracy or a dictatorship, you have to be clear what the rules are and you have to honor what's written down, even if you realize you'll need to change it at some point. Suck it up, honor the dumb rule, and change it later.
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Infect
In EDH it is very, very easy to suddenly get a ton of +1/+1 counters on a creature and swing with it out of nowhere. It is also very, very easy for a Blightsteel Colossus to show up and swing with little to no warning. It's part of the game, but invariably leads to upset players.
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The normal 10 poison counters for Standards and Modern formats to eliminate a player has not (yet) been adjusted for Commander to compensate for the unique nature of our format and the doubled life total. Our league goes with 15 poison counters to eliminate a player. It has helped a lot to allow for Infect to still play a part in the game, but not feel like a super cheap and cheesy way to get a kill. I still find using The Mimeoplasm as a copy of Blightcleave Goblin, with 13 +1/+1 counters from Death's Shadow works like a charm on an open board.
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Combo
If your players feel bad about Infect, chances are good they also hate dealing with combo. Nothing sucks the wind out of a player's sails like an opponent getting just the right combination of cards on their board and declaring to everyone that the game is over. It feels bad for everyone but the combo player but the reality is that it's a part of our format and as legitimate a way to win the game as killing an opponent with infect, mill or commander damage.
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While I do support having an infect number for your league that is higher than the official number of 10, I do not personally encourage you to outlaw combo. One of my reasons is that a combination of card interactions does not have to be infinite or uncontrollable to be game-ending, so you can't just say "no infinites" and be done with it. There will always be combinations of cards that are broken and part of the fun of the game is the constant struggle to establish or to prevent these combinations from making their way onto the battlefield.
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Part of this is that players need to learn to improve their decks so they run answers. They also need to accept the fact that they won't always have the right answers and sometimes no matter how well established their own board is and how hard they tried to seal their own victory, the combo player may just win out anyways.
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Some playgroups put a limit on the number of cycles that any combo can go through. I could even see a cycle limit that is tied to the turn in the game you are on. Some playgroups just accept that when someone has an infinite combo, once it is demonstrated and nobody has any way to stop it, the infinite amount is accepted as an arbitrarily large number (i.e. 10,000 life, 666 token creatures, etc...). I even know someone who when playing casually does not accept combo shortcuts and requires the opponent to manipulate the cards / boardstate for every single iteration of the combo they want to complete.
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Ultimately, what really matters is that you are all on the same page. If your group wants to limit combo to 5 cycles per turn, just make sure that is clearly stated on your score/rules sheet. Any new player should be able to understand what they can expect in your games and you should follow your own rules consistently and to the letter.
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In our league we haven't had to make any special rules around combo. To some extent we take a certain amount of pride in just dealing with it, and in doing our best to learn how to stop combos from occurring. We put answers in our decks and when those answers aren't enough, we do our best to suck it up and move on to the next game.
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Banning Cards
Commander is a format in which almost any card from the entire history of the game can be put into your deck. While this is one of the greatest things about the format, it also means that we can do all manner of horrible things to our opponents over the course of a game.
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If you play enough games, you will get sucked into a Door to Nothingness, you will get hit by one of Vraska's assassins, you will be named by players casting Magister Sphinx, Sorin and now Saskia. You will feel the choking suffocation of playing a single color deck and have an opponent play Iona, smile, look over at you and name your color. You may even have the rare delight of taking the one-two punch of Alesha and Master of Cruelties.
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None of these plays will be fun for you if you are on the receiving end of them, but they are part of the format and part of the game.
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It is easy to jump on the ban-wangon and start making lists of cards that should not be allowed in your league. If you run your league as a dictatorship you don't even have to solicit other players' opinions. Leagues that vote on rule changes aren't immune to this though - it is easy enough to rally the peasants and get your pitchforks and torches all pointed at the same card or commander.
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If you or your players are thinking along these lines, I would suggest that you have more to learn about the game and the format, and about wining and losing, than you realize.
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Calling to ban cards is usually something that happens when someone's deck starts to dominate play and win a lot.
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That means that while you might be interested in the "good of the league", there's a pretty good chance you might also just be a bad loser.
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Don't be a bad loser.
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For every broken card there is an answer, even if it is a really harsh answer like using Nevermore and naming someone's commander.
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You can even build a deck specifically to answer someone else's deck. I built a Saskia deck filled with blue hate to play against monoblue control decks. It's not a great deck but it has answers and solutions to the problems our island-loving friends like to present us with and I'm glad I've got it available to me. Mono-blue heavy control is really hard to play against, especially if you aren't also playing blue. Rather than keep running my Naya and Abzan decks against it and getting nowhere, now every once in a while I can pull out Saskia and give them a real challenge.
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Just saying "git gud" isn't enough.
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You also need to talk with your players. Ask the better players to help the weaker players. Have deckbuilding workshops where you compare notes, talk about how many answers you should run in a deck and how to build your manabase so your deck gets rolling a little faster. Collaboration - especially when there are no real prizes on the line - will both help everyone play better and help to strengthen your community of players.
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Lastly, you don't want to be in the position of telling a player that the win they just got was invalid because they used a card that's legal in the format but banned in your league. It will make you, your players and your league look bad.
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The bottom line is that in a multiplayer format like EDH, you're going to lose lots of games. Some losses will feel bad. Some will feel REALLY bad. Get over it. Lick your wounds, work on your decks and come back to the table the following week with a new approach. Maybe it will work. Maybe it won't. The lesson you will learn by just trying to adapt is a far greater lesson than just banning every card that you have a bad game against.
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Don't be a bad loser, and don't be the worst kind of loser - the kind that tries to change the rules of the game instead of just accepting losses and working hard to get better.
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Deckbuilding Constraints
Commander is rarely an even playing field. Players with $3,000 finely tuned tier 1 juggernaut decks can sit down at the same table as a bunch of new players with pre-constructed decks right out of the box. While you might be tempted to cry foul and start designing complex systems to balance out decks so games are always fair, I would urge restraint.
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When you set up systems to curtail out of control decks, you simply encourage players to find ways around your constraints.
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If a player wants to try to win a month with their crazy overpowered deck, I would suggest you do your best to beat them on the battlefield, but if they win out - so be it. It is OK to have a great deck and it is OK to win a lot.
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I would ALSO urge you to have a talk with them. There is little to be gained by always winning with a behemoth of a deck when it's a free league and everyone is trying to have fun and bring in new players, and there is a lot to lose. Let them win their month, but then urge them to build other decks that are going to result in games that are fun for everyone and not just guaranteed wins for them.
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If they refuse to come to the table and play in a way that is healthy for the league, you have two options. You can bar them from playing, but that's a slippery slope and unless they're a problem in lots of other ways I would not suggest a ban. The other option is to actively work with other players to build decks that can cope with your problem player. If your games become games of archenemy for a while until your "spike" stops being an issue, so be it. Some folks just don't understand how to play midrange, but your league doesn't have to constantly be playing the part of a speedbump either. In time it will work itself out.
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Proxies
If you're running a league, not just playing casually, I would urge you to not allow proxies.
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Does that mean that some folks will have an advantage over others due to their ability to purchase better cards?
Of course it does.
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If that means you'll have to work and plan extra hard to overcome certain opponents, then you'll have to work and plan extra hard. Also, there are cheap cards that can answer expensive threats. Are they playing thousands of dollars worth of lands? Run mass land destruction. Do they have super expensive artifacts? Red probably has some answers you can use.
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If nothing else, whatever policy you do implement should be fair and publicly known.
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Take-backs
EDH is a complex game with intricate boardstates that can be difficult to navigate successfully even for experienced players. We always maintain that you cannot misrepresent the boardstate. That should go without saying, but if asked a direct question you are not allowed to lie. We also urge players to simply answer questions rather than making their opponents come over and analyze their cards. When you're not playing for money and are trying to keep it fun and social, it makes no sense to waste everyone else's time by forcing someone to get up and come pore over your board.
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That means that every now and then someone is going to do something stupid and want to take it back. Some playgroups simply disallow take-backs. In our league we have a -1 penalty on your points for the week and require the consent of the table to allow a take-back. Whatever you do, it is important that you are consistent in the way you deal with take-backs so nobody winds up feeling like anyone is playing favorites.
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Broken Promises
In EDH games you often have players making promises about what they are going to do. Sometimes those players turn around and break their word or claim the promise was never made. Unless there is outright rules-breaking involved, it is not worth getting involved in these kinds of issues. The players will work it out on their own, usually over the course of multiple games or even weeks of play.
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Lying liars
If you do have a player who is misrepresenting their boardstate or simply lying about stuff, definitely take it seriously. It is bad for the health of your league to allow players to cheat. If possible, having a judge available to assist with rulings is really good. You can also look up rulings on the internet if you are having a dispute and want to resolve it fairly and quickly.
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I'll try to keep this updated, but let me know if I let anything on this page is inaccurate.
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