How to Play Commander
A 100-card deck, one legendary creature in charge, 40 life and usually three friends. Here are the rules that actually matter, what a real game looks like, and how to play one in your browser in the next ten minutes.
How do you play Commander?
Each player brings a 100-card deck led by a legendary creature, the commander. Every other card must fit inside that commander's color identity, and apart from basic lands you may run only one copy of each card. Everyone starts at 40 life, the commander waits in the command zone where it can always be cast, and you play until one player is left standing.
Most games are three or four players. In 644,944 tracked games a multiplayer table runs about 58 minutes and a 1v1 game about 25 minutes . Beyond that, Commander is a social format: the rules below are the short list that actually changes how you play.
The six rules that make Commander different
Commander uses the normal rules of Magic. These are the ones that make it its own format, and they are all you need to sit down at a table.
100 cards, one of each
Your deck is exactly 100 cards including the commander. Apart from basic lands you may run only a single copy of any card.
At the table: You build wide instead of deep. No four-ofs means no two games play the same.
A legendary creature leads it
One legendary creature is your commander. It starts in the command zone, not in your deck.
At the table: It is the one card you can always count on drawing, so the whole deck is built around it.
Color identity
Every card must only use mana symbols that appear on your commander, including in its rules text.
At the table: Your commander decides your colors before you pick a single other card.
40 life
Everyone starts at 40 life instead of 20.
At the table: Games last longer and one big turn rarely ends anyone. Expect to take a few hits.
The command zone and commander tax
If your commander dies or is exiled you may return it to the command zone. Each recast costs 2 more generic mana than the last.
At the table: You can never truly lose your commander, but you can be taxed out of casting it.
21 commander damage
If a single opposing commander deals you 21 combat damage over the game, you lose regardless of your life total. It is tracked per commander and gaining life does not reduce it.
At the table: rarer than it sounds. It decides about 8.0% of tracked multiplayer games.
How long a Commander game actually takes
Measured from finished Commander games tracked on Playgroup, not estimated. Abandoned games are excluded by both a played-time and a wall-clock ceiling, so a table that forgot to stop the clock cannot inflate these.
Duel (1v1)
130,894 gamesMedian game length
- Typical range
- 15 to 38 min
- Long game (top 10%)
- 56+ min
- Median rounds
- 8
- Mean length
- 30 min
Multiplayer (3+)
514,050 gamesMedian game length
- Typical range
- 38 to 83 min
- Long game (top 10%)
- 112+ min
- Median rounds
- 9
- Mean length
- 64 min
The part nobody tells you: a multiplayer game takes about 2.4 times as long as a duel but lasts only 1 more round (9 against 8). The game is not longer in game terms. You are simply waiting through more turns before each of yours, which is why a bigger pod feels slower rather than deeper.
What each extra player costs
Median game length by pod size. Adding a fourth or fifth player costs roughly a quarter of an hour each.
Bars are median minutes. The right-hand column is the cost of that extra seat. Sample sizes fall off above five players (2p: 130,894 · 3p: 191,140 · 4p: 276,608 · 5p: 40,522 · 6p: 5,765), so read the six-player figure as indicative.
How Commander games actually end
Every guide teaches you the ways to win. This is how often each one actually happens. Recorded by the winning table at the end of the game.
| How it ended | Multiplayer | Duel (1v1) |
|---|---|---|
|
Combat damage
|
53.3% | 60.9% |
|
Non-combat damage
|
21.0% | 11.2% |
|
Combo
|
8.0% | 4.0% |
|
Commander damage
|
8.0% | 14.9% |
|
Alternative win condition
|
6.7% | 5.6% |
|
Mill
|
1.8% | 1.3% |
|
Poison
|
1.2% | 2.1% |
Share of games with a recorded winning condition: 359,810 multiplayer and 89,448 duel games , which is 70.0% of the multiplayer games in this sample. The rest are draws or were left unrecorded and are excluded rather than assumed.
Worth knowing before your first game: commander damage decides about 14.9% of duels but only 8.0% of multiplayer games. With three opponents there are more blockers in the way and more targets to spread damage across, so the 21-damage rule matters far more in 1v1 than at a four-player table.
Who goes first in Commander?
Pick the starting player at random, with a die roll or a coin flip, then play proceeds clockwise. Unlike a two-player game, nobody skips their first draw: in multiplayer everyone draws on turn one, including the player who went first.
That turns out to matter. In our tracked games the first seat wins clearly more than its fair share and every seat further down wins less. See the win rate by seat .
Play your first Commander game right now
Most guides stop here and tell you to go find three friends and a deck. You do not need either to start. Playgroup Live runs a full Commander table in your browser: paste any decklist, open a lobby for 2 to 6 players, talk over voice, and the board handles life totals, commander damage and the command zone for you.
Playing on paper instead? The Playgroup life counter tracks life, commander damage and who won, so your games count toward stats like the ones on this page.
New to deckbuilding? A preconstructed Commander deck is the cheapest way to start on paper, and our land count guide covers the first question every new builder asks.