Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH), or Commander, is a casual mostly multiplayer format in Magic: The Gathering. This means that it is not commonly sanctioned in major events and a significant portion of EDH players engage in this format casually.
EDH is a great format especially for returning players who have kept their cards but haven’t played in ages. New players also do not have a high barrier to entry. Thus, this format is great for everyone.
Competitive EDH?
As with all formats in Magic, there will always be people with the Spike psychographic profile, meaning that they will always crave the challenge of competition. Thus, Competitive EDH (cEDH) was born. There aren’t any rules differences but players who play cEDH would often have higher investments in their decks and are more cutthroat when it comes to player interaction and table politics.
You can expect explosive starts with cards like Mana Crypt or Mana Vault. Or, you can even experience game wins by turn one to four!
Should you be a Spike, it is important to understand that not all players appreciate the game finishing faster than you on date night.
Table Politics
A thing unique to multiplayer formats like EDH is the existence of politics on the table. No, it isn’t about which party is going to win the next election (Please keep your political views at home unless you are playing with a group that has similar ideologies.)
It is the ability to convince someone to not kill you immediately for whatever reason. Perhaps it is pointing the finger at someone else, pretending that they have their combo ready and convincing the person who would otherwise kill you first to kill the other person so that you may combo off during the turn you managed to get.
It is also the ability to convince someone to clear to board when it is not in your favour while not running any board wipes yourself.
Thus, in EDH, it is important to understand that there WILL be politics and it is important that no one gets too salty over being frequently targeted due to that ONE time they managed to complete their combo. It is mostly a player deflecting the other player that is in an advantageous position.
Deckbuilding
EDH is fun for almost all players due to the casual nature of the format. Pretty much anything goes when it comes to gameplay with the main restrictions being on deckbuilding.
Singleton
EDH has a singleton deckbuilding rule where you may only run 100 unique nonbasic cards in your deck. Nonbasic means that you are free to use any number of cards with the ‘basic’ supertype, such as Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest.
The reason behind this singleton rule is that it increases the variance between games. The chances of having that explosive start are significantly lower when you only have one of each card.
This is good for the budget conscious as you do not need to get playsets of cards you need. This especially adds up if you are the sort that goes for foils.
Commander
One of these 100 cards will be your commander. A commander is any creature with the ‘Legendary’ supertype. Normally, this would mean that you may only have a single creature with this name on that battlefield at any given time but with EDH, this supertype also enables you to use it as a commander. There are a set of 5 non-creature legendary planeswalker cards that can be used as commanders. However, this is a fringe case.
Colour Identity
Your chosen commander would have a colour identity that will be used during deckbuilding. You may only insert cards that have your commander’s colour identity in your deck. A colour identity is found out by checking the mana cost and text box of the card. Any instance where any mana symbol appears on the card, it is considered part of its identity.
For example, Tasigur the Golden Fang has a mana cost that has the Black Mana Symbol (B). However, it has Blue (U) and Green (G) in his text box. This makes his colour identity Black, Blue, and Green. This means, you are free to play Black, Blue or Green identity cards in your deck. However, he is still treated as a monocoloured Black card when it comes to cards like Ultimate Price. Colour identity doesn’t change the colour of the card.
Similarly, note that you cannot play Soulfire Grandmaster in a deck with Avacyn, Angel of Hope as your commander. Soulfire Grandmaster’s colour is white but its colour identity based on its textbox is White, Blue and Red.
Furthermore, double sided cards have the colour identity of both sides. So, you can play a Boros Reckoner in an Archangel Avacyn deck as the flip side of Archangel Avacyn - Avacyn the Purifier is red based on the circle on the textbox despite not having any red mana symbols on the front and back of the card.
Do note that colour changing effects such as Devoid (where cards with Devoid are colourless) do NOT change the colour identity of the card to colourless. However, the colour of the card becomes colorless, giving Ramos no counters upon being cast.
Finally, reminder text (that are bracketed) such as the one used in cards with Extort do not count for colour identity. For example, you cannot play Basilica Screecher in a white deck despite having a white symbol in the reminder text for Extort.
Card Legality
All non-silver bordered cards in Magic are playable in EDH unless banned under the ban list as agreed upon here. Make sure you understand what cards are banned to prevent unfortunate purchases of cards that are powerful but strangely affordable.
However, due to the casual nature of the format, if your playgroup allows for the use of banned cards or silver bordered cards, then nothing can really stop you.
Gameplay
There are some gameplay differences between EDH and other formats of Magic.
Life Total
Each player starts the game with 40 life instead of 20 life. This means that certain strategies may not be as viable as they would be in a 20 life format so kindly understand that what may have worked for you before may not necessarily work in EDH.
Infect
Despite the increased life total, the total amount of poison counters needed to defeat a player is still only 10. However, this method of victory may lead to games that end prematurely, leading to possibly unhappy opponents due to the limited interactivity with poison counters.
Commander Damage
If you are dealt 21 damage of Combat damage from any Commander card, you will lose the game even if you have a million life. Commander damage is similar to Infect. However, this damage is not a counter that can be proliferated or changed in any way other than dealing more damage with the commander.
Mulligan
The official ruling on doing a Mulligan (Replacing your hand with a new one at the start of the game) in EDH has changed over time. The prior rule is the partial Mulligan where players may shuffle any number of cards in their hand into their decks and draw that many cards at the start of the game with each repeat doing the same but with one less card each time.
This lead to some issues in regards to consistency, especially with combo decks as they can filter out their deck for better cards by effectively increasing their card draw by a significant margin, betraying the high variance nature of the singleton format. Due to the casual nature of EDH, players may choose to retain this rule depending on their playgroup. However, it is important to understand the possible implications.
Officially, the current mulligan is a full Paris Mulligan with one free Mulligan. This means that you will shuffle your hand into your deck and draw that many cards for free once. Then, should you repeat this, you can but you will draw one less card.
Number of Players
You may play this format 1v1 but it is encouraged and it is more fun for EDH to be a multiplayer affair. The most common size of an EDH pod is 4 players (Free-for-all). However, you may play with any number of players but do note that more players equals more time spent in one round.
Deck Archetypes
EDH tends to have variants of certain deck archetypes that you can build around. The following are some of the popular archetypes being used in the format. Most of these archetypes can be merged in one way or another. I am not going to recommend any specific general as you can, in theory, build any deck into any archetype with the right cards and I feel that it is best for you to discover which general suits your playstyle for each archetype the most.
Control/Stax
Stax is a term used to describe a deck strategy that mostly relies on resource denial, taxing effects, disruption, and sacrifice enablers to potentially lock down opponents and make it difficult to cast spells, play creatures, attack or have any kind of board state. Popular cards used in Stax decks are cards like Stasis or Winter Orb.
Combo
The goal of a combo deck is to make your win condition as consistent and as fast as possible despite the singleton limitations of the format. Thus, a Combo oriented deck will focus on card advantage such as card draw and tutoring effects (Searching your library for a card and putting it into your hand, battlefield or top of your deck) while keeping up enough disruption to ensure that no one else can interfere with your combo by either countering the spells you play or killing you before your combo can go off.
Control and Combo tend to go hand in hand but they are not mutually inclusive.
Aggro/Stompy
Aggressive decks are significantly weaker in EDH due to the higher life total. Thus, aggressive archetypes tend to have a Stompy (Big creatures) element to them. Decks like Xenagos, God of Revels, encourage big creatures to ‘go face’.
This archetype is relatively simple to play with but it is important to be wary of accidental over-extension of board state due to the large number of legal board wipes in the format.
Group Hug
This is the Moon Moon of EDH players. They just want to have fun so they will share the wealth with additional card advantage and mana ramp for EVERYONE! However, be careful as what starts off as a soft hug becomes a surprise strangle as the more sociopathic Group Hug deck players may use their good-natured deck as a subterfuge for devious combo building shenanigans.
Chaos
This is the Group Hug player’s evil twin. Instead of hiding behind a cutesy façade, the Chaos player’s intentions are to ruin EVERYONE’S day. Chaos players often also play Stax Effects alongside effects that are tedious to deal with such as Probability Storm which makes all spells an RNG fest or cards that make the whole board exchange their permanents around. (I am an ex-Chaos player so I know firsthand how degenerate things can get).
Being a responsible player
Despite what I mentioned above, sometimes a player isn’t actually just deflecting for the sake of covering their own arse. If you understand that the board state is unfavourable for you too and you know that not doing anything will lead to a game loss for everyone, it is important for you to take action and not wait for the next time you have priority to do so.
If your inaction causes a game loss, the people who suffered the loss will generally be unhappy with the player that had the tools to prevent it and chose not to.
Casual Nature of the Game
However, due to the casual nature of the game and the off chance that some crazy shenanigans occur due to a strange 10 piece combo, some players may choose to allow the combo to resolve just to see what happens. So, do not be unhappy even if you tell that player to do the responsible thing and counter a piece of that giant convoluted combo that was crafted over 20 turns of doing otherwise nothing but ramping and tutoring. Some people want to watch the world burn and sometimes the world burning can be hilarious and unexpected.
EDH Format Variants
There are many variants in EDH that follow the mostly the same rules as EDH with some minor differences in game setup and gameplay rules. I am sure there are many more variants out there but here are some common ones.
Kingdom
Kingdom is a format where each player is assigned a role and a hidden win condition. One player will be the King who will be revealed at the start of the game, the King starts with 50 life instead of 40. Further details for this format can be found here.
Planechase
EDH can be played with Planechase cards and the planar die. The plane mechanic is just tacked onto normal EDH gameplay without any additional rules changes. More information about planechase can be found here
Archenemy
Much like Planechase, players may play with Archenemy in EDH too. More information about archenemy can be found here.
Horde EDH
Players collectively battle a deck of creatures and spells. The most common of which is Zombies. More information can be found here.
Pauper EDH
Pauper EDH has different deckbuilding and gameplay rules compared to normal EDH. You have an uncommon creature as your commander. It doesn’t have to be legendary. The rest of the 99 are commons. Each player starts off with 30 life. Whenever a player has been dealt 16 combat damage by any one commander that player is removed from the game. More information can be found here.
Important tools to use
Here are some useful websites that you can use to help out your edh journey:
EDHRec – This website is a database that sees how many percent of decks with which commanders that use specific cards. This is a great place to understand what cards are being used in the decks that you want to build.
Tapped Out – This is a deckbuilding tool that will help you analyse your mana curve, get you a quick quote in terms of price and receive player feedback on your decklist.
EDH Tier List – This is a tier list as listed on Tapped Out based on perceived competitive viability. Tier 1 being the strongest legal commanders with Tier 2 being slightly weaker and so on. In the description box, there are also decklists for most of the top tiered commanders if you want to build a powerful netdeck.
Star City Games – Star City Games (SCG) is one of the largest retailers for Magic the Gathering singles and products and thus, internationally, they are often the standard when it comes to pricing with various conversion rates.
TCGPlayer – TCGPlayer is an alternative way for players to get a market rate for the cards they need as they are the largest aggregation site for trading TCG cards.
MTGSalvation - A forum where a lot of discussion regarding the format is held with primers, individual card discussions and the like.
MTGFamiliar – A very useful android app for players to keep track of their life total, roll dice etc.
Hope you enjoyed the read! If you have any questions, feel free to ask! The more you ask, the more you learn. An important way to get good at EDH or anything for that matter is to organically learn by playing it more often!