The philosophy, rules, and list of cards banned in Commander are maintained by the Commander Rules Committee.

RC Members

Scott Larabee has been involved in Magic since first playing the game in 1994. He’s been a player, single-card dealer, tournament organizer, judge, and store owner before being hired by Wizards of the Coast in 1998. Since 2003, he’s been the Tournament and Policy Manager for Magic’s tabletop professional events.

Scott stumbled across Commander at the Pro Tour in 2005 and joined the Magic Rules Committee in 2008. He’s been on multiple Commander product design teams at Wizards since 2010. Scott and his wife live in Renton, WA with their skeptical cat. Outside of Magic, he enjoys board games, crossword puzzles, cinema, and foodie-food.

Twitter: @ScottLarabee

Toby Elliott began playing Magic with Alpha and never stopped. He qualified for the Pro Tour in 1999, and since you weren’t able to play in PTQs once you qualified, decided to check out this judge thing. It worked out OK. He holds the record for most Pro Tours Head Judged and is known as the “policy guy” for his work on the tournament rules and IPG. He started playing Commander in 2005 and joined the Rules Committee in 2007.

In his spare time Toby is a Senior Developer at Amazon and lives with his wife and cats in Boston, MA. Toby is also a dedicated League of Legends ARAM player, with over 4000 games played, board gamer and amateur foodie.

Twitter: @tobyelliott

Gavin Duggan was one of the two original members of the Commander Rules Committee, and has shaped the rules, philosophy, and infrastructure of the format since its inception. He serves as the mad scientist of the RC, and is responsible for many of the more radical changes in the history of format. He was a pro tour judge, Netrep, and regional coordinator for tournament magic for 15 years.

When playing, Gavin enjoys brewing and currently owns 42 commander decks covering almost every colour configuration. When not playing commander, he plays poker, Go, and Ultimate. He holds a PhD in computational biochemistry and works as senior software engineer for healthcare artificial intelligence research in Mountain View, CA.

Twitter: @genomancer
Email: edhforum at gmail
Reddit: u/genomancer

Sheldon Menery is commonly regarded as “The Godfather of Commander.”  He’s been leading the charge on the format since the very beginning, when he shaped it from an obscure idea in Alaska to the format it is today. 

He’s a former Level 5 Judge, known for his aggressive efforts to make the Pro Tour a bastion of fair play.  After retiring from judging in 2011, he joined the Pro Tour coverage team until moving on to complete a Master’s Degree in English literature in 2019.  He has written a column about Commander at starcitygames for going on 20 years and recently did a stint as a Magic designer at Wizards of the Coast.

A retiree of the US Air Force and two-time cancer survivor, he lives in Lakeland, FL, with Gretchyn, his wife of 14 years, and their five cats, Dasher, Cupid, Comet, Vito, and Vixen.

Twitter: @SheldonMenery
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sheldon.menery

The Commander Advisory Committee

The commander advisory committee is an invited group of Commander community leaders who use their breadth of perspectives on the format to assist the Rules Committee. They highlight potential format improvements, discuss impact of proposed changes, and help the RC stay in touch with the community.

CAG Members

Josh Lee Kwai has been a Magic player (off and on) since 1993. In 2013, he learned to play Commander and eventually started The Command Zone podcast with his friend Jimmy Wong. Josh is a former movie trailer editor with over 15 years of experience working for companies like Disney and Universal Pictures on properties like Star Wars, The Fast and Furious, The Avengers, and many more. Jumping into content creation for MTG was a chance to unite his favorite hobby with his professional knowledge of film production. He is currently the CEO of The Command Zone on YouTube as well as the creator and director of the popular web series Game Knights.

Twitter: @JoshLeeKwai

Ron Foster has been working on Magic for over 20 years in a variety of roles: judge, tournament organizer, translator, product designer, and Wizards of the Coast employee. Credited with popularizing the format in Japan, he joined the Commander Advisory Group as a founding member. When not playing Magic, he enjoys playing other games, both analog and digital, as well as annoying his friends and family with movie, music, and Star Trek references.

Twitter: @ronmfoster

Rachel Agnes began playing Magic during original Innistrad, around 2011. The first card she ever cast was stoneforge mystic fetching batterskull and she was hooked ever since. She immediately became enamored with powerful strategies and, in addition to Commander, loves eternal formats such as legacy, vintage, modern, and cube where Magic’s most powerful cards can reign. After a short stint streaming Magic Online, she began writing magic articles for a local shop and eventually graduated to writing Commander (and miscellaneous) content for Channel Fireball. Beyond Magic, Rachel enjoys posting dumb Magic memes and polls to her twitter, skincare routines that include face masks, and baking!

Twitter: @baetog_

Shivam Bhat stumbled onto Magic in middle school in 1994 and has had an abiding love for playing incredibly powerful cards poorly ever since. After a lengthy hiatus from Magic (Phasing and Flanking were going to destroy the game) and a sojourn into D&D and other card games, Shivam rediscovered Magic with Duels of the Planeswalkers on Xbox. Innistrad’s zombies got him back into paper magic, and a well timed article about Grimgrin leading a zombie army on the mothership introduced Shivam to Commander, where he discovered his true home. Now he talks Commander on a podcast every week, and when not slinging hundreds, he lives in the sunny SF bay area with his wife and child, in tech during the week and as a Hindu priest on the weekends. In between, he gardens, bakes, and indulges in the food arts, and works to further the cause of social justice and equal representation in the magic community.

Twitter: @ghirapurigears

Charlotte Sable has been playing Magic since 1994 and has been a Magic judge and Commander player since 2009. In the intervening years, she has made her mark on the community through her rules blog (magicjudge.tumblr.com) in addition to her work as a judge. Originally from the Toronto area in Canada, she currently lives near Helsinki in Finland with her partner.

Twitter: @JqlGirl
Tumblr: magicjudge.tumblr.com
Discord: JqlGirl#9431

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Adam “Stybs” Styborski learned Magic when Mirage and Ice Age were all the rage, playing off-and-on again throughout the ’90s and early 2000s. Sealed was his favorite format, but he picked up the casual side of Magic by drafting to play multiplayer games and “this sweet EDH format” in 2008. He began writing about non-competitive Magic for DailyMTG in 2009, growing to travel for Magic event coverage and leading multiple Magic content sites and communities, including the popular Pauper Cube. In 2019,he started at Wizards to support the esports team. Beyond 100 card decks, he helps his wife put +1/+1 counters on their two Goblins, gives their cat Grover all the pets, and enjoys RPGs such as Chrono Trigger and World of Warcraft.

Twitter: @the_stybs