Questions

1. What does it mean for these to be the “official rules”?
2. Who makes the official rules?
3. Can I break the official rules?
4. How can I contact the RC or CAG to ask questions?
5. Why does hybrid mana work the way it does?
6. Why can’t all planeswalkers be Commanders?
7. Why is infect still 10 instead of doubling, like life totals are?
8. Does Commander have a wishboard?
9. Are silver/gold-bordered or proxy cards allowed?
10. Is mass land destruction (MLD) allowed in commander?
    Are counterspells allowed in commander?
    Is hand disruption allowed in commander?
    Are life-total setting cards (Sorin, Magister Sphinx) allowed in commander?
    

Answers

What does it mean for these to be the “official rules”?

These are the rules that are used by most of the Commander community, including WotC, CommandFests, and other major events.  

More important than what “official” means is what the “rules” are.  Commander is both a format and a philosophy; while not everyone plays the same way, the format exists to help people find other players who are looking for the same kind of game. The rules exist to provide a useful reference when discussing “what kind of magic do you want to play?”

Who makes the official rules?

The rules for Commander are set by the Commander Rules Committee (“the RC” or “CRC”) and updated approximately every 3 months, if needed.   The RC receives input from the Commander Advisory Group (the CAG), a team of community leaders with diverse opinions and extensive contacts, who represent a breadth of perspectives on the format, while sharing the RC’s vision for Commander.

The membership of both RC and CAG is public, with current and past members documented online at the “Rules Committee” page. 

Can I break the official rules?

That’s up to your opponents. Commander is a game; the Commander RC has no enforcement arm and we have no interest in regulating games. When sitting down at a kitchen table, local game store, CommandFest, or any other venue, you should assume that players will use these rules unless the TO has announced (or the players have agreed) otherwise in advance. Before each game starts, discuss what you’re expecting from the game with the other players and, if everyone agrees, you’re welcome to modify the rules as the group sees fit. Similarly, just following these rules doesn’t guarantee the game will be successful.

How can I contact the RC or CAG to ask questions?

Contact information for all members of the Commander leadership are available on the “Rules Committee” link above, and we’re always willing to listen to, and answer, earnest questions.  If you’re raising a concern about the format, please try to offer constructive feedback.

Why does hybrid mana work the way it does?

In commander, a Hybrid mana symbol contributes all of its colours to the colour identity of the card, so Spitting Image can only go in decks whose commander is blue AND green.

REASON: Costs containing hybrid mana symbols can be paid for with either colour, but they contribute both colours to the card they appear on.  This isn’t Commander specific. The aforementioned Spitting Image can be countered with Red Elemental Blast, and can’t target a creature with protection from green. 

A card’s Colour Identity is similar to its Colour, but slightly different.  When the rules for Commander (née EDH) were formed, the decision was made to make colour identity more strict than colour (it includes the colour of mana symbols in the text box), to restrict the card pool and encourage diversity in deckbuilding. 

The RC feels that relaxing the definition of colour identity to allow hybrid to ignore a symbol on the card would make the rule more complex, and decrease deck diversity, for very little gain.  We do not expect this definition of colour identity to ever change.

Why can’t all planeswalkers be Commanders?

Planeswalkers have names and epithets, but they are not creatures and do not function the same way as creatures. They are not allowed as Commanders.

There would be both pros and cons to allowing planeswalkers as commanders:

PROs:

• Many of our favourite MTG characters are represented as planeswalkers, and an increasing number are showing up that way as time progresses. 
• Red and white are considered weaker colours in Commander, on account of the decreased effectiveness of direct damage (given the 40 point start life total) and the decreased effectiveness of aggressive creatures (in multiplayer games).  Planeswalkers as Commanders would make burn, haste, and Oblivion Ring-style effects more valuable.

CONs:

• Commander is a format which aims to give players more time to interact with each other and execute their game plan.  Planeswalkers thrive on having more time so as Commanders they would be extremely powerful. The RC believes that, if legal, over time a large portion of the metagame would shift to using planeswalkers as commanders, and the set of viable creature Commanders would be substantially reduced.
• While there are some planeswalkers which do interesting things, many fall into the same mould: defend against opposing creatures, slowly gain value, release a game-winning effect.   They do not provide quirky build-around abilities due to the limitations of the card type. If they could be replayed repeatedly as a commander, this would amplify the repetitious downsides.
• Planeswalkers can’t be interacted with in the same ways as creatures; in fact, many of the best ways to interact with a creature Commander don’t work at all on a commander.  The suite of answers each deck needed would wider, the suite of “general” removal more narrow, and the end result is less deck-building diversity.
• Planeswalker commanders need to be protected with more creature removal and defensive creatures, which leads to even longer, grindier play styles. Commander games are already long and don’t need to get longer.
• Making a large portion of the Commanders played immune to mass creature destruction would further weaken Red and White.

Based on our experience, the RC feels using planeswalkers as commanders make for longer, less interactive, more repetitive games.  These outcomes run contrary to our goals for the format.

Why is infect still 10 instead of 20, analogous to life totals doubling?

Poison as a strategy is not very strong at 10 life, and would be completely unviable were it raised. As such there is no value to an additional format-specific rule.

Poison is a reasonably viable strategy for taking out a single opponent, but suffers from the same problem as other similar glass-cannon strategy; once the first opponent has been killed, there isn’t enough strength to take out the remaining players. Additionally, it is a strategy that does not build on what the other players are doing, requiring the infect player to do all the work themselves.

Does commander have a wishboard?

No; cards or effects which bring other cards in from outside the game, commonly known as “Wishes” do not function in commander. Examples include Living Wish or Karn, the Great Creator.

The rules of Magic provide very little guidance on how wishes work outside of a tournament. No boundaries is problematic and leads to arguments. The best approach it to set the default to non-functional and allow groups to agree on parameters if they want to use them.

Including a competitive construct such as a wishboard would force all players to include one, even if they didn’t have plans to use it (as they might gain control of a spell or permanent with this type of effect). It also violates the exactly-100-cards premise of Commander, and encourages players to run narrow, powerful answers to popular strategies that might not be worth running in the main deck.

Are silver/gold-bordered cards or physical proxies allowed in Commander?

Magic is a collectible card game and only official Magic the Gathering cards produced by Wizards of the Coast should be used in games. Cards intended for play in normal games of magic have black or white borders; gold bordered collectors-edition cards and mystery-booster style playtest cards are intended for display purposes, not for use in games.

Silver-bordered cards, while sometimes amusing, are also not intended for use in normal games of magic. While occasional exceptions to this can be fun, when used regularly they often make games less interesting for most players, and are not allowed without prior approval.

Is mass land destruction (MLD) allowed in commander?
Counterspells?
How about hand disruption?
Life-setting cards?

“Yes, but.”

All of these strategies are a good idea in moderation.  

• If an opponent’s deck can combo off without warning, then permission and hand disruption are a must-have.  
• If your opponent plays high powered lands, point land destruction is a good idea.
• If you expect opponents to gain large amounts of life, cards like Sorin Markov can help rein them in.
• If your opponent’s deck has no defense, but instead builds to an unstoppable death machine, then mid- and early-game threats which force them to respond, or exploit their lack of defenses, are entirely appropriate. 

Taken to the extreme, strategies like “Draw Go” or MLD, which aim to restrict opponents’ ability to act at all, aren’t forbidden in commander, but they aren’t very popular.  Most people don’t find them fun to play against, and one of the tenets of Commander is the shared play experience.  If your deck isn’t fun to play against, people won’t want to play against it and you can’t force someone to play Commander with you.  As a result, these strategies are fairly unpopular.

That said, there are some places where any strategy is acceptable.  Some games are played at a high power level, “no holds barred”; if your potential opponents like that kind of game, great!  Just recognize that most commander players aren’t looking for that, and will choose not to play against it, so it’s a good idea to let people know what you’re planning before the game starts.  Ask if they’re ok with it, and be prepared to play something else if they’re not.