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One of the most popular ways to playMagic: The Gatheringnow is through Commander, the premier multiplayer format for anywhere between two and six, if not more, players. With a focus on unique deck design choices and a more singular way to express yourself and your play style, Commander has quickly become an immensely popular take on traditional competitive Magic games.
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Magic was not originally designed to be played this way. Instead, Commander grew from a small playgroup into an official format over the course of Magic’s lifetime. Where Commander started and how it has grown into the powerhouse it is today is a fascinating story built from the hard work and support of players over the years.
What Is Commander?
Commander, at its core, is based on building a 100-card singleton deck centered around a singular legendary creature, your commander, with the deck limited to only using cards that match the color identity of your commander. There are of course special rules among some cards that let you use planeswalkers as a commander, or two commanders for a single deck, letting you experiment with new and unique decks.
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Much of the fun in Commander comes from the freedom and creativity players pour into their decks. Not restricted to the rigid optimization of other constructed formats like Modern and Legacy,Commander gives you the chance to take your favorite cards and use them in ways they were never intended.
Who Invented Commander?
Commander wasn’t always known as the official format Wizards of the Coast supports.For a long time, Commander was a fun fan-game variant. This format, called Elder Dragon Highlander, originated in 1996 and seems to have two parallel origins. The first official printed version of this format comes from the July 1996 edition of Wizards of the Coast’s official gaming magazine The Duelist.
Magic player Jesus M. Lopez wrote in to The Duelist to share with the magazine a format he created called Elder Dragon Legend Wars. This version of the game has a more complicated structure than what players would recognize as EDH or Commander, such as forcing decks to include eight of each basic land in their deck, as well as designating certain creatures as “Warlords” and “Captains”, with unique rules around them as well.
However, certain elements are recognizable, like designing a deck around a legendary creature (one of thefive legendary dragons from the Legends set, which we’ll get to later), and limiting decks to only include one of each card excluding basic lands.
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Around the same time, Adam Staley designed a unique game variant with his playgroup in Alaska. This format became the more widely accepted game of Elder Dragon Highlander, with its name drawing inspiration from the Elder Dragon cycle from the Legends set, a series of five three-color legendary Dragons that acted as the Commander of the deck, and The Highlander, the 1986 cult-classic fantasy film which came with the tag line, “There can only be one,” referring to the legendary status of the main character.
Staley has gone on to say he never read the original article from The Duelist and was unaware of it for some time.Over time, Elder Dragon Highlander distinguished itself as the variant that players preferred, growing from the Alaskan playgroup to eventually befeatured in a 2004 articlewritten by the late Sheldon Menery, sharing the format with a much broader audience.
The Proliferation Of EDH
Menery was a level 5 competitive Magic judge at this time and had plenty of interactions with players and Wizards of the Coast. While working the international Pro Tour,Menery refined some of the rules from the original Alaskan playgroup, opening up the number of commanders available to players, then called Generals, from being limited to just the five Elder Dragons to any legendary creature released since then.
Eventually, the game variant would make its way to Scott Larabee, Wizards of the Coast’s Pro Tour manager, who over the next few yearswould work to formally introduce the format to Wizards of the Coast and players as Commander in 2011.
Wizards of the Coast took Commander in a slightly different direction when it came to naming conventionsfor the format. Not wanting to cross paths with The Highlander’s legal team, the term Commander was chosen to lead the format, while alsochanging the deck’s legendary creature from General to Commander. For many players though, EDH and Commander are fairly interchangeable.
The first official Commander release featured five preconstructed decks, bringing 51 brand-new cards that were exclusive to Commander and eternal formats like Legacy. These three-colored decks were opposite of the initial three-color Elder Dragons players could pick from, giving players access to Mardu, Temur, Abzan, Jeskai, and Sultai decks. Since then,there have been plenty of Commander-specific products released,culminating in a Commander Mastersset which brought many of the best cards in the format to one set.
Ever since its development back in 1996,Commander and EDH has brought players together in ways Magic creator Richard Garfield never imagined. As Commander grows and draws in more players with its wacky combos and fascinating mechanics, the original appeal of the format, to share fun times with your friends, grows.
