Although a variety of rule changes have happened in the format’s vast history, the commander tax has remained basically unchanged.
The commander tax has existed ever since the format’s inception back in 1996. Rooftop Storm | Illustration by John Stanko Every time you do this, your commander is going to cost more to cast. Whenever your commander changes zones from the battlefield to somewhere else, you have the option of moving it back to the command zone instead. A commander cast from the command zone costs an additional for each previous time the player casting it has cast it from the command zone that game. A player may cast a commander they own from the command zone.
For this reason, the Rules Committee came up with rule 903.8, colloquially known as the “commander tax:”ĩ03.8. Because your commanders are always available to be played, there needed to be a way to make it harder for them to pop back into play if they’ve been killed in battle. Your commander lives in this zone instead of ever being in your deck, which means you don’t need to draw them to play them. The zone’s namesake commanders live here, obviously, but there’s also emblems, planes, phenomena, schemes, and dungeons, the most recent addition.
Let’s break this down, starting with how commanders work.įirst thing’s first: the “ command zone.” This is a place where special cards that affect the game in the same way that permanents do but that aren’t actually permanents go. To put it simply, the commander tax requires you to pay 2 additional mana on top of the casting cost of your commander for every time beyond the first you cast it from the command zone. Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow | Illustration by Yongjae Choi
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