Wizards Of The Coast’s Official MTG Commander Deck Ranking System, Explained

Everyone who plays Magic: The Gathering‘s popular Commander format has heard someone say “my deck is a seven” before going off and dominating the entire table. The numerical ranking system adopted by players was fundamentally flawed, because there were no criteria to differentiate between a six and a seven… or even between a three and a nine.

Wizards’ new bracket system looks to correct that, cutting the ratings from ten to five and adding concrete criteria to determine where your deck lands, from goofy exhibition decks at one, all the way to cEDH decks at five.

What Are Commander Brackets?

Commander Brackets is a system created by Wizards of the Coast’s Commander Format Panel. It’s designed to replace the one-through-ten deck power ranking system casually adopted by many Commander players and includes set criteria for determining where your deck rates.

Each of the brackets is intended to represent a different level of play. For example, if you want to play with decks about as strong as precons without limiting yourself to an off-the-shelf deck, you’ll want to build and play at bracket two. If you’re going to play in a tournament, you’ll need to build to bracket five.

The bracket system looks at five main criteria: if the deck includes two-card combos (and how early you can use them) if it can take or chain extra turns, whether there’s any mass land destruction, how many tutors are included, and how many “game changers” are included.

The Game Changers

While Commander does have a Banned List, you can’t make a Restricted List for a singleton format. The Game Changers list has a similar function, though: These cards are powerful enough to completely turn a game around, so most brackets restrict how many cards can be included from the list.

Game Changers are prohibited in Brackets One and Two, and unrestricted in Brackets Four and Five. Bracket Three allows you to include three cards from the list.

Several cards on the Game Changers list are legendary creatures, including popular commanders like Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow. A Game Changer in your command zone still counts as part of the deck, so using one of these cards as your commander automatically brings the deck up to Bracket Three.

Bracket Breakdown

Bracket One: Exhibition

Decks in the bottom bracket are less designed to win than they are to show off a theme or do something goofy. A deck with Felix Five-Boots as the commander where your goal is to equip five footwear artifacts onto your commander falls into this category.

Bracket One games tend to run long and may end with everyone deciding that they’ve just had enough fun assembling their Rebecca Guay art gallery or seeing just how many different cards feature Minotaurs getting zapped by lightning.

This is a good bracket for a silver-border or acorn deck. If you really want to play a Vorthos deck with an Ambassador Laquatus theme, this is the bracket where you’ll most likely find willing players.

To qualify as a Bracket One deck, your deck should have:

• No cards from the Game Changers list
• No cards that give you extra turns
• No two-card combos
• No mass land destruction
• A minimal number of tutors, aside from land tutors like Rampant Growth.

Some players feel that Sol Ring goes against the spirit of Bracket One, but that’s a pre-game conversation you need to have with the other players at your table.

Bracket Two: Core

Bracket Two is what players have generally called “precon level” in the past. Decks in this category are approximately equivalent to preconstructed decks that you can buy at your local game store. This is also a good place to play unmodified precons on equal footing, without having to insist that everyone play a precon.

Games played in Bracket Two tend to run a little long, but there’s potential for big plays that completely turn the game around. Like precons, these decks will likely have a handful of cards included just for flavor rather than function.

Along with matching the general power level of a precon, Bracket Two decks should contain:

• No cards from the Game Changers list
• No extra turn cards intended to be chained together
• No two-card combos
• No mass land destruction
• Only a couple of tutors

Bracket Three: Upgraded

Bracket Three is where you find more powerful decks capable of reliably ending the game in around six turns, potentially out of the blue with a late-game two-card combo. These decks tend to have the best available cards for each slot but aren’t weighed down by a bunch of Game Changers or tutors.

Games in Bracket Three are what most players probably think of when they build a Commander deck. Experienced players generally follow unwritten rules against running mass land denial and focusing on cheap infinite combos, and this bracket largely codifies those unwritten rules.

Bracket Three decks meet the following restrictions:

• No more than three cards from the Game Changers list
• No extra turn cards intended to be chained together
• No early-game two-card combos
• No mass land destruction

Bracket Four: Optimized

The gloves come off in Bracket Four. Aside from cards on the Banned List, this category has no deckbuilding restrictions, so you can feel free to build around early-game combos and mass land denial and include as many Game Changers as you want.

The point of this bracket is to build the strongest deck you can without focusing on the metagame like you would with a cEDH deck. Games in this bracket can end in just a few turns if nobody stops you from popping off, but since all other decks are at about the same level, you can expect that someone will always be the threat.

As mentioned, this bracket has no restrictions aside from the Banned List. Feel free to drop your Dramatic Reversal / Isochron Scepter combo and other early-game combos.

Bracket Five: CEDH

Competitive Commander, cEDH, is the highest bracket. This bracket follows all the same deckbuilding rules as Bracket Four, but has an additional layer: These decks are designed to win tournaments, not pods.

In a competitive format, you need to worry about both the tournament structure and the metagame. Based on the environment in your area, you should be able to predict which decks you’ll encounter and include answers for the most likely and most dangerous situations.

Like the Bracket Four decks, Bracket Five decks have no deckbuilding restrictions aside from the Banned List. However, deckbuilding choices will need to be made with an eye toward what you’ll encounter at tournaments.