Commander is a series of supplemental Magic: the Gathering card game products. Its mechanics are derived from a fan-created format known as "Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH)". The official Commander format is "the only sanctioned format maintained by an outside entity" other than Wizards of the Coast.
History
The original fan-created format, Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH), was developed by Adam Staley in the late 1990s and became a staple of his local play groups in Alaska. Staley's original name was "a tribute to the line 'there can be only one' spoken repeatedly in the 1986 film Highlander" evoking the idea of a battle royale and that there could only be one of a given type of card in a player's deck. The first part of the name referenced the Elder Dragons in the Magic storyline. However, Polygon highlighted that there is some contention on the creative origins of the format as The Duelist also published a multiplayer format called "Elder Legend Dragon Wars" in July 1996 which was shared with the magazine by reader Jesus M. Lopez who claimed he had designed this format. When asked by Polygon, Staley said "I do not remember reading that article. Some things are similar to my version and some are very different".
Sheldon Menery, who was introduced to EDH while stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base, then developed the format further culminating in his 2004 article outlining the format on the Magic fan site Star City Games which "spread the word about it beyond his circle of judges for the first time". This format differed in several ways such as an expanded deck size and a larger health total. Scott Larabee, the Wizards of the Coast’s Pro Tour manager, played the format for the first time in 2005 with one of Menery's decks at a tournament. In the following year, Menery along with other Pro Tour judges, Gavin Duggan and Duncan McGregor, created a rules committee with an official website.
Larabee went on to advocate the format within Wizards of the Coast which led to the commercial launch of the format in 2011. The EDH name was changed due to intellectual property concerns. , Wizards of the Coast has released a product line containing preconstructed Commander decks. However, the format is still maintained by the Commander Rules Committee which is run independently of Wizards of the Coast. In 2020, Wizards of the Coast released metrics from stores in its Wizards Play Network (WPN) on the total number of participates in Magic events (referred to as Tickets). Per the industry trade ICv2, "the number of unique players attending Commander events per week at WPN stores went from 9,000 in 2018 to 28,000 in 2020. In February 2020, all stores that ran events were averaging 1846 Tickets per year. However, stores that ran Commander events averaged about 2111 Tickets per year which is a 12.6% increase over the stores not running Commander. [...] Commander is clearly a growing format and is driving [organized play] numbers upward [...]. On a final note, for stores that carry singles, Reserved List Commander cards have been on a tear lately. [...] The market price sits at around $600.00 which represents more than a 45% increase in value in only about nine months".
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Wizards of the Coast partnered on a webcam version of Magic: The Gathering playable online called SpellTable, which allows remote play of the Commander format. In 2021, Dot eSports highlighted that "Commander has become one of the biggest formats in Magic over the past five years, even leading to Wizards of the Coast dubbing 2020 as 'The Year of Commander.' The format is a boon for novice and experienced deckbuilders to craft thematic decks centered around Magic’s over 1,200 Legendary creatures".
In March 2023, Wizards of the Coast officially launched the Oathbreaker format, which originated as a fan-created variation of Commander. It was created by the Weirdcards Charitable Club, a Minnesota-based gaming group, "around 2017" before becoming an officially supported format.
Gameplay
Commander is a format where players construct 100-card decks, with each card (except basic lands) appearing no more than once. The format is primarily played with four players, each with their own deck. Players also choose a legendary creature or Planeswalker to be their "Commander" or "General" (a Planeswalker must be designated as allowed to be used as a Commander), which begins the game in the "Command Zone", from where it can cast directly to the battlefield. If a commander leaves the battlefield, it goes back to the Command Zone and can be cast again for a higher mana cost. Each player's deck is based and built around their Commander's colors.