Commander brackets and Game Changers
Brackets help you say before the game how strong your deck is, so everyone at the table plays at roughly the same level. There are five brackets; which one fits your deck depends mostly on how many Game Changers it runs.
The five brackets
| Bracket | What to expect | Game Changers | Mass land denial | Extra turns | Two-card combo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Exhibition | Theme over power; a game lasts at least 9 turns. | 0 | no | no | no |
| 2 · Core | Unoptimized and straightforward, social; at least 8 turns. | 0 | no | a few, not chained | no |
| 3 · Upgraded | Strong synergy and card quality, with interaction; at least 6 turns. | up to 3 | no | a few, not chained | not cheap and early (roughly before turn 6) |
| 4 · Optimized | Fast, consistent and lethal; it can end from turn 4. | unlimited | yes | yes | yes |
| 5 · cEDH | Built for competitive Commander; it can end on any turn. | unlimited | yes | yes | yes |
This is a guideline from the Commander Format Panel, still in beta. The talk at the table (rule zero) comes first: a deck with a few weak Game Changers can fit a lower bracket fine, if everyone agrees.
What is a Game Changer?
A card that easily and dramatically tilts a Commander game: lots of resources at once, locking others out, or finding your best card without a drawback. Wizards keeps the list and changes it a few times a year.
All 53 Game Changers
- Ad Nauseam
- Ancient Tomb
- Aura Shards
- Biorhythm
- Bolas's Citadel
- Braids, Cabal Minion
- Chrome Mox
- Coalition Victory
- Consecrated Sphinx
- Crop Rotation
- Cyclonic Rift
- Demonic Tutor
- Drannith Magistrate
- Enlightened Tutor
- Farewell
- Field of the Dead
- Fierce Guardianship
- Force of Will
- Gaea's Cradle
- Gamble
- Gifts Ungiven
- Glacial Chasm
- Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
- Grim Monolith
- Humility
- Imperial Seal
- Intuition
- Jeska's Will
- Lion's Eye Diamond
- Mana Vault
- Mishra's Workshop
- Mox Diamond
- Mystical Tutor
- Narset, Parter of Veils
- Natural Order
- Necropotence
- Notion Thief
- Opposition Agent
- Orcish Bowmasters
- Panoptic Mirror
- Rhystic Study
- Seedborn Muse
- Serra's Sanctum
- Smothering Tithe
- Survival of the Fittest
- Teferi's Protection
- Tergrid, God of Fright // Tergrid's Lantern
- Thassa's Oracle
- The One Ring
- The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
- Underworld Breach
- Vampiric Tutor
- Worldly Tutor
Back to the Commander rules.
Source: Commander Format Panel, Commander Brackets Beta updates of 21 October 2025 and 9 February 2026 (magic.wizards.com).
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Last updated: 13 October 2026