Introduction

Overview

In casual Commander it’s crucial for players to agree on a shared play experience to achieve balance and ensure enjoyment in their games. Power levels, historically on a scale from 1 to 10, are often used as a “shortcut” for the deck’s relative strength and play patterns in pregame discussions.

In our experience, the 10-point scale has been unproductive at best. We believe this is primarily due to the size of the scale and the qualitative nature of the discussion. The purpose of this resource is to provide Commander players with tools to build decks to specific power levels, evaluate the power levels of cards and decks, and have more productive Rule 0 discussions.

We recognize that these power level philosophies here are neither complete, nor perfect. This is meant to act as a living document that will be updated over time as the format develops and we gather additional feedback.

Disclaimer

On September 30th, 2024, Wizards of the Coast announced the development of a bracketing system for Commander decks by power level. Once this system is available, we will adapt the contents of this site to be compatible with the brackets and guidelines that are provided.