How Commander Limited draft works

Commander from a pool you drafted. Sixty cards rather than a hundred, duplicates allowed, and a commander you take out of your own picks at the end.

Commander Limited is the format Commander Legends introduced in 2020: Commander played from a draft pool instead of a constructed deck. It is a straight booster draft, and then you build a Commander deck out of what you opened.

It is the middle ground between the two things Spellpod already does. A Limited draft gives you a forty card deck and no commander. A Commander draft settles commanders by ban and pick before the packs open. Commander Limited does neither: you just draft, and the commander comes out of your own picks.

The rules that differ from constructed Commander

The singleton row is the one that surprises people. Dropping it is deliberate: it means nobody has to track their picks card by card, and the common you opened four times is playable rather than wasted.

Color identity is the constraint that does not relax. Every card in the deck has to fall inside the identity of the commander leading it, which is why the commander question tends to get settled in your head long before the draft ends.

Setting one up

Host a draft, then set the format to Commander Limited. There is no ban and pick phase; the packs and sets are composed exactly as they are for any other draft here.

One setting is worth changing. The paper format takes two cards from every pack rather than one, for coherence and for time, and Spellpod leaves picked cards per booster at one by default. If you want the format as it plays in paper, set it to two.

Naming your commander

When the draft finishes, the build screen offers you the legendary creatures you drafted and you choose one. It uses the same eligibility test the deck builder uses, so the picker cannot offer you something the deck screen would then reject.

The card you name moves out of your card list and into the deck's commander slot, and it starts the game in the command zone rather than the library. From there the deck behaves like a Commander deck: forty life, commander damage, and the tax when it comes back.

If you drafted no legendary creatures the deck saves without a commander, which is a real risk in a set that is thin on them. It is worth watching for one during the draft rather than hoping.

Host a Commander Limited draft

Which sets suit it

Any set works, but the ones built for Commander draft work best, because they seed legendary creatures through the packs on purpose. In an ordinary set legends are much scarcer and a seat can genuinely open nothing playable in its colors.

If you want the guarantee rather than the gamble, that is what Spellpod's own Commander draft is for: it settles commanders from a pool before any pack is opened, so no seat can be left without one.

Common questions