Commander brackets and Game Changers, explained
How Wizards of the Coast's 1-to-5 bracket system describes a Commander deck's power, what Game Changers are, and how to place your own deck.
Every Commander group has had the game where one deck was far stronger than the others. The bracket system, published by Wizards of the Coast, gives players a shared vocabulary for describing a deck's power before the game starts, so that everyone can bring something that fits.
The brackets are a conversation tool, not a ranking. A bracket-2 deck isn't worse than a bracket-4 deck; it's built for a different kind of game.
The five brackets
| Bracket | Name | The experience it aims for |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Exhibition | Theme over winning: decks built around a story, a joke or an unusual idea |
| 2 | Core | About the strength of a modern preconstructed deck: focused, fair, unpredictable |
| 3 | Upgraded | Stronger than a precon, with carefully chosen cards and a few powerful ones |
| 4 | Optimized | High power: the strongest cards and combos, built to win fast |
| 5 | cEDH | Competitive Commander, where every choice serves winning the game |
Game Changers
Game Changers are a list of cards, maintained by Wizards, that warp games around them: cards that give huge amounts of mana, tutor for your best cards, or shut other players out. The list is the main rule that separates the brackets:
- Brackets 1 and 2: no Game Changers.
- Bracket 3: up to three Game Changers.
- Brackets 4 and 5: no limit.
The list changes over time as Wizards adds and removes cards, so check the current list on Wizards' site rather than relying on memory.
Other guidelines
Beyond Game Changers, the lower brackets also steer away from a few kinds of play that tend to make games miserable for the table:
- Mass land destruction (destroying or locking down many lands at once): not expected below bracket 4.
- Chaining extra turns: not expected below bracket 4.
- Two-card infinite combos: not expected in brackets 1 and 2, and in bracket 3 they shouldn't come together early in the game.
These details have been refined since the system launched, so treat the official page as the final word.
Placing your own deck
- Count your Game Changers. That alone narrows your options: none means bracket 1 or 2 is possible; four or more means bracket 4 at least.
- Ask how fast your deck wins. If it regularly wins or locks the game in the first few turns, it's playing at bracket 4 or 5 no matter what its card list says.
- Be honest about intent. A deck built purely around a theme is a 1, even if a few of its cards are strong; a tuned precon is usually a 2 or 3.
The bracket is a starting point for the pre-game conversation, not the whole conversation. Our guide to the pre-game talk covers what else to mention.
Brackets on Podtable
The Podtable deck builder estimates a bracket for each of your decks on its Stats tab. When you pick an AI opponent's deck in the game, each prebuilt deck shows its bracket and any Game Changers it plays, so you can choose an opponent that matches your own deck.
The official explanation, including the current Game Changers list, is on Wizards' Commander page at magic.wizards.com/en/formats/commander.