Fast, cheap, and creative. Rebels was designed to let almost any card be the centerpiece of a deck.
Rebels is a companion format for Commander that celebrates experimental deck-building.
Rebels keeps the core of Commander’s expressive decks and multiplayer politics, while letting players expand deck archetypes along new dimensions.
These rules are sufficient to build and play most Rebels decks.
The
Comprehensive Rules ↗
contains more detailed explanations and examples.
Rebels is a Commander-derived format that follows all official Commander rules with specific changes to create a unique experience.
Cards Banned in Commander ↗ , cards designated as Game Changers ↗ , and Sol Ring are banned in Rebels.
You begin with 30 life and the Commander Damage threshold is 21.
Your deck must contain at least 60 cards. This total is the combination of your library and your Command Zone Cards, so libraries must have at least 58 cards with two cards in the command zone.
You can only have one copy of a card between your command zone, library, and sideboard unless that card states otherwise or it is a basic land.
Libraries may only contain commons, uncommons, and basic lands. Cards with multiple rarity printings can be treated as their lowest printed rarity.
You have two slots in the command zone: one rare slot and one nonrare slot. The cards in these slots are Command Zone Cards.
One of your Command Zone Cards must be a card of a type that is affected by combat. These include: creatures, vehicles, spacecraft, and planeswalkers.
This card can be in either slot.
You may play your Command Zone Cards from the command zone by paying their Commander Tax as an additional cost. Command Zone Cards may also return to the command zone following normal rules for Commanders.
Each Command Zone Card has its own Commander Tax.
Only one of your Command Zone Cards is your Commander.
Only your Commander can deal Commander Damage, and it is your only card affected by game effects that reference “your commander.”
Your Commander’s color identity is the combined color identities of all of your Command Zone Cards.
Each of your Command Zone Cards has a Commander Tax, which is a value equal to 2 for each time that card’s Commander Tax has been paid (either through playing the card from the command zone or by taking a Special Action that requires paying its Commander Tax).
At the start of the game, before sideboarding or mulliganing, players reveal their Command Zone Cards as well as any Outlanders and or Signature Cards.
All players reveal their Command Zone Cards simultaneously.
Command zone changes after Reveal Commanders should be limited to casual games under Rule-0.
Rebels includes additional Special Actions that can be taken at sorcery speed:
Only the owner of a card may take these actions for that card. A player who is controlling another player is not allowed to use these actions on the controlled player's cards.
Reminder: Any Special Actions that requires paying a card's Commander Tax increases that card's future Commander Tax by 2.
You may have a sideboard of up to 10 cards made up of commons, uncommons, and/or basic lands.
Sideboarding ocurs after Reveal Commanders, but before mulliganing and drawing your opening hand.
During sideboarding, at most 5 cards can be moved from your sideboard to your library and at most 5 cards can move from your library to your sideboard.
Swaps do not need to be one-for-one, and your library may change size during sideboarding as long as your library is legal when the game begins.
Fast Sideboarding is a sideboarding variant where 5 cards from your library start in your sideboard, meaning you are preselecting the 5 cards you will be sideboarding out each game.
You’ll start with a 55+ card deck and up to a 15 card fast-sideboard, and then move 5 cards from your fast-sideboard to your library.
You are ready to begin playing Rebels.
The easiest way to build a Rebels deck is to choose a card you like, pair it with another card that supports it, and build around the themes and mechanics of that pairing.
Check out the Example Decks ↗
The Comprehensive Rules ↗ also covers:
Each deck below is defined by its two Command Zone Cards.
They illustrate how different pairings can pull a 58-card library in
unique directions.
Resilient lifegain engine that turns small bodies and recursion into steady pressure.
Card draw, tempo engine with quickened sorceries and a powerful storm combo.
An unusual value engine that fuses aristocrats recursion with aggressive tempo.
Fiery elemental aggro deck built around Chandra's buffs and steady burn tempo.
Mono-green landfall with permanent recursion in the command zone.
A payoff spell and summoner pairing that rewards clever deckbuilding.
Midrange snow shell built around efficiently costed creatures and recursion.
Wild Research toolbox that uses constant tutoring and discard mitigation to stay flexible.
A volatile vehicle and treasure deck that can randomly spike into explosive power.
An unusual combo engine that rewards efficient sequencing.
A highly customizable reanimation shell built for low-power high-utility creatures.
A spell-slinger tempo deck with flexible blink effects for protection and temporary disruption.
The following rules are optional, and were designed:
You must make your choices for Partners, Outlanders, or Signature Cards during deck-building. These choices must be finalized before Reveal Commanders.
Two cards in your deck are linked if one contains the name of the other card in its rules text. This must follow the the form: "card(s) named" followed by the card's name. This linking process is recursive, meaning if card A is linked to card B and card B is linked to card C, then cards A and C are linked as well.
Partners, Outlanders, and Signature Cards each subvert a rule while presenting a restriction:
If multiple cards can be played together as Commanders in the Commander format, then those cards may occupy a single slot in Rebels as long as they all obey the slot’s rarity rules.
These Partner rules do not allow a deck to have more than one Commander, so only one of these Partner cards can be your Commander.
Outlander Cards allow additional rare cards if they are linked to a card in your command zone. This enables meld cards such as Brisela, Voice of Nightmares , since the Bruna, the Fading Light in your command zone is referenced your Outlander Gisela, the Broken Blade in your library.
Outlander Cards act like an alternative form of Command Zone Cards, meaning Outlander Cards can be your one Commander, have their own Commander Tax, and they contribute to your Commander's color identity. They can also use the Record a Commander action to return to your library.
Outlander Cards start in your library and cannot be in your opening hand. Reveal your Outlander Cards during Reveal Commanders, then shuffle them into your library after drawing your opening hand.
If your deck and sideboard do not otherwise contain a rare or mythic rare card, then you may choose one rare or mythic rare card to be an Outlander Card.
This card, and any additional Outlander Cards or Signature cards granted by being linked to it, cannot extend the color identity of your other Command Zone Cards and Outlander Cards.
You can choose this card as your one Commander, meaning you will not have a Commander in the command zone.
This card must be revealed at the start of the game and cannot start in your opening hand.
A legendary token that is named in the rules text of, and produced by, one of your Command Zone or Outlander Cards can also be an Outlander, such as the Mechtitan token created by Mechtitan Core .
If you choose a legendary token as an Outlander Token, then you must also choose it to be your one Commander, in which case you will not have a Commander Card.
Your "commander's color identity" is the combined color identity of all your Command Zone Cards and Outlander Cards. Your Outlander Token does not contribute to this color identity.
A player loses the game if they take 21 or more total combat damage from Outlander Tokens that were your Commander.
Certain cards designed to be played at four copies can be played as Signature Cards to break Rebels’ singleton rule. To qualify, the card must be on the allowed lists found in the Comprehensive Rules , and either a copy of the card must appear in your command zone or the card must be linked to one of your Command Zone Cards.
Examples include Korlash, Heir to Blackblade , Food Fight , Gigantiform , Hedron Alignmen , Squadron Hawk , and Powerstone Shard.
Reveal your Signature Cards alongside your Command Zone cards and Outlander Cards during Reveal Commanders. They cannot start in your opening hand.
Casual play, at its heart, is about playing decks that purposefully fall below the format’s power ceiling, allowing more experimental ideas to thrive.
The Rebels format’s rules are designed to support flexibility within casual play. As long as the table agrees to the changes, then changes can be made to Rebels' core rules.
These optional rules follow two principles: breaking a core rule should carry a cost, and everyone should understand the impact of any changes to the rules before the game begins.
Ideally, changes to the rules should be thematic, intuitive, and should honor the intentions behind a card’s design.
See the Comprehensive Rules ↗ for the complete details.
This web page is a summary of the rules.
The following documents are the primary references. They are intended to be the most current revisions of the rules.