Fast, cheap, and creative. Rebels was designed to let almost any card be the centerpiece of a deck, while maintaining balanced decks and emergent gameplay.
If Commander is about leading vast legions, then Rebels is about running a ragtag crew of unlikely allies.
Rebels is a complementary format for Commander that celebrates experimentation.
Rebels keeps the core of Commander’s expressive decks and multiplayer politics while tightening the experience.
It lets players expand deck archetypes along new dimensions.
These rules are sufficient to build and play most Rebels decks.
The
Full Rules ↗
is the central resource for examples and detailed explanations.
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.
Your deck must contain at least 60 cards. This total includes your library and your Command Zone Cards, so most libraries begin at 58 cards when using two Command Zone Cards.
You begin with 25 life. The Commander Damage threshold remains 21.
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.
One of your Command Zone Cards must be a card type affected by combat, which includes: creature, vehicle, spacecraft, and planeswalker.
This card can be in either slot.
A Command Zone Card may be cast or played from the command zone by paying its Commander Tax, and may return to the command zone following normal rules for Commanders.
Each Command Zone Card has their own Commander Tax.
Only one of your Command Zone Cards is your Commander. It is your only card that can deal Commander Damage and 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.
You may use a sideboard of up to 10 commons, uncommons, and/or basic lands. Commanders are revealed before sideboarding.
During sideboarding, up to 5 cards may leave your library and up to 5 may enter it. Swaps do not need to be one-for-one, and your library may change size as long as it is legal when the game begins.
Command Zone Cards cannot be sideboarded out. But casual groups may allow swapping them under Rule-0.
Fast Sideboarding is a variant where you start each game with 5 extra cards from your library in your sideboard. This means you’ll have a 55+ card deck and up to a 15-card fast-sideboard. During sideboarding, move 5 cards from your fast-sideboard into your library.
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 their cards.
Any Special Action that requires paying Commander Tax increases that card's future Commander Tax by 2.
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.
The Full 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.
Classic mono-green elves with repeatable tutoring 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:
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 cards can be your Commander.
Outlanders allow additional rare cards if they are linked to a card in your command zone by that card’s rules text. This enables meld cards such as Brisela, Voice of Nightmares , where the Bruna, the Fading Light in your command zone is referenced by Gisela, the Broken Blade in your library.
Outlanders act like an alternative form of Command Zone Cards, meaning: Outlanders 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.
Outlanders start in your library and cannot be in your opening hand. Reveal your Outlanders during Reveal Commanders, then shuffle them into your library after drawing your opening hand.
Each of your Command Zone Cards and Outlander Cards must have a different name.
If your deck and sideboard do not otherwise contain a rare or mythic rare card, then you may choose a rare or mythic rare card to be an Outlander Card.
This card (and any Outlanders or Signature cards granted through it) cannot extend the color identity of your other Command Zone Cards and Outlander Cards.
This card can be your one Commander.
It 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 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.
A player loses the game if they take 21 or more total 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 Full 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 in a manner similar to Outlanders. Examples include Korlash, Heir to Blackblade , Food Fight , Gigantiform , and Powerstone Shard .
Reveal your Signature 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 any changes made to its core rules.
These optional rules follow two principles: breaking a core rule should carry a cost, and everyone should understand the rule changes before the game begins.
Ideally, rule changes are thematic, intuitive, and honor the original intent behind a card’s design.
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.