Captain

This is the whole game. It fits on a card.

1. Forty cards, one of them your Captain. Your Captain is a legendary creature. The other thirty nine cards are your library.
2. One of each card. Basic lands are the exception, and so is any card whose own text says a deck can have more of it.
3. Color identity. Every card has to fit inside your Captain's color identity: the colors of its mana cost, of every mana symbol in its rules text, of any color indicator and of any basic land type, on both faces.
4. Twenty life, one opponent.
5. One Fresh Seven. After you draw your opening seven you may, once, shuffle it away and draw a new seven, sight unseen. That's the hand you play: no second redraw, nothing goes to the bottom. Seventeen lands is the place to start.
6. The Seat. Your Captain starts the game in the Seat, next to your library. Casting it is the only way out of the Seat. The first cast from the Seat costs what's printed, and each one after that costs {2} more than the one before.
7. The Seat works like Commander's command zone. If your Captain would go to your hand or your library, you may put it in the Seat instead. If it goes to your graveyard or into exile, you may move it to the Seat right after. It still dies, death triggers still see it, and the choice is always yours.
8. The Navigator's Choice. The player who doesn't take the first turn scries 1 at the beginning of their first upkeep.
9. The Captain's Rally. Once per game, at the beginning of combat on your turn, if you control your Captain, you may rally: your Captain gets +2/+2 until end of turn.

Matches are played to two game wins, with a ten card sideboard and as many one for one swaps between games as you like.

That's the format. Everything below is the detail, for when you want it.

The Seat is a place of its own beside your library, face up, where your Captain starts every game. It works like Commander's command zone: anything that talks about the command zone means the Seat, and anything that talks about your commander means your Captain (more on that under "Cards that mention commanders").

Casting your Captain. You can cast your Captain from the Seat any time you could cast that creature from your hand: normally in one of your main phases while the stack is empty, or at instant speed if it has flash or something gives it flash. It's a spell like any other. It goes on the stack, it can be countered, and anything that triggers "whenever you cast a spell" sees it.

If your Captain is a double faced card, you can cast either face from the Seat: Esika, God of the Tree, or its back face, The Prismatic Bridge. Either one is a cast from the Seat and counts for the tax.

Only casting takes your Captain out of the Seat. Nothing else can move it from there: not a card that would put your commander into your hand (Command Beacon, Netherborn Altar), not one that would put it onto the battlefield without casting it (Hellkite Courser), and not commander ninjutsu. Those cards still work on anything else they can reach; they just can't reach into the Seat. Your Captain leaves the Seat when you cast it, and at no other time.

The Seat tax. Casting your Captain from the Seat costs {2} more for each time you've already cast it from the Seat this game. The first cast has no tax. The tax is generic mana on top of whatever else you pay, it keeps climbing all game, and it never resets until the next game. It's always paid in mana: a card that offers another way to pay a commander's tax, like Liesa, Shroud of Dusk paying life instead, doesn't replace it.

The tax counts casts from the Seat, and only those:

• A cast that gets countered still counts. The next one costs {2} more.
• Going back to the Seat adds nothing by itself. The tax only ever counts earlier casts from the Seat, so if your Captain was never cast from there this game, your next cast from the Seat is still the first.
• A blink that returns your Captain straight to the battlefield never touches the Seat, so it costs nothing.
• Casting your Captain from anywhere else (your hand, your graveyard) isn't a cast from the Seat, so it has no tax and doesn't raise it.
• If an effect lets you cast your Captain without paying its mana cost, you still pay the tax.

For a Captain with mana value 3:

You never have to cast your Captain. It can sit in the Seat all game if that's how the game goes.

Your Captain follows the same rule Commander uses for its command zone, with the Seat in its place:

• If your Captain would be put into your hand or your library from anywhere, you may put it into the Seat instead.
• If your Captain is put into your graveyard or into exile from anywhere, you may put it into the Seat the next time a player would receive priority. In practice that's right after the spell or ability finishes, before anyone can respond.

The choice is always yours, as the owner, and you make it when it happens.

It dies. A Captain that's destroyed, sacrificed or dealt lethal damage really goes to the graveyard, so it dies, and every death trigger sees it: its own "when this creature dies" and every "whenever a creature dies" on either side of the table. Then it moves to the Seat before anyone gets priority, so nobody can do anything with it while it's in the graveyard.

Exile works as printed, and you choose. A blink returns your Captain the way the card says, because you simply don't move it to the Seat. A removal spell exiles it, and you bring it home. An "exile until" effect holds nothing, because you can bring your Captain home the moment it lands there.

At the table:

• Their Flickerwisp targets your Captain. It comes back at the beginning of the next end step, as printed, with no tax. You let it stay in exile until then. A blink is a blink, whoever casts it.
• You cast Ephemerate in response to their Swords to Plowshares. Ephemerate resolves first: your Captain leaves and comes back, and Swords to Plowshares has no target.
• Their Oblivion Ring exiles your Captain. You may bring it home at once, and the Ring holds nothing. Your next cast from the Seat is one step up.
• Their Swords to Plowshares exiles your Captain. You gain the life, you bring your Captain home, and it costs {2} more next time.
• A Wrath of God kills your Captain. It dies. Your Zulaport Cutthroat and their Blood Artist both trigger, and your Captain is in the Seat before anyone can respond.
• Their Rest in Peace is out when your Captain would die. It's exiled instead, so it didn't die and nothing triggers on its death. You bring it home from exile.
• You control Tormod, the Desecrator. When your Captain leaves your graveyard for the Seat, a card has left your graveyard, so Tormod triggers.
• Their Hostage Taker exiles your Captain. You bring it home right away, and Hostage Taker's permission to cast it finds nothing.
• A wheel or a tuck. A wheel makes players shuffle or discard their hands and draw new ones; a tuck puts a permanent into its owner's library. When your Captain would be shuffled into your library or put into your hand, you may put it in the Seat instead, or let it go where the card says. If it goes to your hand, casting it from there isn't a cast from the Seat, so that cast has no tax.
• They steal your Captain with Act of Treason. They control it until the effect ends or it leaves the battlefield, but it's still your card. Whichever zone it heads to next, the Seat is your choice to make.
• You sacrifice your Captain to pay a cost. You can. It dies, triggers fire, and it comes home.

In one sentence: it's Commander's rule, with the Seat for the command zone.

Only the card you registered as your Captain is your Captain.

• A copy isn't your Captain. A token copy of it (from Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, say) or another creature that becomes a copy of it (Clone, Spark Double) is just a creature. It can't go to the Seat, it doesn't count for the tax, it can't rally, and it dies like anything else.
• The legend rule still applies. If you control your Captain and a copy with the same name, you choose one to keep and the other goes to the graveyard. If that's your Captain, you may move it to the Seat.
• A copy of the spell (your Captain copied while it's on the stack) becomes a token when it resolves, and that token isn't your Captain either.
• Melding and mutating. If your Captain melds with another card, or another creature mutates onto it, the whole permanent is your Captain while it's on the battlefield. When it leaves, only your Captain's own card can go to the Seat; the other cards go where they're headed.
• If an opponent takes control of your Captain, it's still your Captain. When it leaves the battlefield, you're the one who chooses whether it goes to the Seat. Only the player who controls it can rally it, and the Rally is yours, so a stolen Captain doesn't rally for anyone.

How it works. Each player shuffles and draws seven. Then, starting with the player who will take the first turn, each player says "keep" or "fresh". A player who says fresh shuffles those seven cards back into their library and draws seven new ones, face down until everyone has decided. There's no second fresh, nothing goes to the bottom, and you don't get to look at the new seven before you decide, because you decide before you draw it. A hand you ship is never shown to anyone.

That's the whole rule. It's blind on purpose: a player whose seven has no game in it gets a real second chance, and a player who throws back a workable hand to go looking for one card is taking a real risk.

The Fresh Seven isn't a mulligan. Captain has no mulligan at all, so a card that works "any time you could mulligan", like Serum Powder, never gets its moment. Cards that do something with your opening hand without needing a mulligan (a Leyline, Gemstone Caverns, Chancellor of the Annex) work as printed, once both players have said keep or fresh.

The numbers, on your real library. Your Captain starts in the Seat, so a forty card deck has a thirty nine card library, exactly like Commander with its command zone, only smaller. With seventeen lands, all of them in those thirty nine:

• About 11.25% of sevens have 0, 1, or 6 or more lands, the hands that tend to be no game at all.
• With one blind redraw and a hard stop, a player ends up stuck with such a hand (both sevens that way) about 1.27% of the time.
• About 2.52% of games see either player stuck like that.
• One named card is in a given seven about 17.9% of the time. Spending your Fresh Seven to find it raises that to about 32.7%, and it risks a hand with no game in it about 1 time in 9 with nothing behind it.

Why seventeen lands. You get one redraw and nothing after it, so the land count does a lot of the work. Seventeen of forty keeps the hands with too few or too many lands rare, and it's where the numbers above come from. It's a starting point, not a rule: lower curves can go lower.

Game one: decide at random (flip a coin, roll a die). The winner chooses who takes the first turn.

Later games in the match: the player who lost the game before chooses. If the game before was a draw, the player who chose last time chooses again.

The first turn: as in all of Magic, the player who takes the first turn skips the draw on that turn.

The Navigator's Choice: the other player, the one who didn't take the first turn, scries 1 at the beginning of their first upkeep. It's a triggered ability the format gives that player, so it uses the stack like any upkeep trigger. The skipped draw pays the second player in cards, the scry pays them in quality, and in the founders' testing the two seats came out within a fraction of a point of even.

Once per game, at the beginning of combat on your turn, if you control your Captain, you may rally it: your Captain gets +2/+2 until end of turn.

• The Rally is a triggered ability the format gives your Captain, not one printed on the card. When combat begins on your turn, you say whether you rally. It uses the stack like any beginning of combat trigger, so your opponent can respond to it.
• It costs nothing, and it isn't an attack. You can rally and then not attack at all.
• You get one Rally per game. Once you've said you rally, it's used, even if it's countered or your Captain leaves the battlefield in response.
• A Captain that leaves the battlefield and comes back doesn't get a second Rally that game.
• The bonus lasts until the cleanup step. It isn't a counter, and it's gone if your Captain is blinked.
• A copy of your Captain can't rally, and a Captain an opponent has stolen can't be rallied by either of you.

The Rally is the one combat trick that belongs to Captain alone. It was taken out in August 2026 and brought back on September 21, 2026 (see "How the rules got here").

Companion does nothing in Captain. There's no place outside the game to bring a companion from, the ten card sideboard is a sideboard and not a companion slot, and an eleventh card riding along would be a free Game Changer.

So a companion card is an ordinary card, and its companion ability does nothing. A legendary companion can be your Captain like any other legendary creature, with no deckbuilding condition. Lurrus of the Dream-Den in the Seat, for example, puts no limit on your other cards' mana values. (Lurrus is a Game Changer, so in Comp it takes one of your three slots, in the Seat or the thirty nine.)

The Seat holds one card. Partner, partner with, choose a background, friends forever, doctor's companion, and every two leader ability yet to be printed do nothing in Captain. A card with one of them is an ordinary card.

Any single legendary creature with such an ability can be your Captain on its own (Thrasios, Triton Hero, say), but never with a second card beside it. A background can go in your thirty nine as an ordinary enchantment, inside your identity.

Why: two Captains would double the guaranteed card under a single tax, and the pairings that ran away with one versus one games in the past were almost all partner pairs. One leader, one identity is the heart of the format.

There's no outside the game in Captain. An effect that would bring you a card from outside the game does nothing, and the ten card sideboard is only a sideboard: cards you swap in between games, never a second library to fetch from during one.

• Burning Wish resolves, and you get nothing from outside the game.
• Karn, the Great Creator's minus ability can still find an artifact card you own in exile. The part that looks outside the game finds nothing.
• Learn can't fetch a Lesson from outside the game. You can still discard a card to draw a card.

Captain isn't Commander, but its Seat works the same way, so cards written for Commander read naturally:

• "Your commander" means your Captain, and "the command zone" means the Seat. Command Tower and Arcane Signet make mana of your Captain's colors. Lieutenant abilities turn on while you control your Captain. Eminence works while your Captain is in the Seat or on the battlefield.
• Only casting takes your Captain out of the Seat. A card that would move your commander out of the command zone some other way (Command Beacon, Netherborn Altar, Hellkite Courser, commander ninjutsu) can't move your Captain out of the Seat, and a card that pays a commander's tax some other way (Liesa, Shroud of Dusk) doesn't replace the Seat tax. See "The Seat".
• The commander cost class is banned in Comp. These are cards you can cast without paying their mana cost because you control a commander, like Fierce Guardianship and Deflecting Swat. With a Captain on the battlefield in almost every game they would be free, so they're on the banned list (see "The banned list").

There's no commander damage. Combat damage from your Captain is ordinary damage. Nobody loses the game for taking 21 damage from one Captain; life totals start at twenty, and that's what decides it.

Forty cards, your Captain included. Your Captain is one of the forty, not an extra card. It starts in the Seat, so your library starts at thirty nine.

One of each card. Your forty plus a ten-card sideboard hold one copy of each card between them, counted by name. The exceptions:

• Basic lands, including snow basics and Wastes: as many as you like.
• A card whose own text says a deck can have any number of it, like Relentless Rats: as many as you like.
• A card whose text gives its own limit, like Seven Dwarves ("up to seven"): up to that number.

Counting the forty and the sideboard together keeps it simple: the sideboard never holds a second copy of anything in the forty.

Color identity. Every card has to fit inside your Captain's color identity. A card's identity is every color in its mana cost and in every mana symbol in its rules text, on both faces, plus any color indicator and the color of any basic land type. Reminder text doesn't count. The site uses Scryfall's color identity for every card, exactly as Scryfall gives it.

• Hybrid mana counts every color it shows. Kitchen Finks costs {1}{G/W}{G/W}, so it needs both green and white in your Captain's identity, even though you could pay for it with either.
• Phyrexian mana counts its color. Dismember costs {1}{B/P}{B/P}, so it's a black card, even though you can pay life instead.
• Lands have identity too, and basic land types count. A Plains is white, and Temple Garden (a Forest Plains) is green and white.
• A card's identity can be wider than its mana cost. A creature with a white mana cost and an ability that costs {B} is a white and black card.
• Identity only decides what goes in the deck. During a game, cards make whatever mana they make.

Colorless Captains. A Captain with no colors in its identity, like Kozilek, Butcher of Truth or Traxos, Scourge of Kroog, can only lead colorless cards: artifacts and other spells with no colored mana symbols anywhere (so Sol Ring and Mind Stone, but not a Talisman, which shows two colors of mana), Wastes, and lands whose rules text shows no colored mana.

Your Captain is a legendary creature, read from the front face of the card:

• A double faced card whose front face is a legendary creature can be your Captain: Esika, God of the Tree, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. You can cast either face from the Seat.
• A planeswalker can't, even one that says it can be your commander (Teferi, Temporal Archmage) or one that's a creature everywhere but the battlefield (Grist, the Hunger Tide). The Seat reads the card's printed type line.
• A Vehicle or other legendary artifact that isn't a creature can't, and neither can a background.
• A melded card (Brisela, Voice of Nightmares) is never a card in a deck, so it can't either.

Seventeen lands is the baseline. It isn't a rule; it's what one Fresh Seven and nothing after it mean in practice. See "The opening hand".

A match is played to two game wins. You bring your forty and a sideboard of up to ten.

Between games you may swap cards between your forty and your ten, one for one, as many as you like. Nothing forces a change, and your forty stays forty.

Your Captain is locked for the match. You can't change Captains between games of a match. You can seat a different legendary creature only between matches, and that's a new registration: the forty and the sideboard, your new Captain included, checked again from the start.

Every Captain deck is in one of two tiers, and permissions widen as the tier rises:

Comp or Cracked comes from the cards. A deck's tier is the lowest tier it fits, never a choice: a deck with four Game Changers is Cracked whether its owner meant it or not, and the site names every card that decided it. Cracked isn't a failure: plenty of people build for it on purpose. Anything in the card pool goes, and proxies are expected.

A Game Changer limit your table agreed on. A table that wants fewer Game Changers agrees on a limit from zero to three before playing, and plays Comp. A teaching table, a precon night or a kitchen table might agree on zero. The limit is an agreement between players, not a tier: a Comp deck with two Game Changers is still Comp, it just doesn't fit a table that agreed on one. The site's deck checker has a setting for it.

A Comp deck is registered once, as a whole. The forty, the sideboard and the Captain are checked when you register, in the order under "Registering a deck", and nothing is checked again during play.

Game Changers are the cards Captain limits rather than bans. There are 136. Each is legal in Comp, but a Comp deck holds at most three of them, counted across the forty and the sideboard together, your Captain included. Cracked has no cap.

A card on the fence is priced, not watched: the format starts strict and loosens when games show a card is fine. A slot is the price you pay, and the banned list is kept for cards that are unanswerable at twenty life or get around the Seat tax by design. The Card Watch is the exception, for the few cards that can't be judged yet (see "The watch lists").

Captain's Game Changer list is its own, not Commander's. Sol Ring, Demonic Tutor and Force of Will are on it, and so are six extra turn spells: Alrund's Epiphany, Capture of Jingzhou, Nexus of Fate, Temporal Manipulation, Temporal Mastery and Time Warp.

Twenty cards are banned in Comp: fifteen by name, and the five cards of the commander cost class. A banned card isn't legal anywhere in a Comp deck or its sideboard, your Captain included. Every one of them is legal in Cracked.

The banned list is short on purpose. A card is banned only when it's unanswerable at twenty life or gets around the Seat tax by design. Anything else that's merely powerful is a Game Changer instead, where a slot is the price.

Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis is on the banned list rather than Banned as Captain because Duel Commander banned it from the deck itself, not only as a commander. Godo, Bandit Warlord is on the banned list too.

The commander cost class. Any card that can be cast without paying its mana cost because you control a commander is banned in Comp. Free interaction is only free because the Seat guarantees you a commander, so the rule covers the whole category rather than naming cards one at a time. Today it's five cards: Deadly Rollick, Deflecting Swat, Fierce Guardianship, Flawless Maneuver and Obscuring Haze. When a new set brings another, it's announced and added in the open, never quietly.

Nine legendary creatures can't be your Captain in Comp. Each is still legal in your thirty nine, where it also counts as a Game Changer, and all nine are legal anywhere in Cracked.

Each one is a documented commander ban in a twenty life one versus one format, or half of a compact two card combo that the Seat would hand you every single game. Ninjutsu, eminence, untap tricks and a free body get around the Seat tax; Kinnan, Urza, Emry and Magda are sure combo halves only when they're seated. Drawn from a thirty nine card library they're ordinary combo pieces, which is why they stay legal there, priced as Game Changers so they can't be stacked with a full set of tutors.

Because your Captain is locked for the match, a ban that covers only the Seat costs nothing to check.

Two lists name cards the founders are keeping an eye on. Watched means named, dated and fully legal. A watch list isn't a restriction, and a watched card stays fully legal until games say otherwise.

• The Leader Watch names 27 Captains (two of them, Lurrus of the Dream-Den and Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, are also Game Changers). Each is fully legal as a Captain, and watched. If one needs to move, it moves to Banned as Captain.
• The Card Watch names 17 cards: the few that can't be judged yet. They're fully legal and not Game Changers while their games are watched. If one needs to move, it becomes a Game Changer first, and goes to the banned list only if it proves unanswerable.

What moves a card. A watched Captain in roughly one in ten registered Seats, or winning fifty five percent of its matches across a season of organized play, moves to Banned as Captain. A watched card in an outsized share of top finishes is priced as a Game Changer first. Every change comes with a comment period and the reasons published, disagreements included.

Some cards on the watch lists, and why:

• Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is a Game Changer, and stays on the Leader Watch until Captain's own games show how it plays as a Captain.
• Lurrus of the Dream-Den is a Game Changer on the Leader Watch: a three mana Captain that recasts cheap permanents from your graveyard every turn is worth watching as well as pricing. In Comp it takes one of your three slots, in the Seat or the thirty nine.
• Dockside Extortionist, Hullbreacher, Smothering Tithe, Rhystic Study, Mystic Remora and Esper Sentinel count opponents, so they have less to count with one. They're never banned in advance; they're watched, unpriced, until Captain's own tables show what they do.
• Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes and Shorikai, Genesis Engine can't be Captains (one is a planeswalker, the other a Vehicle), so they're watched where they can be played, in the thirty nine.

The extra turn watch. Every newly printed instant or sorcery that grants an extra turn joins the Card Watch when its set comes out. Making one a Game Changer takes a name and a reason, like any other move. None has been printed since the rule started on September 2, 2026.

Reserved List cards aren't legal in Comp. The ones in the card pool are legal in Cracked, where proxies are expected; a few, like Chaos Orb and Jihad, are outside the card pool and legal in neither tier.

This is an availability rule, never a power rule. A card that can never be reprinted can only get more expensive, so a format that needed one would come down to who paid. Keeping them out of Comp means price is never what stands between a player and a competitive deck. The list is Scryfall's, 571 cards.

Captain is paper Magic as Vintage defines it: every card Scryfall marks legal or restricted in Vintage is in the card pool, in both tiers. That leaves out ante cards, dexterity cards like Chaos Orb and Falling Star, Conspiracy's draft cards, Shahrazad, and the cards Wizards removed for offensive depictions. Those are legal in neither tier.

Cards from a set in preview season become legal when their set releases, the same way the site handles every format.

A deck is registered as the forty, your Captain included, plus a ten-card sideboard. It's checked once, in this order, and every problem is explained line by line, never quietly fixed:

1. Exactly forty cards counting your Captain, and a sideboard of no more than ten.
2. One of each card across the forty and the sideboard, except basic lands and cards whose own text allows more.
3. Every card inside your Captain's color identity, both faces.
4. Your Captain is a legendary creature (any creature in Captain Limited).
5. Your Captain isn't on Banned as Captain.
6. Nothing in the forty or the sideboard, your Captain included, is on the banned list or the Reserved List, and everything is in the card pool.
7. At most three Game Changers across the forty and the sideboard, or fewer if your table agreed on fewer.

Steps 1 to 4 have to pass in every tier, and so does the card pool part of step 6: a card outside the card pool is legal in neither tier. The rest of steps 5 to 7 decide Comp or Cracked.

Captain is a one versus one format. Fleet Night is how a group plays it in one room: a bracket of one versus one matches, not a four player pod.

Decks are any Comp deck with its sideboard. A fleet may agree on a lower Game Changer limit, from zero to three, before the first match.

Captain works in draft and sealed too. In Captain Limited, any creature in your pool may be your Captain, legendary or not.

Everything else plays as written: forty cards including your Captain, one of each card (basic lands unlimited, as always), color identity, the Seat and its tax, the Fresh Seven, the Navigator's Choice and the Rally. A pool deck is Comp or Cracked by its cards, the same as any other deck.

As in any draft or sealed event, the rest of your pool is your sideboard, whatever its size, rather than a ten card sideboard, and basic lands come from outside your pool.

A Captain draft opens with the Admiral Phase. Before the main draft, the table drafts only legendary creatures that can take the Seat, so each player leaves it with a stable of possible Captains: eight to twelve each, ten unless the table picks another number. Everyone then has lanes to draft toward when the main draft starts.

Each way of drafting runs it its own way:

• Booster draft: the first round, or rounds, are packs of legends only, sized so each player ends with the agreed number.
• Rotisserie, snake and Rochester: the first picks come only from the cube's legendary creatures.
• Grid: the first grids are built from legends only.
• Winston: the first piles come from a stack of legends only.
• Sealed: each player also opens a separate pool of legends, the agreed number of them.

The legends the Admiral Phase doesn't deal stay in the cube, so legendary creatures still turn up in the main draft. In Comp, the Admiral Phase never deals a legend that can't lead in Comp: a banned card, a Reserved List card or one on Banned as Captain. After the draft you build as in Captain Limited, and any creature from your pool may lead, though most pools will hold a legend for it.

A cube for a Captain draft needs enough legends for the Admiral Phase: the number of players times the agreed number, in every color pair. The Cube Generator builds a Captain cube that way and says how many legends a night needs against how many the cube holds.

• Captain: your deck's leader, a legendary creature (any creature in Captain Limited) that starts the game in the Seat.
• The Seat: the place beside your library where your Captain starts each game. It works like Commander's command zone.
• The Seat tax: the {2} extra your Captain costs for each earlier cast from the Seat this game, always paid in mana.
• The forty: your deck, your Captain included.
• The thirty nine: your library at the start of a game: the forty without your Captain.
• The ten: your sideboard, up to ten cards.
• Fresh Seven: the one blind redraw of your opening hand.
• Navigator's Choice: the scry 1 the player who doesn't go first gets at their first upkeep.
• Rally: once per game, +2/+2 for your Captain at the beginning of combat on your turn.
• Comp: the tier with at most three Game Changers and no banned or Reserved List cards.
• Cracked: the tier where anything in the card pool goes.
• Game Changer: a card legal in Comp at no more than three per deck, the sideboard included.
• Game Changer limit your table agreed on: a limit from zero to three that a table agrees on before playing Comp.
• Banned list: twenty cards not legal in Comp, fifteen by name and the five of the commander cost class.
• Commander cost class: cards you can cast free because you control a commander; banned in Comp.
• Banned as Captain: nine legendary creatures that can't be your Captain in Comp but can be in your thirty nine.
• Leader Watch: Captains that are fully legal and being watched.
• Card Watch: the few cards that can't be judged yet: fully legal, not Game Changers, and being watched.
• Reserved List: cards Wizards has promised never to reprint; not legal in Comp.
• Card pool: every card legal or restricted in Vintage.
• Color identity: every color in a card's mana cost, rules text, color indicator and basic land types, both faces.
• Blink: exiling a permanent and returning it to the battlefield.
• Wheel: a card that makes players shuffle or discard their hands and draw new ones.
• Tuck: putting a permanent into its owner's library.
• Registration: checking your forty, your sideboard and your Captain against the rules, once, before play.
• Fleet Night: a group night of one versus one Captain matches.
• Captain Limited: Captain in draft or sealed, where any creature can take the Seat.
• Admiral Phase: the opening part of a Captain draft, which deals only legendary creatures that can take the Seat, eight to twelve to each player.

Is Captain just Commander with forty cards?

It's a close relative. The Seat works like the command zone and the deck is singleton inside your leader's colors. But Captain is one versus one at twenty life, your Captain has to be a legendary creature, there's no commander damage, you get one Fresh Seven instead of mulligans, the Rally and the Navigator's Choice are Captain's own, and a deck is Comp or Cracked by its own lists.

Do I have to cast my Captain?

No. It can stay in the Seat all game.

What happens if my Captain is countered?

It goes to your graveyard, and you may move it to the Seat. The cast still counted, so the next one costs {2} more.

Can I cast my Captain on my opponent's turn?

Only if it has flash or something gives it flash, the same as casting it from your hand.

Can I mulligan?

You get one Fresh Seven, blind, and that's all.

Does my opponent see the hand I shipped?

No. A shipped hand is never shown.

Can I change my Captain between games of a match?

No. Your Captain is locked for the match. Between matches you can register a new deck with a new Captain.

Can a planeswalker be my Captain?

No, not even one that says it can be your commander, and not Grist, the Hunger Tide either. Your Captain is a legendary creature, read from the card's printed type line.

Can Command Beacon or Hellkite Courser get my Captain out of the Seat?

No. Only casting takes your Captain out of the Seat, and the Seat tax is always paid in mana.

Can I cast the back face of my Captain from the Seat?

Yes. Either face of a double faced Captain can be cast from the Seat, and either cast counts for the tax.

Does Serum Powder work?

No. The Fresh Seven isn't a mulligan, and Captain has no mulligan for Serum Powder to work during.

Do Command Tower and Arcane Signet work?

Yes. Your Captain is your commander for any card that asks.

Is there commander damage?

No. Damage from your Captain is ordinary damage.

Does my sideboard count toward the three Game Changers?

Yes. The cap counts the forty and the ten together, your Captain included.

My deck came out Cracked. Did I do something wrong?

No. Plenty of people build for Cracked on purpose. The deck checker names the cards that made it Cracked, so you can swap them if you'd rather play Comp.

Can I play proxies?

Cracked expects them. For Comp, go by your table or your event.

How many lands?

Seventeen is the place to start. Lower curves can go lower.

Why only one opponent?

Captain was built for one versus one at twenty life, and its lists are judged that way. Fleet Night is how a group plays it together.

Captain was made by Chad and Stark over the late summer of 2026, and its rules changed as they played. Here's the record, in order.

• August 2026. The first match nights. The Captain's Rally was removed on the second match night, because both founders forgot it existed while they were relearning the game. Godo, Bandit Warlord was banned on August 14.
• September 1. Three tiers replaced the first two. Banned as Captain became its own list, since a Captain locked for a match is easy to check. Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis moved to the banned list, following Duel Commander. The Reserved List was refreshed from Scryfall. The original two tier format, where any creature could lead, was retired, and the legendary requirement has stayed ever since.
• September 2. Five amendments. The commander cost class was banned. Nothing can come from outside the game. New extra turn spells join the Card Watch. The Seat holds one card, so partners do nothing. The Blink Consent Clause let an owner allow their own blinks. Companions became ordinary cards, which retired the old Casual Only category, and Lurrus of the Dream-Den joined the Leader Watch. The two part return rule (the Captain touched the graveyard, then returned) was replaced by a single redirect to the Seat.
• September 3. The Curfew replaced the Blink Consent Clause: a Captain could visit exile only until the turn ended, and every other zone sent it straight to the Seat.
• September 4. Commander's zone rule replaced the Curfew. Stark asked why a Captain's death triggers couldn't fire, and the answer was one word, "instead": under the Curfew a Captain never reached the graveyard, so it never died. Commander had the same problem until 2020 and fixed it with this exact rule.
• September 21. The Fresh Seven replaced the original "no mulligans" rule; with no redraw at all, about one opening seven in nine had no game in it. The Navigator's Choice arrived. The Rally came back at +2/+2 once per game, judged the one combat trick that belongs to Captain alone. The Casual tier was repealed and two tiers remain: a table that wants fewer Game Changers agrees on a count. The Game Changer list grew from 71 to 136, and the Card Watch was rebuilt.
• September 27. mtgstuff.com became the home of Captain, and this site edition was written from the founders' notes, with the judgement calls below.

Rules that have been retired: the Curfew; the two part return rule; the original two tier format; the Casual Only category and companions as Casual Only; "no mulligans"; the Casual tier; a rule that stopped a loop after three repetitions (combo is handled by the lists instead); and the Field Promotion clause, which lives on as Captain Limited.

Judgement calls, September 27, 2026. Where the founders' notes disagreed with each other, or said nothing, the site decided. Each call:

1. The banned list is twenty cards: fifteen by name plus the five of the commander cost class. (One note said eighteen.)
2. There are two tiers, Comp and Cracked. Older mentions of a Casual tier are gone; a table that wants fewer Game Changers agrees on a count from zero to three and plays Comp. At Fleet Night, a fleet may agree on a lower count before the first match.
3. Godo, Bandit Warlord is on the banned list, as the lists say. (One note put it on Banned as Captain.)
4. Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes and Shorikai, Genesis Engine moved from the Leader Watch to the Card Watch. Neither can take the Seat, so they're watched in the thirty nine. The Leader Watch is 27.
5. Null Rod, Humility and Gilded Drake left the Card Watch. They're Reserved List cards, already out of Comp and legal in Cracked, so watching them did nothing. The Card Watch is 17.
6. The card pool is every card legal or restricted in Vintage, in both tiers. It had been a working reading; now it's the rule.
7. The opening hand numbers are worked out on the real library: thirty nine cards, since your Captain starts in the Seat. The founders' notes had used forty (about 12.2%, 1.5%, 2.9%, 17.5% and 31.9%); it's the same story with slightly different numbers.
8. In draft and sealed, any creature in your pool may be your Captain: Captain Limited. The founders' notes had filed this under a season mode that isn't part of these rules, so it stands here on its own.
9. The Seat tax is written once, under "The Seat".
10. Color identity is explained with examples rather than a count of cards whose identity is wider than their mana cost, since that count depends on the card pool.
11. The Fresh Seven is recorded as replacing "no mulligans", without the cross reference to an earlier amendment that one note got wrong.
12. Who goes first: random in game one and the winner chooses; after that the player who lost the game before chooses. The founders' notes didn't say.
13. Casting your Captain from the Seat follows normal timing: main phase with an empty stack unless it has flash. You still pay the tax when an effect lets you cast it without paying its mana cost.
14. "Your commander" in card text means your Captain, and "the command zone" means the Seat, since the Seat follows Commander's zone rule and the lists were written that way (the commander cost class is banned because those cards would be free). There's no commander damage.
15. Color identity only decides which cards go in a deck; during a game, cards make whatever mana they make.
16. A copy or token of your Captain isn't your Captain. Only the player who controls your Captain can rally it, and only its owner, so a stolen Captain doesn't rally.
17. One of each card is counted across the forty and the sideboard together.
18. The Navigator's Choice is described without a win rate: one note gave the number for the wrong seat, and the founders' conclusion (the seats come out even) is what matters.
19. Captain Limited keeps every other rule, singleton and color identity included, and a pool deck's tier comes from its cards like any other deck's.
20. The Seat reads the card's printed type line, front face. Grist, the Hunger Tide is a planeswalker card, so it can't be a Captain even though it's a creature everywhere but the battlefield.
21. Only casting moves your Captain out of the Seat, and the Seat tax is always paid in mana. That closes the ways around the tax by rule, the way partners were closed, so there's no list to keep current: Command Beacon and Netherborn Altar can't put your Captain into your hand from the Seat, Hellkite Courser can't put it onto the battlefield, commander ninjutsu can't move it, and Liesa, Shroud of Dusk's life payment doesn't replace the tax. Everything else that mentions your commander or the command zone still works. This revises call 14, which had said commander ninjutsu works from the Seat. Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow and Derevi, Empyrial Tactician stay on Banned as Captain as listed.
22. The Fresh Seven isn't a mulligan, so Serum Powder and other cards that work "any time you could mulligan" never get their moment. Opening hand cards that don't need a mulligan work as printed once both players have decided.
23. The Rally is a triggered ability the format gives your Captain: you say whether you rally when your beginning of combat starts, and once you've said it, it's used, even if it's countered or your Captain leaves in response. The Navigator's Choice is a triggered ability at the beginning of that player's first upkeep, and it uses the stack.
24. Either face of a double faced Captain can be cast from the Seat, and either cast counts for the tax. A melded or mutated Captain is your Captain as a whole while it's on the battlefield; when it leaves, only your Captain's own card can go to the Seat.
25. In Captain Limited, the rest of your pool is your sideboard, as in any draft or sealed event, and basic lands come from outside the pool.
26. Wording: the Card Watch is described as the few cards that can't be judged yet, with "a card on the fence is priced, not watched" kept as the general rule; Lurrus of the Dream-Den and Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer are named as Game Changers wherever the Leader Watch mentions them; the multiplayer cards "count opponents, so they have less to count with one"; color identity mentions color indicators and basic land types everywhere; wheels and tucks are explained; Cracked "isn't a failure: plenty of people build for it on purpose"; and the land baseline is simply seventeen.
27. In Super Search, banned:captain finds the twenty banned cards (by name and by class); the cards not legal in Comp for any reason (banned or Reserved List) have their own search, captain:notcomp.
28. A melded card (Brisela, Voice of Nightmares and the rest) isn't a card you put in a deck, and its card page says so instead of calling it legal. A card from an upcoming set says it's legal when its set releases.

Captain was created by Chad and Stark. mtgstuff.com is its home: always free, with nothing to sign up for.