Magic: The Gathering – Commander Legends (2020)

Overview

This expansion for Magic: The Gathering is the first-ever draftable Commander experience!

In the Commander format, players have a legendary creature who serves as the deck's commander. That creature is set aside at the start of the game, and can be cast as if it were in your hand. Normally, this is done with a 100-card singleton constructed deck. However, Commander Legends gives it a new twist. When drafting Commander Legends, each player opens a 20-card booster pack, selects two cards from it, and then passes the pack to the player sitting next to them. They then pick two more cards from the pack they've been handed, and so on, going around the table until all cards are picked. This is repeated with a second booster pack, and again with a third, until everyone has picked a total of 60 cards. Players then choose a commander (or a pair of commanders that both have the Partner ability) from among the cards they drafted, add any number of basic lands, and build a 60-card deck. Then everyone shuffles up their decks and battles in a free-for-all! (A larger pod of drafters splits into two groups first.)

The set is sold in draft boosters and collector boosters, and contains 361 cards (141 commons, 120 uncommons, 77 rares, and 22 mythic rares, plus the Prismatic Piper, a special helper card who appears more frequently than a common), plus a selection of 32 legendary reprints from past sets who appear with an all-new foil-etched treatment in collector boosters and, on rare occasion, in draft boosters as well. Two preconstructed Commander decks, "Arm for Battle" and "Reap the Tides," were also released alongside the main set.