How to Run a Commander Tournament (Casual and cEDH)

A Commander tournament splits players into pods of 3 to 5 (usually 4), plays timed rounds, and scores each pod either by finishing position or by win and draw. Everyone is ranked by total points, and some events finish with a top cut to a final pod.

This guide is for the person running it: a store organizer, a club, or a playgroup host. Commander doesn't fit the 1v1 Swiss habits most organizers already have, so we go through each decision you'll face and give a default for every one, from pod sizes and round length to scoring, seat order and the cut.

Last updated: October 10, 2026.

Want the pods and points done for you? Our Commander tournament app builds the pods and keeps the standings. It's free for up to 8 players.

How Commander tournaments work (the 60-second version)

• Each round, players sit in pods of 3 to 5 and play one multiplayer game.

• Casual events usually score by finishing position. Competitive (cEDH) events score 5 for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loss.

• A round lasts 60 to 80 minutes. The event's end-of-round rule decides what happens at time.

• Standings rank players by total points, with a tiebreaker for players on the same total.

• Some events add a top cut: the leaders play one last pod for first place.

If you've run a normal Magic event, here's what changes:

The pairing logic borrows from Swiss. We explain the 1v1 version step by step in our guide to how Swiss pairings work.

Casual or competitive: decide first

Pick one per event and put it in the announcement. A tuned deck at a casual table is the most common complaint about Commander events, and an event that tries to be both usually ends up there.

Casual covers most store nights and home events. Typical choices:

• Placement points (4/3/2/1) or win points, sometimes with small bonuses

• Random pods, optionally grouped by Commander Bracket

• Relaxed end of round

• Prizes for showing up, not just for winning

Competitive (cEDH) events follow the conventions of organized cEDH events:

• 5/1/0 scoring

• Later rounds paired by points

• Assigned seat order

• A strict end-of-round procedure

• A top cut

Some players don't think Commander should be a tournament at all: it's a social format, and cutthroat play for prizes can wreck that. We think the fix is honest labeling. Call the casual night casual, keep its prizes small and its rules relaxed, and players who want a cutthroat game know where to find one.

Pod sizes for any player count

Four is the default. Wizards' store guidance calls 4 the sweet spot and pods of 3 to 5 workable (WPN, November 2025). Fill as many 4-player pods as you can, then put the leftovers into 3-player pods or 5-player pods. That choice is yours.

Six, 7 and 11 players can't avoid a 3-pod without a 6-player table, so both columns match there.

3-pods, 5-pods or byes?

• 3-player pods finish fast, but a win comes cheaper, with only two opponents to beat. Some organizers score a 3-pod win the same as a 4-pod win anyway. Others give 3-pod players a small bonus. Pick a house rule and announce it.

• 5-player pods keep everyone at a full table but run long. Expect them to hit time more often, so they suit casual nights better than strict cEDH rounds.

• Byes leave someone sitting out a whole round. Some cEDH events use them to keep every pod at 4, and score a bye as a win.

Grouping pods by power level (Commander Brackets)

Wizards' Commander Brackets rate decks from 1 (Exhibition) to 5 (cEDH). They're still labeled beta as of the February 2026 update, and Wizards describes them as a tool for the pregame conversation, not a hard rule. WPN suggests stores use them to group pods.

In practice: ask each player for their deck's Bracket at sign-up, then build pods from players in the same or neighboring Brackets. If your Bracket 4 players don't fill a pod, put them with the 3s rather than with the 1s and 2s.

How many rounds fit in a Commander night?

Time sets the round count, not player count. Add 10 minutes of turnaround to each round (reporting, re-pairing, finding seats) and divide your evening.

Most store Commander nights fit two rounds. A 2014 Star City Games article on Commander FNM said the same, and the arithmetic hasn't changed.

Commander tournament points: casual vs cEDH scoring

Placement scoring means nobody leaves with zero, and being the last player knocked out still earns something. The 5/1/0 system pays only for the win. It's the standard for cEDH outside Japan, per EDHREC's 2025 cEDH state of the format, and the cEDH events we looked at that give byes score them as a win.

A quick example. Twelve players, three rounds of casual 4/3/2/1. Top of the standings after round 3:

Sam and Priya tie on 11, so the tiebreaker decides who's first. A common choice is opponents' average points per game: the player whose pod-mates scored more had the harder road.

Bonus points (optional)

Bonuses keep casual nights fun. A short sheet might look like this:

• +1 for the first player to deal combat damage

• +1 for each opponent you eliminate

• +1 for winning with this week's theme (a creature type, a set)

• +1 for showing up

• +1 for the player your pod votes most fun to play against

Keep the sheet to one page. Every bonus is something players will chase, and long lists slow games down and get gamed. For a season of Commander events, our MTG league guide covers carrying points from week to week.

Why draws matter more in 5/1/0

Under 5/1/0, a draw is worth a fifth of a win, which makes it much better than a loss. At a table where nobody can win in time, all four players have a reason to accept a draw. That's legitimate, but it changes play near the end of a round. The European cEDH ruleset requires an intentional draw to be unanimous, and for a match draw that includes players already knocked out of the game.

Commander tournament rules to announce before round 1

Write these down and read them out before round 1. Arguments at the end of a round almost always come from a rule nobody stated.

1. End of round. Pick one: finish the current turn and then draw; a fixed number of extra turns; or a short extension (cEDH uses 15 minutes) and then a draw. Don't change it mid-event.

2. Draws and intentional draws. Who has to agree, and what a draw scores.

3. Concessions and kingmaking. Can players concede? Can they hand a win to someone? Many casual events ban conceding to a specific player.

4. Deck rules. Bracket or power level, proxies allowed or not, precon-only or budget caps. Some stores set a total deck budget and a per-card price cap.

5. Banned list. The official Commander banned list, plus any house bans.

6. Tiebreakers. cEDH events often use OMW%. We explain it with examples in OMW% and other tiebreakers. For a casual night, opponents' average points or simply total wins works fine.

7. Prizes. Participation packs, a pack for each pod win, store credit. Big prizes pull tuned decks into casual events, so size them to the event you want.

If it's a home event, the same list applies, just with fewer formalities. Our guide to hosting a Magic tournament at home covers the rest of the setup.

Seat order and who goes first

Casual: roll a die, highest roll goes first, play passes clockwise.

cEDH: seats are assigned at random before the game, and seat 1 goes first. The European cEDH ruleset uses random seating in Swiss rounds and seats by standings in the top cut.

An EDHREC article from March 2026 puts cEDH win rates at about 35–40% for seat 1, 25–30% for seat 2, about 20% for seat 3 and 10–15% for seat 4. The article doesn't name its data source.

Over a three- or four-round event, check that nobody gets seat 4 twice in a row. If someone does, swap them with the seat-1 player in the next round.

Pairing later rounds and cutting to a final pod

• Round 1 is random.

• Later rounds: random at casual events, by points at competitive ones. Pairing by points means the leaders play each other at table 1, then the next group, and so on.

• Avoid repeat pod-mates where you can. Past round 3 in a small event you'll run out of fresh combinations, so accept some repeats.

Running a top cut by hand

A top cut takes the leaders after the Swiss rounds and plays them off. For a small event, the simplest cut is top 4 into one final pod:

1. Finish the last Swiss round and settle the standings, tiebreakers included.

2. Seat the top 4 by standings: 1st seed in seat 1, 4th seed in seat 4.

3. Play one game. The winner takes the event.

A final-pod game needs a result. The European cEDH ruleset restarts a drawn single-elimination game with the same pod, and if the match still ends in a draw, the highest Swiss seed wins. For a casual final, "highest seed wins at time" is easier to explain.

Bigger cEDH events cut to 16, play four semifinal pods and send the four winners to a final pod. To spread the seeds, snake them: pod A gets seeds 1, 8, 9 and 16; pod B 2, 7, 10 and 15; pod C 3, 6, 11 and 14; pod D 4, 5, 12 and 13.

How big a cut to run depends on attendance. As a rough guide, 12–16 players fit 3 rounds and a top 4, and much larger events add rounds and cut to 16. Below about 12 players, skip the cut and let the standings decide.

cEDH tournaments: what changes

A cEDH tournament uses the same building blocks with less slack:

• 5/1/0 scoring

• Rounds of 75–80 minutes plus 15–20 minutes to finish the turn, then a draw

• Assigned seats, seat 1 first

• OMW% as the tiebreaker

• Top 16, then semifinal pods, then a final pod at larger events

• Decklists usually required before round 1, and proxies often allowed. Check each event's page.

cEDH tournament rules

Most European cEDH events, and many elsewhere, use the European cEDH Multiplayer Addendum to the Magic Tournament Rules. In short: 75-minute Swiss rounds with a hard 15-minute limit on the last turn, then a draw, with no extra turns. Intentional draws need everyone still in the game to agree. Swiss seating is random, and the top cut is seated by standings. Read the full addendum before you use it. It's short.

Large cEDH events with real prize money usually run on dedicated tournament platforms. The structure in this guide is aimed at local events.

Running pods with EventLink "Player List Only"

Wizards tells stores to schedule Commander events in EventLink as Casual, Player List Only. That records who attended, with no pairings and no results (WPN, November 2025). Official kits like Commander Party work the same way. EventLink takes care of attendance, and you still have to build pods, track points and keep standings yourself, on paper, in a spreadsheet or with a third-party tool.

Running your Commander tournament in MTGevent

We built Commander support into MTGevent because the pods-and-points part was the part we kept doing by hand. Here's what our Commander tournament app does:

• It builds pods of 3 to 5, filling 4-player pods first and putting leftovers into 3s by default, or 5s if you prefer. The lobby shows the split before you start ("10 players → 3 pods: 4, 3, 3").

• It pairs at random or by points, avoiding repeat pod-mates where it can, with random seats and optional grouping by Bracket.

• Scoring presets are Casual 4/3/2/1, cEDH 5/1/0 or Custom, plus your own house-rule bonuses.

• A round timer records unfinished pods as draws at time.

• Players get a read-only view with their own pod first and live standings, sorted by points, then opponents' average points per game, then wins.

You enter each pod's result. Players can't report their own pod results yet, and there's no built-in top cut, so take your final pod from the standings by hand as described above. It's free for up to 8 players. Above that it's 1 credit per extra player, or unlimited with Pro.

Commander tournament FAQ

How do MTG Commander tournaments work?

Players sit in pods of 3 to 5, usually 4, and play one multiplayer game per round. Each pod is scored by finishing position (4/3/2/1 in casual events) or by result (5 win, 1 draw, 0 loss in cEDH). After a set number of rounds, players are ranked by total points, and some events finish with a top cut to a final pod.

How do you host a Commander tournament?

1. Decide whether it's casual or competitive and say so in the announcement.

2. Split players into pods of 4, putting leftovers into 3s or 5s.

3. Set a round length (60–80 minutes) and an end-of-round rule.

4. Pick a scoring system: 4/3/2/1, 5/1/0 or your own.

5. Announce the rules, tiebreaker and prizes before round 1.

How many players do you need for a Commander tournament?

At least 3 for a single pod, though 8 (two pods of 4) is the smallest count where standings start to mean something. A top cut makes sense from about 12 players.

What is the scoring for cEDH tournaments?

The standard is 5 points for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loss. EDHREC describes it as standard everywhere except Japan. Where an event gives byes, they're typically scored as a win.

What happens when time runs out in a Commander game?

That depends on the rule the organizer announced. Common options: the active player finishes the turn and the game is a draw; a set number of extra turns; or, at cEDH events, 15 to 20 more minutes to finish the turn and then a draw.

Who goes first in Commander?

At casual tables, players roll a die and play goes clockwise. At cEDH events, seats are assigned before the game and seat 1 goes first. Seat 1 wins noticeably more often, so rotate seats across rounds.

What is the 75% rule in MTG?

"75%" is casual shorthand for a Commander deck that's strong and focused but not fully optimized, a step below cEDH. It was always vague. Wizards' Commander Brackets (1 to 5) now give players a shared scale for the same pregame conversation.

Can you run a Commander tournament in EventLink?

You can schedule it there. Wizards' advice is to set Commander events to Casual, Player List Only, which records attendance but doesn't build pods or track results. Pods and points are up to the organizer.

Ready for your first pod night? Read how our Commander tournament app works, or create a free account and set up your event. It's free for up to 8 players.

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