Commander brackets explained
Updated 1 November 2026
"What power level is your deck?" used to be the hardest question in Commander, because everyone answered it differently. In 2025 Wizards of the Coast introduced brackets: five named levels with simple rules, so a table can agree what kind of game it wants before anyone shuffles.
The five brackets at a glance
| Bracket | Name | What a game feels like |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Exhibition | Theme first. Decks built around a joke, a story or a single creature type, where winning matters less than showing the deck off. |
| 2 | Core | About the strength of a typical preconstructed deck. Games are slow and interactive, and each deck does its thing. |
| 3 | Upgraded | Precons that have been tuned, with stronger cards and a clearer plan. A handful of very powerful cards are allowed. |
| 4 | Optimized | High power. Anything legal goes, and decks are built to win efficiently. |
| 5 | cEDH | Competitive Commander. The strongest possible decks, built and played to win as fast as possible. |
What each bracket allows
The brackets mostly describe intent, but they come with a few concrete limits:
| Bracket | Game Changers | Mass land denial | Extra turns | Two-card combos |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Exhibition | None | None | None | None |
| 2. Core | None | None | Few, not chained | None |
| 3. Upgraded | Up to 3 | None | Few, not chained | Late-game only |
| 4. Optimized | Any | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed |
| 5. cEDH | Any | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed |
Brewhall is a little stricter than this when it builds a deck: it puts at most one extra turn in brackets 2 and 3, and no two-card combos in bracket 3.
Wizards updates the rules and the Game Changers list from time to time. Their announcement has the full wording.
What are Game Changers?
Game Changers are a short list of individual cards that warp games around them. They're the cards that make a table groan when they hit the battlefield: cards like Rhystic Study, Smothering Tithe, Cyclonic Rift and Demonic Tutor. They're not banned, but brackets 1 and 2 can't include any, and bracket 3 can include up to three.
The list changes, so check the current version rather than memorising it. Searching is:gamechanger on Scryfall shows it. Brewhall reads the list live from Scryfall every time it builds a deck.
Mass land denial, extra turns and combos
Mass land denial
Cards that destroy or lock down many lands at once, such as Armageddon, Blood Moon or Winter Orb. They can stop a whole table from playing, so they're kept to brackets 4 and 5.
Extra turns
One extra turn is exciting. Taking turn after turn while three people watch isn't, so the lower brackets only allow a few and say they shouldn't be chained together.
Two-card combos
Two cards that win the game, or create an infinite loop, as soon as they're together. In bracket 3 they should only come together late in the game. Brewhall can't judge "late", so it leaves them out of bracket 3 entirely and checks every deck against Commander Spellbook.
The rules are the floor, not the whole picture
A deck can follow every bracket 2 rule and still play like a bracket 4 deck, if it's full of efficient removal, fast mana and tutors. The brackets ask you to be honest about intent too. A good habit is to describe your deck in a sentence before the game: "Bracket 3, a token deck that wins by attacking, one Game Changer." That conversation, often called Rule 0, does more for a good game than any list.
How brackets change the shape of a deck
Higher brackets don't just allow stronger cards. The whole deck changes: more ramp so you're ahead earlier, more removal and protection because opponents are doing more, and fewer slots for cards that are there purely for fun. In Brewhall, the bracket you pick sets that mix as well as the rules above. A bracket 1 deck leaves lots of room for flavour, while a bracket 5 deck is almost all ramp, interaction and win conditions.
Try it: build the same commander at bracket 2 and at bracket 4 on Brewhall and compare the lists. It's a quick way to see what the brackets mean in practice.