Rulebreaker in MTG: Rules, History, and Best Cards

Rules Lawyer | Illustration by Sean Murray

Mystery Booster Commander Edition is a set made to draft a Commander deck and play in a pod, which is quite a daunting mission. Not only do you need to draft legendary creatures, but also a good density of creatures and removal spells that match your commander’s color identity, besides mana fixing and the like.

In the past, mechanics like partner and background were designed to make this task a little more flexible, and now WotC designers have created rulebreaker, a new Commander mechanic. Instead of focusing on the game and how to interact with multiple players rather than just one, here we have ways to break the rigid deckbuilding aspects of EDH.

Let’s dive in and see how deep the existing rules for Commander decks will be broken, shall we?

How Does Rulebreaker Work?

Sleight of Hand | Illustration by Scott Murphy

As the name implies, the rulebreaker mechanic allows players to break one of the fundamental rules of the Commander format. We only know one card with rulebreaker so far, Tolabow, Loch Rascal, and it’s a mono-blue commander that lets you play instants and sorceries that are either blue, or another color you choose when deckbuilding.

We know there’s going to be eight total in Mystery Booster Commander Edition, with different rulebreaking traits. The sky’s the limit for which rules can be broken via rulebreaker, but at the same time, we don’t want anything wild that actually breaks the format.

Some playtest cards were made with rulebreaker in the past, and these are pretty similar to the actual black-bordered rulebreaker mechanic, but they're actually quite innocuous. For example, the rulebreaker mechanic on Arvad of the Weatherlight says that “you may include legendary permanents of any color in your deck regardless of color identity”. It’s basically a white and black commander that lets you be for legendary permanents.

The History of Rulebreaker in MTG

Rulebreaker was officially created as a mechanic in 2026 (not considering previous playtest cards) in Mystery Booster Commander Edition, present on eight cards total. Tolabow, Loch Rascal was the first spoiled card with the mechanic.

This is a very specific mechanic designed to help facilitate Commander Drafts, so I doubt we'll be seeing it much outside of similarly focused Commander products.

Are Rulebreaker Cards Legal in Commander?

Rulebreaker cards from Mystery Booster Commander Edition will be legal in Commander, and you can play them in the 99 of your EDH decks or design a deck around them to fully utilize the rulebreaker mechanic.

However, the existing rulebreaker playtest cards can’t be used in Commander decks unless your playgroup authorizes or allows you to play them in a pregame Rule 0 discussion.

How Many Rulebreaker Cards Will Mystery Booster Commander Edition Have?

There will be eight rulebreaker cards, and they were designed with help from the Commander Format Panel to ensure things stay stable in the format.

Does Rulebreaker Change Your Commander’s Color Identity?

No, rulebreaker doesn’t change your commander’s color identity.

Let’s look at Tolabow, Loch Rascal. It’s blue, and let’s say I choose black as a color to play instants and sorceries. This deck could run Doom Blade, Demonic Tutor, and Recoil, as well as Swamps and any other kind of basic land.

However, even with the addition of these black cards to your deck, your color identity remains mono-blue, so your Command Tower could not produce black mana, for example.

Gallery and List of Rulebreaker Cards

Mystery Booster Commander Edition Cards

• Tolabow, Loch Rascal

Playtest Cards

• Valko Indorian, Researcher
• Hadran, Naya Sunseeder
• Arvad of the Weatherlight
• Daxiver, Izzet Eletromancer

Best Rulebreaker Cards

Playtest Cards

Daxiver, Izzet Electromancer could have been an inspiration for Tolabow, Loch Rascal, and I think I prefer much more the prowess tokens Tolabow creates to the generic ramp from Daxiver, even though you can play all colors of instants and sorceries.

Arvad of the Weatherlight’s best trait is that you can sometimes cheat expensive legends from your hand into play, which offsets having legends with harsh color requirements.

Valko Indorian, Researcher can be cool, with an ability that considers artifacts and enchantments you own everywhere to be both types, which has a lot of different implications.

Tolabow, Loch Rascal

Tolabow, Loch Rascal is an interesting Monastery Mentor variant, and its rulebreaker ability lets you choose another color other than blue to play instants and sorceries of tht color.

Two things going on for this otter are that you can make a blue core and change the additional color as you see fit, and players are going to be guessing what your second color is. This commander also lets you play other basic lands, so the biggest advantage is that you can play Ux spellslinger with full domain, for example.

The downsides are also there, considering that you’re not playing the full two colors, just a subset of cards from another color.

The biggest question surrounding this card is: Why play Tolabow as anything other than a Dimir commander () or an Izzet commander ()? Other Commander mechanics like partner or choose a background already do that, so Tolabow's not doing anything we haven't really seen before.

Rulebreaker Speculation

All rulebreaker cards we’ve seen so far mess with color. Valko Indorian, Researcher lets us ignore the color identity of artifacts and enchantments, while Hadran, Naya Sunseeder is a green and red commander that lets us play any creature with power 4 or greater in our decks. In a sense, it’s like the companion mechanic where they chose to mess with the mana value of cards (all odds, all evens, all 3+).

One highly discussed topic inside the community is hybrid mana. We could have a red rulebreaker commander that lets us play any hybrid cards that have red and something else, or a blue/green commander that lets us play any hybrid cards that have either green or blue.

Another hard rule for the Commander format is the number of cards in your deck. There’s got to be a rulebreaker ability that allows players to play more or fewer than 100 cards (or 60 for Commander Draft). My guess is more; reducing the number of cards is a bit complicated due to power level and balance reasons, but I can see a rulebreaker card saying you can build 85-90 card Commander decks. People always want to play cards like Battle of Wits in their Commander decks, so it’s not impossible to have a rulebreaker that allows you to do that.

Then there’s the sideboard, or rather lack of a sideboard in EDH. I can see a rulebreaker card saying that this commander allows you to have a 5-10 card sideboard so you can wish for some cards, or use cards like Fae of Wishes.

You could also imagine a rulebreaker commander with the following rulebox text: “Name a card. Your deck can have up to four copies of that card.” That could be used to introduce combos involving Hedron Archive or Biovisionary into the format.

A bizarre card on the wish list is a rulebreaker commander that partners with a nonlegendary creature and makes it legendary.

Wrap Up

Rules Lawyer | Illustration by Dmitry Burmak

And that’s about it for rulebreaker. It’s a complicated mechanic to evaluate, especially since we haven't seen the full extent of it yet.

Considering the impact that half a dozen companions had in MTG, it’s fair to say that it’s interesting to have a small number of cards that break the rules, but too many and the impact on the format would be too great.

What do you think of rulebreaker, and what would you like to see from one of these commanders? Let me know in the comments section below, or let’s discuss it over in the Draftsim Discord. And check out The Daily Upkeep newsletter to stay up to date on all the latest MTG news.

Until next time, stay safe!