Popular Commander Variant Gets Insane Temporary Rules Update

Last updated on May 7, 2025

Haunted Hellride – illus. Olivier Bernard

Are you a fan of Vehicles in MTG, and wish you could have other options besides Transformers and Shorikai, Genesis Engine as your vehicle commanders? 

You may be in luck. This upcoming July, the Pauper Commander (PDH) community will temporarily alter their deck-building rules, allowing uncommon vehicles as commanders. The July rules change will allow deck builders to utilize any of the 52 available uncommon vehicles printed to date.

“Exclusively for the month of July 2025,” reads the official announcement at the PDH Home Base website, “uncommon vehicles will be legal PDH commanders. At the time of writing, there are 52 uncommon vehicles available for experimentation and brewing.  More than half of them have a non-colorless Color Identity, so there are lots of options to brew around if you want a vehicle commander and also colors.

Rulebreakers II, Electric Boogaloo

Colossal Plow illus. Joe Slucher

PDH Home Base's announcement makes it extremely clear that this is just a temporary change. In fact, the event is called “Rule Break Month 2”, to stress that this is something they are doing for fun, rather than field-testing some upcoming rules changes.

“We’re just doing this to have fun, to get people to experiment with rule-zero modifications within their playgroup, and to see how well certain rule-zero commanders play with rules-as-written commanders,” says the announcement, again stressing this will be a temporary change.

July will be their second Break-The-Rules-Month, the first being last January where they made uncommon Planeswalkers legal commanders. During July, any uncommon vehicle will be a legal commander for a Pauper Commander deck.

Something the PDH Rules Committee learned last January is that they should have promoted the event louder and earlier. “Some folks heard about it in mid-January from other players,” reads the recent announcement, “and didn’t have enough time to participate.”

They are trying to mend that mistake for the Rule Breakers sequel, hence why they've announced it two months in advance – and they are asking interested players to spread the word as much as they can. So, if you're interested, you know what to do!

And in case you were wondering what Pauper Commander is…

What Is Pauper EDH?

Third Path Iconoclast – illus. Manuel Castañón

Pauper Commander (PDH) is a community-driven variant of the Commander format that applies Pauper’s “commons-only” restriction to Commander deckbuilding. In Pauper Commander, each deck is built around a single uncommon creature as its commander, but unlike regular Commander it does not need to be a legendary creature. Partner commanders are allowed if both cards are uncommon; e.g. Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator and Breeches, Brazen Plunderer.

The rest of your 99-card deck consists exclusively of cards that have been printed at common rarity. PDH is a singleton format, and color identity works exactly like in Commander. The Pauper Commander ban list is very small: just any card banned in all constructed formats (e.g. cards with the Conspiracy type or involving ante), plus the infamous Mystic Remora and Rhystic Study.

In multiplayer PDH games, each player starts at 30 life (lower than EDH’s 40), and commander damage has a lowered threshold: 16 commander damage (from a single opposing commander) kills your opponent, rather than 21.

Other than that, PDH works pretty much like regular Commander!

The first attempts to formalize the format date back to 2012, gaining more traction around 2015 with Ruffigan’s Pauper EDH Primer. By 2017, TappedOut officially recognized PDH as a distinct format, and by 2020 it became searchable in Scryfall (you can use f:paupercommander to search for cards legal in your 99, and is:PauperCommander for PDH commanders). As of December 2023, it's recognized as a format in Commander Spellbook.

Pauper Commander is not an officially sanctioned format – it is maintained by the community, much like EDH was in its early days, with the PDH Home Base website being the main hub for rules and news about the format. There is no Wizards of the Coast rules committee or official banlist beyond what the fan community establishes, and WotC has mostly ignored the format as far as official mentions are concerned, save some mentions in passing like in an article from WotC's Gavin Verhey more than a decade ago.

Max Speed!

Apocalypse Runner – illus. Aaron J. Riley

If you want to get further involved with the format, PDH Home Base is probably your first stop as the format's main hub. You can also find links to their Discord server.

PDH also has a Reddit page for any questions, tips and advice you may need.

If you're starting out, remember that you don't have to use a Vehicle in July (it's just an extra, for-fun option). But July will be a perfect month to jump into the format, given that everybody playing with a vehicle in their command zone will be brewing under brand-new rules!