MTG Treachery: the hidden-role Commander variant, explained
Treachery deals every Commander player a secret role: Leader, Guardian, Assassin or Traitor. Here are the roles, the role counts for 4 to 8 players, and how unveiling works.
In this article
Treachery takes a normal Commander pod and hands everyone a secret job. One player is the Leader, and the rest of the table might be protecting them, hunting them, or waiting to turn on everyone. It was inspired by the board game BANG!, and it plays like a game of Werewolf with 100-card decks.
The variant was created by Stefouch and the team behind mtgtreachery.net, who maintain the official rules and all 62 identity cards. The rule numbers and role counts in this post come from their Treachery Comprehensive Rules, last updated May 2026.
The four roles
Each player gets one identity card. Its subtype is your role, and your role decides how you win.
- Leader. Plays face up and takes the first turn. The Leader team (Leader plus Guardians) wins when every Assassin and Traitor is gone.
- Guardian. Hidden. You’re on the Leader’s team, so you win or lose with them.
- Assassin. Hidden. The Assassins are a team, and they win as soon as the Leader is dead and at least one Assassin is still in the game.
- Traitor. Hidden and alone. You win only if every other player has left the game, other Traitors included. That usually means keeping the Leader alive until the Assassins are gone, then finishing the Leader yourself.
The catch for Guardians is spelled out in the rules:
907.8b. The leader team loses the game if all players controlling a Leader identity have lost the game, even if at least one Guardian identity is still in the game. This overrides all effects that would preclude a player controlling a Guardian identity from losing the game (such as Platinum Angel).
So a Guardian with Platinum Angel on the battlefield still loses when the Leader dies. The Angel says you can’t lose the game, and Treachery’s rule overrides it.
How many of each role
The official table for 4 to 8 players (rule 907.3c):
| Players | Leader | Guardians | Assassins | Traitors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| 5 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| 6 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
| 7 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| 8 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
Everyone knows the mix before the game starts. What they don’t know is who has which card. The base rule behind the table: exactly one Leader, at least one Traitor, Assassins equal to half the players rounded down, and Guardians or Traitors in the remaining seats.
Setup and starting life
Shuffle the identity cards for your player count and deal one face down to each player. Everyone looks at their own card. The Leader turns theirs face up and puts it in the command zone. Everyone else puts theirs there face down.
Starting life is normal Commander: 40 each. Some Leader cards change that. The Old Ruler adds 20 to its player’s starting life, so that Leader starts at 60 with an extra card in hand. The 21 commander damage rule still applies, and it’s often the cleanest way to bring down a 60-life Leader.
If you don’t have the cards printed yet, the official site suggests basic lands as stand-ins: Plains for the Leader, Island for a Guardian, Mountain for an Assassin and Swamp for the Traitor. It works, but you lose the best part of the format.
Unveiling and Undercover
Every non-Leader identity has an unveil cost. Any time you have priority, you can pay it and turn your card face up. It’s a special action, so turning the card over doesn’t use the stack. Unveiling then triggers a one-time ability, and these are strong: The Golem, a Guardian, makes a Leader player lose 6 life while you gain 6, then gives every Leader hexproof and stops them from being attacked.
The cost is that everyone now knows your role. Until you unveil, you count as an opponent to every other player and have no teammates.
Many Guardians also have Undercover (rule 702.TR02). You can only unveil an Undercover card after another non-Leader identity has been revealed, or after a player other than you has attacked a Leader player that game. It stops a Guardian from cashing in their protection on turn two.
One rules detail: putting a creature onto the battlefield already attacking doesn’t count as attacking the Leader for Undercover. The creature has to be declared as an attacker.
When a player leaves the game
When someone loses or concedes, their identity card is revealed to the whole table (rule 907.13). That’s how the table finds out whether the player who just died was an Assassin or a Guardian, and it often changes who attacks whom next. At the end of the game, every face-down card is revealed.
Playing Treachery with phones
You need the identity cards to play properly. The official site has print files, or you can skip printing with Treachery.app, a free web app we built. Each phone gets its own secret identity that you hold to peek at, the app knows when a team has won, and it has the full rules guide, all 62 identity cards in a searchable oracle, and print-at-home sheets if your group prefers paper.
Treachery.app doesn’t count life. That part stays at the table.
Keeping track at the table
A Treachery game is a 5- to 7-player Commander game with one player at a different life total, so you need a life counter that can handle a big pod. Commander damage has to be tracked per commander for every player, and with the Leader at 60 life, the 21 commander damage threshold matters more than in a normal game. Our guide to commander damage covers how it counts.
Lotus handles up to 10 players with life, commander damage and poison per seat. It knocks a player out at 21 damage from one commander or at 10 poison. Tap a player’s life total to type in a new number, which is how you give the Leader their 60.
For the life totals in other formats, see starting life in every MTG format.
