Pauper Commander (PDH): rules, life and commander damage
Pauper Commander is Commander with an uncommon creature in charge and 99 commons. Deck rules, rarity, 30 starting life, 16 commander damage and the ban list.
In this article
Pauper Commander, usually called PDH, is Commander with a rarity limit. Your commander is an uncommon creature and the rest of the deck is commons, which keeps decks cheap and games closer than an average Commander pod.
PDH isn’t run by Wizards. Its rules and ban list come from the PDH Rules Committee at pdhhomebase.com, and the rule numbers below are from their comprehensive rules (version 5.3.2), which are based on Commander’s rule 903.
PDH rules at a glance
| Pauper Commander | Commander | |
|---|---|---|
| Commander | An uncommon creature | A legendary creature |
| Other 99 cards | Commons only | Any rarity |
| Starting life | 30 | 40 |
| Commander damage | 16 | 21 |
| Commander tax |  per earlier cast | per earlier cast |
| Run by | PDH Rules Committee | Commander Format Panel |
Everything else works like Commander: 100 cards with one copy of each (apart from basic lands), color identity, the command zone, the commander tax and free-for-all multiplayer.
Your commander: an uncommon creature
Your commander must be a nonland creature of uncommon rarity (rule 906.3). It doesn’t need to be legendary, which opens up a lot of options. Tatyova, Benthic Druid is a legendary uncommon, but a nonlegendary uncommon creature works just as well.
A few details:
- Double-faced cards: only the front face has to be an uncommon creature. A card with a land on the back is fine (rule 906.1).
- Partner: two uncommon creatures with partner can share the command zone, like Ghost of Ramirez DePietro and another partner (rule 907.1).
- Backgrounds: a commander with “Choose a Background” can team up with an uncommon Background (rule 907.7).
The committee’s rules page now also allows uncommon Vehicles and Spacecraft as commanders.
The 99: commons only
Every other card in the deck has to be common (rule 906.5e). What counts is whether the card was ever printed at common:
- in a paper Magic set or product as a normal card, or
- as a digital card on Magic Online.
If it was, every printing of it is legal, even a rare reprint (rule 906.12). MTG Arena printings don’t count, and neither do oversized cards.
That’s how classics like Mulldrifter, Ghostly Flicker and Chainer's Edict end up in PDH decks. Arcane Signet and Command Tower have common printings too, so your mana base looks a lot like Commander’s.
The rules also give one counterexample: Sol Ring. It’s uncommon in almost every set. Its only common printing, in Magic’s 30th Anniversary Edition, has a non-standard back and isn’t legal for constructed play, so Sol Ring isn’t legal in PDH.
30 life and 16 commander damage
PDH lowers both numbers:
906.10a A player that’s been dealt 16 or more combat damage by the same commander over the course of the game loses the game.
- Starting life is 30 (rule 906.7).
- Commander damage is 16, combat damage only, counted for each commander separately. With partners, damage from each of the two is tracked on its own (rule 907.4).
Our commander damage guide covers what counts as commander damage in detail, and the starting life guide lists every format’s numbers side by side.
Ban list
The PDH Rules Committee keeps its own ban list. Many of the cards on it are Commander staples that happen to have a common printing, like Rhystic Study and Mystic Remora. Both draw far too many cards for a format of commons.
PDH also bans Conspiracy cards, ante cards and the cards Wizards removed from every constructed format. Check pdhhomebase.com for the current list before building.
PDH vs Pauper
The names are close, but the formats aren’t:
- Pauper is a 60-card, 1v1 constructed format with commons only and 20 life. It’s an official Wizards format.
- Pauper Commander is the 100-card multiplayer format with an uncommon commander, 30 life and 16 commander damage. It’s a community format.
Oathbreaker is the other big community format with a command zone, and our formats overview compares PDH with all the official ones.
Tracking a PDH game
You need life from 30, commander damage per commander and a tax for each player.
Lotus lets you set the multiplayer starting life to 30 and tracks commander damage and commander tax per player. Its automatic commander damage knockout is set to Commander’s 21, so in PDH you call the knockout at 16 yourself.
