Magic the Gathering Elder Dragon Highlander
An Intro to this Off-Beat Casual Format
An EDH deck must have a legendary creature as it's "general," and can be built using only colorless cards or cards of the general's colors. Note that split and hybrid cards count as both colors for deck construction purposes, and spells with off-color activated abilities cannot be played unless the off-color activated abilities are the general's color.
Special Rules for Generals
The "general" is removed from the deck at the start of each game and put into the removed from game zone. A player's general in the RFG zone can be put into play during the main phase of a player's turn if they have the mana to cast the general. The general costs an additional 2 colorless mana to play it for each time it has previously been put into play. If a general would be put into a graveyard from anywhere, it is removed from the game instead. This is treated as a replacement effect.
You are free to use any legendary creature you like as your general when building your deck, with one exception: Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary may not be a general.
Deckbuilding Rules Guidelines
EDH is a singleton format, meaning that other than basic lands, no two cards in your deck may have the same English name. In addition to color and quantity restrictions, the following deck construction rules also apply:
- Any card which generates multiple colors of mana cannot generate mana outside the colors of it's general. If a card would generate mana outside it's general's colors, it generates colorless mana instead.
- An EDH deck must contain exactly 100 cards, including it's general.
- EDH is played with Vintage legal cards, and cards banned in Vintage are banned in EDH. (This means no silver-bordered Un- cards).
- EDH has it's own banned list in addition to the Vintage banned list, and can be found on the official EDH rules page.
Tips for Building Your EDH Deck
There are two ways to go about building an EDH deck. The first is a top-down method, starting with selecting a general and then building a deck around that general. Some generals lend themselves better to this build around me strategy than others, so choose appropriately. The second method is to build a deck, and then find a general of the appropriate color(s) to complete the deck. This method can be better if the general itself isn't as important as the colors of mana in your deck, but either method can work.
Additional Play Rules
The following play rules also apply to EDH:
- Players start the game with 40 Life.
- Each player is allowed one free mulligan before observing the regular 'Paris mulligan' rules.
- A player dealt 21 combat damage by a single general loses the game. This 'general damage' is kept track of separately from life totals. Damage done by generals also takes away from a player's life totals in addition to the special rules for general damage, not instead of.
- The 'Legendary Rule' does not apply to a general. If a player puts a legend into play that is a duplicate of a general in play, only the non-general is put into the graveyard as a result of the legendary rule. (See the official EDH Rules Page for more on this).
Further Reading
For more info about EDH including decklists and discussion, check out the EDH Forums
*All names in this article are (c). Wizards of the Coast.
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