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Commander Ranking · Mystery Booster Commander · Pre-Release

The 8 Rulebreakers of Mystery Booster Commander, Ranked

Mystery Booster Commander Edition doesn't release until 9 November 2026, but it already has a rules problem: eight legendary commanders, each printed with a brand-new ability word called Rulebreaker that lets it ignore one of Commander's core deckbuilding rules while it sits in the command zone. We rank all eight by early EDHREC deck count, explain exactly what rule each one breaks, and show how The Oracle builds a legal deck around every single one of them.

Rulebreaker isn't a keyword with one fixed effect — it's an ability word, and every card that has it spells out its own exception in a reminder-style line: "Rulebreaker — <whatever this specific commander is allowed to ignore>." Six of the eight bend the same rule in slightly different ways: a named category of card (Angels, Auras, huge creatures, artifact creatures and Equipment, Phyrexians, or one chosen extra colour of instants and sorceries) is allowed into the deck regardless of colour identity, and the deck can also run any basic land cards it likes. Grizzlegom goes further and allows any land cards at all, basic or not. And Whtz, the Bibliophile doesn't touch colour identity whatsoever — it throws out the 100-card deck size limit entirely.

None of the eight touch the singleton rule. Every deck built around one of these commanders still needs exactly one copy of everything except basic lands — Whtz doesn't even relax that part. What's genuinely new is that Wizards is previewing this product early enough that EDHREC already has real submitted-deck data for all eight, weeks before the set is actually legal to play. That's what the ranking below is built from.

A Note On Legality

Mystery Booster Commander Edition (set code MBC) releases 9 November 2026. Every card below currently shows not_legal on Scryfall for the Commander format — that's expected pre-release behaviour, not a problem with the cards themselves, and should update automatically once the set ships.

Ranked by Early EDHREC Deck Count · Least to Most Popular
08
Mono-Blue · Mystery Booster Commander
Tolabow, Loch Rascal
Pick one colour that isn't yours. Every instant and sorcery in it is now legal.
2UU · 4 CMC 3/2 Spellslinger Prowess Tokens
416
Decks Built
RulebreakerIf Tolabow is your commander, the colour identity of instant and sorcery cards in your deck can include one colour of your choice not in your commander's colour identity, and your deck can have any basic land cards.

Tolabow is the most mechanically unusual of the eight, because its exception isn't fixed on the card — it's a choice the deckbuilder has to make before a single card gets picked. Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery, Tolabow creates a 1/1 blue-and-red Otter with prowess, so the deck wants as many cheap spells as it can find — and the Rulebreaker clause is what lets it go get them from a second colour entirely. It's the lowest-built of the eight so far, likely because that up-front colour decision is an extra step most other Commander deckbuilding never asks for. The Oracle handles it with a dedicated colour-picker modal the moment you select Tolabow, and restricts your basic lands to just your chosen colour plus blue — not all five — so you're not carrying dead Forests and Plains for a deck that only ever wants two colours of mana.

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07
Mono-Black · Mystery Booster Commander
Valko Indorian
Every Phyrexian you find, from any colour, gets menace and lifelink.
3B · 4 CMC 2/4 Phyrexian Tribal Menace + Lifelink
656
Decks Built
RulebreakerA deck with this commander can have Phyrexian cards of any colour identity and any basic land cards.

Valko Indorian is the cleanest of the eight to explain: every Phyrexian creature you control gets menace and lifelink, and the Rulebreaker clause means "every Phyrexian" is no longer limited to black ones. "Phyrexian" spans every colour in Magic's card pool, from the New Phyrexia invasion set to Kaldheim's Phyrexian-corrupted gods, so a mono-black-identity deck can genuinely run white, blue, red and green Phyrexians side by side and still have every one of them swinging in unblockable, life-draining. It sits mid-pack on early deck count — a smaller build-around payoff than some of the others, but a very direct one for anyone who already owns Phyrexian cards from past collections.

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06
Colourless · Mystery Booster Commander
The Everforger
Cast an artifact creature or Equipment, and it copies itself once a turn.
{6} · 6 CMC 4/5 Artifact Tribal Free Copies
774
Decks Built
RulebreakerA deck with this commander can have artifact creature and Equipment cards of any colour identity and any basic land cards.

The Everforger is the one truly colourless entry on this list, which is exactly what makes its Rulebreaker clause hit so hard: a colourless commander has no colour identity restriction to break in the first place for most of its own card pool, but artifact creatures and Equipment are printed in every colour, and normally a colourless deck could only run the colourless ones. The Everforger opens every coloured artifact creature and every coloured piece of Equipment in Magic's card pool, then copies the first one you cast each turn for free. That's an unusually wide design space for a single commander to unlock, and 774 early decks suggests players are still working out just how wide "every artifact creature ever printed" actually is.

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05
Mono-Red · Mystery Booster Commander
The Unluckiest Planeswalker
Every Aura anyone ever attached to it, it can throw right back.
2R · 3 CMC Planeswalker Aura Tribal Aura Redirection
921
Decks Built
RulebreakerA deck with this commander can have Aura cards of any colour identity and any basic land cards.

The name is the joke: planeswalkers are usually Auras' favourite target, since an Aura stuck to a planeswalker can strip its loyalty down fast. This one turns that weakness into the whole plan. Its +1 adds a mana of any colour, and if that mana casts an Aura this turn, you get a 1/1 red Gremlin out of it. Its −3 discards your hand, draws twice the number of Auras you control, and then takes every Aura currently attached to the Planeswalker and reattaches it to an opponent's permanent instead — so the exact Pacifisms and Control Magics the table used against it become the table's own problem. Any colour of Aura counts, from mono-white removal Auras to the golgari graveyard-recursion kind, which is exactly what the Rulebreaker clause is unlocking here.

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04
Mono-White · Mystery Booster Commander
Seluma, Light of Aysen
Any Angel, from any colour, is legal — and combat damage brings one back.
4W · 5 CMC 4/4 · Flying Angel Tribal Graveyard Recursion
932
Decks Built
RulebreakerA deck with this commander can have Angel cards of any colour identity and any basic land cards.

Seluma is the most straightforward tribal payoff on this list, and Angels are one of the deepest, most iconic tribes Magic has ever printed — spanning white, black, red, and just about every combination in between. Normally a mono-white commander would be locked out of every Angel that isn't itself white. Seluma removes that wall entirely, and whenever it connects with a player in combat, it returns any Angel creature card from your graveyard straight to the battlefield. That means black reanimator-flavoured Angels, red aggressive Angels, and classic white lifegain Angels can all sit in the same 100-card deck and all come back for free once Seluma starts connecting. Just under 1,000 early decks makes this one of the more approachable entries — the payoff is easy to understand even without reading every line of rules text twice.

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03
Mono-Green · Mystery Booster Commander
Maular, the Next Evolution
Any creature with mana value 7 or more is fair game. Every one of them hits twice as hard.
5GG · 7 CMC 10/10 Big Creature Tribal Attack-Trigger Doubling
1,446
Decks Built
RulebreakerA deck with this commander can have creature cards with mana value 7 or greater of any colour identity and any basic land cards.

Maular itself is a 10/10 for seven mana, and its Rulebreaker clause hands a mono-green deck access to every huge creature ever printed regardless of colour — Blightsteel Colossus, Terastodon, Iona Shield of Emeria, and every other mana-value-7-and-up threat become fair game the moment Maular is your commander. Whenever a creature you control at mana value 7 or greater attacks, its power and toughness double until end of turn, which turns even a modest 7/7 into a 14/14 the instant it swings. Green's own ramp package (Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, Nature's Lore) is exactly the tool needed to get these giants out ahead of schedule, and 1,446 decks built already suggests "ramp into something enormous, then watch it double" is exactly the kind of straightforward power fantasy players wanted from this set.

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02
Gruul · R/G · Mystery Booster Commander
Grizzlegom, Hurloon Hero
Its own attack trigger rewards all five basic land types. So its own rule lets it run all five.
5RG · 7 CMC 4/4 Five-Colour Basics Attack-Trigger Payoffs
1,544
Decks Built
RulebreakerA deck with this commander can have any land cards.

Grizzlegom is the only one of the eight whose Rulebreaker clause touches lands specifically rather than a category of spell, and it goes further than "any basic land cards" — it says any land cards, basic or not. That's because Grizzlegom's own attack trigger is built to reward every single basic land type: a Soldier token for each Plains, a card drawn for each Island, a life total drained for each Swamp, a +1/+1 counter for each Mountain, and life gained for each Forest. A Gruul-only commander that only cared about Mountains and Forests would never get to see the white, blue, and black halves of its own ability text — the Rulebreaker clause is what actually makes Grizzlegom's own card function as printed, and 1,544 early decks suggests players caught on to that fast.

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01
Azorius · W/U · Mystery Booster Commander
Whtz, the Bibliophile
No maximum deck size. Not a bigger number — no number at all.
1WU · 3 CMC 1/3 No Deck Size Limit Draw Engine
6,102
Decks Built
RulebreakerA deck with this commander has no maximum deck size.

Whtz isn't just the most popular Rulebreaker commander so far, it's not close — over four times the deck count of second-placed Grizzlegom, and nearly fifteen times Tolabow at the bottom. Its own activated ability draws a card and gains a life for {3} and a tap, and costs {3} less — effectively free — once your starting deck has 200 or more cards in it, which is Whtz all but naming the number it wants you to build to. Every other Rulebreaker commander bends colour identity or land legality; Whtz is the only one that removes a rule about deck size at all, and that novelty alone seems to be why it's drawing more submitted decks than the other seven combined. The Oracle builds a genuine 250-card deck for Whtz rather than a token gesture past 100 — we tested 200, 250, 300 and 400-card builds against real EDHREC data before landing on 250 as the largest size we could fill entirely with real synergy-ranked cards, no generic filler, and a one-time notice explains exactly why before it builds.

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