Rule-Break-Month 4

Preface

We’re back and breaking rules again!  Rounds 2 and 3 were not as spicy as we’d hoped, so we’ve turned to ghost pepper sauce for some big swings in round 4: What if you got to add a single color to the identity of colorless commanders?  We’re calling this “colorless+1” – it effectively adds Faceless One’s first ability to the text box of every colorless pauper commander.

If [cardname] is your commander, choose a color before the game begins.  [cardname] is the chosen color.

We think it’ll be a pretty good time, but we won’t know for sure until you try it and tell us about it!

The tl;dr:

• You can play colorless commanders as if they had a mono-colored identity, exclusively this July 2026.

• • In August, colorless commanders will go back to having zero colors in their identity, instead of one.
  • We want you to play around with this and see how it goes, and let us know how it goes.  How well do colorless+1 decks play with and against and alongside normal Rules-As-Written (RAW) decks?  Share your experiences!
  • No one on the RC is considering a permanent Rules Change.  

• No one on the RC is considering a permanent Rules Change.  We’re just trying to have fun, and to compile information on common rule-breaks for our FAQs while we’re at it.
• Tournament Organizers set their own rules for their own events.  They can choose to allow colorless+1 decks this July, or they can choose not to.  Check with them before you sign up for an event.

The Long Version
Let’s start with what Break the Rules Month (BtRM) even is: it’s science that we all do together to get a better sense of the boundaries of the format by moving beyond those boundaries.  Our format is fundamentally a fan format, pioneered a decade-or-so ago for dozens of reasons, and played in hundreds of different ways by thousands of different communities around the globe.  We on the Rules Committee (RC) have done our best to filter that diversity into one basic ruleset that we feel serves as the best foundation for us all, but we recognize that different playgroups creating variations of that ruleset enriches everyone’s experiences.  We want to encourage that exploration and variation, while preserving the basic ruleset.  Break the Rules Month is a time when we encourage everyone to build and play decks that all break a fundamental format rule so we can all see how it goes.  We’ve tried it a few times before with mixed success.

• In January 2025, we allowed uncommon Planeswalkers to be commanders.  This went really well!  Allowing planeswalkers changed deckbuilding and games in ways that were interesting, but not broken or un-fun.  We’re excited to return to this one in the future.
• In April 2025, we made the bold and forward-thinking decision to allow Vehicles and Spacecraft into the command zone for Break the Rules Month July 2025.  Shortly after our announcement, wizards announced that they were permanently changing Command Zone rules to include vehicles and spacecraft, which kinda stole our thunder, but we had fun anyways.
• In January 2026, we moved away from the Command Zone briefly to allow Learn cards to put lessons into your hand from outside the game.  We didn’t get much data from this month, but the data we got suggested that it made games more interesting without being overpowered or un-fun.  I thought lessons would be attractive, since they could go into any deck, and folks wouldn’t have to build a whole new (illegal) deck to participate, but the potential inconsistency of “I never drew a learn card so it didn’t change anything” combined with the relatively narrow card pool, was a big detriment to the plan, and participation was sparse.
• For round 4, coming to a playgroup near you this July 2026, we want to make sure that if you’re breaking the rules, you and everyone else will for sure feel it.  It will not go unnoticed.

For Break the Rules Month Four, we want a big swing.  We’ve chosen a rule break that will

• have a consistent impact on the break the rules games, 
• have a deep card pool with many options, and
• have a wide range of possibilities and deckbuilding paths.

We juggled a couple great possibilities and landed on “Allow colorless commanders to pretend like they have a mono-colored identity.”  There are 318 colorless commanders, and you can give any of them a color of your choice: that’s almost 1600 new deck options!  You can make the Adriesta blue to access assassins, changelings, and cards that turn opponents’ lands into islands.  You can make Behemoth of Vault 0 white to access more energy cards, or black to get some good grave-flickers.  You can make Clay Golem green to get some better ramp.  You could make Containment Construct red to get the good looting.  (That’s my plan!)

The draw of big swings is that we hope they drive up engagement for folks to do the thing, and to let us know about it.  The risk of big swings is: this is more likely to create oppressive decks that aren’t very fun.  I’ve always been pretty grateful, for example, that Glaring Fleshraker doesn’t have access to counterspell and treasure cruise, and I’m pretty nervous about what kinds of degenerate nonsense some of you are going to come up with.  But that’s good science!  If you wanna build degenerate nonsense, you should.  And then you should play it in July and let me know how it goes!  If it’s truly unhinged and busted, then we know that for the future and probably won’t revisit this rule-break.  If it’s actually super fun and reasonable, then we can come back to it in the future.  Either way we get good data, as long as you experiment and communicate.  

How exactly does this work?  Socially?

I’m delighted you asked!  I want to emphasize two different elements of this.  The more important of the two is the social contract.  Break the Rules Month operates exclusively on an opt-in basis.  If your friends think that you putting a lightning bolt into your Patchwork Automaton deck is bogus and unfun, don’t do it.  If you’re at a tournament and the rules don’t allow adding white to your Howling Golem deck for Asha’s Favor, don’t do that.  If at any point you’re confronted with opposition about this and, instead of capitulating, you invoke my name or this article to try to win what shouldn’t be an argument, I will find you and the resulting conversation will be deeply unpleasant.  This is for fun.  Don’t make it weird.

That said: if your whole pod is enthusiastic about playing against colorless+1 decks, and you’re enthusiastic about playing with colorless+1 decks, here’s how they’ll work:

How exactly does this work?  Mechanically?

It’s pretty simple!

• Each colorless pauper commander gets the following line of Faceless One’s text:
• If [cardname] is your commander, choose a color before the game begins.  [cardname] is the chosen color.
• • This doesn’t make Faceless One or The Prismatic Piper two-color partners: they’re not legal PDH commanders in the first place.  (Their rarity is “special,” not uncommon).
• That’s it!  All the other normal deckbuilding rules still apply.  If you make Iron Mastiff red for firebreathing, you can play mountains in that deck, as well as any cards with mono-red color identity.  Like firebreathing.

Remember that this is for science!

The rules committee gets a lot of questions about what’s legal or not.  For some questions, like “can you use Sneak from the command zone?” we’re delighted to be able to say yes and explain how that works!  For other questions, like “can you use Ninjutsu from the command zone?” we have to admit that officially you cannot.  Getting good data and feedback from these Break the Rules Months helps us answer those questions very thoroughly.  For the stuff that’s not technically legal, being able to describe those things as either “fair and balanced if your group wants to rule-break it” or “probably a bad idea that’s likely to lead to big unfun game imbalances” is extremely helpful for us.  But we can only do that if you help us run these experiments, and report back with your findings.

Go forth, brew some fun colorless+1 decks, and let me know how it all goes!

Love,

-Dave