If you follow me on Instagram, you might have heard me talk about Centurion Commander, especially in the posts about my Isamaru deck.
When asked about Centurion, I usually simply tell you that it is a 1vs1 variant of Commander really popular here in Italy.
As I’m going to bring more content about this format both on the blog and on my SNS, I thought it was time to give you a better explanation of it.
First of all, Centurion Commander has its own site. It’s almost completely in English and the parts in Italian are always translated right after or are only reports of some niche tournaments. You can find the site by clicking here.
Apart from the 1vs1 aspect, Centurion also differs from regular EDH in some rules and in the banlist.
The Different Rules
Centurion follows all the rules of EDH but with these differences: Players will start with 25 life, there isn’t a free Mulligan and, as for other Magic formats, there will be a player on the play and one on the draw. The 25 life is a nice number because it isn’t too high to make aggro strategy completely unavailable and at the same time it isn’t too low to make the same aggro deck too oppressive for the format.
The Different Banlist
Apart from the classic Bans, Centurion also has cards that are banned as Commander or as Partner. Like it was before they changed the rule of classic EDH, a card banned as Commander cannot be you Commander but can still be played in the 99s. A card banned as a Partner can still be your Commander (and in the 99) but it needs to be alone without a Partner to do it.
Centurion generally bans two types of spells: Fast Mana and Tutors; these two categories are banned to avoid games where the winner is based on who finds some cards first rather than playing a classic game of Magic.
There are various other cards banned that don’t fall in this category but that still got banned on how oppressing they got in the meta. All the bans are well-thought and they take place after months of the card in the meta and after being certain that it is harmful for the gameplay and a good balance between the decks. If you are interested in reading the full banlist you can click here.
The Community
Centurion is popular mainly in Italy. with big tournaments (the last one got 70+ players) every weekend all over the nation, but there are also some small communities in Brazil and Croatia! If you want to check out for players in you region or start up a community with the help of the organizers and creator of the Centurion format, you can check out the Facebook Group; again, it’s mostly in Italian but you don’t need to worry: post in English and you will receive the answers that you are looking for!
This is the end of my small introduction to Centurion! Feel free to leave any question in the comments and I will answer you there! Stay tuned for some Centurion decklist coming soon on the blog!
Raven の Nest 
25 starting life eh? That seems a bit short but hey, if it works. And banning a lot of the tutors sounds like a great idea to me.
what does “one player on the draw and one player on the play” mean?
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Usually in Commander everyone draw during their first turn. In centurion works as in other 1vs1 (like Modern, Pauper) on player is on the play and so it’s the one who play first and doesn’t get to draw a card their first turn, while the other players is on the draw as it starts per second and gets to draw during its first turn.
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Ahhh, thanks. I haven’t played 60card in so long that I forgot that was how it went 🙂
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