ABOUT THE DUEL COMMANDER RULES COMMITTEE
FOREWORD
Hello, dear Duel Commander players from around the world,
This is just a summed up note regarding the Duel Commander Rules Committee itself. Its organization has changed over the years. Right now, we're within a stable structure, after lots of changes. The committee has grown from one person, a long time ago, to (round) 20 today. Please note we are all volunteers, and this is done only with free time and personal investment, nothing less, nothing more. We are not affiliated nor endorsed with Wizards of the Coast. This note is here to basically describe how the team works, what we produce and how we work.
ROLES AND STRUCTURE
Since 2024, the Duel Commander Rules Committee has followed a new structure.
Here's a quick explanation of how it works.
Our roles are split between several statuses.
Each links leads to an individual presentation, if you want to know more about us.
📥 Download The Organization Chart
Just click on this image to download a full-size, non-transparent version
(don't forget to use the "Download" icon on the top, preview quality is not 100%).
Note: please come back from time to time to get the latest version of this chart.
⚖️The Core Team, who decides how everything is handled, is made of:
Core Members: whose team objective is to decide the game orientation, design, from major overhauls to minor changes
Managers: whose objective is decision supervision, organization, team setup and everything that is required in order to have our structure work
🪐 The Extended Team, which represents all members of the Committee, consists of:
The Internationalization team, a vastly expanded team made of:
(Head) Regional Coordinators: people who are identified from as many places in the world, virtual or geographical areas, to better ensure factual detection, local perception, information diffusion among many other responsibilities
Brazil
Czech Republic
Germany
Italy
Latin America
Philippines
Russia
USA
Entropize / Anthony Vasaturo (Head RC)
Dan Pyre / Brennan McAlear (Midwest)
A Social Media & Content Curation team, which consists of:
Community Managers: social animators, of online or offline groups, communities, places of interest, whose purpose is to stimulate discussions, share and explain official contents, organize topics, avoid repetitive ambiguities, in short: chat!
Content Curators: as time passes, we should now start gathering, and probably create official contents, whether they would be playlist, articles, videos, etc.
A Rules Guidance Team
Rules Advisors: a restricted yet still needed rules advisory position to better ensure strict, comprehensive rules and judge coordination
🔗A selected list of trusted, external partners and people, who are not be a part of the Committee but who work hand-to-hand with it:
A Discord Support Team, which will assist in mandatory activities from our everyday lives on Discord
Deck Channels Managers: people in charge of ideation and deck discussion structuration
Chat Moderators: global messages and reactions tempering, assisting in finding information
Panel Hosts: people animating Discord panels
An Events Team, which will ensure coordination with Tournament Organizers and help assist promoting the largest tournaments, consisting of:
Event Managers: people whose role is to gather, publish, share major events, and fluidify their visibility, working hand-to-hand with tournament organizers
A Facebook Support Team, to ensure our legacy media still works, made of:
Chat Moderators: same as for Discord chat moderators
The mentioned presence of official external relations with:
Magic The Gathering, here through the presence of Daybreak™ Daybreak Games™ for Magic The Gathering Online™.
The recruitment process as presented during our 2024 panel still holds for all new roles (see: Other Content on this website).
🔗A selected list of trusted, external partners and people, who are not be a part of the Committee but who work hand to hand with it:
A Discord Support Team, which will assist in mandatory activities from our everyday lives on Discord
Deck Channels Managers: people in charge of ideation and deck discussion structuration
Chat Moderators: global messages and reactions tempering, assisting in finding information
Panel Hosts: people animating Discord panels
An Events Team, which will ensure coordination with Tournament Organizers and help assist promoting the largest tournaments, consisting of:
Event Managers: people whose role is to gather, publish, share major events, and fluidify their visibility, working hand-to-hand with tournament organizers
A Facebook Support Team, to ensure our legacy media still works, made of:
Chat Moderators: same as for Discord chat moderators
The mentioned presence of official external relations with:
Magic The Gathering, here through the presence of Daybreak™ Daybreak Games™ for Magic The Gathering Online™.
Recruitment
The recruitment process as presented during our 2024 panel still holds for all new roles (see: Other Content on this website) and remains perpetually active for all those roles.
Sponsoring - I want to help!
Currently, Duel Commander barely costs over a hundredth of EUR every year to us (Discord boosts, DNS registrars and a little hosting costs).
We still accept direct financial use through donations (get in touch with the Core Team for that), or simply directly through Discord Server boosting (helping us get/keep level 3 server boosting would be helpful!).
Roles exclusivity
👉 Those roles/statuses are mutually exclusive (i.e. can't be cumulative), and they are not made for raises (they are not upgrades, but a new role can be assigned to anyone). The Committee usually contacts people they think should join them, but, should you know someone you think would be interested and interesting please contact us on Discord or Facebook. See our 2024 presentation for more.
Communication
Updates location
This is the main source of content, ever since Facebook took down the Notes functionality we used to rely on until october 2020.
Announcements are also notified to people on our Discord, and still notified on anyone who follows us on Facebook.
Updates schedules
We publish scheduled update announcements every 2 months, the reason for that time span is explained in the November 2020 update.
We once chose to synchronize the updates with the ones Wizards Of The Coast does, but considering their multiple timing changes, we now make a announcement on our own, fixed dates. The exact time for those scheduled announcements is set on the last monday of every off month each year (i.e. January, March, May, July, September and November), and the exact hour should be on an evening, local French metropolitan time (CEST / GMT+1 watch out for DST), usually around 8:00 P.M.. Announcements are effective at the time they're published.
For some extreme reasons, we can publish any additional update we think is required through exceptional announcements. This is apart from scheduled announcements mentioned hereabove. As stated in our June 9, 2024 announcement, we now also define possible, extra announcement slots: at the same time written above, but on any given monday.
Updates philosophy
We do not use preventive individual card bans, for this method denies the needs for proofs and only relies upon theory crafting, which is significantly less reliable. We do not either use express, emergency rules/B&R updates, for our communication tools are limited and not relayed by official ones, therefore we can’t be certain to hit a majority of players in a short time span. Such a statement could only be false in the rare, extreme case of unavoidable time constraints. More info can be found here.
Updates contents
Much like their updates (and more), we can publish:
non-B&R rules updates (removal of the “commander damage rule”, for example)
Committee structural updates (new people joining the team, for example)
B&R card changes updates (making Yawgmoth's Bargain legal again, for example)
communication updates (removal of the public watchlist and watchlist colors, for example)
Updates accessibility
👉 Every Website post / Facebook Post we publish is totally publicly accessible. The URL you see (like the one this page has) does NOT require an account to be seen and shared. Those notes are made to be shared and discussed, on Facebook, Discord, Twitter, forums, or anywhere else, so please don’t hesitate to do so!
Fundamental documents
If you need information, please refer to our notes, our current structure is:
A page for a quick start guide.
A page for comprehensive rules, inspired by the one made by Wizards of The Coast.
A page for Frequently Asked Questions.
A page about the Committee board, methodology and actions (the one you’re reading right now).
A page for the current Banned and Restricted lists.
A page for each update announcement.
Announcements effectiveness and language
👉 Those announcements, should they contain changes, apply immediately.
👉 We currently communicate in English only. Everyone is free to translate the document in other languages. Make sure not to damage the contents, as much as you can, and please refer to this Facebook page as a genuine reference.
Legal concerns
Magic: The Gathering – Commander and their logos, the distinctive look of characters and of the symbols are the property of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries. U.S. Pat. No. RE 37,957.
This website follows Hasbro.inc / Wizards Of The Coast's fan content policy, that you can find here.
As so (quoted from these documents):
6.1. Wizards Ownership.
The Websites, Games, and Services (including all Wizards' generated content residing thereon) are the sole property of Wizards, and are protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We own and reserve all Intellectual Property Rights (defined below) and all other legal and exploitation rights in and to the Websites, Games, Services, and Games and all data and content included therein, including (without limitation) all in-game items and virtual currency, accounts, computer code, titles, themes, characters (including likeness and names), objects, chat logs, stories, dialog, catch phrases, locations, concepts, artwork, character inventories, structural or landscape designs, animations, sounds, audio-visual effects, methods of operation, moral rights, any related documentation, storylines, sounds, music, and gameplay, and methods of operation (collectively, the "GameContent").
6.2. Limited License.
You may not use or exploit any part of the Game Content, Websites, Games, or Services except as expressly permitted by us in these Terms or our Fan Content Policy. You have no ownership right or interest or other rights in or to any part of the Game Content, Websites, Games, or Services, including without limitation in-game items whether earned in game or purchased from Wizards. All rights granted to you under these Terms are granted by express license only and not by sale. No license or other rights will be created by these Terms by implication, estoppel, or otherwise. Any attempt to exercise Intellectual Property Rights in the Websites, Services, Games, and Game Content except as specifically authorized by Wizards is strictly prohibited and will terminate the rights granted herein. All goodwill generated by your use of Wizards trademarks shall automatically inure to the benefit of Wizards.
Duel Commander is not a brand, but considered as a collective work of creation, and as so falls under the intellectual property of the Duel Commander Rules Committee, a perpetual non-physical person, subject to change. All the media handled, published by the Duel Commander Rules Committee fall under this intellectual property rights. All the contents are open for changes by anyone willing to participate, but owhership of anything Duel Commander-related cannot be legally claimed.
The contents we publish (with the exception of ALL terms mentioned hereabove by Wizards Of The Coast legal terms, which hence belong to them) fall under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) by default.
You are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.
The licensor (i.e. The Duel Commander Rules Committee) cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Under the following terms:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
Non-Commercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
No-Derivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Note: the platforms we use may track your visit and generate data from your presence, which we have no control on. This mostly includes: Google, Meta, and Discord.
The Duel Commander Rules Committee.
The document you’re reading is based on the work of the Duel Commander Committee, which has changed over time, but the people who helped this existing and made this be brought to light remain. Please note that Duel Commander format is not affiliated to, maintained by, nor having any support from Wizards of The Coast.
Wizards of the Coast™, Magic: The Gathering™, Magic, Magic: The Gathering – Com- mander and their logos, the distinctive look of characters and of the symbols are the property of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries. U.S. Pat. No. RE 37,957.
We would like to thank everyone who made Magic The Gathering possible (because without Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro, we would certainly not be here today), but also the makers, maintainers and communities of Singleton formats, Elder Dragon Highlander and Multiplayer Commander teams, as well as some people who made this format possible, such as Kevin Desprez, Damien Guillemard, Claire Dupré, Sylvain Lauriol and Daniel Kitachewski for their advice, their initial support and involvement, as well as Damien Jantzen, Jordan Raiber, Manuel Le Marec, Martin Cuchet, Pierre-Guillaume Bardin and Thomas Mechin. Though they’re not part of the committee anymore, people might remember the time they all spent in making this format be known. We also want to thank all the other people who got involved once into the Duel Commander Committee, those who are still involved in it, advisors and regional coordinators, and everyone who helps building the community.