Oh, a question near and dear to my heart! As you all may know by now, Judges are fond of Commander, and some Judges are VERY fond of ‘pimping’ their deck with older framed versions of cards, foreign language cards, rare promos, all that sort of thing. Zak Whyte, a judge friend of mine, commonly catches flak for his habit of getting every possible card he can in foil and Japanese.

So, one thing that comes up sometimes in formats like Standard and Modern is whether or not you can use an ‘old’ version of a card; for example, using 8th Edition or Stronghold copies of Mana Leak, or using a Judge Foil copy of Dark Confidant in their Modern deck. You can use any official printing of a card in any format that it’s legal, so long as it has a black or a white border, has a regular Magic back [or is a Double-Faced Card], is the right SIZE [no oversized cards!], and is made by WotC. So, while you can use your Duel Decks copy of Venser or Koth in a Standard deck, you could not use any gold-bordered cards from the old Championship decks that used to be released.

Today’s Tournament Tip written by
Trevor Nuñez, Level 1 judge from Roswell, NM