Commander, with a cap on power creep.
Vulcan Highlander is Commander plus one rule: every card costs 0 to 5 points, and your deck may spend at most 50 points. This isn't about a small number of "game changer" cards: it's about the overall power creep of recent years. Former Commander staples and hundreds of older cards have been pushed out of the format. Games have become shorter, less strategic, and less fun. Our points system allows new cards, but caps decks at a 2016-2018 power level with no need for additional bans. The vast majority of cards cost no points, but power crept newer cards have a point score, as well as overpowered older cards.
Commander should be an evergreen format, not a rotating one (a 2016 deck should be playable against a 2026 deck). If you and your play group are frustrated by power creep, Vulcan Highlander gives you an even-handed framework to return to less over-powered game play.
Deck checker
Paste your deck list to see every card's points cost and your deck's total. No account necessary.
Points list
See every card that costs points, filterable by color, type, and set.
Changelog
Every update to the points list, newest first, each with the reasoning behind it.
The average deck gets stronger every year
Power creep is not limited to a handful of "game changer" cards. It's across the board in hundreds of cards released in recent years, and it has compounding effects. Decks pack more power each year, with former Commander staple cards being pushed out by new cards that are stronger or provide the same effects for less mana.
Nearly half of all pointed cards were first printed 2019 or later. For example, Bloomburrow's 40th-best card sees more play than Zendikar's 20th-best does.
This chart is one way to visualize it: looking at EDHREC data, what percentage of each set is strong enough to earn a slot in Commander decks?
From 5% of a 1995 set to 44% of a 2026 one. A deck's 100 slots are zero-sum, so every slot given to a newer, more powerful card is taken from an older one. This is the power creep the point budget caps. The easy counter-argument is that people just like to play new cards. Check out the full evidence to see why there's more to it than that.
You can also paste your own deck list to see its points cost. Is yours way over 50 points? That's actually the point. Vulcan Highlander gives you and your play group a framework to bring back the fun and strategy of Commander before power creep took over the format, without having to ban more cards.
A sample Vulcan Highlander deck
I designed an Inti, Seneschal of the Sun deck as my first Vulcan Highlander deck. While it has elements of typical Inti aggro strategies that rely on discard or treasures, it ties those elements together around an artifact recursion and top deck manipulation theme. As you'll see in the deck list, it plays plenty of newer cards, but has an overall power level that is lower than typical current Commander decks. It took some creative thinking to design it without exceeding 50 points, which led me back to some older cards that synergize with its strategy (you'll see it even has a Fallen Empires card!). Playing it well requires strategic gameplay, and it's fun. It would be well-matched by typical decks from the late 2010s. This is the point of Vulcan Highlander.
How it works
- The evidence — the data showing power creep is real, measurable, and recent.
- The methodology — how every Commander legal card is evaluated and scored.