Canadian Highlander rules look wild the first time you read them. Black Lotus is legal. Time Walk is legal. Moxen are legal. And somehow the format still holds together.
That is the charm of Canlander. It is a 100 card singleton, 1v1 Magic: The Gathering format with 20 life, no commander, no sideboards, and a 10 point cap on the strongest cards in your deck. If you are coming from Commander, the biggest adjustment is that Canadian Highlander rewards tighter curves, faster interaction, and cleaner deckbuilding. You do not get forty life to mess around, and you do not get a commander to bail you out.
If you want the clean version, this guide explains the Canadian Highlander rules, how the points system works, what makes the format different from Commander, and how to build a first deck that does not immediately fold to the first scary thing your opponent does.
What Are the Canadian Highlander Rules?
At the highest level, Canadian Highlander is a fan run format that started in Victoria, British Columbia. It uses normal Magic gameplay rules, but wraps them in a very specific deckbuilding shell.
Canadian Highlander Rules for Deck Construction
The first deckbuilding rule is simple. Your deck must have at least 100 cards. You can play more than 100 if you want, but that is usually a bad trade. Bigger deck, less consistency. And in Canlander, consistency is already under pressure because you only get one copy of most cards.
The second rule is singleton. Outside of basic lands and cards that explicitly allow extra copies, you only get one of each card. That changes deckbuilding a lot. Instead of building around four copies of your best card, you build around redundancy, role overlap, and flexible effects. One cheap removal spell is fine. Seven cheap removal spells that do similar jobs is how you survive.
The third rule is the one Commander players notice right away. There is no commander. That means no command zone, no commander tax, and no color identity restriction. If your deck can cast the spells, you can play the spells. Five color good stuff is fair game. So is a tight two color aggro deck with a cleaner manabase and fewer excuses.
And there are no sideboards. That matters more than people expect. Wish effects that grab cards from outside the game do not function, and companion does not work in Canadian Highlander either. You can still play companion cards in your 100, but not as companions.
Canadian Highlander Rules for Points and Banned Cards
This is the rule that makes the format feel unique.
Instead of banning most power cards for strength, Canadian Highlander uses a 10 point system. Your deck can include pointed cards, but the total value of those cards cannot exceed 10. That is the real puzzle of deck construction. You are not asking, “What are the best cards?” You are asking, “Which package of busted cards is actually best for my plan?”
Right now, the official points list includes examples like these:
Ancestral Recall at 8 points
Black Lotus, Flash, and Time Vault at 7 points
Mana Crypt, Thassa's Oracle, and Time Walk at 5 points
Demonic Tutor, Sol Ring, Tinker, Underworld Breach, and each Mox at 3 points
Mystical Tutor and Vampiric Tutor at 2 points
Mana Drain, Strip Mine, The One Ring, and Wrenn and Six at 1 point
That is why two Canlander decks can look equally absurd on paper and still play very differently. A blue control deck might spend almost everything on Ancestral Recall. An aggro or midrange deck might care more about Mana Crypt or Moxen. A combo deck might invest points in tutors or a specific engine piece instead.
You also do not have to spend all 10 points. That sounds obvious, but it matters. Sometimes the best version of your deck is a 7 point or 8 point build because the next pointed card is not helping your actual plan. New players love the urge to “use all the points.” I get it. But points are a cap, not a shopping challenge.
As for banned cards, Canadian Highlander effectively uses the Vintage banned list as its baseline and then excludes the usual non constructed oddballs such as ante cards, Conspiracy cards, dexterity cards, acorn and silver bordered cards, sub game cards, and cards involving stickers or Attractions. The format keeps the card pool huge, then uses singleton plus points to stop the whole thing from turning into nonsense.
Canadian Highlander Rules for Mulligans, Sideboards, and Gameplay
The actual gameplay rules are mostly normal Magic. The special format pieces are the starting life total, the lack of sideboards, and the mulligan rule.
You start at 20 life. That makes the format much faster and less forgiving than Commander. You cannot casually take hits for six turns and assume you will stabilize later. If your deck does nothing until turn four, you are probably setting yourself up for a bad time.
Canadian Highlander uses the London mulligan. You draw seven each time you mulligan, then put a number of cards equal to your mulligans on the bottom of your library. That is good news, because 100 card singleton decks can be messy. But it also means mulligan decisions matter a lot. The official primer notes that the format is nearly always played best of three even though there are no sideboards, so you still need a deck that can function across a match rather than cheese one cute opener and call it a day.
This is also why outside the game effects do not work. No sideboards means no wishboard. And because companions require that outside zone, the companion mechanic is turned off here too.
As for speed, think faster than Commander, a little looser than pure Vintage, and very punishing if you stumble. Official guidance for new players says meaningful plays on turns one and two matter, aggro can often close the game by turn five, and faster combo decks can threaten turns three or four when unimpeded. So yes, you need a real curve.
Canadian Highlander Rules vs Commander
A lot of players find the format by asking a simple question: “Is this just 1v1 Commander?”
Not really.
Commander is built around a legend, a color identity, forty life, multiplayer politics, and swingier game length. Canadian Highlander is about raw card quality, efficiency, and tight technical play. There is no commander to build around, no free color restriction to define your shell, and no social contract cushioning the sharp edges.
That changes card evaluation in a big way. Expensive haymakers that are excellent in Commander can be clunky here. Cheap interaction, fast mana, efficient threats, and compact engines go way up. A Canlander creature often needs to attack well, block well, or generate value right now. “This gets amazing if it survives two full turns and I untap again” is a much riskier sentence in this format.
I think this is the biggest trap for Commander players. They port over a pet deck, trim a few cards, and assume they are ready. Usually they are not. The themes may carry over, but the card choices often need a serious rewrite.
How to Build Your First Canadian Highlander Deck
If you are new, do not start by asking which 10 pointed cards you can cram into a pile. Start with an archetype.
Aggro, midrange, control, combo, and tempo all exist here. Pick the play pattern you already understand, then build a singleton version that respects the format's speed. If you are an aggro player, prioritize one and two drops plus reach. If you are a control player, make sure your answers line up early enough and your win conditions actually close. If you are a combo player, be honest about how many tutors, cantrips, and backup plans you need to make a singleton engine real.
Mana is another place where new players lose games before the game really starts. Canadian Highlander has no color identity restriction, which is freeing, but it also tempts people into greedy manabases that punish them for existing. If you want a refresher on how to think about duals, fetches, shocks, pain lands, and utility lands, our The Essential Guide to Lands in Magic: The Gathering is a good place to start. And if you are still sorting out guild, shard, and wedge names while sketching lists, MTG Color Combinations Explained will save you some confusion.
A good first deck usually does four things well:
It makes meaningful plays in the first two turns
It has a stable mana base
It uses points with a purpose
It knows how it actually wins
That last one matters. “Value” is not a win condition. “I drew cool cards” is not a win condition. Even midrange piles need a clear plan for closing the game before a combo deck assembles something gross or a control deck takes over.
FAQs About Canadian Highlander Rules
Do I Have to Use All 10 Points?
No. Ten points is the maximum, not the requirement. Plenty of decks would rather stay under the cap than force in a card that looks strong but does not fit the plan.
Can I Play More Than 100 Cards?
Yes, but you usually should not. Going above 100 does not give you extra points, and it makes your deck less consistent.
Can I Use a Commander or Color Identity Rules?
No. There is no commander in Canadian Highlander, and there are no color identity restrictions.
Do Companions Work?
No. Because there are no sideboards, companion does not function in Canadian Highlander.
Is Canadian Highlander Always Super Fast?
It is fast enough that you need to respect the early turns, but it is not just coin flip combo. Aggro, midrange, control, tempo, and combo all have room to exist because the singleton rule and the points system keep decks from feeling too repetitive.
Final Thoughts
Canadian Highlander rules can look chaotic from the outside, but the format is surprisingly elegant once you play a few matches. The deckbuilding rules are tight. The gameplay is fast. And the 10 point system creates real decisions instead of fake ones.
That is also why the format has such a loyal following. You get access to some of the strongest cards in Magic, but you still have to make tradeoffs. You cannot just jam everything and call it skill.
If you want to test a few shells, build a battlebox, or put together readable practice decks without hunting down every pointed staple first, PrintMTG is a practical way to get cards in hand and start playing sooner.