Commander Glossary
A proxy is a stand-in for a card you do not own. Sanctioned events require authentic cards and always will, but away from them there is no rule to look up: Wizards has said it does not police playtest cards made for personal use, so whether your table allows them is a Rule 0 question. The one hard line is between a playtest card and a counterfeit.
A proxy is a piece of card that stands in for a Magic card you do not have, so that a deck can be played as though it were complete. In its oldest and plainest form it is a basic land with a card name written on it in marker. In its common modern form it is a printed slip carrying the card's rules text, tucked into a sleeve in front of a card you are not otherwise using.
What it is not is a copy of a Magic card. That distinction sounds like pedantry and is the entire subject: a stand-in that could never be mistaken for the real thing sits in one legal and social category, and a reproduction built to pass as genuine sits in a completely different one.
Four contexts, and they have four different answers. Most arguments about proxies are really two people talking about different rows of this table.
Proxies are illegal, so using one at a kitchen table is breaking a rule.
There is no rule to break away from sanctioned play. Wizards' stated position is that it has no desire to police playtest cards made for personal, non-commercial use, even inside a store. What it does care about is that sanctioned events use authentic cards, and that counterfeits are stopped. Your playgroup's answer is a house rule, not a legal question.
The practical version: if the event has a name, a judge or an entry fee, bring real cards. If it is four people and a kitchen table, the only authority is the four of you.
A playtest card is made for you to play with. A counterfeit is made to deceive somebody, and that somebody is usually a player or a store buying cards in good faith. Producing or selling counterfeit cards is illegal, and it is the reason proxies get discussed with more heat than a home-game convention would otherwise attract.
A proxy should be immediately identifiable as not a real card, at arm's length, by someone who is not looking closely.
It should never be sold, traded, or included in a lot of cards changing hands.
Anything advertised as indistinguishable from the real thing, or as passing inspection, is a counterfeit whatever the listing calls it.
If you are ever unsure which side of the line something is on, the question to ask is who it could fool and in what transaction.
This page covers proxies as a way to play games with your friends. It is not a guide to producing convincing reproductions, and the two are not on a spectrum.
"Do you allow proxies" gets different answers from reasonable people because they are solving different problems with it. Five of the real reasons, roughly in order of how uncontroversial they are.
A card can look perfect in a decklist and be wrong in your deck. Proxying it for three games before spending real money on it is the single least controversial use, and even proxy-averse playgroups tend to allow it.
Commander's most-wanted staples include cards that cost more than an entire precon. A playgroup that wants everyone playing at the same level has a choice between proxies and a table where the person with the bigger budget wins more, and plenty of groups pick proxies.
The opposite case, and a common one: you own the expensive card and would rather not shuffle it four times a night. A proxy in the deck and the original in a binder is a preservation decision, not a cost one.
Singleton means one copy per deck, not one copy per collection. If two of your decks want the same staple, proxying the second is cheaper than a second copy and means neither deck has to be taken apart.
The competitive end of Commander is broadly proxy-friendly by convention, because the format's card pool includes cards that cost thousands and nobody wants entry to be a wealth test. Norms vary by group, but assume it is allowed and ask anyway.
And the objection, stated fairly, because it is not unreasonable either: part of what some players enjoy is acquiring the cards, and a deck assembled over two years means something to the person who assembled it. A group that prefers everyone to own what they play is not being precious, it is playing a slightly different game, and it is worth knowing that before you sit down rather than after.
This belongs in the same conversation as brackets, combos and land destruction, and it is the easiest item on that list to get right because it is a yes or no question.
Ask before the game, not while shuffling. "Is the table fine with proxies?" takes four seconds and prevents the only bad version of this conversation, which is the one that happens after somebody has cast one.
Say roughly how many, and of what. "Three, all lands" and "the whole deck" are very different asks and get different answers.
Expect the answer to differ between pods at the same store. One table's normal is another's dealbreaker and neither is being unreasonable.
If somebody says no, that is a no. It costs you one game, and the alternative is being the person who argued about it.
Agree it once for a recurring group and stop relitigating it. A regular playgroup should know its own answer without asking every week.
A proxy's job is to be readable and to shuffle like a card. Five things get that right.
A basic land with the card name written on it in marker is the original playtest card and is still completely fine. It cannot be mistaken for anything and it works.
A printed slip in front of a real card inside a sleeve is the common version. Use a card you are not otherwise playing, so the sleeve still shuffles and feels like the rest of the deck.
Keep the full rules text on it, not just the name. The table needs to read it without asking you, and you need it too more often than you would think.
Match the sleeve. A deck where the proxies are visibly different from the back is a marked deck, which matters even in a casual game.
Never print onto card stock intended to feel like the real thing. That is where a playtest card stops being one.
Five ways this goes wrong, only one of which is about the cards.
Proxying a card and then not being able to say what it does. If the table cannot read it and you cannot explain it, it is not a playable card, it is a delay.
Bringing proxies to a prerelease, FNM or any sanctioned event. This is the one context with an actual rule, and the answer is no.
Buying "proxies" that are made to look real. Anything advertised as passing under a loupe, with correct card stock and rosette printing, is a counterfeit no matter what the seller calls it.
Selling, trading or including a proxy in a bulk lot. The moment it changes hands as though it were a card, it stops being a playtest card and becomes fraud.
Using a proxy for a card that is banned. The ban list applies to what the card is, not to how it was printed.
The honest reason to think about this at all is that proxies remove a budget ceiling, and a budget ceiling was doing something. It was quietly holding your deck at a power level the rest of your pod could handle. Take it away in an afternoon and the deck can move up a bracket without you deciding to move it, which is the most common way a proxy-friendly group ends up having an argument that is not really about proxies.
That is a tracking question more than a card question. TurnZero HQ keeps a per-deck record across a season, so when a deck's win rate against the same pod jumps after a round of changes, you can see it happen rather than argue about whether it did. Knowing which upgrade moved the needle is also the only way to put one back.
Not in sanctioned play. Any DCI-sanctioned event, including prereleases and Friday Night Magic, requires authentic Magic cards, and the only exception is a judge issuing a replacement for a card that gets damaged during that event. Away from sanctioned play there is no rule at all: Wizards has said it has no desire to police playtest cards made for personal, non-commercial use, so whether proxies are allowed in your kitchen-table or store-casual Commander game is entirely a question for the table.
Commander's rules do not mention them, so it is a Rule 0 question rather than a rules question. In practice most casual playgroups allow at least some, the competitive end of the format is broadly proxy-friendly, and some groups prefer everyone to own their cards. None of those positions is wrong. Ask before the game rather than after you cast one.
Intent and appearance. A playtest card is a stand-in that nobody would mistake for a real card, made for your own use, and Wizards has explicitly said it is not interested in policing those. A counterfeit is a reproduction made to pass as a genuine card, which is illegal to produce or sell and is a real problem for players and stores. The test is simple: if it is trying to fool anybody, it is on the wrong side of the line.
No. The permission Wizards describes is for personal, non-commercial use. Once a card is sold, traded or slipped into a bulk lot, it is being passed off as something it is not, and that is fraud regardless of what it was called when it was made.
The simplest version is a basic land with the card's name written on it. The common version is a printed slip with the card's full rules text placed in front of a real card inside a sleeve, so it shuffles like the rest of the deck. Keep the whole rules text on it rather than just the name, and keep it obviously not a real card.
The bracket system reads what the cards do, not what they cost or how they were printed, so a proxied deck sits exactly where the same list would sit if every card were genuine. The thing worth saying out loud at Rule 0 is not that the deck is proxied but what proxying let you put in it, since that is what actually changes the game.
Track your deck's record across a season, so a jump in power shows up as a number.
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