Commander 2019

Commander is a regular deck "climbing" card game for 4, 6, or 8 players playing in teams. (As a climbing game, Commander shares some features of its play in common with other climbing games such as President, Tichu, The Great Dalmuti, and Haggis.) Four players play in two partnerships. Six players can play in two teams of three or in three partnerships; eight players can play in two teams of four or in four partnerships.

The goal of the game is to shed your cards sooner than opposing team members can shed their cards. The sooner you shed, the more points you score for your team.

Prior to the start of each hand, a unique blind bidding mechanism elects one player per team as that team's "commander" and also decides which of the newly-chosen commanders has the privilege of playing first. The commander of a team is expected to be the first of the team to shed all their cards -- and ideally, is expected to shed their cards before the other commanders can do so. Otherwise, a commander faces a penalty that reduces their team's score.

For a complete set of rules to Commander, see the files section or the forum posting in the rules forum. (Note that the playing chips described in these rules and pictured in the representative image are primarily for scoring convenience. The game can also be played with a few spare coins and pen and paper scoring.)

—description from the designer