If you’re in your first week of playing competitive Commander online, these are the terms you’ll run into. Each one gets two sentences, and where a term means something different here from what it means in casual Commander, the difference is the point.
Bracket
Wizards’ five-tier system for describing a deck’s power, introduced in 2025 with the Commander Format Panel advising, and Bracket 5 means cEDH. Most online communities host tables by bracket, so a request for a “cEDH pod” is a request for Bracket 5 and nothing lower.
cEDH
Competitive Commander, played with the sole aim of winning, using the strongest cards and lines there are and no social contract about what’s “fair”. Every guide here assumes that’s what you’re playing.
Commander damage
Take 21 combat damage from any single commander and you’ve lost, with the count kept separately for each commander. Online, SpellTable’s or Convoke’s life panel tracks it, but you should still say when it changes.
Concession
When a player chooses to lose the game. At a competitive table, a concession that hands another player the win is a table decision, and most servers have a rule on it.
Fast mana
Cards that produce more mana than they cost on the turn you play them, like Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond. Decks in cEDH are built around them, which is why a turn-two win is nothing unusual. Mana Crypt and Jeweled Lotus were the strongest of the lot until both were banned in Commander in September 2024.
Floating mana
Mana you’ve added to your mana pool and not spent yet. On camera nobody can count your taps, so whenever it isn’t obvious, say how much you’re floating and in what colours.
LFP, LFG
“Looking for pod” or “looking for group”, the request that fills a table. Most servers have a channel and a form for it, and the first pod guide shows you the form.
Pod
Your group of players for a single game, almost always four. “The pod fired” means the game started, and “the pod broke” means it lost a player before it finished.
Playtest card
A stand-in for an authentic printing that the community expects you to recognise as the real card. It has official art, a matching frame, and either a playtest mark or a non-authentic back. Playtest cards online covers what online cEDH accepts and why SpellTable’s card recognition makes this matter, and What you need at the table has the rest of your kit.
Proxy
The wider word for any stand-in card. In cEDH conversation you’ll hear “proxy” and “playtest card” used interchangeably, and at a table, what matters is that the card’s recognisable.
Priority
Whoever holds it has the right to take an action. “Does anyone respond?” and “in response” are the two phrases that mark priority passing at a table, and saying them out loud is the habit that stops most online disputes.
Rule 0
The conversation your table has before a game about what’s acceptable. At a cEDH table it’s short, covering commanders and how life is tracked, as everything else is assumed.
SpellTable
SpellTable is Wizards of the Coast’s browser tool for playing paper Magic over webcam, with card recognition and life tracking, and it runs in Chrome. It expects a camera pointed at your play area. It has voice chat of its own, but SpellTable calls that early-stage, and most tables use Discord instead (SpellTable FAQ, checked September 2026).
Convoke
Convoke is an independent browser tool for playing paper Magic over webcam. When we checked its site on 21 September 2026, it listed its own card recognition, 1080p video, life tracking, decklist import and a spectator mode. It’s free, like SpellTable, and communities in the directory play on either one, with the game link telling you which.
Stack
The order spells and abilities wait in to resolve, last in, first out. Online, the stack is spoken: name what you’re casting, wait for responses, then resolve.
Storm count, cast triggers
Two things a table tracks that a webcam can’t show: how many spells have been cast this turn, and triggers from cards like Rhystic Study and Mystic Remora. Announce your spells, and ask “pay the one?” each time until the table agrees a shortcut.
Top cut, Swiss
Swiss rounds pair players with similar records, then a top cut (top 16, top 4) plays single elimination. Where the organiser publishes it, the tournament calendar tells you which structure each event uses.
Win condition, “winning on the stack”
A combination of cards that ends the game once it resolves, and Thassa’s Oracle with Demonic Consultation is the best-known example. “It’s on the stack” means the win is happening unless someone responds now, and it’s the moment to ask for responses one last time.