MTG Formats
A format is two decisions: which cards you may use, and how you may use them. Everything else follows from those. Here is every format worth knowing, what each one costs to enter, and which deck to build for it.
Two rules define every format in Magic. The first is the card pool: which printed cards you are allowed to touch. The second is deck construction: how many cards you need, and how many copies of any one card you may run. Name those two and you have described a format completely.
Standard and Modern have identical construction rules (sixty cards, four copies, fifteen-card sideboard) and are wildly different formats, because one reaches back three years and the other reaches back to 2003. Commander and Brawl draw from different pools but share the singleton rule, which is why they feel like relatives. Once you can read a format as "pool plus construction", a new one takes about a minute to learn.
Which cards can I play, and how many of each? Every other difference between formats is a consequence of those two answers.
the only two questions a format answers
Everything after that is convention. Life totals, how many players sit down, whether there is a card in a command zone you can always reach: those are the levers that turn the same card pool into a two-player race or a four-player negotiation. Commander's 40 life is the clearest example, and it exists because a game with three opponents needs to survive three opponents.
Deck size is a minimum unless the format fixes it exactly, which only the singleton formats do. How many copies of a card each format allows is on its own card further down.
Sixty-card decks, four copies of anything, a fifteen-card sideboard. These five are the ladder players usually mean by "competitive Magic", and the only thing that separates them is how far back the card pool reaches.
The rotating format, and the one every new set is designed for. The smallest card pool of any constructed format, which is what makes it the cheapest to keep current in.
Standard's card pool with the rotation switched off. Modern's power level without Modern's mana base, since the fetchlands were banned before the format's first event.
Twenty-plus years of cards, no rotation, and the only non-eternal format with sets printed straight into it. The turn-four format, most weeks.
Everything, with the Power Nine banned. Held together by free spells, and priced by the dual lands almost every deck wants.
The only format where the Power Nine are legal, one copy at a time. Bans are reserved for cards that break the game; everything else gets restricted instead.
You build from cards opened at the event rather than from a collection. Forty-card decks, no four-of rule, and the cheapest way into a new set: the entry fee is close to what the packs cost, and you keep everything you open.
Six packs, forty cards, no collection required. What a prerelease is, and the format where knowing the set matters less than counting your playables.
The other half of Limited: you pick one card from a pack and pass the rest, three times over, then build from the 45 you kept.
Limited from a curated pool instead of a printed set. Buy it once and it drafts forever, which is why it is the format groups settle on when they are tired of buying packs.
One copy of each card, and a face card in the command zone you can always reach. Commander is the biggest format in Magic by a wide margin; the others are the same idea at different deck sizes.
The format most people mean when they say they play Magic. A hundred singleton cards, a legendary creature in the command zone, and a table rather than an opponent.
Commander built from Standard, at half the deck size and a third of the price. The Arena version is the one most people play, and it is 100 cards rather than 60.
A planeswalker in the command zone with an instant or sorcery bound to it. Sixty cards, twenty life, and games that finish inside an hour.
Commander crossed with Pauper: an uncommon legend leads 99 commons. A complete deck runs to the price of a booster box, and often less.
Three formats that exist only inside MTG Arena, because two of them contain cards that were never printed and the third contains the versions of cards Arena has since changed.
Standard with a patch cycle. Cards that could not exist on cardboard, and existing cards reworded when they get out of hand.
Arena's non-rotating format. Nothing ever leaves, and the cards Alchemy has rebalanced are legal here in their rebalanced wording.
Historic with the rebalancing switched off and nothing banned. The most powerful format on Arena, and the only one that restricts cards instead of banning them.
Formats defined by a constraint rather than by a date: only commons, only cards that cost pennies, only one creature. Cheap to enter and, in two of the three cases, impossible to spend your way ahead in.
Commons only, across every set ever printed. A tuned deck costs less than a single Modern land, and the format has been played seriously for over a decade.
A format whose legality is a price tag. Around fifteen thousand cards are legal, the list is redrawn every season, and a deck that gets popular prices itself out.
Two players, one library, one graveyard, and one creature in the whole format. Deckbuilding is finished before you sit down, so every game is pure play skill.
The honest answer is "whichever one the people near you already play", because a deck with nobody to play it against is an expensive binder. Ask at the shop before you buy anything. If you have a choice, this is the order the questions usually come in.
Picking a format
1. How many people are at the table?
2. Do you want to own a collection, or just show up?
3. What is your budget for the deck?
4. Are you playing on MTG Arena?
One thing worth knowing before you spend: card pools nest downward, not sideways. A Standard deck is usually legal in Pioneer and Modern as well, so cards bought for Standard keep working after they rotate out of it. Cards bought for Modern were never Standard legal in the first place and never will be. Buying the deck that rotates is not a waste; buying it expecting to play it in Standard forever is.
Wizards of the Coast sanctions about a dozen, split into constructed (you build from your collection) and limited (you build from packs opened at the event). Alongside those sit community-run formats like Oathbreaker, Penny Dreadful and Dandan, which have their own rules committees and banned lists but no official tournament support. This page covers eighteen of them, which is every format a player is realistically offered a seat in.
Commander, and not narrowly. It is a multiplayer singleton format with 100-card decks and a legendary creature in the command zone, and it has been the most played way to play Magic for years. Standard and Modern are the biggest 1v1 constructed formats, and Sealed is the format almost everyone plays first, because that is what a prerelease is.
Sealed, if you count a single event: the entry fee is close to what the six packs cost and you keep every card you open. For a deck you own and can replay, Pauper is the cheapest constructed format, since every card in it has been printed at common. Penny Dreadful is cheaper still on Magic Online, where its whole point is that no legal card costs more than two cents.
That older sets stop being legal in it. Standard is the only major format that rotates: sets leave roughly three years after they arrive, which keeps the card pool small and the cost of staying current low. Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Pauper, Commander, Historic and Timeless are non-rotating, so a card you buy for them stays legal unless it is specifically banned.
Often, in one direction. Card pools nest: a Standard-legal deck is normally Pioneer and Modern legal too, because those formats reach further back rather than sideways. The reverse does not hold, and singleton formats break the pattern entirely, since a Commander or Brawl deck is built one copy at a time and cannot be reused in a four-of format without rebuilding it.
TurnZero HQ builds and rates Commander decks, and tracks life totals, win rates and standout moments at the table. Free to start.
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