Formats

Commander — also called EDH — is most often played four-handed, at forty life each. Your deck is exactly one hundred cards with only a single copy of any card, and it is led by a legendary creature: your commander, always available, castable again even after it dies.

It is the most-played format in the shop and by far the most welcoming to a new player. Games are long, social and talkative. The singleton rule means no two games play alike, and a deck is built one card at a time rather than four at a time.

Standard allows only sets released in the past few years; the oldest leave the format as new ones arrive. Decks are a minimum of sixty cards, with at most four copies of any card.

The upside is that a smaller card pool stays comprehensible: you can genuinely know what an opponent might be playing. The downside is rotation — a competitive deck has an expiry date, and keeping it current costs money.

Modern covers most cards printed since 2003 in modern-border sets. Nothing ever leaves: a card bought today is still legal in ten years, barring the occasional ban.

Games are fast and precise, because the best tools of two decades exist side by side. It is a demanding format where knowing the opposing decks counts almost as much as playing your own.

Pioneer allows cards printed since roughly 2012, with no rotation. It is deliberately a compromise: deeper than Standard, cheaper and less punishing than Modern.

Many players arrive with cards bought for Standard that have just rotated out, which makes it the natural next step when rotation leaves you holding an orphaned deck.

Pauper allows only cards that have been printed at common. Decks are sixty cards as in Standard, but the entire legal card pool costs a fraction of the price.

It is often underestimated as simple. It is not: stripped of their most powerful cards, strategies get tighter and games come down to small margins.

In Limited you bring nothing: you pay entry, receive sealed packs, and build a forty-card deck from what you open. In a draft, eight players pass packs around and pick one card at a time.

It is the fairest format there is, because the size of your collection counts for nothing. It is also, in many people's view, the best school: you learn to evaluate cards you have never seen, in real time.