What is Standard in Magic: The Gathering? The chances are that if you’re asking this, then you’re fairly new to the game. So, for starters, welcome on in to this incredible game. You’ve got a lot of exciting games ahead of you and lots of formats to learn about, but take things at your own pace.
Now then, Standard is a lot of people’s first entry into constructed formats, so while a lot of our other pieces list the expectations for deck construction pretty simply, we’ll explain things a bit more here.
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What is Standard in Magic: The Gathering?
Standard is a constructed format. That means that your deck has specific rules to follow. Your deck must contain at least sixty cards, and aside from Basic Lands and any cards that state so in their rules text, you can only have up to four of any single card in your deck and sideboard. Your sideboard can be up to fifteen cards, and you use it to swap out parts of your deck that might not be good about specific matchups.
Standard is the smallest construct format, and what that means is that it has the least cards and sets within it. This is because sets rotate out regularly, which helps to keep the format fresh and exciting, but can also put some people off who want to use their pet cards.
As it stands, Standard contains Dominaria United, Streets of Capenna, Kamigawa, Neon Dynasty, Innistrad, Crimson Vow, and Innistrad, Midnight Hunt. That means you can use any cards from these sets, and also any cards printed in these sets that you own from a previous printing.
What cards are banned in Standard?
As Standard has a smaller pool of cards to choose from, it also (usually) has fewer banned cards. Since Standard’s rotation into Dominaria United just occurred, no cards are currently banned.
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