MTG formats explained: every way to play Magic
Commander, Standard, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Pauper, Brawl, Oathbreaker, Draft and more: card pool, deck size, players and starting life for every major Magic format.
In this article
There are a lot of ways to play Magic, and the names don’t tell you much. This guide lists every major format with the four things that actually matter at the table: which cards you can use, how big your deck is, how many people play and how much life you start with.
The formats at a glance
| Format | Card pool | Deck | Players | Life |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Commander | Almost every card | 100, one of each | 3+ | 40 |
| Standard | Most recent sets | 60+ | 1v1 | 20 |
| Pioneer | Return to Ravnica onward | 60+ | 1v1 | 20 |
| Modern | Eighth Edition and Mirrodin onward | 60+ | 1v1 | 20 |
| Legacy | Every set, with a ban list | 60+ | 1v1 | 20 |
| Vintage | Every set, with a restricted list | 60+ | 1v1 | 20 |
| Pauper | Commons only | 60+ | 1v1 | 20 |
| Draft / Sealed | Packs opened at the event | 40+ | 2–8 | 20 |
| Brawl (MTG Arena) | Cards on Arena | 100, one of each | 1v1 | 25 |
| Oathbreaker | Almost every card | 60, one of each | 3–5 | 20 |
Constructed formats share one rule from the Comprehensive Rules (rule 100.2a): at least 60 cards and no more than four copies of any card except basic lands, plus a sideboard of up to 15 cards.
Commander
The most popular way to play casually. You pick a legendary creature as your commander, build a 100-card deck around it with only one copy of each card, and play against two or more opponents at 40 life.
Every card in the deck has to fit your commander’s color identity (rule 903.5c), and a commander that hits you for 21 combat damage over the game knocks you out. See our guide to commander damage. Wizards also publishes five optional brackets, from Exhibition to cEDH, so playgroups can match decks of similar power.
Standard
The newest sets only. Once a year, after the first premier set of the year comes out, the oldest sets rotate out. It’s the format most new players start with in stores and on MTG Arena.
Pioneer
A nonrotating format: every set from Return to Ravnica (2012) onward. Your deck doesn’t lose cards when Standard rotates, and the card pool is much smaller than Modern’s.
Modern
Cards from Eighth Edition and Mirrodin (2003) onward, so more than two decades of sets. It’s a big card pool with fast, powerful decks, and also nonrotating.
Legacy and Vintage
Both use every Magic set ever printed. The difference is how they handle the most powerful cards:
- Legacy has a ban list. Cards on it can’t be played at all.
- Vintage bans fewer cards and puts others on a restricted list: you can play exactly one copy.
Pauper
Every card has to have been printed at common in a paper Magic product or on Magic Online. If it ever was, any printing of it is legal. Pauper is cheap to get into and still competitive.
Draft and Sealed
The two limited formats. You build your deck from packs opened at the event, and the minimum deck size is 40 (rule 100.2b).
- Booster Draft: each player opens a pack, picks one card and passes the rest. You open three packs this way and end up with about 45 cards to build from.
- Sealed: you open your packs and build directly from them, with no passing.
Brawl
On MTG Arena, Brawl is a 1v1 take on Commander: 100 cards, one of each, a legendary creature or planeswalker as commander, 25 life and any card available on Arena. Like all Brawl, it doesn’t use the commander damage rule (rule 903.12h). The Comprehensive Rules also describe a 60-card version built from Standard sets, with 25 life in 1v1 and 30 in multiplayer.
Oathbreaker
A 60-card multiplayer format for 3 to 5 players. Instead of a creature you get a planeswalker as your Oathbreaker, plus a Signature Spell, an instant or sorcery you can cast from the command zone while your Oathbreaker is on the battlefield. Everyone starts at 20 life.
Community formats
These aren’t run by Wizards, so their rules come from their own committees:
- Pauper Commander (PDH): an uncommon creature as commander, 99 commons, 30 life and 16 commander damage.
- Duel Commander: 1v1 Commander with 20 life, its own ban list and no commander damage.
Casual variants
Some ways of playing change the game rather than the card pool:
- Two-Headed Giant: teams of two share one life total of 30.
- Archenemy: one player with 40 life and a scheme deck against a team at 20 life each.
- Planechase: each player brings a deck of planes, and the active plane changes the rules until someone planeswalks away.
For the exact starting life and poison numbers in each of these, see starting life in every format.
Arena-only formats
Alchemy, Historic and Timeless only exist on MTG Arena and use cards available there. Alchemy is the one built around digital-only cards.
Keeping track at the table
The life total is the one thing every format has in common, and it’s different in almost all of them.
Lotus remembers one starting life total for 1v1 games and one for multiplayer, 20 and 40 by default, so switching from Modern to Commander picks the right number. You can set custom totals for formats like PDH, Brawl or Two-Headed Giant, and Lotus also has Archenemy and Planechase modes.
