A vaulted stone hall lined with round game tables, each lit by a hanging lantern burning a different colour — white, blue, orange, green — with rune-marked banners on the pillars

● MAGIC · CHAPTER 02 — DOOR 02 · CHOOSE A FORMAT

FORMATS

pick your table.

one game, a dozen doors.

Commander, Standard, Draft, Modern — Magic is really a dozen games wearing one name. Pick the table you want to sit at.

▸ THE FORMAT MATRIX

Four tables, four rulebooks. Same cards. The differences fit on one page — and they decide everything else.

Nobody tells a new player this plainly, so here it is side by side. Deck size, how many copies you're allowed, how many people sit down, how much life you start with, which cards are even legal — and what it takes to walk in the door. Read down the column you like the look of.

THE FOUR FORMATS, LINE BY LINE
THE RULE	CCommanderthe pod	SStandardthe season	MModernthe long game	DDraftthe pod, blind
Deck size	100	60	60	40
Copies of a card	1 — singleton	up to 4	up to 4	whatever you open
Players	3–5	2	2	8 pod
Starting life	40	20	20	20
Card pool	anything ever printed	the last few years	most sets since 2003	three packs
What it costs to start	borrow a precon	a season	deep	the price of entry, each time

▸The format decides the price of playing more than any single card does. A hundred-dollar card in a format you never sit down to play is a hundred dollars of shelf.

CCOMMANDER~~THE POD~~ Deck size100 Copies1 — singleton Players3–5 Starting life40 Card poolanything ever printed To startborrow a precon

SSTANDARD~~THE SEASON~~ Deck size60 Copiesup to 4 Players2 Starting life20 Card poolthe last few years To starta season

An overhead view of a round rune-carved stone table with four chairs drawn up to it, a violet spiral of runes glowing across its surface under a hanging lantern

MMODERN~~THE LONG GAME~~ Deck size60 Copiesup to 4 Players2 Starting life20 Card poolmost sets since 2003 To startdeep

DDRAFT~~THE POD, BLIND~~ Deck size40 Copieswhatever you open Players8 pod Starting life20 Card poolthree packs To startthe price of entry, each time

▸The format decides the price of playing more than any single card does. A hundred-dollar card in a format you never sit down to play is a hundred dollars of shelf.

A round wooden table laid for four under a great iron candle chandelier, four high-backed leather chairs drawn up around it

Three tables.

THE POD · THE DUEL · THE DRAFT. SIT WHERE YOU FIT.

TABLE 01 · COMMANDER

The Four-Player Table.

Four players, a hundred cards, no duplicates, and one legendary creature at the head of the deck deciding what colours you're allowed. It is how most people actually play Magic — and the only table that talks back.

▸Singleton means one of everything — variance is the point, not a flaw
▸Politics is a rule, not a bug: three people can and will gang up on you
▸A preconstructed deck off the shelf is a real deck — upgrade ten cards at a time

◆ GUIDE COMING SOON

TABLE 02 · CONSTRUCTED

Standard, Modern and the Duel.

Two players, sixty cards, four copies of anything you can afford. Standard rotates and stays shallow; Modern never rotates and never gets cheaper. Same shape, different clock — and the clock is the whole decision.

▸Standard rotates: what you buy this year plays for roughly three, then stops
▸Modern never rotates, so the cost is front-loaded once instead of annual forever
▸Fifteen sideboard cards decide games two and three — half the skill lives there

◆ GUIDE COMING SOON

A single long stone table with two facing chairs at the floor of an empty stone amphitheatre, lit by one shaft of pale light

Eight plain wooden chairs pulled up to a round timber table in a raftered hall, a paper-wrapped packet set at every seat around a single lantern

TABLE 03 · DRAFT

Eight Seats, Three Packs.

No collection required. Eight people open a pack, take one card, pass the rest, and keep passing until the packs are gone. Then you build a forty-card deck out of whatever came back around. The cheapest real Magic there is.