Explaining All The Most Popular Formats in MTG Easily and Plainly 

One format my college friends would do sometimes is two-headed giant. Basically, it's two players on a team against two players using 60 card decks

For anyone watching this for education on the formats post-May 2023, Standard's time frame has been increased from ~2 years to ~3 years. For posterity

Putting pauper above pioneer in powerlevel, as it should be

A correction on Explorer: It's Arena's version of Pioneer and not Historic, and will be exactly Pioneer once all the cards legal in that format are on Arena.

Two other formats I think are worth mentioning are Cube and Canadian Highlander. Cube is a limited format, but rather than opening packs, someone assembles their own pool of cards from which players can make their own "packs" to draft from. While there aren't any absolutes with how a cube is constructed, it's typically 360 or 540 cards (meaning an 8 player draft will use either 100% of the card pool or 2/3rds of it), will include no duplicate cards, and has a very high power level. The most well known cube is the Vintage Cube on MTGO, which boasts the power level of Vintage, but without the consistency of every deck being a finely tuned combo deck. With the baseline for just about every card being an extremely good card and often format warping back when it was first printed, as well as some extremely good mana fixing to reduce the cost of splashing, the draft portion ends up being a lot more synergy focused than traditional draft. The typical draft strategy of a 2 color good stuff deck is just going to fall flat before decks where every card is working in the same direction. Though on the other hand, everything is so good, you can usually just go with whatever seems like the most fun and still end up with a pretty good deck. Trying to physically build a cube can be pretty expensive, but it costs nothing to maintain once you do construct it. Even eternal formats have cards go in and out of the meta as well as bannings, which does mean there's some upkeep to stay in the format. Additionally, you can tailor the cube to fit your exact preferences. People have made cubes around a certain format, or tailored it around certain colors or themes, such as the Grixis cube (only blue, black and red cards) or the Artificer's Cube (all artifact focused synergies). As someone who really enjoys drafting, but also enjoys high power level, cube is pretty much the perfect marriage of those. Canadian Highlander is maybe the most popular unofficial format. While there are many Highlander formats operating on a similar ruleset, the Canadian one seems to be the best balanced of the bunch and sees the most play outside its area of origin. It often gets compared to Commander (originally called Elder Dragon Highlander) as it is also a 100 card singleton format with no sideboard. However, that's about where the similarities end. There's no commander and no color restrictions. The better comparison is Vintage, as they have the same banned list (cards that aren't legal in any format, like ante cards). However, the restricted system Vintage uses where you can only have 1 copy of extremely powerful cards doesn't work in a format where you're only allowed to have one copy anyways. Instead, CanLander introduces the points system. Extremely powerful cards are assigned a points value, with decks allowed to have 10 points worth of cards in them. This means that you can play any card you want, but you can't play all the best cards together in one deck. And this system has worked well enough that its lead to maybe the most diverse metagame of any format in MtG. Nearly every deck that has at one point dominated an eternal format has some sort of equivalent in CanLander that has seen competitive success, as well as a few decks that are unlike anything other formats have to offer. This makes it the ideal format for anyone who loves brewing their own decks, as well a great format for anyone nostalgic for some old deck they used to play. It can be a very expensive format to get into, given how some of the cards can be upwards of several thousand dollars, but in practice it actually isn't. The place it sees the most play is on MTGO, where prices are far cheaper. In addition, since it isn't an official format, proxies are often accepted where it does see paper play. Additionally, since the format is so different from other formats, a lot of the powerhouses of the format are cards that never found a home in other formats and aren't worth anything. There are competitive decks that don't rely on any of expensive reserved list cards, and can run you less than a modern deck to put together from scratch.

Some of the other formats that weren’t popular enough to get listed include: Planechase, a format where in addition to the usual deck each player brings a 10 card deck of special Plane cards, each representing the various locations in Magic’s multiverse setting. There is always 1 plane card in play, and players can spend their mana to roll a d6 in an attempt to either move to the next plane or trigger the secondary effect of the plane in play. Planes have 2 effects, the first is always active and the second is a triggered effect that happens when someone rolls the chaos symbol on the planar die (or a 1 on a d6). If a player rolls the planeswalker symbol instead (a 6 on a d6) the current plane is discarded and the player replaces it with the top card of their planechase deck. Planechase is generally treated as a mechanism added onto another format where instead of everyone having a personal planechase deck, all the planechase cards are shuffled into a single shared deck to draw planes from, so if you’re able to find a few people willing to play a multiplayer format like commander, there’s a decent chance they’d be willing to introduce planes to the game. Vanguard, similarly to commander, each player also brings a vanguard which represents a character in Magic’s story. The vanguard applies certain effects to the game such as altering your starting life total or maximum hand size as well as some other unique ability. Unfortunately this format was discontinued and you probably won’t find anyone willing to play. Two-headed giant, this is a 2v2 format where players are on teams against each other. Players share a life total (determined by 1.5x the starting life of a single player, so a 2v2 commander game would have starting life totals of 60), and can block for each other, however cards in hand and mana are not shared. Instead of each player taking their own turn, the team takes it’s turn together. Both players draw, play cards, attack, etc. at the same time. If one player loses, the team loses. Archenemy. This is a 4 player format where the game is set up in a 3v1 match. The 3 players are on a team but have their own life totals. As a team they take their turns at the same time, however if one team member dies, the other two are still alive. The single player or “archenemy” also has a special “scheme” deck, meant to balance the 3v1 teams. At the start of the archenemy’s turn, they reveal the top card of the scheme deck which can help the archenemy or hurt the team players. The archenemy also starts with twice the normal life total and only wins when all 3 other players are defeated. Oathbreaker. This fan-made format is similar to commander except you get a 58 card singleton deck with a planeswalker as your “oathbreaker” and an instant or sorcery as your “signature spell”. The signature spell can be played following the same rules as casting your commander with the added restriction that you must control your oathbreaker/commander in order to cast it. PiLander. This is a very small fan format which combines the set restrictions of pioneer with the gameplay format of commander (also known as Elder Dragon Highlander or EDH, which was the original name of the format before wizards officially adopted the format, changing it’s name and allowing legendary creatures in general to be the commander rather than exclusively Elder Dragons). This is a link to the discord server run by the format’s creators discord.gg/jeGN5ymP

One format I have a soft spot for that sadly doesn’t see much play: Oathbreaker. It’s like Commander, but you have to use a Planeswalker as your commander, and they also have a Signature Spell - an instant or sorcery in your oathbreaker’s color identity that also goes in the Command Zone, and can only be cast while your oathbreaker is on the field. You can do things like play a blue artifact-centric oathbreaker with Thoughtcast as the signature spell, so as long as you keep putting artifacts on the board, you can keep drawing cards for super cheap despite the theoretically rising commander tax on Thoughtcast. Most of which will be artifacts, that you can then put on the board. It also has a lower life total and deck size than Commander - 20 life and 60 cards - so that combined with the existence of the Signature Spell makes the games a lot faster and more explosive. Which makes it a better format than Commander for quick, casual multiplayer games, like when you’re at the game store a bit early waiting for the draft to fire and you wanna shuffle up with your buddies.

vintage does technically have a ban list: Shahrazad, ante cards, and dexterity cards like Chaos Orb. If ante were allowed, Contract From Below would probably be the most powerful card in the game.

I remember the chaos of early magic days. One of my favorite memories is going so summer camp right when Prophecy was the newest set. We would sit on the floor of the multi-purpose room in a massive circle and play a single free-for-all game that anyone with a deck could join. Meaning we often had 20-30 people all playing a single game of magic. It was absolutely nuts and a terrible way to play the game. You would literally have to stand up and walk around the inside of the circle in order to see what cards the other kids had played. Combined with how many people were playing, that meant it might take fifteen minutes or more between each of your turns. Again, terrible way to play but I loved it and cherish those memories.

the best part of playing pauper is that you can probably afford to build multiple decks, and the mechanics of each deck tend to be fairly straightforward. So make 2 or more, its a great alternative to casual sessions where some folks might be waiting for the next Commander game.

I remember playing sealed at a new shop that decided sideboards didn't exist. I had played sealed release events for a couple years at that point and always ended up making two decks and playing what I assumed was the weaker one until it lost. With the cards being random, I could always make a slightly weaker deck with the colors I didn't use, and I love deck building with limitations. Basically, I got to play my favorite part twice for one cost of entry. Anyway, I'm at a new place for some reason and do my usual thing. First round, I lose so I swapped to my real deck and win. My opponent says "you can't do that" and calls the kid that is running the shop (who has a kid running the shop on a MTG sealed night btw?) over to make a ruling. He goes "yea, sure". I tell him that this has never been an issue at the other shop I usually went to, and they had a sanctioned MTG judge that went there for release night events. He calls the shop owner, who says that I can't use a sideboard. I play the rest of the event with my main deck and do fine, but that was the first and last time I went to that place.

As a pretty big Magic newbie who's only been playing for a few years this is the video I've been waiting for

Explorer doesn't have *all* cards on Arena that aren't digital only, it only has the cards from formerly or currently standard-legal sets, where Historic also has the Historic Anthologies, Jumpstart, the Strixhaven Mystical Archive cards, and some Modern Horizons cards from Jumpstart: Historic Horizons. Explorer will one day have all cards legal in Pioneer.

It's really cool to see you getting into Magic after watching your streams trying to understand it from a Yugi-Oh players perspective.

Just an addendum to the Planeswakers in Commander, you can use a Planeswalker in Commander, they just have to specifically say they are allowed to be used as a Commander. They aren't totally disallowed as Commanders. And if you have group of friend you play with, because of the casual nature of the format, house rules can and often do form, which can be another Pro to the format, and so you can get away with using certain specific planeswalkers as a Commander if your pod allows.

you do a great job explaining the rules of each and i love it. make it very digestible so keep up the great work

This is a fantastic, straight-forward guide! I’ll be pointing people here whenever they ask about the different formats. I’ll be honest, I was a bit worried you might not mention MTGO, so I was happy to see it in the “where to play” sections!

One big benefit to Pauper is that many cards that wouldn't normally see play are suddenly a lot more useful.

This video was made very comprehensive and its a great intro for those curious about MTG.... because of that, it should've been put in your Other channels as to promote this channel and MTG as a whole

MtG trivia: The first sanctioned sealed-deck event was a Pro Tour. In addition to that, the tournament also functioned as the Mirage pre-release. Additionally additionally, the event started with a players' meeting to discuss how the event should be run. (i.e. how many packs each player got, deck size, deck construction time, etc.)

Hey dude, thanks for making his channel! Love the yu gi oh and wow channels. Made this discovery today and, as a mtg player, have been binge watching all these vids today lol

I legitimately laughed at the no ban list claim for alchemy as they recently banned grinning ignus from the format.

And just as you've put all this work into a very nice polished video, Arena introduces the Gladiator format, 100 card singleton with a small banlist and a few other details.

My brother and I play a version of Brawl where you have 30 life and since it’s only him and I, it’s very casual. There is no Commander Damage either, and no cards are banned, since it is just us.

13:05 correction a planeswalker can be your commander, if it says on the card such as Estrid the Masked from the 2018 precons, or from commander legends 2, but then otherwise no, a planeswalker can't

There are some thing that you'll need to consider: In Arena there's 2 versions of Standard: There is Standard which is a Bo1. And what is known as Traditional which is technically the Standard format from Paper and Online. This is a Bo3 format as well as the format most Tournaments are based of Also there's a version of Commander that is DCI Sanctioned (thus is Official Competitive Format) that exists exclusively for Online called 1v1 Commander There's also another DCI Sanctioned Format for Online and Arena for called Brawl which is another version of Commander but you can only use Standard-legal Cards There's also a Multiplayer Format that is DCI Sanctioned for Paper called Two-Headed Giant in which two teams of 2 Players take turns together rather than each individual Player taking turns

I will be the one to shill for Penny Dreadful like always XD It's an MTGO exclusive format which rotates every standard set release and includes all cards under a certain price threshold (usually 1 cent, though sometimes the price of Magic cards overall goes up like when a new official format is announced). This makes it a sort of "self-correcting" format where powerful cards naturally pull themselves out of legality and allow for new strategies to be found from what's left. There are also frequently incredibly powerful cards that enter the format due to being banned everywhere else where it would be game-warping, like Gitaxian Probe or Sylvan Library.

Thank you, man. That is what I was looking for!

Another con, if it's seen that way, of Brawl is there's no Commander damage. So lifegain decks can sometimes get an edge over other decks if you don't already have a win con prepared

This is the best video i have seen on explaining MTG formats

Thanks for sharing that, it explained a lot. Man... what a whirlwind of formats. Makes coming back to it 20 years later really hard. I miss the school days of just making decks and playing, regardless of format. This was 2001/2002. At this rate with a family and kids, I doubt I can be a player. Perhaps just a collector for now.

Great video, a lot of information I was hoping to see.

Historic Brawl sure is fun, as long as you get to face different Commanders.

Considering that you're a bit new to Magic, this is pretty accurate all points considering. I will say that Vintage and legacy, well, most newer players won't delve even near the formats without being completely loaded. But, you did good. Good work.

commander does have some planeswalkers you can run as commanders, and there absolutely is a competitive side of commander called Cedh as well as the speed of commander rising

I see people posting other formats not in the video so here's one my friends and I played. Tiny leader: 50 card singleton (or 100 depending on who you play with) which includes your tiny leader. Color restrictions apply the same as EDH (commander) with one other rule; no cards mana value higher than 3. It died out around covid time, but was super fun. Especially running tree folk or mardu aggro.

One of the most popular format in Europe is Duel Commander. A commander format made for 1v1. Love your work ;)

I have a standard deck from years ago that I'd like to play against other standard decks from various blocks. Basically nobody'd be able to prepare for the meta. But it'd also be challenging to account for the legality of the deck for its specific block. Maybe just an interesting type of casual play.

good video. Ive never played MTG and know nothing about it. All I know is my local store (very small in small town in Australia) mainly does Draft and Commander it seems. I should try a Draft sometime!

Seeing you make videos on Yugioh and then Dungeons and Dragons and NOW MAGIC!? Super awesome!

The best format is Cards I Own

Perfectly explained!

My favorite is standard brawl. It’s a singleton format that has the same card pool as standard with a commander and 60 card deck limit. It has the fresh rotating decks like standard with the more casual feel of historic brawl with a tighter focus and shorter games with a 25 life total

Most people when wanting to play Vintage in paper with play with proxies of the most expensive cards. Look except for official Wizards of the cost events a lot of places will usually go with allowing them. It's actually a really fun format to play when you don't have to worry about the price as much.

My favorite is kitchen table format. The only rule is no companion cards (just a commander) and no crying and if your turn is taking too long the table can declare your turn over. It’s contextual. Are you busy with procs and counters? Do your thing. Are you just wonderingg what you should do. AUTOMATIC END STEP.

Very informative

I play Magic with my friends casually about every 2-3 weeks, and we really enjoy buying new packs, building decks out of them or improving our existing decks with them, so Modern works best for us. Standard rotates out a little too quickly for our taste, and we also still like to use our decks that we've been gradually building up over the years

12:44 A con that can be added is that Modern has very nearly become an unspoken-rotating format, since stronger cards get printed in every standard and MH set, making those stronger cards virtually mandatory to play if you want to compete. Modern has gotten stronger every two years, and decks that once use to be great in the format are now basically unplayed.

With the exception of when i go to in store events, the only formats we do are commander and “standard” standard just meaning 60 card decks and 15 card sideboard, we have our own banlist and stuff. Just makes things easier and more fun to us

Commander does have competitive tournaments, quite a few actually. Its considered tedh or tournament elder dragon highlander, a subset of competitive elder dragon highlander.

I would say one thing you should mention about Pioneer vs Modern is that for Pioneer they specifically banned Fetch Lands. Those lands in particular are all relatively pricey (getting playset of 1 of them usually runs you 80 usd at least) but are basically mandatory to have a decent modern deck. It's to the point that WotC made a special limited edition product known as Secret Lairs, and one of their releases was just fetch lands. While a lot of older cards can be expensive, to play Modern you pretty much have to get over the fetch land hurdle first.

Cube and Premodern: two great ways to enjoy MTG too!

I had no idea you had a MTG channel, I was so pleasantly surprised to hear your voice

So a correction is that there is a competitive version of commander called cedh (competitive elder dragon highlander the name of commander from before it was adapted by wotc)

Many years ago, I played a game in Emperor format. You have 2 teams of 3 players. The player in the middle of each team is the emperor. You can only attack the opponent adjacent to you (so the emperor cannot attack at first). The goal is to eliminate the emperor of the opposing team, so you first have to eliminate one of the players at their side. There's also 2-headed giant, another multiplayer format.

This one was very helpful

With sealed, it is possible to make 3 decks and play all 3 during the event. You get 6 packs, which yields 84 nonland cards. Because you generally build decks out of 23-25 nonland cards, you can build 3 decks. This obviously is varied by how many 2-3 colour cards you get.

Very helpful.

Oathbreaker was one that popped up in 2019. It was 60 card Commander, but you had to run a planeswalker and a signature spell which you could only cast if you controlled that walker. I ran a few decks including Angrath/Widespead Brutality.

Few house rules I use when people call them on turn 0. Also house rules do NOT exist within the meta, and as such are not enhanced, diminished, or otherwise effected in game spells, abilities, emblems, etc. Bedlam- allows 3rd party blocking 4th Myth- If a creature is to be killed by combat damage from another, the player at advantage may untap and remove their creature from combat and flip a coin. If that player wins the flip, they take control of the disadvantaged creature. Activate only once per combat, and cancel all damages from the encounter. There are others, but this is longer already than I wanted.

11:13 - 11:45 During the pros and cons of pauper the text on screen actually said "Pros and Cons of PIONEER". It was fixed at 11:47 when talking about where it can be played so it's probably just something missed in editing but figured I'd let you know.

There are two other multi-player focused formats not mentioned in this video: Archenemy and Planechase. Archenemy is usually played 3 vs 1, in which the solo player (the Archenemy) tries to take out the team of 3. The Archenemy starts with more life and has the assistance of a Scheme deck, an oversize deck of cards made specifically for the format that has its top card revealed at the start of the Archenemy's Main Phase 1, and its effect happens then. Planechase also uses an oversized deck of Plane and Phenomenon cards, as well as a "planar die". At the start of the game, the top card is revealed, and its effects are applied. During your Main Phase, you can roll the Planar die. The first roll is free, but each one after costs 1 generic mana per previous roll that turn. If the roll comes up with the Chaos symbol, an effect (stated on the Plane card) is applied. On the "Planeswalker" symbol, the current plane card is put on the bottom and the next plane is revealed, going into effect immediately. Some groups prefer one large planar deck, others prefer each player to have their own.

i like that you show one of the few banned cards as an example of a commander.

To clarify something regarding Commander for newer players. There ARE planeswalkers and a Vehicle that have an ability on the card to let them be allowed to be the Commander. Just ask any longtime player of Commander to talk about the Windchase Planeswalker card. You'll likely see them grimace as a result.

Your Videos are certainly for newer players, but I watch them anyways because Of nostalgic reasons. I remember watching your ygo content when you only did Ygopro Replays years ago. Good old times. And your background music was lit. 🔥 Do you play Mtg now or did it just peak your interest because you like Cardgames in general?

Other fun and popular(ish?) formats not listed include: *Two-Headed Giant/Team v. Team *Tribal Wars (MTGO format requiring 1/3 or more of your deck to have a specific creature type) *Archenemy (1 v Team) *Oathbreaker (like Commander, but the "commander" must be a Planeswalker with a selected instant or sorcery as a signature spell) *Planechase (casual format with augmented rules using a Planar Deck) *Tiny Leaders (Commander variant where only cards with mana cost 3 or less can be used) One con I'm kinda sad you didn't mention with any Eternal format... how often the metagame becomes stagnant. You mentioned decks rotating out in Standard, and how they didn't in other formats, but failed to mention that when a deck dominates... it can stay on top for YEARS. MUD/Stax in Vintage is a great example, where it's been one of the preeminent meta decks in the format for well over a decade. Plenty of times you'll end up playing against the same 5-6 strategies over and over, and boy does that get boring.

I feel like you should do another video on the less common but still fun formats. Such as, Archenemy, Plansechase and Two-Headed giant, because while they are not as common, and some require extra cards, I think they can make for some of the most unquie and fun play.

In commander you also have to worry about commander damage. Basically, if your commander deals 21 or more damage to someone then they automatically lose the game regardless of how much you life they have left

For anyone interested, here’s some more (obscure, and understandably not included) formats: Tiny Leaders Cube Penny Dreadful Two headed giant Pentagram Planechase Wayfarer Oathbreaker Archenemy Dandan Type 4 Rainbow Stairwell Many versions of highlander (German, Canadian, Australian, French, Russian Duel, Swedish Gold)

Only thing I disagree with is the competitive tournament thing for commander. Admittedly, they're nowhere near as common as for other formats, but there's an entire sub-format called cEDH, or competitive commander, that's played in certain tournaments. Not saying you were wrong, just a slight bit off target. Aside from that though incredible video!

Talking about pauper piqued my curiosity about the best common cards in mtg...any chance for a top 10 for it?

Forgot to mention cube in the limited section if not even make a new category for it. It removes the con that you have to constantly buy more packs, but it can get repetitive (if you have a small pool and don't update it that often or change cube) and it's hard to make and maintain and store/transport it. Nonetheless its my favorite format. :)

I would have considered putting some of the old terms for some of the formats such as a lot of us used to call you know type 2 standard type 2 was you know old term for standard and then you had 1.5 1.0 for legacy and vintage that's how I still call them today

when i go to the local game store and told them i only play vintage they look at me like i'm a weirdo. Never had a commander deck because i only palyed with my friends and we only have vintage deck (some are modern base with a bit of extra to even the odds). oh and we banned tinker from our games- just because it way to powerfull. good video sir.

I want to start and never played before besides a little on arena what format is best for beginners And what should I buy to start out

Thank God. My 5th favorite Vtuber explains MTG formats to me. At least the difference for a yugioh fan especially. God knows we don't read!

you can use a playset in limited formats, if you draft and pick 5 of the same card and want to play all 5, you can.

I'd love to see video like this for all tcg by theduellogs

Something about Commander, you CAN use certain Planeswalkers like Daretti because it specifies on the card it can be used as a Commander.

Total newbie here, so in a standard format can you play streets of new capenna against dominaría united or it has to be the same?

Fun fact: Yu-Gi-Oh! also has its vintage format in the TCG. It's called Traditional... Let's just say, I heard that it's not a popular format. From what I know, the Traditional format is just the Advanced format except is more consistent thanks to the banned cards made limited there. Or a bunch of FTK strategies. (Credits to Dzeeff)

In limited you left out cube which is one of the best draft experiences you can have.

Explorer is not actually Historic without the digital cards, since Historic has a lot of Modern and Legacy legal cards that are not legal in Explorer/Pioneer. Like DRC or Faithless looting.

How about a run through of different types of 3+ MTG games that can be played? For example: Brawl, 2 headed giant, assassin, king of the hill, etc... Assuming people still do that? Used to be how I spent my lunches at school with 7 other MTG players and 1 epic game.

Just going to point out that you could technically play explorer in paper, though it could be hard to find someone else that wants to play explorer. You could be sure your decklist is free of pioneer bans and play with someone playing pioneer, though.

13:08 there are planes walkers that can be used as commanders

Damn that Goblin Charbelcher is DOROOOO! MONSTAA KAADO!

There are many non-digital only cards on arena that are not explorer-legal. Like faithless looting and many of the mystical archive.

bro/bra I paused the video at 16:03 bro playing with over $80k cards must be stressful...don't bend the corners🤣🤣. Great video Thanks

Tbis is so interesting

Ty

I think i might get into pauper simply because I do own a lot of common cards.

Great list, but I feel like saying Aggro isn't very good in Legacy is a little misleading because they are generally wrapped in something that looks like a combo, a la Dredge and Madness, have more control elements, like Death and Taxes, or are Delver, which is the best deck in the format and has been since Delver was printed and just gets more tools with what seems like every new set

A slight correction to commander: You can have a planeswalker as a commander IF it has an ability "[Name] can be your commander"

Question: if I just go to a store to meet someone and want to play my first game, what format should I be on the lookout for? I really can't tell. Like what am I playing if I'm just hanging out in the games room using 60 cards, 20 life, and just whatever cards seem fun with friends doing the same?

Bro I find more of your channels all the time by accident

My heart will eternally belong to Vintage. Well, EDH, but also VIntage. I am in a polygamous relationship with MTG formats.

Commander is very close to legacy, you can use all card printed to build your deck. Also is very expensive if you built a very high optimized deck. Te big difference is that you can use cards that are banned on legacy like demonic tutor

Standard - you need a new deck every 2 years. lol, try every month. Con’s for Historic and Explorer - unable to feasibly acquire cards required in the format

What cards can you use in commander? Ithink that wasnt mentioned or I am just stupid