Magic: The Gathering used to be all about its Standard format, with cards rotating out every two years (now three) to make room for newer releases. The system worked well for decades, but over the years, things changed, and now Standard is all but eclipsed by everything else on offer.
In a blog post on Nov. 13, former MTG world champion Sam Black lamented about Standard’s dwindling role in the MTG ecosystem. “Standard is no longer essential to Magic’s business model,” he wrote, explaining that a “huge portion” of new cards aren’t playable in the format.
Standard was the most popular format for competitive players and casuals alike and a great entry point for newcomers, but that’s far from the case nowadays. Wizards of the Coast regularly releases Commander pre-cons, Secret Lair drops, Universes Beyond sets, and direct-to-Modern sets, and none of these are Standard-legal. Black explains that most new players are introduced to MTG through Commander, which offers better value for newcomers looking to build a playable collection. Even if beginners do buy Booster packs, they often contain cards not playable in Standard, and Black rightly points out how unintuitive this is.
“Even if a player were trying to play Standard by buying packs of the appropriate set, they still couldn’t just build a deck out of cards they own and know that they could bring it to a Standard tournament,” Black explained. Standard’s biggest appeal was supposed to be that every new card was legal, but today, believe it or not, more new cards are playable in Modern than Standard. “I want to reiterate how insane it is that Modern allows players to play with more new cards,” Black wrote. All the quirky cards released in Secret Lair drops and Universes Beyond sets are Modern-legal, on top of the fact that players don’t need to keep up Standard rotations. It’s a popular competitive format, too, and most players will tell you that Modern is a better way to experience MTG than Standard.
With so many better-value, more popular, and more accessible formats available, where does Standard fit into the equation? It’s not fit for purpose anymore, and given Wizards of the Coast recently extended Standard rotations to three years rather than two, the designers clearly know something’s wrong.
Black argues the simplest option at this point would be to retire the Standard format, and we agree. It’s no longer popular enough to bring value to the franchise, it’s needlessly splitting the playerbase, and there are already too many formats to keep up with.
