A Compleat History of the Magic Metagame, Appendix A: A Brief Introduction to Magic's Formats
Hi! This is a context post to help folks who don't play Magic get their bearings, as discussion of different formats will figure more and more in the story as we move into 1997 and beyond.
Unlike other TCGs, Magic has very nearly from the start been divided into multiple formats – each with its own specific rules and card legality. This is a quick description of each one, as well as some notes on Magic's release schedule.
Magic releases
This is a good spot to discuss this because we've just reached Mirage, the first set in Mirage block, comes out late in 1996. While Ice Age/Alliances/Homelands was considered a block retroactively, it was never planned as such, so Mirage is really the first 'true' block; and blocks are going to be the release model for Magic sets, more or less unchanged, until the mid-2010s.
A block is just three thematically and mechanically connected sets of cards, meant to be played together. Blocks traditionally are made out of a large set (of about 300 cards) and two small sets (of about 160 cards), with the large set coming first. The large set in a block is essentially its own free-standing, independent printing of Magic, containing everything needed for the game to function (just like Alpha did, though each large set has its own set of mechanics and themes). The smaller sets are ancillary expansions that complicate and add on to the main large set.
A block comes out over the course of a year; Magic years start in the northern hemisphere fall, with the last small set of the block coming out in the spring. Mirage comes out in October of 1996; Visions in early 1997, and then Weatherlight in the spring.
In addition to these sets (at the time called "expert expansion sets"), Wizards printed a "core set" every other year. The core set was all reprints; basically, the core set is Alpha but with the most broken cards (like Power) taken out, and some cards from various expansion sets brought in. Over the years, the core set was refined into a sort of platonic ideal of Magic – a basic, straightforward set that was representative of Magic but didn't carry any special one-off mechanics.
The newest core set when Mirage came out was Fourth Edition, release in 1995; Fifth Edition comes out in the summer of 1997.
You might notice that there's a "hole" in this release schedule, where Wizards doesn't publish a new summer expansion set every other year. Filling this hole will be a whole adventure but they only start taking serious stabs at it in the late 2000s.
Limited play
In Limited magic, you open a specified number of packs and use the cards you open to make decks. Minimum deck size is 40 cards, and you can have as many copies of a card as you want (although, of course, you have to open that many copies, so there's a practical limit).
In Sealed, you simply open six packs, add in any amount of basic land, and make a deck to play against other people (typically in a Swiss tournament or league). Sealed was in the past often a tournament format but it was never very popular compared to draft. It is still the format played at pre-release events, though, so it has that going for it.
In Draft, a 'pod' of eight players sits at a table; everyone opens a pack, takes one card out, and then passes the pack to the person sitting to their right until all cards have been picked. You repeat this process once going left, then once again going right. At the end, you take the cards you drafted, add basic lands, and play with those decks.
Draft is often regarded as the most skill-testing way to play Magic; the draft process itself is enormously nuanced – it's at once competitive (you're trying to leave the pod with the best deck) and cooperative (you're trying to identify which cards other players are picking and draft the things they're not picking, so you can have a good deck of cards that go well together). There's no way to arrive at a draft at an advantage (like if you brought the best deck to a tournament), and generally in actual gameplay you have to care about a wider gamut of cards that your opponent might have.
During the block era, you would draft three packs of a big set; then when the first small set came out, you'd draft two big and one small; and then finally, big-small-small. However, players generally preferred the more consistent and varied "triple big set" draft formats.
We're not really going to talk a lot about Limited in the Compleat Story, maybe in a supplemental chapter later; every new block is more or less its own self-contained metagame, and while there's a sort of shared history there, it's not the same thing as the Constructed metagame.
Constructed play
In Constructed you take cards that you already own and use them to build a 60-card deck. At most four of any one card (except basic land). In some formats, mainly Vintage, cards can be restricted – meaning you only get one copy at most. There are myriad Constructed formats, but these are the important ones for our story:
- Vintage (aka 'Type 1'): You can use any card (except a handful that don't work within the rules any more or are absolutely insufferable in tournament play). Some cards are restricted. Vintage for much of its life is going to resemble 1993-94 Magic, being dominated by the Power Nine; later, while the Power Nine will still dominate, they will begin to more and more enable broken, unique, and powerful combo strategies. Never supported very much as a tournament format past 1995 or so, Vintage will recede into the background as a niche pursuit, and we won't touch on it too much.
- Legacy (aka 'Type 1.5'): You can use any card, except ones that are banned – which includes everything in Vintage's banned and restricted list. Vintage without the power nine; Legacy will still have a fast style of play and a very high power level, but definitely a step slower and closer to 'fair' Magic. Legacy is born in 1997 as essentially "Vintage for people who can't afford Power", but it'll gradually develop its own identity, especially after 2004 when it gets its own separate ban list distinct from Vintage's.
- Standard (aka 'Type 2'): Standard has had several different models over the years, but the gist of it is that you can play with cards from the last two years or so – Every Fall, Standard 'rotates', with old sets leaving the format as new sets come in. Standard is by far the most supported tournament format (though it was seldom the most popular among players). It's also the one where newly printed cards make the biggest impact. So it's the main focus of our story.
- Block Constructed: Constructed play, but with cards from only a single block. Block constructed was never popular; the shallowness of the card pool made for an environment that got stale very quickly. But Wizards used it as the format for a lot of high-level tournaments, as it guaranteed that shiny new cards from the shiny new set would be showcased.
- Extended (aka 'Type 1.x'): Basically, double-size (or triple-size) Standard. A rotating format that allowed 4, 7, or more years' worth of sets. Wizards fiddled with Extended's definition several times over its lifetime (from 1997 on). It got plenty of tournament support and was popular with a certain class of player, but was eventually retired in 2013 in favor of Modern.
- Modern: Introduced in 2011 as a non-rotating format that could replace Extended. Modern includes everything from 8th Edition onward, so from 2003 or so. Has its own distinct ban list and identity. Wizards would eventually print powerful cards directly into Modern which would substantially change the format; how you feel about that is a big bone of contention among a certain class of Magic player.
- Pioneer: Introduced in 2019, allows cards from Return to Ravnica onward, which is to say from 2012. Intended as a more accessible alternative to Modern, a format that was becoming increasingly expensive and daunting for new players. Still figuring out its identity as a format, well-liked by those who play it but not played by that many; hampered by its lifetime so far coinciding with the severe waning of Wizards' support for high-level tournament play.
There are also various casual formats (like Commander), but I won't get into them as they don't figure in our story – we only care about tournament play here.
Rotation!
Rotation is Magic's solution to the problem of power creep and design exhaustion – a way to keep changing up the Constructed environment year after year.
It is, of course, also a big source of confusion and frustration for players – "What do you mean my cards aren't legal any more?" – so while Standard has often been a great format to play, it did ask players to get over the hump of their cards having an expiration date.
The core set provided some stability in this – with a mostly-stable set of cards that would stick around across rotations – but only to a point, especially as cards in the main expansion sets were often more pushed, in terms of power level, than ones in the core set.
Wizards tweaked the rotation of Standard a lot around 2015 when the block model began to break down, but for the next decade of our story it's going to steadily include:
- The newest core set;
- The two most recent blocks.
So, when Mirage releases, it ushers in the first fully-separated Standard on a normal block-based rotation. It includes:
- Ice Age block, ie Ice Age, Alliances, and Homelands;
- Mirage block, which is just Mirage itself but will soon include Visions and Weatherlight;
- Fourth Edition; in the summer of 1997, Fifth Edition was added. There's a brief window between a new core set coming out and the previous one rotating out (in the fall alongside the block that's rotating out); during that time, two core sets are legal in Standard.
In late 1997, when Tempest (the first set in Tempest block) comes out, Ice Age block and 4th Edition then rotates out.
The main story of the Compleat History will resume soon as we discuss what, exactly was in Mirage and Visions that shook up Standard...