Standard (MTG)

Players: 2
Format: Standard
Difficulty: Medium
Age: 13+

What is Standard?

Standard is Magic: The Gathering’s premier competitive format. Magic is the world’s most popular collectible card game, created in 1993, where players take on the role of “planeswalkers” who cast spells and summon creatures to defeat their opponents.

Standard features only the most recent cards, creating a dynamic metagame that constantly changes with each new release and annual rotation. It’s ideal for competitive players who want to experience the newest cards and strategies.

Basic Rules

Deck Construction

  • Minimum 60 cards: No maximum, but 60 is standard
  • Maximum 4 copies: Of any card except basic lands
  • Sideboard: 15 optional cards to adjust between games
  • Card pool: Only sets from the last ~2 years

Game Setup

  • Starting life points: 20
  • Format: Generally 1v1
  • Mulligan: Follow London mulligan rules
  • Best of 3: In tournaments, play best of 3 with sideboarding

How to Play

Game Setup

  1. Build your deck: Minimum 60 cards with maximum 4 copies of each card
  2. Prepare your sideboard: 15 cards to adjust between games (optional but recommended in tournaments)
  3. Shuffle your deck: Make sure cards are well shuffled
  4. Life points: Each player starts with 20 life points
  5. Starting hand: Draw 7 cards
  6. Mulligan: If you don’t like your hand, you can mulligan (shuffle and draw 7, then put 1 on the bottom of your deck)
  7. Determine who goes first: Die roll or coin flip

Turn Structure

Each turn follows Magic’s standard phases:

  1. Beginning Phase
    • Untap your tapped cards
    • Draw a card (except on the first turn of the starting player)
  2. Main Phase (First)
    • Play a land (maximum one per turn)
    • Cast spells: creatures, artifacts, planeswalkers, etc.
    • Activate abilities of your permanents
  3. Combat Phase
    • Declare attackers: Tap creatures you want to attack with
    • Declare blockers: Opponent can block with their creatures
    • Combat damage: Blocked and blocking creatures deal damage to each other
    • Unblocked damage: Goes directly to opponent’s life points
  4. Main Phase (Second)
    • Same as the first main phase
    • Opportunity to play more cards after combat
  5. End Phase
    • Discard down to 7 cards if you have more
    • “Until end of turn” effects end

Key Mechanics

  • Instants: You can play them at any time, even during your opponent’s turn
  • Stack: Spells resolve from the stack in reverse order (LIFO)
  • Priority: Players have priority to respond to each action
  • Mana: Generate mana by tapping lands to pay for card costs

Sideboarding (Best of 3)

Between games in a match:

  1. You can swap up to 15 cards from your deck with cards from the sideboard
  2. The deck must maintain the minimum of 60 cards
  3. Adjust your strategy based on your opponent’s deck
  4. In the third game, return to the original sideboard if you want

Resources

Meta Information

Deck Building