This is the third in a series of blog posts discussing the trading card game Magic The Gathering (hereafter shortened to just “Magic”) and its connections to the world of sales.
Magic The Gathering has five main constructed formats: Standard, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, and Commander. Four of these five formats are played with 60-card decks and 15-card sideboards. Standard is a format consisting of only the latest two years’ worth of cards, so card sets that were released in Fall of 2016, for example, will be rotating out of standard gameplay in the Fall of 2018. Modern is a format including all cards going back to Eighth Edition, which was released in 2003, making it a more diverse format than Standard. Legacy and Vintage are very similar formats, allowing cards to be played that date back to the very beginning of the game in 1993. Commander is altogether a different kind of format from the first four, as it is played with 100 card, singleton decks. This means that besides basic land cards, you may only play one copy of any card in your deck, and your deck must be led by a powerful legendary creature called your “commander”.
Magic also has two limited formats, Draft and Sealed. Draft is a format where players open packs one at a time, pick one card, and pass the rest to the player sitting next to them. This process is repeated until all three packs given out to each player have been emptied. Players then build a 40-card deck by pulling from their picks. Sealed is a format where players play a tournament using 40-card decks they have constructed solely from 6 sealed packs given to them at the start of the event.
Out of all these formats, Standard is the only format that goes through rotation and all others are considered Eternal formats. Cards in Standard are ticking time bombs. Once you get within three months of Standard rotation, cards that will be rotating out and that don’t see play in Eternal formats significantly decrease in value on the secondary market. For example, I began very seriously purchasing Magic packs in large quantities two years ago, which means a decent amount of the cards in my decks and personal collection have to be sold before this summer if I want to make the most money I can from them.
Standard format is the bread-and-butter of Wizards of the Coast. It sells new sets and requires consistent investment, making it a high earner for Wizards. Due to rotation, there will always be a constant push for players to keep up with set releases, ensuring that Wizards does not lose valuable sales to players sticking only to Eternal formats.