Magic tournament

A Magic tournament is a meeting for contest, often sanctioned by the DCI, where the game is played by individuals or teams according to the official rules. Winners will gain a prize. Tournaments are played using either a modified Swiss or a single-elimination structure.

There are two general types of Magic tournaments: Constructed tournaments, and Limited tournaments. In Constructed tournaments, each player provides his own deck, which much be constructed from a specified card-pool. At Limited tournaments, a random assortment of cards is provided by the tournament organizers, usually in the form of booster packs.

Constructed

• Vintage — Of all constructed formats Vintage, or "Type 1", features the largest card-pool. Currently, this including nearly every black- or white-bordered card ever printed. The only banned cards are silver-bordered cards from the parody sets Unglued and Unhinged, physical dexterity cards such as Chaos Orb, ante cards such as Tempest Efreet, and subgame cards such as Shahrazad. In other formats cards which are deemed sufficient powerful are banned; however, Vintage instead maintains a restricted list so as to ensure that a card will always be able to be played in at least one sanctioned format. The restricted list contains cards such as the famed Power Nine.

• Legacy — smaller card-pool than Vintage, with cards deemed too powerful (e.g. the Power Nine) banned; but other cards since Alpha allowed.

• Extended — limited card-pool allowing cards from the last seven years of blocks and core sets. The Extended card-pool rotates every block. Extended is no longer supported by Wizards, having been replaced by Modern (see below).

• Modern — limited card pool allowing cards from all core sets and expansions since Eighth Edition, except for some banned cards. As a rule of thumb, any card with the modern (post-Eighth Edition) card frame is allowed. Supplementary products such as Commander and Conspiracy aren't included.

• Standard — Standard, which is also referred to as "Type 2", is the most commonly sanctioned constructed format. The Standard card pool generally consists of only the most recently released Core Set and the sets from the two most recent Blocks, even if the block is not complete. It only rotates once per year, so before the first set of a new block comes out, it actually contains two core sets. After Magic 2016 (planned to be the last ever core set), it will instead contain the last three (two-set) blocks, rotating twice a year.

• Block Constructed — Block Constructed has the smallest card-pool of all the constructed formats. As implied by the name, the Block Constructed card pool normally consists of only cards from a specified Block. However, due to the release of two "mini-Blocks", consisting of a large expansion and only a single small expansion, in the 2007-2008 tournament year, the Block Constructed format allowed cards from both mini-Blocks.

Limited

• Sealed deck
• Booster draft
• Rochester draft

See also

• Last Chance Qualifier
• Planeswalker points