Rules

A card is legal if it has at least one paper printing where both conditions are true:

1. It went through Standard, in a set from 8th Edition (2003) onward.
2. It belongs to the Magic multiverse, which excludes Universes Beyond and other crossovers with outside properties.

That is the entire eligibility test. The card must also not be on the banned list, but there is no third criterion.

Legality belongs to the card, not to the particular copy in your hand. If a card had a qualifying Standard printing at any point, any printing of that card is legal: Masters reprints, Commander decks, Secret Lair releases, store promos, and other supplemental printings.

When in doubt, paste your list into the validator.

The Forgotten Realms case

Adventures in the Forgotten Realms (2021) went through Standard, but it is still outside Canonic. Wizards owns D&D, but D&D is not part of the Magic multiverse.

It is the format's most consequential boundary decision. It excludes cards such as the manland cycle, Portable Hole, and Ranger Class. The distinction is intentional: once the multiverse criterion has an exception, the rule stops being a criterion and becomes a collection of individual judgments.

Legal sets

From 8th Edition (July 2003) through the newest set, in release order.

See all 94 legal sets

Canonic uses the official Modern banned list, unchanged. Inheriting it keeps the restriction objective: maintaining a separate ban list would require making balance decisions for a community that is still small.

Wizards has already moved in the same direction. In December 2024, four cards were unbanned at once, with Wizards citing feedback that the Modern Horizons sets had increased the format's power level and displaced iconic strategies. Some bans created by that environment can therefore be reconsidered as the format changes.

Those unbans have a different context here. See the cards we watch first.

See the banned list (44 cards)

The Horizons sets do not enter Canonic as sets. That is a defining property of the format.

Individual cards from Horizons can enter through two routes, and only two: to correct the format, or by earning a place through a monthly test event. Neither route admits an entire set.

What never enters, by either route

Cards designed to define the power level of an eternal format remain outside the pool. Importing them wholesale would also import the problem Canonic is designed to avoid.

Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer · Wrenn and Six · Prismatic Ending · Unholy Heat · Ephemerate · the free elementals (Solitude, Grief, Fury, Subtlety, Endurance) · the Force cycle (Force of Negation, Force of Vigor)

These examples are illustrative, not exhaustive. The principle applies to cards of the same role and power level.

Universes Beyond is excluded from both routes. Horizons are excluded on power-level grounds, which can be evaluated. The Magic-multiverse criterion is structural: it defines what belongs in the format and is therefore not subject to testing.

Route 1: correcting the format

A correction begins when the metagame data shows that a deck has become dominant. At that point, the format has two broad options: ban a card, which may remove the archetype with it, or introduce an answer that gives the rest of the field a way to compete.

The second option is the one to prefer.

A correction therefore runs from a demonstrated problem to a specific answer. Never from excitement about a card, and never as the first response to an ordinary metagame shift.

• One card at a time, never a set. Each addition must have a specific purpose.
• Only to answer a dominant deck. The objective is to repair a broken matchup, not to add a card because it would be interesting.
• Modern power level. The answer must address the problem without redefining the cost or pace of a normal turn.
• Announced with the reason, including why banning the problematic card was considered the worse option.

No card has been added through this route. If the correct answer is ever none, that is the format working as intended.

Route 2: the monthly test event

Once a month, one event is played with several Horizons cards temporarily added to the pool. A group is preferable to a single card because the purpose of the event is to observe interactions and synergies. Anyone can suggest candidates.

• Nothing changes by default. The event is a test; the permanent pool remains unchanged.
• A test can begin with "this looks interesting." That lower threshold applies inside the event and nowhere else.
• Several cards enter; they leave individually. Permanence is decided per card and requires both testing and community support. Most candidates are expected to remain test-only.

Modern has returned a number of cards to legality over the years. The cards that matter here share a date: each was unbanned after Modern Horizons arrived on June 14, 2019. That means each was judged safe for a format that had already been accelerated and strengthened by Horizons.

Canonic removes that context. The cards remain the same; the environment against which they were evaluated does not.

• Stoneforge Mystic — unbanned August 26, 2019
• Preordain — unbanned August 7, 2023
• Faithless Looting, Mox Opal, Green Sun's Zenith and Splinter Twin — unbanned December 16, 2024

They are legal, and nothing about that legality is provisional. They are the first cards to examine if something goes wrong. If one becomes a central cause of a metagame problem, it is an obvious candidate for review, just as Modern has previously done with cards such as Golgari Grave-Troll.

Banning is still not the first move. The first move is the correction process above: identify the card that can answer the dominant strategy. Some cases involve an entire archetype rather than a single card — Splinter Twin, for example, is also the name of a deck — and removing a deck merely to repair one matchup is the trade to avoid for as long as possible.

Every published result carries a star level, and that level determines how heavily the result is weighted on the metagame page. A 4★ result contributes more than a 1★ result because it represents a larger number of players and matches.

The level is determined only by event size. It is counted at publication from the players who played a match, rather than from those who registered.

Players who played	Level
up to 7	1★
8 to 32	2★
33 to 64	3★
65 or more	4★

A store does not buy additional weight. A Friday-night event with twenty friends is a 2★ event, just like a twenty-player store tournament. The distinction between store and amateur events concerns how the event is administered and which limits apply to it.

The organizer never declares the level. There is no field for it. The level is calculated automatically at publication, when the headcount becomes a recorded result rather than an estimate.

In casual play, anything goes

Games between friends, kitchen-table games, and testing sessions: use whatever you want. A proxy can be a handwritten card, printed paper, or a basic land with the relevant text. Nobody should have to skip testing a deck because one card is expensive.

In tournaments, if the event allows them

Canonic permits proxies, but each event sets its own policy. A store tournament may restrict or prohibit them, and that is the organizer's decision. The policy must be stated on the event page before registration.

Where proxies are allowed, one principle governs them: any player at the table must be able to identify and read the card without already knowing what it is. In practice:

• Original effect. A proxy represents an existing card with its actual rules text. It is not an invitation to invent cards.
• Official card name. The Godzilla cards from Ikoria do not qualify: their alternate names can obscure which card is being represented.
• Complete rules text. Textless and full-art promos do not qualify when they require the opponent to already know the card.
• Official Magic art, standard layout. The art may come from any Magic-multiverse product, even one that is not legal in Canonic: a Lightning Bolt using Modern Horizons 2 art is a valid proxy. Universes Beyond or external-IP art is not. Treatments that materially reduce readability, including Phyrexian-language printings, also do not qualify.

The art requirement exists because tournaments are the source of the format's photographs, decklists, and reports. A format that excludes outside properties should not represent itself through a table full of those properties.

The one line that holds everywhere

A proxy must never attempt to pass as an authentic card.

Do not imitate card backs, materials, foiling, or other features intended to make a proxy indistinguishable from a genuine card. A proxy that enters trades or sales as a counterfeit can harm people who had nothing to do with the game or event where it was created.

Proxies are a tool for playing the game. Counterfeits are not.

A printed sheet in a sleeve, backed by a common card, meets all of it.

Authentic cards always count

The rules above govern proxies. A genuine card is never turned away. If you own a Phyrexian-language Praetor or an original Godzilla card, play it. You choose what you own and what you play; the proxy rules only determine what may be represented on paper.

Why remove Modern Horizons?

Because Horizons sets are designed to enter Modern directly, without going through Standard. They are calibrated for an eternal format rather than for the normal Standard environment, and that is one of the main reasons Modern's power level increased so quickly in recent years. The cards are not inherently bad. They arrived through a route the rest of the pool did not have to take.

But Final Fantasy and Marvel are Standard-legal. Why don't they count?

They are Standard-legal, but Standard legality is only the first criterion. Since 2025, Universes Beyond sets enter Standard and therefore satisfy that part of the test. They still fail the second criterion: belonging to the Magic multiverse. A Chocobo can be Standard-legal without being a Magic-universe card.

Wizards owns D&D. Why doesn't Forgotten Realms count?

Ownership of an outside property does not make that property part of the Magic multiverse.

Can I use a card that came in my Commander deck?

Yes. Legality belongs to the card, not to the product in which your copy was printed.

Will you ever allow Modern Horizons?

Not as sets. That is a defining rule of the format. Individual cards can enter through two routes: when the format requires a correction, or when a card earns a place through the monthly test event. Both routes are evaluated per card, announced publicly, and never admit an entire set.

Is this an official Wizards format?

No. It is a community format, like Premodern and Old School. No permission is required for players to agree on a card pool and play it.

Why the name Canonic?

Because the criterion is the canon: what belongs to Magic's own world, and what part of Magic's history has already passed through Standard. The name refers to both.

Everything here is ordinary Magic, using the same basic constructed rules as Modern and other sanctioned formats. This section is here so a new player does not need to look elsewhere.

Building a deck

• Minimum of 60 cards in the main deck. No maximum, provided you can shuffle the deck without assistance.
• Sideboard of up to 15 cards.
• Maximum of 4 copies of any card across the main deck and sideboard. Basic lands are unlimited.

Playing a match

• Matches are best of 3, with sideboarding between games.
• London mulligan.
• Rounds are usually 50 minutes.

Where to play

Today, mostly on paper, with whoever is nearby. The format is new and the community is forming. The deck lists are a starting point, and the validator tells you immediately whether a list is legal.