There are always signs—no one deck having too large a share of the metagame, the rock-paper-scissors feel of deck selection, members of the same team opting for different decks for the same event—but a few months into the current Standard format that the talk really begins to circulate.

Standard is so good right now.

But what makes any single Standard environment stand out? What makes it good, or even exceptional? And is Standard great right now? Here's a hint: it is.

Standard Is Great Because of Deck Diversity

One facet of a great Standard environment that players bring up again and again is a diversity of successful decks.

"I think what makes a great Standard environment is a diverse metagame where more than just a few decks are all top-tier options. Then it's creative and elaborate and it feels like people can keep developing different ideas and coming up with new tech and it keeps evolving," said Eli Kassis, who most recently placed 3rd at Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3. "That's my favorite kind of environment."

"I think the greatest appeal of Standard is that it highlights one of the best things about Magic in general, which is that Magic is a game that has many games inside it," said Pro Tour competitor Anthony Lee, a previous member of the dominant Team Handshake. "That's shown off well by Standard because context is the single most important thing in most Standard formats. There should be an ebb and flow in terms of which threats and answers are well positioned in the format."

For Lee, the best Standard formats have a variety of successful decks and a fluctuation of the best card's relative strength as the weeks go by. When Standard is good, it's not static.

"There are threats that people are talking about all the time, the omnipresent threats that naturally cycle out," Lee continued. "Cards like Gideon, Ally of Zendikar; The Great Henge; and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, all of them range widely from defining the format to being somewhat playable at various points over the time they're in Standard. I think that those are the greatest Standard formats, when the cards naturally ebb and flow. Standard's usually not about finding the most powerful thing to do, it's about figuring out how stuff fits together."

Standard Is Good Because of the Complex Gameplay

A strong Standard environment can also be diverse in terms of the choices players make and the decisions they face.

"I think Standard is at its best when, during gameplay, you make a ton of different choices and you run into novel experiences every game," said Pro Tour competitor Chris Botelho. "I think novelty in particular is the big draw to Standard, where you're dealing with new formats and new cards more often than in other formats."

The current Standard format has had shakeups in the last few weeks, with variations of Esper Pixie and Dimir Midrange rising through the metagame at Magic Spotlight: Foundations. In that respect, it's meeting at least one of the benchmarks for a strong environment. The metagame and decks are still evolving, and the format is both diverse and presents a lot of opportunities for decisions.

"I've heard a lot of people say that Standard is very fast, but I think that's a common misconception. It would be more accurate to define Standard as being high pressure," Lee said. "You have to answer the threats that are presented, but that usually does happen, and then you keep playing from there. Games can be short or long, but the pattern is always about this pressure created by the threats and the fact that you have to answer them moving the game forward."

One of Standard's strengths as a format is the interactive gameplay, and a good Standard environment leans into that, trading off threats and answers. In the current metagame, blocking is also a large part of the format's interactive nature.

"I think the biggest strength of Standard right now is Kaito, Bane of Nightmares and that's kind of weird because Kaito is not an aspect, it's a single card, and I wouldn't normally answer that, but I think Kaito ties a lot into why tempo is so important right now," Botelho said. "Preventing your opponent from getting down Kaito is super important because Kaito is super strong, but that means blocking is both a lot stronger and more important than it usually is. And I think that Standard and Magic as a whole gets really interesting and gets a lot more decisions involved when blocking is a big part of the game.

"Enduring Curiosity, from the same blue-black deck as Kaito, has also made it very, very important to be able to block those 1/1 flyers that you would normally ignore," he continued. "I like that even when you're playing decks that have neither of those cards, you still have to consider 'What am I going to play that can deal with 1/1 flyers? How am I going to interact with the board?' And a lot of the time if I was say, only trying to beat red-green decks, the answer would be that I don't want to try to play blockers against Monstrous Rage, but now I am forced to play these blockers and figure out how to block with them best against Monstrous Rage. And it's really, really fun when you get forced to make tricky, complex decisions like that."

Standard Is Good Because of All the Options

In addition to the interactive gameplay, current Standard leans into the metagame diversity that's a hallmark of a strong format.
"[Magic players] really enjoy the kind of interactive gameplay that Standard has, and that part is really good right now," Lee said. "But something that is more true of this Standard is that there's a lot of metagame diversity. Usually there's a tradeoff, where Standard has the most interactive gameplay but fewer viable decks. But right now, a lot of decks are viable. If you write out a sideboard guide, it just keeps going."

Recent changes and additions to the format have made that metagame diversity possible.

"The first thing is that, obviously, Standard is just bigger than it used to be because they made the change to rotation, but with a lot of the recent sets, a high percentage of the set is also relevant for Constructed," Lee said. "Back in the day, there weren't that many new cards that you would really consider for play, but both Bloomburrow and Duskmourn: House of Horror are really deep in terms of the playable cards.

"There are more sets, and more of those sets that are actually playable. And the other thing is that a lot of the threats in Standard nowadays are modal, which adds a lot of decisions that are really interesting in the game. All of the threats have multiple ways in which you can use them now, and that adds a lot of depth to gameplay. I think that's another big shift in design that's increased how good Standard is now."

"I think there's a large enough card pool that there's enough creativity, but I'd say the biggest strength is that there are enough lands that you can build any color combination to make whatever card pool work," Kassis added. "We have the Verges in Aetherdrift. I think that completes a picture that was sort of lacking before. Like, Red-White Mice was just a little bit weaker than Red-Green Mice because of the mana base, but now you can play either and so it's a lot more open."

Standard Is Good When Players Can Play What They Love

Of course, no format is complete without viable individual cards that appeal to a range of unique play styles. Standard is at its best when aggro players play aggro, control players can play control, and tempo and midrange decks both have space to make their strategies work.

"It changes every couple of weeks, but I think overall the most fun card is This Town Ain't Big Enough," Lee said. "It just kind of has everything. It's flexible, it makes you evaluate what's important, so you use it differently from game to game or differently from matchup to matchup depending on what's important. It's powerful but doesn't really feel impressive, and I think it's just super cool that it was a card that we all kind of missed for a while. It's a sleeper hit, I think, and for me that really sums up Standard in general."

"I am what some might call a blue-white control degenerate, so I have been absolutely in love with playing Beza," Botelho said. "There is something viscerally satisfying about getting to play this one silly Elk and get back life, board presence, and cards. It brings a very callous, evil smile to my face. I really like those turnabout moments in Magic, where you need to plan out how to come back from a resource disadvantage. Beza is the kind of card that encourages a lot of thinking ahead and gives you a lot of reward when you successfully do so. I really like designs that promote comeback moments and reward you for thinking ahead."

Standard Is Good Because It's So Fun

In this varied metagame, with threats that are cycling in and out and interactive gameplay, there's space to jump into the format in the way that feels best to you. And when players gather in Chicago for the Pro Tour, there's still room for them to decide what they feel is best in the format.

"If somebody were new to Standard and wanting to break in, I'd tell them that there's these mono-red decks that are fantastic and make you competitive. If somebody wants to have fun, they can build things like Mono-Green Ramp and Merfolk," Kassis said. "There are lots of decks, and the tier-one and tier-two options are not as far apart as they used to be."

We'll see Standard mainstays and spicy new decks take the stage at Pro Tour Aetherdrift on February 21–23. Tune in to our coverage from the show floor at MagicCon: Chicago or online to see who will emerge victorious. We don't know who will win, but one thing is for certain. Standard is very, very good right now.