Standard Format was announced by Decipher on March 25, 2003 and implemented for official tournaments on April 15, 2003. Until the end of Decipher's support for sanctioned events, this was the preferred format for high level tournaments. When it was announced, the card pool was all currently released cards minus the cards that were on the Standard Format Exclusion List or X-List for short. Sites were selected from the current block. The intent of Standard Format was to create a competitive format that was free of many of the abusive cards that helped to create a stale gameplay environment in spite of an increasing card pool.

As the game evolved and more sets were released, Standard Format changed. Cards were added to and removed from the X-list as abusive combos or over-powered cards were discovered and taken advantage of by players. Several of the most popular formats played today include various snapshots of the Standard Format. These include:

• Towers Standard - Sets 1-6, Towers Block Sites
  • Standard Format from July 9, 2003 (The Ents of Fangorn expansion became tournament legal) to November 12, 2003 (The Return of the King Base Set became tournament legal)
• King Standard - Sets 1-7, Sites from Set 7
  • Standard format from January 12, 2004 (Addition of The Palantir of Orthanc to the X-List) to March 17, 2004 (The Siege of Gondor expansion became tournament legal)
• Movie Block - Sets 1-10, King Block Sites
  • Standard format from August 3, 2004 (Addition of Memories of Darkness to the X-List) to November 10, 2004 (The Shadows expansion became tournament legal)

The final version of Standard included cards from Sets 7-19 using sites from sets 11-18 and the X-List

DGMA Announcement of the Standard Format
DGMA First Standard Format Exclusion List (X-List)