What was Magic like in the good old days?

I have no idea. For me, the good old days were 2015. Playing with draft chaff from Magic Origins and Battle for Zendikar with a couple of friends who didn’t know what “card advantage” or “metagame” was. For others, Magic’s first decade or so is what matters to them.

This is the “Premodern” format.

There are monthly tournaments at Three for One Trading and there is an active community in Vienna about this beautiful format!

Premodern is a 1v1, 60-card format. It follows the normal rules of Magic. The card pool is key. Only cards printed between Fourth Edition and Scourge are legal.

Premodern has a board game quality. The card pool is set. You’re playing Limited with a massive card pool. There are almost 5,400 unique cards available. In general, any card using the old card frame printed between 1995 and 2003 is legal.

Magic started in 1993. Premodern is unique in that it excludes many of the most powerful cards in the game. There is no Power Nine or original Dual Lands.

Despite the focus on old cards, you are allowed to play newer reprints of existing cards, too. Your Modern Horizons Counterspell is just as valid as one from Mercadian Masques.

There is also a separate Premodern ban list, but we’ll get to that later.

Some cards were banned day one. Force of Will and Brainstorm are the key players. Their raw power is key. However, format identity plays a role too. Legacy is the format of Brainstorm and Force of Will.

Premodern is not trying to be Legacy; it is something different, so these cards are gone. Banning Force is also a nice budget consideration. A playset of Force costs more than some entire decks!

Land Tax has been banned, unbanned, and finally, re-banned in 2023. Scroll Rack made it problematic. It made gameplay boring. The best way to pay the Land Tax was to sit there and not play any lands. But that doesn’t sound like a very fun game of Magic.

Parallax Tide was the most recent ban. Playing this card fairly lets you remove lands from play, but they come back once the last “fade” counter is removed. The problem is it’s two abilities are split into two parts. This means you can cast Parallax Tide, remove all its counters, hold priority to not let the trigger resolve, then cast Chain of Vapor to bounce Parallax Tide.

This results in your opponent’s lands being exiled forever. The same effect can happen with a Stifle. Anyone who knows the difference between Oblivion Ringand Banishing Light knows what I’m talking about.

Breaking it down by type, there are 12 instants, three sorceries, three enchantments, one creature, and one artifact.

The top twenty have fair interactive spells. Swords to Plowshares, Counterspell, and Lightning Bolt are familiar faces. Some stranger cuts are Naturalize and Stifle. These feel like fringe sideboard cards.

This is our first hint at some of Premodern’s best decks.

Foil is one of my favorite counterspells despite the high cost. In a world without Force of Will, this is the best option when your opponent demands an answer.

Card draw and hand disruption fill out the other slots. Impulse and Fact or Fiction warm my heart. I love instant speed card selection.

Green gets some representation, too, with Sylvan Library. Necropotence and Yawgmoth’s Bargain are banned.

Black settles for hand disruption. Duress and Cabal Therapy to counteract your opponent’s plan.

The lone creature is Mogg Fanatic. For some of you, memories of early Sleigh decks might come flooding back. It’s a versatile threat that can pick off creatures or sneak in for the last point of damage.

Cursed Scroll is our only artifact. It is a repeatable source of burn. For three mana, you name a card, then reveal a random card from your hand. If you reveal the named card, you deal two damage. Emptying your hand means you can guarantee this will always deal two damage.

Parallax Tide is one of the top 20 cards of last year, too. However, it has since been banned. This gives some insight into why Naturalize was such a key player, too.

The format is not without Dual Lands entirely. Thanks, Mercadian Masques and Ice Age. I am particularly fond of the Ice Age Sulfurous Springs. The art is so 90’s.

The cars are surprisingly modal; this is not just a simple burn deck. Grim Lavamancer and Cursed Scroll give you ways to spend mana on turns with bad draws. Seal of Fire can be set up as a late-game land mine. Play it costs early, but cash it in to remove a blocker, or go for the face.

We discussed Cursed Scroll before; it appears here to give the deck inevitability. It will kill. The card has only received one black border printing in Tempest. It trends on Cardmarket for around €50, or if the tournament allows it, there are gold border copies from the 1998/99 World Championship Deck series.

The deck is familiar to any delver player. We have Opt and Portent to cantrip towards our win. Foil and Misdirection impersonate Force of Will. Meanwhile, Daze and Gush round out the deck. I will never be sick of these two!

While the main kill is Dreadnought, our other threat is four Mishra’s Factory. This poor-man’s Mutavault is a 2/2 when it attacks, or a 3/3 if you tap it before the damage step.

This deck is a pleasure to pilot. If you have enjoyed Delver of Secrets in other formats, give this a try!

If you prefer your blue decks to be more controlling, then Standstill is your deck! The namesake enchantment slows the game. When a player casts a spell while Standstill is in play, it is sacrificed. That player’s opponent’s each draw three cards. Standstill is a puzzle.

Standstill is dangerous for the opponent. It slows down the game. The slower the game gets, the better the odds for a control player.

I will also call out one fantastic sideboard card. Teferi’s Response is a two-mana instant that counters a spell/ability that targets a land you control. If an ability is countered, you destroy that permanent. Then you draw two cards! At the bare minimum, this will protect your land from being destroyed and draw two cards. It’s a three-for-one!

The deck seeks to win with Opalescence. This card is often a rules nightmare, but for today’s discussion, we are being exceptionally fair with it. We just want to hit people without enchantments. This is a great way to turn early game plays like Exploration into an impactful play later on.

To help get us to our key cards, we have Mirri’s Guile, Enchantress’s Presence, and Solitary Confinement to help us dig and ride out the early game.

Replenish brings the whole deck together nicely. It can completely reset the game in your favor.

For us, that is Terravore. A member of the Lhurgoyf family, Terravore has power and toughness equal to the number of lands in all graveyards.

With Wooded Foothills and Wastelands alone, Terravore is always going to have some stats. Oath of Druids mills cards too. Terravore is always a threat. Another great perk is Terravore‘s casting cost. At only three mana, he is very easy to play. We are not cheating Atraxa into play.

This is a fair and effective.