Premodern

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Premodern
DCI Sanctioned
Paper
Magic Online
Magic Arena
Rules
Type	Constructed
Multiplayer
Scryfall Statistics
cards

Premodern is a casual constructed Magic: The Gathering format with a fixed card pool consisting of cards printed between Fourth Edition and Scourge. It bridges the gap between fellow community lead Old School 93/94 format and Modern.

Deck construction

Constructed decks must contain a minimum of sixty (60) cards and there is no maximum deck size - however, you must be able to shuffle your deck with no assistance. If a player wishes to use a sideboard, it must contain no more than fifteen (15) cards.

Except for basic land cards, a player's combined deck and sideboard may not contain more than four copies of a card.

Any card released in a standard legal set between Fourth Edition and Scourge is legal in Premodern. Unlike Old School 93/94 there is no requirement to play a period-appropriate printing of a card; any frame or illustration is acceptable. Additionally, most events allow gold bordered cards from World Championship Decks and the community is generally extremely proxy friendly.

Ban list

The format is administered by Martin Berlin, its creator. Changes to the ban list are announced on the format's website.

“

An underlying idea is that the format should be a home for iconic and fun cards that don't see play in other formats - either because their relative power level has withered over time, or because they are not tournament-legal due to their interactions with newer cards (e.g. Survival of the Fittest and Vengevine in Legacy). In line with this idea, some cards that are dominant in other formats are banned in Premodern (e.g. Brainstorm and Force of Will) to leave room for other cards to prosper, and to make the format distinct from others.

”

Cards banned in Premodern broadly fit into three categories:

• Power level
• Format identity
• Cards that reference Ante

Cards that are banned in official formats due to being considered culturally offensive (such as Crusade) are legal in Premodern.

The following individual cards are banned in Premodern tournaments:

• Amulet of Quoz
• Balance
• Brainstorm
• Bronze Tablet
• Channel
• Demonic Consultation
• Earthcraft
• Entomb
• Flash
• Force of Will
• Goblin Recruiter
• Grim Monolith
• Jeweled Bird
• Land Tax
• Mana Vault
• Memory Jar
• Mind Twist
• Mind's Desire
• Mystical Tutor
• Necropotence
• Rebirth
• Strip Mine
• Tempest Efreet
• Tendrils of Agony
• Time Spiral
• Timmerian Fiends
• Tolarian Academy
• Vampiric Tutor
• Windfall
• Worldgorger Dragon
• Yawgmoth's Bargain
• Yawgmoth's Will

Notable events

Lobstercon is a tournament held annually in Boston, Massachusetts. At the 2024 Lobstercon 238 people played in the Premodern main event: the North American Premodern Championship. This was won by 1998 World Champion Brian Selden, who played a monoblue Phyrexian Dreadnought deck. The 2025 event, which had an increased cap of 320 players, sold out in only 4 hours. This event was won by Vintage Super League contestant Rich Shay.

Relationship to other formats

Old School 93/94 is a community format which consists of cards printed in 1993 and 1994. Premodern originally grew from the Old School community and there is still significant overlap between the player base of both formats.

Extended was an official format that was created in 1997 as a bridge between Type 1 (now Vintage) and Type 2 (Standard). It consisted of up to seven years worth of expansions with rotation once every three years. Many Premodern decks are inspired by popular Extended decks.

Middle School covers the same period as Premodern, and many of the same decks are viable in both formats. However, Middle School is played under the 2003 era rules (ie: with Mana burn and “Damage on the Stack”) whereas Premodern uses Magic’s current rules. There are also differences in ban lists and legal sets: for instance cards reprinted in Anthologies such as Hymn to Tourach are legal in Middle School but not Premodern.

PreFire Modern is a community format created by MTGO streamer and Premodern content creator Francisco Pawluszek. It uses the Modern format’s card pool before the release of War of the Spark, although it doesn’t seek to replicate the historical banned list.