Brainstorm | Illustration by Willian Murai
Premodern is a community-driven format created by Martin Berlin in 2012, with the goal to sculpt an environment where players could use cards unavailable in other formats because they were power-crept or banned due to new cards that made them too powerful.
In addition to an extremely limited card pool of Standard-legal sets from Fourth Edition to Scourge, just before Eighth Edition introduced a new card frame, the format has a small ban list aimed at the most powerful strategies that maintains the identity of the format.
The Latest Premodern Bannings
Mystical Tutor | Illustration by David O'Connor
January 18, 2026
- Parallax Tide was banned.
Ante Cards
The following cards are banned because they use the ante mechanic, which involves players setting aside cards from the top of their deck for the winner of the match to permanently keep. They’re banned in basically every format, including Premodern:
Balance
Balance is utterly unfair in many formats, and that holds true for Premodern; it takes so little to make this a one-side board wipe/Armageddon/Mind Twist—just imagine an opening where your mana sources are Mox Diamond and Lotus Petal. Should your opponent ever bounce back, the second Balance extinguishes any hope they had.
Brainstorm + Force of Will
A portion of the cards on the ban list aren’t just there to restrict the power of certain archetypes or colors (though these cards certainly fit that umbrella!); they’re there to help the format maintain a unique identity. For example, Force of Will and Brainstorm aren’t just excellent blue spells, they’re an iconic part of Legacy’s format identity—if they were legal, Premodern might feel like Legacy-lite.
Channel
While Channel lacks the ceiling it possess in other formats—there are no Eldrazi in Premodern—the card still enables problematic play patterns. For example, the classic Channel + Fireball combo is well within reach thanks to great mana acceleration like Lotus Petal, Mox Diamond, and Birds of Paradise, among others.
Demonic Consultation
Demonic Consultation is simply a busted tutor. There’s no card disadvantage, the cost is as close to 0 as it could possibly get and… yeah, that’s about it. There’s always the slim chance that you exile all cards from your library, but that’s extremely unlikely and a risk worth taking to ensure your combo deck goes off every single time with minimal fail states. Why turn down the chance to play 7-8 copies of your best card?
Earthcraft
The primary reason to ban Earthcraft is the potent Squirrel Nest combo: You can make infinite Squirrel tokens at instant speed as early as turn 2 with the right draw, though 3 is more likely. Premodern already has a handful of powerful enchantress decks that would adopt this easily. While there are tools to combat it, like Engineered Plague, it still offers an incredibly fast win.
Entomb
Entomb’s ban keeps reanimator decks in check because they lose the absolutely absurd start that chains Dark Ritual into Entomb then Animate Dead. Or just a turn-2 Animate Dead on your best target. It’s also arguably a format identity ban like Brainstorm and FoW given how long it was a Legacy staple before its eventual ban there.
Flash
Rather than interact with Protean Hulk, printed well after the cutoff for Premodern’s card pool, Flash is banned for fear of what it could do with Academy Rector. Two mana to put any enchantment from your deck into play gets taken advantage of fast. Show and Tell is legal, but it’s a turn slower and restricted to sorcery speed.
Goblin Recruiter
Goblin Recruiter looks like a funny card, but don't underestimate it. Its ban is partially related to time—stacking your deck takes quite some time—but also power, as Goblin Food Chain has been a beast since the days of Legacy. This same rationale sees the Recruiter banned in Legacy.
Grim Monolith + Mana Vault
Grim Monolith and Mana Vault are similarly busted pieces of fast mana. The format has Sol lands and Tinker and so many ways to break these, like setting up Phyrexian Devourer + Fling combos. Mana Vault is the stronger of the two since it sets up turn-2 Dream Halls and doesn’t need Ancient Tomb to come down on turn 1, but both deserve their place on the ban list.
Land Tax
Land Tax has had an on-again, off-again relationship with the Premodern ban list; it was originally unbanned in June 2018 to see what it did to the meta. It did nasty things as a draw engine when paired with cards like Scroll Rack (you could put the three lands you drew on top for three new cards) and combo'd with Forbid. These saw it rebanned in 2023 since the draw engine was so cheap and not every color could handle the artifact plus enchantment combo.
Memory Jar
Memory Jar is famously one of the most broken cards ever printed and the target of Magic’s first emergency ban after Urza’s Legacy dropped in 1999. Urza’s block—which consists of Urza’s Saga, Urza’s Legacy, and Urza’s Destiny—is famous for ushering in Combo Winter, a period of intensely broken cards so warped around powerful artifacts that players left the game. Memory Jar was banned to stop it from continuing, and it deserves its ban here.
Mind Twist
Mind Twist thrives off Premodern’s fast mana like Dark Ritual and Mox Diamond. It takes very little for it to dominate a game by leaving the opponent empty-handed, which isn’t only powerful but deeply unfun because the game just ends. Even a small Twist can be devastating since the discard is random; when X=2 eats your only two land drops, the game’s pretty much as over as it would be when you ditch six cards.
Mind’s Desire + Tendrils of Agony
Storm is one of the most broken mechanics ever, and its most broken cards are Mind's Desire and Tendrils of Agony. Their bans make perfect sense. Storm still exists in Premodern thanks to Brain Freeze—it just needs to work harder and consider Gaea's Blessing.
Mystical Tutor + Vampiric Tutor
Mystical Tutor and Vampiric Tutor are simply some of the best tutors ever printed, even though they’re card disadvantage. Setting up a perfect draw goes a long way towards establishing a win, especially since that perfect draw doesn’t need to be a win condition; it could be an answer. Vampiric is certainly the stronger of the two because it finds anything, but both make combo decks much more powerful and consistent.
Necropotence
Necropotence is one of the most powerful draw engines ever printed because it lets you trade all the life you want to sculpt the perfect hand. That’s an astonishing advantage for 3 mana, but the true kicker is the legality of Dark Ritual: It allows for a turn-1 Necropotence, an exceptional start for most formats.
Parallax Tide
The most recent card to be banned in Premodern, Parallax Tide had an easy-to-break “temporary” land exile ability. It took little effort to make it permanent with cards like Stifle and Chain of Vapor. These interactions spawned a slew of decks, like Dreadnought builds, control builds, and Replenish combo decks; enough cases to see it banned.
Strip Mine
Strip Mine just isn’t fun. You play it, you put your opponent behind on mana. Because they didn’t build their deck around it, it hurts them. If you recur Strip Mine, you put them further and further behind. And since it’s colorless, any strategy can use it.
Even if it weren’t a hideously broken design, Strip Mine’s worth banning for the quality of life of Premodern’s players.
Time Spiral
Another limiter on storm decks, Time Spiral does a ludicrous amount of work. It’s effectively a free draw-seven that potentially ramps you with an Ancient Tomb or similar effect. Even without that or Mind's Desire, it unleashes powerful combo turns. Another broken card from Urza’s block that deserves to be left in the gutter.
Tolarian Academy
Something, something, Tinker… something, something, Combo Winter… something, something, Urza’s block ruining formats because it didn’t understand how powerful artifacts were. There's a reason Tolarian Academy is only legal in Vintage.
Windfall
Windfall is yet another card that earns a spot on the ban list because fast mana is good. Cards like Ancient Tomb, Mox Diamond, and Lotus Petal enable powerful starts where you dump a bunch of mana sources into play, then wheel into a fresh seven. It also has the potential to create frustrating non-games; if your opponent Windfalls turn 1 or 2, there’s a decent chance they wheel you into an unplayable hand you never would have kept, an issue similar to that of Mind Twist.
Worldgorger Dragon
Worldgorger Dragon is a famous combo card with Animate Dead and other aura-based reanimation spells that produces infinite mana… and also draws the game if you can’t disrupt it. Not only is it powerful, the combo can take a while to resolve since you get infinite mana and flicker all your permanents and get a bunch of enters triggers and stuff like that, so you could call this a power ban or a quality of life ban, as you please.
Yawgmoth’s Bargain
Yawgmoth's Bargain, surprisingly, was banned for no reason related to storm. Rather, it was central to a powerful Academy Rector deck that reliably cheated the Bargain into play early. If the Rector plan ever failed, Yawgmoth's Bargain is an extremely castable card that still offers incredible card advantage. Like Land Tax, it’s another card that briefly came off the ban list only to go back.
Yawgmoth’s Will
Yawgmoth's Will is yet another limiter on Storm. Premodern has all the great cards with it, like Lotus Petal, Lion's Eye Diamond, even Pox if you want to get spicy. It’s extremely hard to lose a game in which you cast Yawg-Will with proper set up, which keeps it banned in Legacy, restricted in Vintage, and rightfully absent from Premodern.
How Often Are Premodern Bannings Announced?
Premodern has no set schedule for how often bans are announced; cards are banned as needed. The most recent banning was Parallax Tide in 2026, with not a whisper of a ban announcement on the official Premodern blog between that and the banning of Land Tax three years prior.
Who Decides What to Ban in Premodern?
Martin Berlin, the creator of Premodern, decides which cards to ban and unban, though he does so with input from the community.
Do Premodern Bannings Affect MTG Arena and Magic Online?
You can’t play Premodern on MTG Arena, so bans don’t affect that platform. However, the format is supported on Magic Online, so any bans Martin announces take effect there.
Wrap Up
Memory Jar | Illustration by Donato Giancola
I really appreciate the Premodern ban list for concision. The cards on here make sense, and there are very few outliers that make me raise an eyebrow. It’s a great community format, and it’s grown in popularity recently, perhaps as a response to Universes Beyond’s invasion of every other Magic format.
Do you play Premodern? Does the ban list make you more or less likely to play? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord, and check out our newsletter, The Daily Upkeep!
Stay safe, and thanks for reading!
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