The Ban List

Perhaps the most iconic banned card, Necropotence defined an entire era of Magic. In Premodern, its ability to trade life for cards at a 1:1 ratio is simply too efficient for a format meant to be interactive.

Known as 'Yawgmoth's Win', this card allows a player to replay their entire graveyard. In a format with Dark Ritual and Lion's Eye Diamond, it enables degenerate combo turns that are impossible to interact with for most decks.

Balance is anything but balanced. For two mana, it can act as a board wipe, a Mind Twist, and a mass land destruction spell all in one. It punishes players for playing the game.

Amulet of Quoz turns a game of Magic into a coin-flip wager on ante — a mechanic outlawed in all sanctioned play. It is banned in Premodern by definition, not by power level.

Bronze Tablet lets players trade cards through ante, a mechanic banned from sanctioned Magic. Premodern excludes it alongside every other ante card.

Jeweled Bird swaps itself into the ante and draws a card, a function built entirely around the outlawed ante mechanic. It is banned in Premodern as a matter of rules, not balance.

Rebirth resets life totals and interacts with ante, a mechanic banned from sanctioned Magic. Premodern excludes it on rules grounds.

Tempest Efreet can take a card from the opponent's deck via ante — a mechanic outlawed in sanctioned Magic. It is banned in Premodern by rule.

Timmerian Fiends exists to manipulate the ante, a mechanic banned from all sanctioned Magic. Premodern excludes it as a matter of rules.

A one-mana instant that draws three and tucks two back is the defining cantrip of blue control and combo, and Premodern bans it not for raw brokenness but to draw a hard boundary against Legacy. Within the 4th Edition-through-Scourge pool, Brainstorm fuels the same fetch-and-shuffle, dig-for-the-answer engines that dominate eternal formats, threatening to collapse Premodern's deck diversity into a sea of blue. The card's smoothing of draws is simply too potent for a format built around fairer, more interactive games of attrition.

Channel turns your life total into colorless mana at a brutal one-for-one rate, collapsing the entire mana curve into a single explosive turn. In a format built around fair creatures, counterspells, and incremental advantage, a card that funds a turn-one kill or an out-of-nowhere bomb before the opponent acts violates Premodern's core promise of an interactive game. The payoff is non-negotiable: by the time it resolves, the game is frequently already decided.

For a single black mana, Demonic Consultation is an unconditional tutor that fetches any card in your deck, paid for by exiling the top six cards and then exiling every other card revealed until you hit the one you named. In Premodern's slower, interaction-based metagame, that one-mana consistency lets combo decks assemble their kill (most notably via storm/Doomsday-adjacent engines and reanimator setups) far too reliably, collapsing the variance that keeps non-blue tutoring honest. The trivial cost makes the format's answers irrelevant because the combo player simply finds the missing piece on turn one or two.

Earthcraft lets you tap any untapped creature to untap a basic land, and paired with Squirrel Nest it forms a clean two-card infinite engine: a basic land enchanted by Squirrel Nest taps to make a 1/1 Squirrel, Earthcraft taps that Squirrel to untap the land, and the loop repeats for an unbounded swarm of Squirrels. In a format built around fair creature decks and slow, interactive games, a cheap deterministic kill that assembles from two enchantments — both squarely in the legal pool — warps the metagame far beyond Premodern's intended power level. The combo is too compact and too hard to interact with for a format that prizes grindy, board-centric play.

For a single black mana at instant speed, Entomb tutors any card directly into your graveyard, turning the hardest part of a reanimator deck — getting a fatty into the bin — into a near-free action. In Premodern's slower, more grindy power band, that efficiency collapses the combo: a turn-one Entomb into a turn-one or turn-two Reanimate or Exhume drops a Verdant Force, Spirit of the Night, or other bomb onto the battlefield before opponents can deploy meaningful interaction. It is not a card that asks you to build toward a payoff; it simply hands you the payoff on the cheapest possible terms.

Flash is a two-mana instant ({1}{U}) that lets you put a creature card from your hand straight into play at instant speed — then either pay that creature's mana cost reduced by {2} or sacrifice it on the spot. That sacrifice clause is the trap: a creature can briefly enter play for almost nothing and immediately leave, firing whatever death or leaves-play trigger it carries. In a format defined by reactive, fair interaction (1995-2003 power level), assembling a payoff at flash speed on the opponent's end step sidesteps the sorcery-speed pacing the format relies on. The danger is not the card alone but how cheaply and instantly it stages a creature whose departure trigger does the real work, leaving opponents no window to respond on their own terms.

For just 1R, Goblin Recruiter tutors any number of Goblins straight to the top of your library in the exact order you choose, converting a fair tribal deck into a deterministic combo engine. In a format built on the variance and back-and-forth of mid-90s tribal aggro, freely arranging the top of your library is simply too much consistency: it removes the draw-step gamble that keeps Goblin mirrors and matchups interactive. Chained into Goblin Ringleader, it lets you replay half your deck and assemble explosive, near-unbeatable starts that no Premodern-legal answer is meant to keep pace with.

Grim Monolith taps for three colorless and untaps for just 4 mana, turning a 2-mana artifact into an explosive ramp engine that powers out threats and lock pieces turns ahead of a fair curve. In a format built around colored mana, modest creatures, and the give-and-take of the early turns, this kind of acceleration collapses the interaction window opponents are supposed to have. Paired with Power Artifact it loops infinite colorless mana, and even without combos it simply lets one player skip the game everyone else is playing.

For a single white mana, Land Tax sits on the battlefield and, on each of your upkeeps when an opponent controls more lands than you, fetches up to three basic lands from your library to hand, refilling your grip turn after turn at almost no cost. In Premodern's grindy, fair-deck environment that asymmetry is brutal: it both thins your deck (boosting topdecks) and fuels engines like Scroll Rack, which recycles the lands back atop your library for fresh cards each turn. An enchantment that generates relentless, uninteractive resource advantage for one mana warps the format toward a single dominant control engine.

A one-mana artifact that immediately taps for three colorless mana, Mana Vault turns turn one into a turn-three mana base for a single card, powering out threats long before opponents can answer them. The deferred drawback (it stays tapped through your untap step and deals 1 damage to you each upkeep unless you pay 4) is a cost a combo or fast deck happily ignores once it has already won. In a format built on the early-2000s interaction baseline, that kind of repeatable, color-free burst warps the first turns of the game beyond what fair decks can keep up with.

Memory Jar is a 5-mana artifact that taps and sacrifices to make every player exile their hand and draw seven, with the new hands discarded and the originals returned at the next end step — a one-shot, symmetrical refill rather than a Wheel of Fortune you keep around. In Premodern's free-artifact/storm-adjacent shells it becomes an engine rather than a fair card-advantage tool: searched up by Tinker, returned and re-sacrificed by Goblin Welder, it refuels a turn that draws and chains a huge fraction of the deck. The format's pre-2003 card pool simply lacks the cheap, reliable interaction needed to punish a combo player who can manufacture multiple fresh seven-card hands in a single turn.

For B and X generic mana, Mind Twist forces the opponent to discard X cards at random, scaling with every extra mana invested. Accelerated by Dark Ritual and other fast black mana, it can empty a hand on turn two or three with no answer once the spell resolves, leaving the victim drawing off the top while the caster still holds a full grip. That degree of non-interactive, snowballing card destruction sits far above what Premodern's grindy, board-developing games are built to absorb.

Mind's Desire reads "shuffle your library, then play the top X cards for free," where X is your storm count, making it a one-card explosion that converts a turn of cheap rituals and cantrips into a cascade of free spells. In Premodern's ritual-rich pool (Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Lion's Eye Diamond, Lotus Petal), a single resolved copy snowballs into more lands, more accelerants, and ultimately a lethal or game-locking payoff faster than any fair deck can interact. It rewards solitaire combo turns over the back-and-forth, interactive play the format is built to protect, so it sits at the heart of the storm ban package.

Mystical Tutor fetches any instant or sorcery to the top of your library for a single blue mana at instant speed, turning one slot into a toolbox answer for every situation. In a format defined by interactive, fair blue control and combo decks, that cheap, flexible consistency is the problem: it lets a deck reliably assemble degenerate lines or always have the perfect counter, removal, or finisher in hand. Premodern's power philosophy tolerates tutoring only when it is slow or costly, and a one-mana instant-speed search is simply too efficient for the era's card pool.

A four-mana blue enchantment that uses its fading counters to remove an opponent's lands from the game, only returning them if it ever leaves play. In a vacuum it is a soft tempo tool, but Premodern's deep mana-denial and enchantment-recursion shells weaponize it: paired with Replenish it can be looped back into play, permanently stripping an opponent of their lands and locking them out of the game entirely. That kind of non-interactive, repeatable resource starvation is exactly the play pattern the format's interaction-first philosophy refuses to tolerate.

Strip Mine is a colorless land that taps for mana yet sacrifices itself to destroy any land, including basics, for a net-zero mana investment. In a format where every deck runs basics and mana bases are deliberately fragile, that repeatable, color-free disruption lets aggro and control decks mana-screw opponents out of games before any real interaction happens. Premodern prizes grindy, decision-dense play, and a free land-for-land trade that costs no spell slot and hits the most basic resource undermines that entire premise.

Tendrils is the payoff that turns a chain of cheap rituals and cantrips into a lethal Storm count, draining the opponent for two life per spell cast that turn. In a format built on the slower, more interactive combat and resource exchanges of the late-1990s/early-2000s, a deck that ignores the board entirely and kills on turn two or three through a deterministic combo loop warps deckbuilding and play patterns. Banning it removes Storm's only true one-card finisher, keeping the format's combo decks from becoming non-interactive solitaire.

Time Spiral is a Timetwister-style reset: every player shuffles their hand and graveyard into their library and then draws seven, and the caster untaps up to six lands in the bargain. That land rebate means it effectively refunds its own six-mana cost and leaves you with a fresh grip and mana up. In Premodern's interactive, two-color-good-stuff metagame, that turns it into a combo accelerant rather than a fair card-advantage spell: it reloads an empty hand mid-turn and powers explosive Urza-era engines that the format cannot reasonably answer. A spell that hands you a brand-new seven for "free" while leaving lands untapped is the textbook ceiling-breaker a 1995-2003 power level was never meant to police.

A Legendary Land that taps for blue mana equal to your artifact count, Tolarian Academy turns cheap artifacts like Lotus Petal, Lion's Eye Diamond, and the fast-mana rocks of the era into explosive, snowballing mana. In an artifact-heavy shell it routinely produces five or more mana from a single land on turn one or two, fueling Mind Over Matter, Stroke of Genius, and other game-ending payoffs far before an interactive deck can answer them. Premodern is built around grindy, fair midrange and combo with windows for disruption, and a one-card mana engine of this magnitude collapses those windows entirely.

For a single black mana at instant speed, Vampiric Tutor finds any card in your deck and sets it atop your library, paying only 2 life. In a format built on creature combat and reactive interaction, that kind of frictionless consistency lets combo and toolbox decks assemble their best answer or kill piece every game, collapsing deck variance and homogenizing what would otherwise be a diverse metagame. The 2-life cost is a rounding error next to the power of turning every draw step into "draw exactly what you need."

A two-mana sorcery that forces every player to discard their hand and draw cards equal to the largest hand discarded, Windfall is a symmetrical refill that the caster bends entirely in their favor. In a combo-leaning deck it converts a dead, dumped hand into a fistful of fresh resources for almost no cost, and the more cards an opponent is holding, the more the Windfall player draws. That kind of cheap, scaling card advantage hands degenerate "draw-and-go-off" strategies the fuel they need while giving the interactive player no meaningful way to tax or punish it.

Animate Dead on Worldgorger Dragon creates a loop that exiles all your other permanents and returns them each cycle, with lands coming back untapped, letting you generate arbitrary mana or trigger ETBs as many times as you like before ending the loop to win. In Premodern's slow, fair, mana-light environment, that turns a couple of cheap reanimation spells into a combo kill as early as turn two with no real interactive counterplay on the stack. A two-card engine that ignores creature combat and life totals entirely is exactly the kind of deterministic, non-interactive win the format's philosophy is built to exclude.

Bargain takes the already-banned Necropotence engine and strips away its only real downside, letting you pay 1 life to draw a card immediately rather than exiling cards to a delayed end-of-turn pile. In a slow, interactive Premodern metagame where life totals are a renewable resource, that means a single uncontested turn converts your life cushion directly into a fistful of cards, fueling combo and ritual-storm starts no fair deck can answer. Like Necropotence before it, it warps games into a race against an unstoppable card-advantage spiral.

Force of Will lets blue decks counter anything for zero mana by paying 1 life and pitching a blue card, untethering the format's premier interaction from the resource that is supposed to constrain it. In Premodern's deliberately slower, mana-bound metagame, a free hard counter warps deckbuilding and play patterns toward blue, letting combo and control protect their plans (or stop yours) without ever tapping out or falling behind on development. Banning it preserves the format's identity: interaction should cost mana, so that tapping out, sequencing, and resource trades remain real decisions rather than a foregone "no."