Timmerian Fiends

Premodern-legal editions of Timmerian Fiends — old-border printings plus any period-appropriate foil promos (Arena/Judge, through Scourge). Hover to preview an edition on the card; click to select it.

Homelands

1995·hmlrare

Selected

Old-border editions + pre-Scourge promo foils (Arena/Judge). Modern-frame reprints (8th Edition onward) exist but are not period-appropriate printings.

Why It's Banned

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

An early ante card retired with the rest once organized play banned playing for ante.

Trivia & Lore

• Timmerian Fiends, from Homelands (released October 1995), was the last ante card ever printed in Magic. No card has referenced ante since, and it is the only ante-banned card from that set.
• It is one of only two creatures among the nine banned 'ante' cards (the 'Ante Nine'), the other being Tempest Efreet. The full nine are Amulet of Quoz, Bronze Tablet, Contract from Below, Darkpact, Demonic Attorney, Jeweled Bird, Rebirth, Tempest Efreet, and Timmerian Fiends.
• Its ante ability can only target an artifact: sacrificing the Fiends lets the artifact's owner ante the top card of their library, and if they decline, ownership of that artifact and the Fiends is permanently exchanged. This artifact-only scope makes it the narrowest of the ante 'swap' cards.
• The card has an asymmetric mana profile: it costs {1}{B}{B} (3 mana) to cast, but its activated ante ability costs a separate {B}{B}{B} (three black mana) plus sacrificing the 1/1 creature itself.
• Despite being a banned, Reserved List rare, Timmerian Fiends is nearly worthless on the secondary market, with Scryfall listing it around $0.66 USD / 0.70 EUR, reflecting Homelands' reputation as a weak set.
• It is on the Reserved List (Scryfall flags reserved: true), so it can never be reprinted in tournament-legal black-bordered form. Homelands #58 remains its sole printing.
• The card was illustrated by Mike Kimble and is a 1/1 Horror. Its small stats combined with its narrow ante restriction led historian Agent Palmer to call it 'probably the worst of all nine ante cards.'
• Its only official ruling (Oct 4, 2004) addresses a targeting quirk: both Timmerian Fiends and the target artifact must be on the battlefield when the ability is announced, and the artifact must still be there when the ability resolves or nothing happens.
• Ante (and thus Timmerian Fiends) was phased out and banned largely because Wizards feared the mechanic could classify sanctioned tournaments as gambling, forcing venues to obtain gambling licenses; ante survives only as an optional casual variant.
• Timmerian Fiends carries the legacy 'fail-safe' templating shared by ante cards: its Oracle text literally begins 'Remove this card from your deck before playing if you're not playing for ante.'

Critical Rulings