Glossary
The community lingo and rules terms used throughout PremodernHQ, in one place. If a hotlinked phrase or deck nickname is unfamiliar, look it up here. Also see the getting started guide and the rules & FAQ.
44 of 44 terms
A
- Apocalypse
- The third SET of the Invasion block (2001), not the card of the same name. The Invasion block leaned hard into multicolor and gold cards; Apocalypse added the enemy-colored 'pain' duals and powerful enemy-color spells to the Premodern pool.
B
- Blowout
- A single exchange that swings the game hard, like punishing an overextension with a sweeper or countering the spell an opponent built their whole turn around.
- Bolt the Bird
- Spending premium early removal on an opposing mana creature like Llanowar Elves or Birds of Paradise to set the opponent behind on mana. A classic tempo judgment call.
C
- Card Advantage
- Having more cards and resources in play and in hand than your opponent. Often shortened to CA, it is the engine behind most grindy, long-game wins.
D
- Damage on the stack
- A retired rule where combat damage was a triggered ability. This allowed players to sacrifice creatures 'in response' to their damage. In Premodern, this rule is NOT used.
- Draw-Go
- A control strategy (primarily Landstill) that avoids casting spells during its own turn, instead holding mana for counterspells and removal during the opponent's turn.
- Dumptruck
- A style of midrange/control deck (often RUG) originating in Portland, known for high card quality and land disruption.
E
- ETB
- Enters The Battlefield. A triggered ability that fires when a permanent first arrives in play.
- Exile
- To move a card to the exile zone, removed from the game. Unlike the graveyard, exiled cards normally can't be recovered.
F
- Fetchlands
- Lands like Polluted Delta or Wooded Foothills. You pay 1 life and sacrifice them to search your library for a basic land type.
- Fizzle
- Slang for a spell or ability that fails to resolve, usually because all of its targets have become illegal.
G
- Gold-bordered
- Cards from World Championship or Collector's Edition sets. They have gold borders and different backs, and are normally not tournament legal, but are often welcomed in Premodern to improve accessibility.
- Goldfishing
- Testing a deck against no opponent to measure its raw clock, meaning how many turns it needs to win against a passive 'goldfish' that never blocks or interacts. Every deck page on the wiki has a built-in sample-hand tool, so you can goldfish any list you open from /archetypes or /events.
H
- Hard Lock
- A game state where an opponent is completely prevented from taking meaningful actions (e.g., Decree of Silence + Opalescence).
- Hatebear
- A small, efficient creature whose real job is a disruptive static ability rather than combat, such as taxing spells or shutting off a strategy.
I
- Inevitability
- The quality of a deck that will eventually win a long game on its own, usually a control deck, which forces the opponent to close things out before it takes over.
L
- Legend rule
- The current rule: if you control two or more legendary permanents with the same name, you choose one to keep and put the rest into their owner's graveyard. (The old pre-2017 'legend rule' instead stopped a second copy from entering and could be used to remove an opponent's legend; Premodern uses the current version.)
- LobsterCon
- The unofficial North American Premodern Championship held annually in Boston. It is the largest paper Premodern event in the world.
- London Mulligan
- The current official Magic mulligan rule. You draw seven cards, then put one card on the bottom of your library for each time you have mulliganed.
- LTB
- Leaves The Battlefield. A triggered ability that fires when a permanent is destroyed, exiled, or returned to hand.
M
- Mana burn
- A retired rule where unspent mana at the end of a phase caused the player to lose that much life. In Premodern, this rule is NOT used.
- Mana flood
- Drawing far more lands than you can use, leaving you with nothing impactful to do while the opponent develops. The classic feel-bad non-game.
- Middle-School
- A common synonym for Premodern, referencing the time period when many current players were in middle school (mid-to-late 90s).
- Mill
- To put cards from the top of a library into the graveyard. A mill win condition empties the opponent's library so they lose on their next draw.
N
- Netdeck
- A decklist copied from published tournament results rather than brewed yourself. Netdecking is a fast way to pick up a proven archetype.
O
- Old Border Only
- A personal or community preference to only play cards with the original card frame, even if modern-frame reprints are technically legal.
- Old Frame
- Also called 'Old Border'. The classic card design used from 1993 until 2003 (8th Edition). Premodern focuses on this era's aesthetics.
- On the play / On the draw
- Whether you take the first turn (on the play, with no draw step on turn one) or the second (on the draw, with an extra card). It is a real edge that shapes mulligan and sequencing decisions.
- Onslaught
- A Premodern-era SET and BLOCK (Onslaught / Legions / Scourge, 2002-2003), not the card of the same name. It pushed tribal themes (notably Goblins) and introduced morph and the allied fetchlands (Bloodstained Mire, Polluted Delta, etc.) that anchor many Premodern mana bases.
P
- Pain Lands
- A cycle of lands (like Adarkar Wastes or Karplusan Forest) that tap for colored mana but deal 1 damage to you. They are a staple of Premodern mana bases.
- Priority
- The right to cast spells or activate abilities. While a player holds priority they can respond before anything on the stack resolves.
R
- Reanimation
- Returning a creature from the graveyard directly to the battlefield, often cheaply (e.g. Reanimate, Exhume, Necromancy).
S
- Sacrifice
- To put a permanent you control into its owner's graveyard, usually as a cost. Sacrificing can't be stopped by hexproof or most removal protection.
- Silver Bullets
- Highly specific cards in a deck or sideboard (often found via tutors like Enlightened Tutor or Living Wish) that are devastating against specific archetypes.
- Sligh
- A red aggro deck built on an optimized low mana curve, named after player Paul Sligh. It gave its name to 'the Sligh curve,' the idea of filling every early turn with an efficient play.
- Soft Lock
- A game state where an opponent can technically still play, but is severely restricted (e.g., Stasis or Winter Orb).
- Swiss
- A tournament format where everyone plays a set number of rounds and nobody is eliminated; each round pairs you against an opponent with a similar record. Final standings come from match results, often with a Top 8 cut to single-elimination afterward.
T
- Tempo
- The race for time on the board. A tempo play trades raw card value for speed, like bouncing a blocker or countering a key spell to keep the pressure on while the opponent falls behind.
- The Stack
- The zone where spells and abilities wait to resolve, last-in-first-out. Players get priority to respond before each one resolves.
- The Vibe
- A community term for the unique, nostalgic atmosphere of Premodern events, characterized by hospitality and mutual respect for the 1995-2003 era.
- Toolbox
- A deck design that uses tutors to find specific 'Silver Bullet' answers for any given situation.
- Tutor
- To search your library for a specific card (e.g. Vampiric Tutor, Worldly Tutor). Named after the card Demonic Tutor.
- Two-for-one
- A single card that answers two of the opponent's, such as a board sweeper or a creature that kills one of theirs and survives. Winning these trades repeatedly takes over attrition games.
W
- WPN
- Wizards Play Network: Wizards of the Coast's program of officially sanctioned local game stores and organized play. Premodern is a grassroots format with no WPN support, so it runs entirely on community-organized events.
Submit your own term
Missing a piece of slang, a deck nickname, or a rules term? Send it our way. Keep the definition plain-language (1–3 sentences) so it helps a newer player. Each entry is just a term and a definition:
{
"term": "Tempo",
"definition": "Cheap threats plus disruption to stay ahead on the clock."
}Submit it on the contribute page, or open a PR adding it to data/introduction/glossary.json. A copy-paste template lives at data-mirror/templates/glossary-template.json.