An introduction to Magic: The Gathering's Premodern: Elves, Goblins and Deadguy Ale

Premodern is a community-created old-school format. According to premodernmagic.com, "Premodern is a community-created constructed format consisting of the sets from Fourth Edition to Scourge. A rule of thumb for the card pool is: all cards with the old frame printed between 1995 and 2003. In line with this idea, some cards that are dominant in other formats are banned in Premodern (e.g. Brainstorm and Force of Will) in order to leave room for other cards to prosper, and to make the format distinct from others."

You can find the full banlist here! 

Premodern isn’t as restrictive as Old School, and you can play cards with newer frame printings as well, making it relatively cheap since you don’t have to necessarily play Vindicate from Apocalypse and instead can use a reprinted variant. Also, even in most tournaments, the normally not legal gold-bordered cards from World Championship Decks as well as Collectors' Edition and International Edition cards are allowed. 

Of course, the format has several expensive Reserved List cards which can make certain decks rather expensive (like Gaea’s Cradle or Mox Diamond), but you can also find good decks for about just 50,00€, like this Orzhov Midrange deck more commonly known as BW Deadguy Ale. 

This is a typical midrange deck with the powerful turn one play of Swamp, Dark Ritual and Hypnotic Specter, but it also has great answers like Swords to Plowshares and Wasteland. 

On my paper-focused YouTube channel Mengu’s Workshop, we played Premodern recently - and the two decks we chose were Goblins and Elves! 

Goblins is very old-school. You’re playing Goblin Lackey, killing your opponent’s blockers and putting Goblin Ringleader and Siege-Gang Commander into play way ahead of schedule! 

My deck of choice on the other hand was Elves, and it was the deck I played at the 4Seasons tournament! 

My list is slightly different from the normal one, which tends to splash red for Anger to have a more explosive combo with Survival of the Fittest, that can win in one big turn with Kamahl, Fist of Krosa. 

I like a more midrange approach, playing Wall of Roots in the main deck to be more prepared for my opponent’s sideboard plan of Engineered Plague and to have my mana dork survive to cast Call of the Herd. 

I'm excited to play Premodern also because I love to collect cards and play with old beautiful versions. It’s an aspect of Magic that I like a lot and I miss the old border cards! Just look how beautiful my deck looks!