Premodern rules

Premodern is a community constructed format for Magic: The Gathering built from the sets of Magic’s golden era — Fourth Edition (1995) through Scourge (2003). It is played with the current comprehensive rules, so if you already know modern-era Magic you already know how Premodern plays; only the card pool is different. The canonical rules and ban list are maintained by the format’s creator, Martin Berlin, at premodernmagic.com; this page summarises them, and we mirror any change within 24 hours.

Deck construction

• Minimum 60-card main deck, with up to a 15-card sideboard.
• Maximum four copies of any individual card, basic lands excepted.
• Only cards first printed in a Premodern-legal set are allowed — see the full legal-sets list. Later reprints of a legal card are fine (the community simply prefers the original old-frame printing).
• The banlist removes 33 cards for power level, including Brainstorm and Force of Will.

Match structure

Premodern is played best-of-three with sideboarding — the standard Constructed match. Tournament rounds run 50 minutes. Between games you may swap any number of cards with your sideboard, returning to your registered main deck before each new match.

Gameplay baseline

• The London Mulligan is in effect.
• No mana burn — leftover mana empties with no life loss.
• Damage does not use the stack; cards use their current Oracle wording and errata.

Because the rules are current but the cards are old, games reward resource management and sequencing over raw curve-out speed. For the vocabulary of the format — Stiflenought, Pande-Burst, “the Rock” — see the glossary.

The gold-border allowance

Gold-bordered World Championship Deck cards are widely accepted at Premodern events, which keeps otherwise-expensive staples affordable. This is a community norm rather than a universal rule — confirm policy with your tournament organiser. The price pages track what each staple costs in USD and EUR, and the budget decks page ranks the cheapest competitive builds.

Where the official rules live

premodernmtg.com is an unofficial community resource. The authoritative rules document and the canonical ban list are Martin Berlin’s at premodernmagic.com. Where the two differ, defer to premodernmagic.com. New to the format? Start with what Premodern is, then pick a deck from the metagame board.