Several times I have encountered the same question: "So, is Premodern cool?" And my answer has always been affirmative, but perhaps it doesn´t explain well the reasons, and this article tries to solve that and it´s aimed at all those who ask the same.
These are my reasons why (I think) Premodern is so cool:
These are my reasons why (I think) Premodern is so cool:
1. Immense Pool to explore and (re) discover.
Premodern covers from April of 1995 to May of 2003, or what is the same, from IV Edition to Scourge. That's a total of 6,865 cards! A huge pool. It´s almost impossible to remember each card, even if you played during all that time..
I started playing with Revised Edition and I retired in V Edition and reengaged several times along the Extended period, but I lost sight of some expansions, for example, without going any further, I didn´t know any card printed in Prophecy.
One of the things I like the most about "Magic: The Gathering" is knowing new cards, and exploring all these "forgotten in time" expansions is a wonderful and exciting task, and if we compare it with Old School 93-94, which is already I know all the cards, in Premodern it will take a considerable time to know each and every one of them.
Excuse me the metaphor, but Old School formats are like an Egyptian pyramid, we know their existence because they´ve been there all their lives, but we don´t really know what treasures they hide inside until we enter, explore and discover them. I feel right now as if I were an Argivian archaeologist digging up Premodern.
2. The nostalgia factor is strong.
The period covered by Premodern, we have already seen, is large. We are talking about one of the golden ages of the game. Within this stage were forged some of the most legendary professional players, who haven´t heard of Kai Budde, Jon Finkel, Mike Long, etc.
You will be able to play again mythical decks such as Suicide Black, CounterHammer, The Rock, Fires, Survival, Draw & Go, Turboland, Probloom, Trix, Psiqueatog, and a long etcetera, (with some variations, no duals, for example) and not only that, apart from playing and reliving the versions classic you will be able to try to improve them and innovate about them.
At that time, Wizards of the Coast got better the competitive mode and expanded it all over the world, creating "Extended", a format that was tremendously successful and that brings back good memories to everyone.
In Premodern there are also some of the most mythical extensions of the game. The Urza´s block is known by having printed the most powerful cards, or Tempest and Exodus that, perhaps, was one of the most playable expansions of all Magic
But there are also some expansions to which I personally consider 100% Old School, such as Ice Age, Homelands, Chronicles, Alliances or IV Edition. This block, that of the Ice Age, is quite "vintage" seen on the table, and we are talking about the year 95 in which we have already begun to play, MTG was still an emerging game and Fallen Empires (last extension of OS 93 - 94) was recently published.
3. New combinations od cards thet never coexisted in the same format.
Extended went through several rotations and could not play the full spectrum of Premodern cards at once in any of its stages.
This is a very interesting point, some cards never coexisted in tournaments or competitive formats of the time (other than the so-called eternal formats: Legacy, Vintage), and cards published in Ice Age, for putting a example, never combined with those of Scourge.
We are still exploring a format in which we won´t know what combos will appear, and that is something that fascinates me and pushes me to look for new decks and new strategies every day.
We are still exploring a format in which we won´t know what combos will appear, and that is something that fascinates me and pushes me to look for new decks and new strategies every day.
4. It's Creative and varied.
As there is such a large pool and it´s so accessible and a "casual" format, made for fun, it has some advantages, one of them is that you can develop different strategies besides Pro Tour, PPTQ, GP etc, and you go to be able to take your deck of beasts or zombies to see how it works, and this will lead you to discover new interactions between the cards that, maybe, in a format where you must carry the top deck or you are nobody, you could never see in table.
If you take any list of decks that have participated in a Premodern tournament you´ll notice that the metagame is quite varied, there is a lot of Sligh, Survival or Goblins, but also other archetypes, some new ones, that come out every day, and that It's even more fascinating, not knowing what you're going to face or who has come up with something new.
One of the things I like most about Old School is that it rewards the design of new decks and new strategies. This creative component is multiplied in Premodern. For those of us who like to design decks (MTG is the perfect game for that).
5. Is balanced (and unified).
There is some controversy since the format was opened and the list of banned was presented, some players didn´t understand why to ban Brainstorm or Force of Will. For me the answer is clear: if these cards were allowed Premodern would have been a "Mini-Legacy", even worse than Legacy, since everyone would play 4 copies of each, and it would not be a format neither so varied, nor so creative and, consequently, less fun.
There is some controversy since the format was opened and the list of banned was presented, some players didn´t understand why to ban Brainstorm or Force of Will. For me the answer is clear: if these cards were allowed Premodern would have been a "Mini-Legacy", even worse than Legacy, since everyone would play 4 copies of each, and it would not be a format neither so varied, nor so creative and, consequently, less fun.
The list of prohibited, in my opinion, is a success, and was one of the reasons why I decided to try the format. Of course, if you removed FoW you also had to remove the possibility of unbalancing combos and that's why they had to ban Channel, Entomb, Memory Jar, Mind's Desire, Necropotence, Tendrils of Agony, Time Spiral, Worldgorger Dragon, Yawgmoth's Will, ... The list, as they said, is revisable, maybe they change something, but for now I think they have managed to give the format the right balance and necessary to make it healthy and fun.When you play Premodern you feel this balance. There are Tier 1 decks, as in all formats, (such as Goblins, Sligh, Survival or Standstill), but there are also many sideboards cards that go very well against these strategies, everything is to try and find appropriate cards in the huge pool of Premodern.
In addition, Martin Berlin, did well from the beginning and designed a format that is played the same everywhere, with the same B & R and same rules in all tournaments.
This is an important milestone. Those of us who come from Old School 93-94 know what we are talking about, because sometimes it´s dizzy to have to adapt to the rules of a local community that are different from the ones you play in your community, and here, in Premodern, everything is unified so that Everyone play the same rules.
6. Is accessible
If we compare it with other formats, Premodern is one of the most economical and, therefore, one of the most accessible. For a minimum investment you can have a competitive deck.
The Reserved List doesn´t have as much weight in Premodern as it does in Old School 93-94, which makes many cards out of reach for most players, that doesn´t happen in Premodern, where there are some hard to get cards, but not at OS level.
This makes it possible to play without proxies (something that is almost impossible nowadays in Old Scholl 93-94) and this is a very important point for the Premodern community to continue growing and nutra of new players, because for very little you can play and try the format, and I'm sure you'll stay.
In addition, "reprints are allowed", even if they do not have an old frame or the original drawing. This, that aesthetically can´t like the most purist, widens even more the spectrum of possible new players.
7. The community is growing.
Premodern was born with an approach similar to Old School 93-94, it entered strongly into the magicist panorama and nowadays it grows at a fairly fast pace, the blogs dealing with Premodern are multiplied (the first and most important is Premodern) and there is a strong community in social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram (with accounts as interesting as @Premodernmagic o @Mtgdojoera (account now inactive but that he has made an interesting contribution) and even by Skype.The tournaments in stores are also multiplied as well as the leagues (without going any further than ours in Madrid is a good example) and even become National in several countries in Europe (Sweden, Italy, France).
Although it´s a format in which you play many "forgotten" cards, it´s not a dead format, far from it, it´s quite alive and is played more than some official WotC formats, such as Vintage.
So that’s it! Let me know what you think, why Premodern is cool or why Premodern isn´t cool. As always, leave comments in the blog, or in my Instagram account @Retroplayermtg. I'd love to hear your opinions.
I also remind you that I write articles about Old school in the Liga Madrileña de Old School (LMOS) blog.
Cheers!
Carlos Piélago