by Johnny Cycles, May 28th, 2026
Tired of sitting down at your LGS to play Commander only to find one opponent is playing Deadpool, Trading Card, another is running Caesar, Legion’s Emperor, and the third tells you he’s playing Mono White Humans, then breaks out Rick, Steadfast Leader. Or maybe you’re tired of games ending by turn 6 thanks to all the power creep, cheap commanders that do it all, and an abundance of printed-for-Commander cards that all say “each opponent” in a giant block of text?
If any of this resonates with you, I encourage you to consider Premodern Commander! It doesn’t have to replace Commander. No, think of it as a nostalgic rest stop in a time long past when Commander was full of bulk rares, jank, and high CMC cards that didn’t see play anywhere else. Play a few matches, remember Magic and Commander as it once was, then go back to the powered up cards of today. You’ll appreciate them even more returning to them from the 90s!
What is Premodern Commander?
Premodern Commander is inspired by Premodern, a format created by Martin Berlin in 2012 that is designed to “be a home for iconic and fun cards that don’t see play in other formats.” With a card pool ranging from Fourth Edition to Scourge, Premodern has a ban list built, in part, to maintain the unique feel of this old-school Magic format.
Premodern has gained quite a bit of traction in recent years, with MTGO now hosting multiple events daily. Part of the appeal of the format is nostalgia for Magic as it used to be before Universes Beyond corrupted, I mean, appeared in the game.
Premodern Commander is a format created for the same reasons, though it differs in one key way. Its legal sets include Alpha through Scourge. This adds 9 more sets, but, more importantly, a bunch of possible commanders, 444 to Premodern’s 132.
Why Play Premodern Commander?
First, that old-school feel of Magic.
If you played Magic in the 90s or early 2000s, then Premodern Commander will function like a time machine for you.
And it’s not just that you’re playing cards your younger self remembers.
The games themselves tend to play out in a similar way. Longer and grindier, a Premodern Commander game won’t end quickly.
Second, a new card pool!
One of these cards is strictly better than the other…
Yes, technically, these cards are the oldest in the game, but the vast majority of them have been outclassed.
Limiting yourself to just these older sets means your Premodern Commander deck will look drastically different than your current ones, and it won’t come at the cost of getting stomped by more powerful, contemporary decks.
Third, that art!
It’s not just the old border that will take you back in time. So much of the art back then is remarkable for many reasons.
Fourth, dual lands!
If you played in the 90s and are lucky enough to have kept your playdeck full of dual lands, this is the format to play them in!
Fifth, outside of the earliest sets and a handful of cards from the later ones, most of what you’ll be playing is pretty budget friendly.
One critique of the format is that it can’t evolve since there won’t be new cards added to it over time.
But hey, that’s kind of the point! And with over 400 commanders to choose from and a card pool in the thousands, I think it’ll take some time for players to get
bored with their options.
Why Alpha through Scourge?
One commenter, aaronluong3361, made the point that it wasn’t until 2018 that Wizards began printing more and more legendary creatures, as well as Standard-legal cards obviously meant for Commander (Smothering Tithe). Could Premodern Commander run from Alpha to, say, the Ixalan block? Dominaria is where Wizards really pushed legendary creatures, printing them as uncommons in large numbers for the first time.
Magic’s first uncommon legendary creatures. Printed today, they would certainly have the Partner mechanic, too.
Another interesting cutoff would be to ban all Commander products and any Commander sets. The first Commander Precon was released in 2011 and Wizards started pumping them out with every set in 2020. According to Google’s AI overview, there are more than 150 Commander Precons. Meanwhile, there are three Commander only sets.
Finally, we could ban all Universes Beyond sets. Many old-school Commander players already avoid these cards in their own decks, but having a subformat that didn’t allow them would ensure the play experience wasn’t spoiled by Wolverine or Dr. Who.
Of course, any combination of the above is also a viable option, as would something not listed here. Let me know in the comments how you would create a subformat of Commander to capture that old-school feel.
Would banning all of these return the format to something more akin to what it was when it first started? Or would the power creep we’ve seen over the years make it almost as fast and efficient?
Decklist – Esper Control with Mareike Ri Berit
| Marieke Ri Berit |
Creatures (14)
| Intrepid Hero | |
| Air Elemental | |
| Crypt Angel | |
| Phyrexian Plaguelord | |
| Radiant, Archangel | |
| Serra Angel | |
| Alabaster Dragon |
| Catacomb Dragon | |
| Dread Reaper | |
| Dromar, the Banisher | |
| Laquatus’s Champion | |
| Mist Dragon | |
| Pearl Dragon | |
| Wayward Angel |
Artifacts (7)
| Mana Vault | |
| Drake-Skull Cameo | |
| Eye of Ramos | |
| Puppet Strings | |
| Seashell Cameo | |
| Skull of Ramos | |
| Sol Grail |
Enchantments (7)
| Pacifism | |
| Oubliette | |
| Reparations | |
| Aurification | |
| Control Magic | |
| Greed | |
| Null Chamber |
Instants (22)
| Chain Stasis | |
| Curfew | |
| Fade from Memory | |
| Intervene | |
| Mystical Tutor | |
| Swords to Plowshares | |
| Unsummon | |
| Word of Undoing | |
| Boomerang | |
| Counterspell | |
| Disenchant | |
| Flash of Insight | |
| Mana Drain | |
| Mana Leak | |
| Reprisal | |
| Shelter |
| Snap | |
| Dissipate | |
| Jolt | |
| Stroke of Genius | |
| Twitch | |
| Dessertion |
Sorceries (10)
| Chainer’s Edict | |
| Demonic Tutor | |
| False Summoning | |
| Morningtide | |
| Dream Cache | |
| Deep Analysis | |
| Wrath of God | |
| Purify | |
| Rout | |
| Akroma’s Vengeance |
Lands (39)
Deck Tech
Primary Game Plan
When sifting through the many commanders to choose from for Premodern, I wanted one in a color combination I don’t have a deck in yet and that had an ability I could build around. Merieke Ri Berit fits both of these requirements nicely. With more than 40 Commander decks, I’ve managed not to build one in Esper yet. It’s true, a long time ago, I briefly had an Aminatou, the Fateshifter, but I lost interest in it pretty quickly and dismantled it.
As to Merieke’s ability, it is no doubt a powerful one, particularly if there were enough ways to untap her. As it turns out, there are plenty of ways to destroy the creature we’ve stolen, either by untapping her or returning her to our hand.
Thus, our chief goal is to take our opponent’s creatures one at a time and kill them by untapping our commander. Eventually, we’ll stick a finisher of our own or beat down with a big fatty that our opponent plays.
In support of this game plan is a pretty straightforward Control shell. We have targeted removal, sweepers, counter magic, and card draw, as well as nearly a dozen top-end creatures to kill our opponent with.
What Went Wrong?
Yup, you know you have a good deck when this section comes immediately after your primary game plan…
Seriously, though, the main problem with the deck is how it lined up with my brother-in-law’s choice of commanders and the deck he built around it. Tsabo Tavoc just so happens to nerf our entire strategy, while also posing a 3-turn clock. Furthermore, while I built an Esper Control deck, he built a Rakdos Control one. Sure, his deck plays a handful of creatures, but most of them are support pieces. Our games consisted largely of him casting one kill spell after another, eventually running me out of answers for his commander, and then winning via Commander damage.
You can’t judge a deck by a single bad match-up, but I did learn a few things about the format and my strategy.
First, creatures are largely underwhelming outside of a handful of them. Sure, we have 5-drop flying Angels and some 6-drop bombs, but even these are far less impactful than I thought they’d be. Or, to put it another way, the answers we have are far better than the threats.
Which is exactly how I remember Magic being in the 90s.
Of course, if I was playing against a Goblin, Elf, or White Weenie deck, I would probably feel a little differently.
So, while the first iteration of the deck had about 20 ways to either bounce or untap Merieke to ensure I always had a way to kill whatever creature we stole, I’ve cut that number down to about 10. Against true Aggro decks, I’m not sure we’d be able to keep up with our opponent’s board, while against other Midrange or Control decks, we won’t need to take but a handful of our opponent’s creatures. And, we probably won’t want to kill them anyway.
Second, it’s a much slower format, as I expected, but instead of playing cheap cantrips to help in the early game, we have the time and the luxury to play bigger draw spells.
Third, the reanimation spells are very powerful, so even though we want to steal creatures, graveyard hate is still essential.
Finally, protection spells are sort of weak given how many kill spells prevent regeneration.
But it wasn’t just the untap and bounce spells that weakened the deck. I also picked both creatures and draw spells that worked with my steal and sac plan. With so few targets for my commander’s ability, though, many of these cards either rotted in my hand or were unimpactful.
What Changed?
I didn’t want to abandon our primary game plan, but I knew we weren’t going to compete with at a high level with the sheer number of untap and bounce spells I had put in the deck. Trimming this number keeps our strategy intact, while freeing up some space for more generically good interactive spells.
Second, I swapped out all the creatures and card draw that needed creatures to sacrifice for legitimate threats and card draw without additional costs. Unfortunately, this does reduce the flavor and synergy of the deck, but without ways to generate expendable creatures of our own repeatedly, Premodern Commander simply doesn’t have the support cards for this kind of Aristocrat-ish strategy.
Third, I brought in some graveyard hate and more kill spells. I originally played none of the first and only a few of the second, thinking that I would just take my opponent’s creatures and kill them that way. Again, given the commander we were up against, having limited targeted removal and few sweepers meant we were simply treading water until we died.
Finally, I revisited some old-school cards that were good in Control decks in the 90s. As it turns out, they’re still not too bad. Sure, Control Magic does what our commander does, but we don’t have to untap with a creature to resolve this spell.
Here’s the breakdown of the deck into the following categories: untap/bounce cards, creatures, removal, counter magic, card draw, and ramp. I won’t spend a lot of time explaining cards like Swords to Plowshares or Counterspell, but there are a handful of cool cards that are worth highlighting along the way.
Untap/Bounce Cards
I’ve trimmed this section down to eight cards…wow. I thought I had more than that, but since my meta currently includes a single deck, this is probably the right number. If and when I begin playing against different decks, I’ll increase this number some. In the meantime, I’ve prioritized untap cards that can tap or untap, since the ability to tap a creature before combat keeps them from being completely dead cards if our commander isn’t out. As to bounce spells, I’ve tried to err on the side of low CMC and instant speed, so we can respond to kill spells if necessary.
Boomerang – note that you can return a land to its owner’s hand, too, which can function as a Time Walk in the right spot.
Chain Stasis – since we’ll be targeting our own creature with this ideally, we get to copy it for . We aren’t worried about our opponent copying it, should we use it on one of their creatures.
Curfew – I love the flexibility of this card. Sure, ideally, we’ll have stolen a creature with our commander before casting this to return her to our hand and kill said creature, but for the low, low cost of a single , we can undo our opponent’s entire turn, should they tap out to play their commander without any other creatures out.
Jolt – 3 mana is a lot, but we can tap down an attacker pre-combat, untap our Mana Vault or Ancient Tomb, AND we get to draw a card off of it!
Puppet Strings – a strictly better Icy Manipulator for our deck.
Snap – this is an expensive common at almost $4. Players really like untapping lands/free spells.
Unsummon – doubles as a protection spell, kill spell, and Time Walk.
Word of Undoing – ditto, except we get the joy of returning an early Pacifism to our hand to recast on a better threat.
Creatures
I realized pretty quickly that this deck needed more threats. Even when we were able to control the board, we ended up durdling a lot and letting our opponent back in the game. More card draw and finishers should help with this problem. These are the creatures we want to close the game out with.
Air Elemental – a vanilla 5-mana 4/4 flier, this OG creature is outclassed by Serra Angel. We’re playing both.
Alabaster Dragon – I love Dragons! 6 mana for a 4/4 flier is pretty steep, if not out of character with the times. Non-exile kill cards will only delay this creature…
Catacomb Dragon – another 6-mana 4/4 flier. That block of text is clunky, but the tl;dr is blocking this Dragon is annoying.
Crypt Angel – other than our commander, we only have three Blue creatures to return from our graveyard with this Angel’s enters ability, but still…pro white ain’t bad.
Dread Reaper – losing 5 life isn’t great, but a 6/5 flier is pretty stacked in Premodern.
Dromar, the Banisher – honestly, this legendary Dragon would be the better commander for us as it guarantees a threat from our Command Zone. Still, I’m sticking with my original deck idea for now.
Laquatus’s Champion – this card makes me so happy. The art is great, while the 6/3 stats alongside regeneration are legit. I also love that it functions as a 6 damage burn spell in the right spot.
Mist Dragon – I’m not sure why we have to pay 0 to give it flying or to take it away. Phasing out is nice.
Pearl Dragon – buffing its toughness is okay, I guess. It does give us something that we can block Tsabo Tavoc with after untapping.
Radiant, Archangel – now we’re talking! A 5-mana vigilant flier that can easily become a 6/6 or 7/7! Whew boy!
Wayward Angel – hopefully we’ll have lots of our opponents creatures to sacrifice by the time we untap with this and have threshold. Otherwise, it’s a 4/4 vigilant flier for 6. Pretty good for Premodern.
Why no Akroma, Angel of Wrath?
This legendary Angel would by far be our best creature, but I’ve left it out. On one hand, it epitomizes old-school Commander. High CMC. Lots of keywords. No activated or triggered abilities that will take over a game. Akroma, Angel of Wrath wants to win via combat. Still, I’ve played Akroma, Angel of Wrath before, so I’m going to leave her out for now.
Removal
In this section, I’ll list the various kinds of removal and highlight anything worth mentioning. I’m including here spot removal, sweepers, enchantment/artifact removal, and graveyard hate.
Spot Removal
Aurification – I love this card as a way to buy us time until we find better answers or our own threats.
Chainer’s Edict – great when it’s good. Flashback is a nice bonus.
Control Magic – if you can’t kill it, steal it!
Intrepid Hero – synergizes extremely well with all of our untap effects. I originally was playing Royal Assassin, as this is one of my favorite OG cards, but difficult choices had to be made.
Null Chamber – what a great card to stop difficult commanders! Sure, our opponent may name our commander, too, but we aren’t as reliant on ours to win as many other decks will be on theirs. And, at 3 mana, we can cast Merieke before casting this enchant world.
Oubliette – Oblivion Ring‘s predecessor.
Pacifism – if seeing this card in the 99 doesn’t take you back to the early days of Commander, I’m not sure what will.
Phyrexian Plaguelord – another way to kill the creature we steal in case we don’t have an untap effect for our commander.
Swords to Plowshares
Reprisal – should kill most things we care about.
Sweepers
Akroma’s Wrath – another OG sweeper that used to be a staple but has since been outclassed.
Rout – sweepers at instant speed are very powerful.
Wrath of God
Artifact and Enchantment Removal
Every deck needs some of these, but I think in Premodern enchantments are more powerful, as our options are so limited for certain effects.
Disenchant – another card that has been outclassed over the years of power creep.
Purify – a sweeper for all those problematic permanents. Of course, we play them, too, so this may end up being a dead card some of the time, but when we need it, we’ll be very happy it’s in the deck!
Graveyard Hate
We have a variety of options for these slots, but none are quite as good as Rest in Peace.
Fade from Memory – I like that it’s an instant and that we can cycle it if necessary or if our opponent isn’t reanimating things. I don’t like that it’s a 1-time use.
Morningtide – another 1-time use card, at least it takes out the entire graveyard. Of course, it’s also a sorcery, which makes it less effective.
Counter Magic
Much of what is legal in Premodern Commander is also legal in Commander, short of Fierce Guardianship.
Counterspell
Desertion
Dissipate
False Summoning
Intervene – a 1-mana protection spell to help keep our commander around.
Mana Drain
Mana Leak
Card Draw
While answers back in the day were very good, card draw was less so.
Deep Analysis – to draw 2 cards… At least it has flashback!
Demonic Tutor – yes, tutors aren’t true card advantage, but it does replace itself with exactly what we want in the moment.
Dream Cache – a 3-mana Brainstorm that lets us bottom what we don’t want.
Flash of Insight – a way to dig for an answer or threat.
Greed – this enchantment is outclassed in today’s Commander, but not by much.
Mystical Tutor – not really card draw, of course. My favorite target for this spell is Demonic Tutor… That’s a joke.
Reparations – you know this card is pre Commander by the wording. I have to choose an opponent for this enchantment? What?!
Shelter – a protection spell that draws us a card…for 2 mana. Now we’re talking!
Stroke of Genius – Sphinx’s Revelation‘s predecessor.
Twitch – one of our untap cards that also cantrips.
Ramp
I was surprised at how much and varied ramp there is to choose from. Of course, most of the mana rocks are of the 3-mana type. No, I’m still not playing Sol Ring.
Mana Crypt – many of our untap spells can target this artifact, which is a bonus. You may wonder why I’m playing Mana Crypt if I don’t play Sol Ring. I don’t play either, really, but this deck being old-school feels right for Mana Crypt. Furthermore, a turn 1 Sol Ring is far and away better than a turn 1 Mana Crypt.
Drake-Skull Cameo – a Dimir mana rock. I had no idea this card existed. In fact, the Cameo cycle matches the allied colors.
Eye of Ramos – speaking of cycles, there is a Ramos cycle, as well.
Seashell Cameo – you guessed, Azorius colors.
Skull of Ramos – this one taps for .
Sol Grail – flexible color fixing.
Ideal Hand and Game Play
This will be match-up dependent, unfortunately. Against another Control deck that is light on creatures, you don’t want to see the untap spells we’re playing. Against a creature-heavy strategy, these will be some of our best cards. Otherwise, we want to make our land drops just about every turn, honestly, so at least three lands is good. A mana rock, an interactive spell, and either some card draw or a creature to play towards would constitute a good hand.
Even though this format is much slower than Commander, we would like to curve out with mana rocks, counter magic, enchantments, and creatures. To put it another way, we would like the option of casting something each turn starting with 2.
Weaknesses
So far the biggest weakness of this deck is durdling. We can’t rely on our commander to win games unless our opponent is playing some big fatties. We have about 10 possible finishers of our own, but with the amount of removal in this format, I’m not sure we can rely on the first few surviving.
Furthermore, like any Control deck, if our answers don’t line up with what our opponent is doing, we’ll often die with a hand full of useless cards.
Flex Spots
I’d make room for more untap effects if my meta included more creature-heavy decks. I’m also tempted to find more threats or simply switch commanders to have a recursive beater, at the very least. But as I mentioned above, I’d like to give Merieke a few more chances to show her worth.
Otherwise, trimming a card from each of the above categories to make room for something else is what I would recommend. One less counter spell for one more graveyard hate card, for instance. This will be dependent on the meta.
Conclusion
My first few games of premodern Commander took me right back to the 90s, I won’t lie. I also won’t lie and say this was totally a good thing. The long games with lots of durdling; the efficient answers for very inefficient creatures; and the underwhelming nature of threats in general made for some painful games. I think I would have had more fun had my commander been able to do her thing, but, alas, I have yet to steal a single creature with her.
Still, I am hopeful that she’ll shine in other match-ups and I’m going to stick it out with her for now. And, despite the durdling, the format is definitely fun to play…every once in awhile. I don’t see myself ever playing even the same number of Premodern Commander games as Commander, but I do enjoy taking a break from today’s high-powered, hyper-efficient Commander to go back in time to the 90s.
Thanks for reading and watching! Do you have a Premodern Commander deck? How’s your experience been?
