Mana cost {1}{U}{U}. Power/toughness 1/1.
{2}, Sacrifice a permanent: Return target creature to its owner's hand.
Barrin, Master Wizard is a blue card, legal in Premodern, shown in its old-frame Urza's Saga printing.
Price and printings: Cardmarket (€3.6) · TCGplayer ($4.12) · Scryfall
Tracked daily since 16 September 2026: on Cardmarket between €3.34 and €4.17 in that time.
Tournament decklists, card prices and spicy brews from Premodern, the Magic format for cards from 1995 to 2003.
Every deck in the archive: winning and Top 8 decklists from Premodern tournaments and Magic Online leagues around the world, with full mainboards and sideboards.
Premodern is a Magic: The Gathering format played with cards from Fourth Edition through Scourge (1995–2003), the game's golden era. It captures the feel of early competitive Magic: iconic old-border cards, meaningful decisions and a rich, interactive metagame, free of the power creep of later sets.
Premodern doesn't rotate and never gets new cards, so decks change when the banlist does or when someone finds a use for an old card. Survival of the Fittest, for example, is banned in Legacy but legal here, and Full English Breakfast is built around it. Our tier list has aggro like Goblins and Sligh, control like Landstill and Stasis, combo like Replenish and Enchantress, and midrange like The Rock.
Looking for a first deck? Our guide to your first Premodern deck suggests five that are easy to learn, with real tournament lists and prices.
A card is legal as long as its name appears in one of these sets. (Reprints in newer sets are legal too. We show the old-frame printing everywhere except on the budget page, which shows both.)
Fourth Edition
Ice Age
Chronicles
Homelands
Alliances
Mirage
Visions
Fifth Edition
Weatherlight
Tempest
Stronghold
Exodus
Urza's Saga
Urza's Legacy
Sixth Edition
Urza's Destiny
Mercadian Masques
Nemesis
Prophecy
Invasion
Planeshift
Seventh Edition
Apocalypse
Odyssey
Torment
Judgment
Onslaught
Legions
ScourgeMost of these made games too fast or too one-sided. Brainstorm and Force of Will are banned so blue decks play differently than in Legacy, and the ante cards are obviously banned.
Why each card is banned, and every change since 2018 →
Martin Berlin keeps the banlist, with input from the community, and announces changes on premodernmagic.com.
33 cards are banned in Premodern. The list is kept by Martin Berlin, who created the format in 2012, with input from the community, and every change is announced on premodernmagic.com. Below: what each card does that got it banned, and every change since 2018.
Reports
Monthly metagame reports, tournament roundups and price reports, built on our archive of tournament decks and our daily price tracking.
Premodern decks the tier list leaves out, built around cards like Battle of Wits, Didgeridoo or Horn of Greed.
Every competitive deck you can build for under $500, priced card by card from a real tournament list, with reprints and in the original printings.
The Card Index
Every card from the tournament decks, spicy brews and archetype guides we track, each with its printing, price and the decks that play it.
The most played cards across the tournament decks and archetypes we track. Maindeck and sideboard cards are counted in separate lists, so a hate card that sits in half the sideboards doesn't get mixed up with the cards decks are built around.
Card art © Wizards of the Coast, shown in the old-frame printing.
A decklist with a wrong card, a tournament result we have missed, a broken link, or anything else. Leave your email address so we can get back to you.
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← Back to the homepagePremodern Chronicles is an independent, non-commercial archive of Magic: The Gathering Premodern tournament results: winning decklists, a metagame tier list with deck guides, card prices and the banlist. Card images and card data come from Scryfall.
Premodern Chronicles is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Wizards of the Coast Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.
Magic: The Gathering, its card names, card images, and mana symbols are trademarks and copyrights of Wizards of the Coast LLC. Premodern Chronicles is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC.
Corrections to a decklist, a tournament result we have missed, or anything else: use the contact form or reach us on Instagram. What you send through the form is stored on our own server (message, reply address, the page it was sent from, and a shortened hash of your IP address to limit abuse) for as long as it takes to deal with it, and is forwarded to us as a private notification. Nothing is shared with third parties.