Featured artwork: Arnjlot’s Ascent by Drew Tucker.

Daybreak, the company running Magic Online, recently added support for Premodern as part of their new Contraption concept, a playground of sorts for testing out alternative formats and rules sets on a rotating basis. Premodern will be available there over the holidays and stretching into January, with both leagues and tournament challenges scheduled—check out the announcement for all details. This is, of course, great news for those who want to enjoy Premodern on this platform!

Prior to this, Premodern has actually been played for quite some time on Magic Online, in “free-form”, both casual games and in the Premodern Community Series leagues, and as far as I understand, these leagues will continue to be organized also in the future. This community initiative, led by Pablo “paulmaster” Marcos and Chris “iron lungs” diBiase has been essential for growing the playerbase there and paving the way for official support, so let’s take the time to thank them for their work! See also Chris’s comment on the announcement here.

We’ll see if, and how, the support for Premodern on Magic Online evolves in the future, but for now it’s quite interesting to see, in near real-time, how the metagame is formed there. The decks that went 5–0 in the leagues can be seen on this page. Keep in mind, though, that Magic Online is its own universe, in terms of playerbase and card economy, so don’t expect your local metagame, or even that of a large real-life event to be the same as on there. Beware also that some cards, like Volrath’s Shapeshifter, are known to be bugged, and not even all cards in the Premodern card pool exist on Magic Online (including the card whose artwork is featured in this article, see other not-so-playable cards here).

Also, to briefly address some concerns that have been expressed, I want to clarify that Premodern remains a community format. Although I’m positive to more platforms to enjoy it, I also believe that real-life local meetups and events constitute the backbone of the community, and I don’t expect that to change in the future. 🙂

Take care!

– Martin