Off-Meta Premodern: 5 Rogue Decks to Try Out!

Premodern has gained mainstream space in competitive Magic since the format arrived on Magic Online. Innovation flourished in the first few weeks, Parallax Tide was banned, and the Metagame continues to adapt to changes to this day. On the other hand, there's also a well-defined environment: Stiflenought as the best deck, Goblins, Elves, and Sligh are very popular strategies, and lists like Terrageddon, The Rock, and other classic archetypes hold their ground with solid numbers in Challenges.

But that doesn't mean there's a lack of room for innovation. In this article, we present five decks that aren't part of Premodern's Tier 1 today and sometimes remain off the radar.

I named this deck Preboomer Jund because it follows a very similar core to pre-Modern Horizons Modern Jund, but with Premodern cards. It's a Midrange deck built around discard and removal to exhaust the opponent's resources and then cast bombs to finish the game.

This is the deck that best uses Tempting Wurm, an "equivalent" to Tarmogoyf as a 5/5 for , except for the drawback of giving the opponent the freedom to put any number of permanents onto the battlefield—something you can work around with the amount of discard used to remove those problems from their hand before casting the creature.

Iggy Pop is a historical Storm variant from Legacy that runs Lion's Eye Diamond and Ill-Gotten Gains as accelerators and recursion, reminiscent of Past in Flames' role in current lists, but without as much scope.

Like any Storm list, the plan involves sequencing spells to build up mana to the point where one or more Brain Freezes remove all cards from the opponent's library. Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, and Lotus Petal join LED in accelerating mana, while cantrips and especially Intuition set up spells to create loops with Ill-Gotten Gains.

This is an expensive deck and extremely knowledge-intensive about how to sequence spells and plan ahead, but that's part of the appeal of playing Storm in any competitive format.

Threshold is the historical predecessor of Delver of Secrets decks in Legacy. Before the one-drop came out in Innistrad or Tarmogoyf in Future Sight, the cheap threat choices involved Nimble Mongoose and Werebear paired with a dozen cantrips, stack interaction, and removal.

Lists used to be split between and a third color, but Premodern uses Mox Diamond and City of Brass to play with light splashes and contributions from all colors: white for Swords to Plowshares and various key sideboard pieces, red for Fire // Ice and Pyroclasm, and black for Engineered Plague.

Zombie Infestation is based around a combo with the archetype's key enchantment alongside Squee, Goblin Nabob and Krovikan Horror: with both cards or two copies of Squee, you can discard them each turn to get a 2/2 Zombie token. Add Gush to the equation, and you already have three Zombies for four cards. Accumulated Knowledge benefits from the discard to ensure more cards, and eventually all these tokens will have Flying with Wonder on the board.

Ponza is well-known in Premodern as a Terravore with Armageddon strategy, but a new monocolored variant has emerged in the format since the January, running Stone Rain and Pillage combined with Sphere of Resistance to lock the opponent's ability to progress in the game. The deck also includes Wasteland and Rishadan Port to deny resources.

The Mono Red version bets on cheap threats and recurring damage sources: Cursed Scroll and Grim Lavamancer control the board and become finishers, and Veteran Brawlers takes advantage of the LD and taxing to have no restrictions on attacking.

That's all for today!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks for reading!