The Premodern Tier List

Gro-a-Tog:

What it does: Interact with your opponents while keeping the pressure on with efficient creatures.

GAT is back and better than ever! Be sure to visit my youtube channel for the latest iterations on this deck. I only have biased opinions here, but others have started making inroads into the metagame with this deck. It has great disruption, is very consistent and has a great matchup spread with a puncher’s chance against any deck in the format. I know, that makes it sound like The Rock, but of all the The Rock variants available, I think this one has the best tools.

Power: B / Consistency: A / Resiliency: A-

You’re basically exchanging dreadnought’s power ceiling for not relying on finding and protecting a combo as your win con. You get to keep the broken card draw engine and flexible two-way play of countermagic as both disruption and protection.

Burn:

What it does: Reduce your opponent’s life total to 0, with the option to keep the board clear of opposing creatures along the way.

Burn has always been strong in the format, and the presence of burn creates its own sub-metagame between the amount of burn pilots and the number of very specific burn hate cards (like Chill or Circle of Protection: Red) in sideboards. Burn exploits the fact that many decks aren’t naturally advantaged against it. With the return of dreadnought to the top, that has changed. Bringing Burn to a tournament comes with high risk and high reward, you might find an easy path to the top 8, or you might run into a couple pilots who decided they didn’t want to ever lose to Burn that will end your tournament with the help of an extremely hateful sideboard. It’s also important to note that this is a very popular deck amongst people dabbling in the format, so expect it to be overrepresented at larger events. Look out for versions that splash green to board Naturalize, Tranquil Domain, and Call of the Herd. Pyrostatic Pillar is also becoming more popular.

Power: B / Consistency: A / Resiliency: B

You often win or lose by one card or one turn. You can get got by anti red hate, or by getting combo’d out.

Terravore Variants:

What they do: These decks are quite different but are roughly similar in power to each other. They all extend the game with mana disruption, sprinkle in some interaction and finish with terravore, manlands, and sometimes Call of the Herd.

I personally find them to be varying degrees of mopey – exploiting vulnerable manabases but often suffering from the midrange problem of a low power ceiling. That said, their continued success as a cohort cannot be denied and you should expect to face these kinds of decks often at any premodern tournament.

Power: B- / Consistency: A- / Resiliency: B

The nut draw of activating weathered wayfarer a few times is not going to win any awards, but in exchange you rarely fail to play a game. Low resiliency here is not really because you die to hate, but more so you die to power (survival of the fittest or combo kills). Plus you can be burned out or tsabo’s webbed out.

Goblins:

What it does: Flood the board with goblins with the surprisingly grindy engine of Goblin Matron and Goblin Ringleader to outlast any answers.

This deck is deceptively powerful. It has access to explosive and grindy plans with a touch of mana disruption, giving it strong and flexible game plans against any kind of deck. Goblin Lackey gives you explosive potential, but even when it’s answered, Goblin Warchief can often end games. While the deck has been tier 1 in the past, it can struggle against dreadnought thanks to the efficiency of Hydroblast and both Enchantress and Replenish can be a headache with fast Opalescence+Parallax Wave combos. It’s hard to craft a goblins sideboard as you often can’t take out too many of your proactive pieces and dilute the strength of Goblin Ringleader.

Power: B / Consistency: B / Resiliency: B

A solid deck, but lacking in any specific appeal.

Elves:

What it does: Generate tons of mana with elves and Gaea’s Cradle to flood the board with Survival of the Fittest.

Previously, I had thought of elves as a clear runner-up to goblins. However, elves appears to be outperforming goblins in key matchups in the midrange/control spectrum. Goblins suffers from blue blasts, chills, and sometimes mana denial. Meanwhile Elves is especially good against those. If the metagame shifts back to where burn and goblins are more popular, elves will suffer, but for now, elves is enjoying a happy place in the metagame. Recently, elves has had exciting innovations giving it a more robust gameplan at the expense of some big mana potential. There’s also the option to invest in more mana denial. The sample list is just one direction, but you can find many other approaches.

Power: A- / Consistency: B / Resiliency: B-

Explosive wins, but few enticing backup plans and vulnerability to red, sweepers, and Opal-Wave.

Psychatog Variants:

What it does: Use various controlling tools to stay alive while you cantrip through your deck and finish your opponent with Psychatog.

Psychatog has a bit of the same feel as dreadnought – just slower. There’s tons of direction to take this list as all of the card draw and countermagic create different incentives. Though one thing that never changes is Psychatog the same menace on the battlefield as it always was – impossible to burn out and surprisingly quick to deal 20.

Power: B / Consistency: A / Resiliency: B+

This deck is slowly converging with gro-a-tog as the UW based build gains popularity, weirdly, this build is more focused on the disruptive Meddling Mage and Armageddon games than Gro is nowadays. The UB build still has legs, but it seems to be struggling in more competitive environments.

Up and Coming or Down and Out

Other people call these decks tier 2, they may have the juice, but I’m always skeptical until I see the same kind of consistency as the established tier 2 decks.

GW Mad Dogs:

What it does: Beatdown

An exciting new deck popularized on MTGO, this might be the best pure beatdown deck we’ve seen in Premodern. For the most part, it’s a pile of solid creatures, but the use of Glory for protection or evasion is inspired. Green and White offer reasonable disruptive options which don’t have to carry too much weight if you’re threatening your opponent’s life total.

Power: B- / Consistency: B / Resiliency: B

Moneyball Black:

What it does: Midrange.

Grantfly/David Gleicher (check him out on Youtube) may have finally cracked the code on black midrange. It’s called ‘Moneyball’ because all the cards are supposedly a good rate. I still think this deck lacks a little power, but it is absolutely the best we’ve seen out of mono black and winning the largest Premodern tournament in history is quite the feather in its cap. I think this deck is a bit overplayed for how average it looks.

Power: C / Consistency: B+ / Resiliency: B+

Breakfast:

Full English Breakfast variants have been taking fewer headlines but are still important to be aware of. I think the deck thrives on information asymmetry as its infrequent play means players have been slow to pick up on its unique interactions and patterns. It’s still a resilient combo deck with lots of explosive potential. For the uninitiated, the deck wins primarily through either using a Survival to make your Volrath’s Shapeshifter first into a Phyrexian Devourer with a bunch of counters and then a Triskelion to kill you or using Hermit Druid to mill their library, unearth a Shapeshifter that enters as a Karmic Guide which brings a Psychatog into play, puts the tog back on top of the yard via flashback Cabal Therapy, making the Shapeshifter a Psychatog which can eat the graveyard until you have just Akroma on top, and then attacks with the now gigantic Akroma/Shapeshifter. There are some other complicated sequences available, so if you’re worried about facing this deck, you’ll have to study up, as the multiple combo lines can play around common disruption.

Power: B+ / Consistency: B / Resiliency: B

Iggy Pop:

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What it does: Use Intuition or Brain Freeze to set up loops with Ill-Gotten Gains to generate enough storm to Brain Freeze your opponent.

This deck has seen a renaissance recently with great content up on YouTube and brewers like Desolutionist pushing the limits of the deck’s design. The latest breakthrough has been a build less focused on tutoring and more focused on brute value created by self mill. Then, with a full graveyard, it’s not too hard to use Ill-Gotten Gains to generate enough mana and storm for brain freeze kills. I love how this deck is playing and if I was a dedicated combo player, mastering this deck may be highly rewarding.

Power: A / Consistency: B- / Resiliency: C+

We’re fast, can easily fill our graveyard and create wins, but countermagic, graveyard hate, and Gaea’s Blessing can be difficult to contend with.

Rock-Sur:

What it does: Grind your opponent down with the help of Survival of the Fittest.

Phil cracked the formula for BG survival with his list after months of hard work and great results online. While it’s super fair as far as survival decks go, it still has all the tools to convert a resolved survival into a win. While it doesn’t suffer from ‘45% against the field’ problems, it can still be hit or miss. It’s favored but not by much against burn and dreadnought and unfavored against replenish. It’s great against most tier 2 decks like Terrageddon and GAT, which struggle against survival. There’s also an option to include an infinite combo package with Palinchron to close games. The deck can be a bit durdly at times and can struggle vs. graveyard hate. People have mostly dropped this deck.

Power: B- / Consistency: B- / Resiliency: B+

This might be the least powerful Survival of the Fittest deck, in exchange, the discard package gives you an angle of disruption that most Survival decks lack. The mana is still not good.

The Rock and UW The Rock AKA Landstill:

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What they do: Midrange

These decks will always be good at granting strong players a lot of agency to win multiple uphill battles per tournament. A good player might take comfort in knowing they’ll likely come out on top against weaker opponents with these decks. They’ll also talk themselves into thinking they can’t lose to certain decks because of their unique sideboard plans. Nonetheless, I don’t expect these decks to top very often as they are simply not very powerful. They’re also suffering some splash damage from the increased presence of Tsabo’s Web. I’m sure there’s room for exploration and optimization here though, and while I don’t believe strongly in ‘personalizing’ your list, if you’re gonna do it, these are the decks for it. I’m interested in seeing if UW control can be built without standstill as RG Oath is specifically punishing that card. Check out Fpawlusz’s YouTube channel for creative Rock lists.

Power: C / Consistency: B- / Resiliency: B+

Stasis:

What it does: Fuel Stasis with land drops, Gush, Thwart, and Forsaken City while they die to Black Vise or an eventual Brain Freeze/Stroke of Genius.

Stasis is in a weird spot as it makes use of the powerful blue cantrip core, but the Stasis/Vise strategy has awkward holes. I think the deck struggles against capable opponents as well as just fast efficient decks, but on the other hand, it’s definitely very consistent and sometimes the perfect pick against a meta that’s been increasingly casting expensive spells at sorcery speed.

Power: B- / Consistency: B+ / Resiliency: B-

Devourer:

What it does: Tinker out or cast a Phyrexian Devourer, pump it up and Fling it or Altar of Dementia it before the sacrifice trigger resolves.

This is one of the most straightforward combo decks in the format. What I like most about the archetype is that it dodges creature removal, and is resilient to artifact removal and mana disruption. I haven’t been satisfied with its consistency in my own testing, but as you can see, Tom’s build is designed to grind a little bit into the midgame to potentially solve this issue. The easily included Tsabo’s Web do give this deck free wins against RG Oath. It does catch some unfortunate hate from multiple directions between Gaea’s Blessing, Engineered Plague, Cursed Totem and your typical stack/prison interaction.

Power: A / Consistency: B- / Resiliency: B-

Frantic Storm:

What it does: Use cost reducers to turn free spells like Frantic Search into ritual effects, churning through your deck with card draw until you can mill them with a Brain Freeze or two or three.

Storm has been fairly quiet in results, but in my testing, the deck has been very impressive. I don’t feel like it can lose to any midrange or control decks. It does seem vulnerable to Dreadnought and unfortunately Pyroblasts and cheap artifact removal backed up by pressure can be tough out of Burn and Goblins. I’m optimistic that with some additional optimization, this could become a real threat.

Power: B+ / Consistency: B / Resiliency: C+

‘Playable Deadguy Ale’ or BW Control:

What it does: Grind with Eternal Dragon and cast big decrees after slowing the game down.

This deck has really fallen off recently with its difficulty dealing with mana denial and keeping up with the card advantage and power the metagame is bringing.

Power: C- / Consistency: B / Resiliency: B-

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Past Updates:

Update Notes 03/23/26: MTGO has been a great general temperature check with some decks fading to obscurity and others rising up. Also I added the grade scores.

Update Notes 01/21/26: Parallax Tide has been banned so we’re going to see the meta re-adjust. I expect Terrageddon, Ponza Oath, and Enchantress to improve.

Update Notes 12/16/25: Premodern on MTGO dream has come true! I hope we see some movement, but right now it still seems good decks are holding strong.

Update Notes 3/13/25: There’s a tier 0 now. Going into Lobstercon I cannot imagine recommending anything other than dreadnought or maybe replenish.

Update Notes 10/23/25: Did some cleanup and moved stuff between tiers.

Update Notes 6/17/25: The meta has settled after Lobstercon and vibes have caused me to be divergent to win-rates available on data.duresscrew.com in some regards.

Update Notes 11/9/24: The innovative new Mono-U Dreadnought list has claimed the top spot of the metagame. I’m hoping to see shifts to rebalance around the deck, which could be seismic, as previous heavyweights in Replenish and GR Oath would be seriously knocked down in any room with a reasonable representation of dreadnought. If you’re going to a tournament you care about winning, bring dreadnought or a strategy to beat it.

Update Notes 9/15/24: Lobstercon and Euros are right around the corner and Replenish is seeing even more success in tournaments. I’ve promoted it to upper Tier 1 against my own personal judgement as it’s hard to ignore its recent accomplishments. GR Oath is still the most consistent and powerful deck in my opinion, and while it doesn’t have a high play rate, I expect it to have a very high success rate at the world’s two largest tournaments. GW Oath may also be a sleeper answer to defeat GR Oath in the heads up while maintaining most of its equity against the field. I’m hard at work trying to stay on top of the new tech coming to these lists as archetype-specialists continuously tinker, but it’s also hard to gauge if the card of the week has staying power, so make sure to do your own research!

Update Notes 8/17/24: Since the May edition of this list, GWu Terrageddon lists have claimed a place in tier 2. Replenish has also been on the rise in the hands of multiple pilots across regions and I’ve given it a spot in tier 1. I’ve also added Mono-Blue Tide and Stasis. Looking ahead to Lobstercon, I think this list is still pretty accurate with regards to relative power of these decks, but play rate will be unpredictable as always, outside of a somewhat reliable 10%+ meta share each for dreadnought and burn.

Update Notes 5/07/24: Premodern feels like it’s getting wider. The momentum surrounding RG Oath has finally been met with reasonable resistance in players’ deck/tech selection. An overall meta trend I’m noticing is that resiliency is more important than explosiveness – linear decks are pushing their fundamental turn back to interact more with their opponents. Similarly reactive decks are also adopting some proactive elements to meet the rest of the meta in the middle.