Prewar captures Legacy much as it was prior to the release of War of the Spark (WAR). This was a format where fair decks accumulated incremental advantage over longer, interactive games; and there were dozens of viable decks, most of which had long periods of viability.

War of the Spark brought a different design philosophy. After, Magic saw significant power and complexity creep. Legacy experienced high rates of bans and deck obsolescence, and the format accelerated—games were decided earlier, replacing the intricate back-and-forth of before.

Prewar has been called Prewar Legacy, Pre-WAR Legacy, PreFire Legacy, or Pre-FIRE Legacy in other contexts.

• If you like interesting and meaningful decisions in your games, you’ll love Prewar.
• If you like to innovate new spins on decks and brew anew, you’ll love Prewar.
• If you like playing your deck for years without it becoming obsolete, you’ll love Prewar.
• If you like to see a wide variety of strategies, you’ll love Prewar.
• If you like games to be full of possibilities, and sometimes dramatic surprises; you’ll love Prewar.

Using the Wayback Machine to look at period MTGGoldfish and MTGTop8 data, we see the historical metagame had five major categories of decks:

• Blue aggro decks (e.g.: Delver, Death’s Shadow)
• Blue control decks (e.g.: UWx Miracles, UWx Stoneblade, Grixis, Czech Pile)
• Chalice of the Void decks (e.g.: Eldrazi, Moon Stompy, Affinity)
• Fair nonblue decks (e.g.: Death and Taxes, Maverick, Goblins, Deadguy Ale)
• Combo-focused decks (e.g.: Reanimator, Storm, Turbo-Depths)

These categories cover most of the format, and a lot of variety exists within each. Their relative portions waxed and waned, but each was a force to be reckoned with.

Possibly, though there are no current plans to do so. The ban list may change, but no new sets will be introduced to the format. The format of this historical era was extremely well-balanced, and nothing since has indicated a need for any change in the ban list. That said, if the data starts to show otherwise, changes can be made–including unbans.

Formats like Premodern have shown that closed card pools can remain dynamic for many years. Prewar’s card pool is thrice Premodern’s size. History is also on our side: Legacy’s evolution was often fed by rediscovering new synergies and applications of old cards, and it remained vibrant. In the Prewar period specifically, innovation soared.

Prewar can be played anywhere you can play Magic with the full card pool available. This obviously includes the physical tabletop card-game and Magic: the Gathering Online (MTGO); but also includes several unofficial play test clients. It does not include Arena. The official Discord server hosts MTGO leagues run with the support of Gatherling, and will be glad to support webcam and other leagues with sufficient interest.

We encourage players to run their own events and to build their own communities. Please use the contact form or join the Discord, and we will be glad to support such developments and spread the word.

We encourage all players to support the game, and the local spaces in which they play. We also understand accessibility is an issue in a format featuring so many Reserved List cards. We encourage communities to be as accepting as possible. That said, the organizer always has final discretion on what cards are playable at an event.