Boogeymen: An Assessment of PreFire’s Watchlist Noteworthies

Magic: The Gathering · by Joey Zaibatsu · August 2, 2026

Those looking to experience and relive the glory days of Modern may (and should) rejoice when stumbling across PreFire, a format created by MTG enthusiast Francisco Pawlusze (Fpawlusz online), precisely for those very same reasons.

PreFire Modern

Upon further delving into the ins and outs of the format, one realizes that although the sets which define the format’s legality start at 8th Edition and end before War of the Spark. It is a very different format than simply a snapshot of the Pre-War 2019 Modern Season. The primary culprit: an entirely different banlist.

Curious players might quickly notice that beloved classics, which paid the reaper’s toll in years past, have been deemed as format pillars in PreFire. {Birthing Pod} and {Splinter Twin} players of old can comfortably find a home here, as these beloved shells have a place in PreFire. Joining the aforementioned, {Mox Opal} and {Faithless Looting} are also legal, which allows Affinity and strong Graveyard-oriented decks to also see play. As a closed format (i.e., the card pool is locked; no new cards enter the format nor rotate out), we do not need to live in a world with a lingering concern of Wizards of the Coast (WotC) pushing boundaries too hard and breaking what we have come to love.

{Splinter Twin} by Goran Josic

{Birthing Pod} by Daarken

{Faithless Looting} by Gabor Szikszai

{Mox Opal} by Volkan Baǵa

After the rush of nostalgia and excitement a former Modern player might feel after seeing that some iconic Modern staples are ready to build around and play with in PreFire, it is the natural next step to proceed to view the rest of the format’s banlist to get a better lay of the land. Upon first glance, the banlist makes sense.

PreFire Banned List

These are some egregious cards that have either never been legal (for good reason) or have been banned* in Modern’s past for creating an anemic format.

*There are two cards at the time of this article's publication that are presently on the banned list that were never banned in Modern. One is covered later in this piece; the other is {Creeping Chill}. Early into this format's inception, Burn was held down by the raw power of Dredge leveraging {Creeping Chill}. Dredge begins with approximately six extra life, for little to no deck-building cost. For this reason, and in the interest of not holding down a beloved archetype, {Creeping Chill} was banned.

{Creeping Chill} by Wisnu Tan

Upon further inspection, some cards are missing! Modern has had several other cards deemed too problematic to come off its banlist. Cards that would have unacceptably warped the format. Then it hits: PreFire also has a watchlist, with some infamous cards in their ranks.

The rationale for a watchlist was that while PreFire hits on familiar cues to a historic Modern format, it is NOT Modern. The intention of the format is to create a rich and unique play experience, not to replicate a format from days past. Doing so requires testing the cards that never got their fair shake.

Let’s look at some of these boogeymen, the most egregious cards on the watchlist, listed in order, and offer an assessment of their potential danger in this format.

Honorable Mention

{Simian Spirit Guide} by Dave DeVries

{Simian Spirit Guide} was banned in Modern after the advent of Modal-Double-Faced (MDFC) cards as lands, introduced in Zendikar Rising. Prior to that, {Simian Spirit Guide} was legal for Modern's inception, seeing play in fringe strategies or known Combo decks like Living End or Grishoalbrand, neither of which are problematic in PreFire.

MDFCs allowed linear strategies to leverage {Goblin Charbelcher} and {Balustrade Spy} to assemble a combo, where one having technically no actual land cards in their deck mattered, and help put together a game-ending combo. {Simian Spirit Guide} effectively pushed these strategies from the fringe into becoming real and warping strategies. As these land cards come from set(s) not legal in PreFire, there is less concern with the fast mana it provides. The threat is always looming that {Simian Spirit Guide} breaks something, so it is on the watchlist.

PreFire Watch List

{Punishing Fire}

{Punishing Fire} by Christopher Moeller

Starting our list is a former Extended and Legacy classic, {Punishing Fire}. As a long-time Jund pilot, this one intrigued me greatly when stumbling upon this format. Seeing {Punishing Fire}, a card STILL currently banned in Modern, made me tilt my head.

Paired with [Grove of the Burnwillows], {Punishing Fire} is a recurring removal engine that can bully low-toughness creatures. With enough time, you can net one damage for each activation to close a longer, grindier game. You can tap into {Punishing Fire}'s recursion for additional value from cards like {Faithless Looting} or {Liliana of the Veil}. While the engine requires including some number of {Grove of the Burnwillows} as a potential deckbuilding concession, it’s possible this combo is not an issue, but rather another example from Magic’s history that stayed banned due to a “better safe than sorry” rationale.

Currently, it seems like the best home for {Punishing Fire} and {Grove of the Burnwillows} would be a [g][r] Midrange shell, like Jund (e.g., Punishing Jund from Legacy fame), or in decks that already utilize {Grove of the Burnwillows}, like [g][r] Eldrazi. Considering that [Umezawa’s Jitte] is a card that is on the PreFire banned list for a similar reason of hosing opposing creature-based strategies, {Punishing Fire} definitely warrants a watchout.

{Sensei’s Divining Top}

{Sensei's Divining Top} by Michael Sutfin

Next on our list is an absolutely infamous card from Legacy’s past. {Sensei’s Divining Top} has a reputation for powering incredibly strong [u]-based control strategies, and also being a nightmare for tournament logistics. {Sensei’s Divining Top} rose to prominence as the centerpiece of Legacy Miracles. Top was banned from Legacy in 2017.

Michael J Flores wrote an amazing article back then, summarizing the history of the card and the reasoning behind its ban.

Sensei's Divining Top, Who Did It All, Banned at 13
by Michael Flores

While concerns are always there for how {Sensei's Divining Top} can eat time in paper tournaments, it is less of a concern, since PreFire predominantly played online. Enabling Miracles and giving an extra leg of consistency is certainly powerful, but that is not sufficient to prove {Sensei's Divining Top} is an outlier in the format. {Sensei’s Divining Top} implicated another card's ban early in PreFire: {Counterbalance}.

{Counterbalance} by John Zeleznik

CounterTop proved an early oppressive combination. In an interesting proposal to break this combo up while carving out a distinct niche for PreFire, {Counterbalance} was the prisoner swap to maintain {Sensei's Divining Top}'s legality. Moving forward, we need to keep an eye on whether spinning results in winning, and more importantly, whether it creates an environment anemic to a healthy tournament.

{Glimpse of Nature}

{Glimpse of Nature} by Shishizaru

Every player who has ever witnessed the power of Legacy or Extended Elves sees {Glimpse of Nature} and presumes PreFire Elves as a first ballot tier one strategy. Chaining cheap Elves to draw cards and generate mana with {Heritage Druid} seems like everything this format doesn't want. There is one notable exception, though.

{Wirewood Symbiote} is not legal in PreFire. This significantly reduces the consistency of a strategy that the Legacy and Extended variants need to function. Without this key piece, the deck is subject to a fail rate that opens the door for midrange or control to leverage their strengths.

That doesn’t mean that PreFire Elves would be stronger without {Glimpse of Nature}. Quite the contrary. Combined with {Green Sun’s Zenith}, it boosts the deck's firepower compared to Modern’s past.

Moving on from Elves, it is entirely possible that {Glimpse of Nature} might enable an unforeseen strategy like Affinity, or possibly some {Intruder Alarm} build. For now, we can only glimpse at what a possible future holds with this card in the pool.

{Dread Return}

{Dread Return} by Kev Walker

This is the more dangerous ring of the watchlist. {Dread Return} has never seen nor will ever see the light of day in contemporary Modern. It is often considered in the same circle as {Eye of Ugin} and {Hypergenesis}.

{Dread Return} is currently legal alongside {Bridge From Below}, and Dredge all-stars {Narcomoeba}, {Prized Amalgam}, and others. I have a tough time believing {Dread Return} is ok in the format, but it has yet to break anything.

{Dread Return} is a Dredge payoff to recur {Lotleth Giant}, though that strategy is tempered by the absence of {Creeping Chill}. Manaless Dredge has always been a fringe strategy, even in Legacy, but if it were to ever get there in PreFire, {Dread Return} would be the offender.

Fran Pawlusze has an open challenge to the community to break {Dread Return}, as he is not convinced there exists a shell in PreFire to accomplish that. I eagerly await someone answering the call to prove if it is a real menace, or a paper tiger.

{Seething Song}

{Seething Song} by Martina Pilcerova

In my opinion, this card stands above the others. I would bet that if any of the above cards are deemed too powerful, it's {Seething Song}.

{Seething Song} was problematic enough to be banned in early Modern due to Storm strategies; one of Magic's most targeted archetypes. Storm has always endured and is alive and well in PreFire. One of its most prominent shells, Gifts Storm, was present at the end of the Pre-Modern Horizon era.

With {Preordain} legal in PreFire, shouldn’t that be enough? {Seething Song} offers significantly more consistency, as it can be cast off of one of eight two-mana Ritual effects — {Pyretic Ritual} and {Desperate Ritual}, to chain into {Past in Flames}. The only thing holding Storm back from taking over is its current popularity. Storm is almost not present.

When Storm shows up, it dominates. Like {Dread Return}, the community must demonstrate {Seething Song} is problematic enough to warrant a ban.

{Krark-Clan Ironworks} by Greg Hildebrandt

It took years to ban {Krark-Clan Ironworks}. In those days, only one popular pilot, Matt Nass, played that deck to amazing results. Everyone else? They played what they believed was the strongest deck, or their preferred deck, and not the actual strongest deck, which was undoubtedly {Krark-Clan Ironworks}. I envision a similar situation playing out with Storm, although Storm is considerably more of an attractive option than {Krark-Clan Ironworks} ever was.

Unlike {Dread Return}, which needs a showcase of how problematic it can be, the proof very much is in the pudding here: someone must tune the Storm shell and terrorize the meta.

{Green Sun’s Zenith}

{Green Sun's Zenith} by David Rapoza

{Green Sun’s Zenith} was not legal for Modern’s early years. Its biggest risk is functioning as a late-game tutor and a turn-one mana dork with {Dryad Arbor}. That level of flexibility was deemed too strong for a long time.

{Green Sun’s Zenith} was unbanned in Modern in late 2024, and can be seen powering strategies like Amulet Titan and creature-based toolboxes. While unclear if {Green Sun's Zenith} is too strong for PreFire, it can currently be seen enhancing creature-based strategies like Maverick, {Birthing Pod}, Infect, or giving Amulet Titan an injection of reach/power that it lacks without some of the pushed cards available in future sets.

{Sword of the Meek} by Franz Vohwinkel

{Thopter Foundry} by Ralph Horsley

I am quite honestly unsure why these are present on this watchlist. {Sword of the Meek} began its life in Modern on the initial banlist, with the combo of sacrificing it to {Thopter Foundry} somewhat fresh in the memory of the previous Extended format.

When {Sword of the Meek} was unbanned circa 2016, there was excitement, but the combo was not strong enough to keep pace with the rest of the format. It saw a resurgence alongside {Urza, Lord High Artificer}, but that's not available in PreFire.