The Post Parallax Tide Meta Will Disappoint You
My first games of Premodern happened in early November 2024. I had a pint by my side while waiting for a burger at the Steam Engine. My weapon of choice in Waterloo was Frantic Storm, against Nick Borman’s Birds of Paradise/Tradewind Rider/Opposition pile. I later realized there would be a wide variety of Birds Of Paradise piles to face when sitting across from Nick.
But those were not competitive tables, the likes of which inform balance changes.
Six weeks prior to that meetup, Brian Selden was winning the North American Premodern Championship piloting David Raczka’s Dr Surf And Turf, a groundbreaking Dreadnought list that juked to Tide Combo post board. Lanny Huang of Spike Colony fame won the side event the same weekend with the same list. The joy of that breakthrough, the mythical nature of “Raczka’s pdf“ and the recontextualization of the whole format are well documented on Spike Colony’s episodes Brian Selden — Two Time NA Premodern Champion and Mono Blue Dreadnought With David Raczka! Listen to those if you want to get a sense of what it sounded like experiencing the groundswell first hand.
The Steam Engine on That Day, shot with my ghostly Motorola Edge Pro 20
Back in Waterloo playing against Nick and then against Nuno, I had also brought Goblins, and proxied some Tides to add to my UW Dreadnought list. Given I was new to the format, nothing was more prescribed than picking up a Meddling Mage deck! Later I learned that, if I was going to go through the trouble of swallowing that mana base, I should have stuck with Armageddon.
Over the 16 months following Selden’s feat, “Bantide” was common discourse accompanying a fast growing online premodern scene. Some reply guys disliked the play pattern, others disliked the deckbuilding pressure it presented, and another group simply thought too many decks to beat were tide decks. I remember a fellow event goer at Bristol mentioning that “Replenish is the bogeyman of the format” one hour before lunch break, and that “Dreadnought is the bogeyman of the format” one hour after wharfing a whole pepperoni pizza from Zero Degrees Brewery. By the end of the day, after Tidestill had won the tournament, you can surely guess his quote: “Tide Control is the bogeyman of the format!”. Thankfully Twitch chat does not design the actual games we play.
Results since have shown Tide to be one of the best things to do in the format, perhaps the best. Between Dreadnought, Replenish, Tide Control of the UW or the good variety, top 8s and wins were frequent. In WoTC tended formats, decks have been banned for taking 30% of the top 8 slots to themselves. Here however we are talking about 30% spread across three to four archetypes.
The metagame also evolved. Enchantress went into its Mirri’s Guile era with heavy reliance on Carpet of Flowers from the board to become a de-facto blue nemesis. It won Lobstercon 2025 and became a fixture of top tables with virtually the same 75 for months after.
Moneyball Black evolved from its first appearance as Oops All Good Black Cards into a well trained blue predator, winning the largest Premodern event ever at the time in the form of 2025 Spanish Nationals. Moneyball Black’s ascension was a welcome sight, mere months after Martin Berlin stated “I intend to make a change to push black in 2025. But I have to keep you guessing as to how…”. Brewers had done the work for him, no rule changes needed. More on that later.
16 months have passed, and I became thoroughly enfranchised in Premodern. I also flew out of London to Valencia. As I landed here in early December, the format too landed on Magic Online. Sligh, a dog to Dreadnought but a threat to other Tide decks, rose in adoption due to its ability to win as quickly as it does frequently. Fireblast and league grinding, a match made in heaven.
And then came The Changes.
The Changes
On January 18th 2026, Martin Berlin blogged on premodern.com that Parallax Tide was banned. Martin presents a thoughtful rationale there that I strongly suggest you read for yourself.
It was ominous that the post came up as the sun set in Europe, as I expect the decision to backfire.
The first order projected impact sounds good: remove the one-sided Armageddon that goes into 3 top 8 decks, and suddenly you open up the format for a multitude of dormant 4+ mana sorcery speed cards.
In its evil lair of second order effects, Terravore gets ready for dinner.
The Impact
Next month stands to be colorful. All of the Eternal Dragons, Legacy Weapons, Morphlings, Living Deaths and the like are going for a spin around Tideless Utopia.
And if your jam is to play whatever feels fun without being a spike, that is great. As it was already fine during the days of Tide.
However, let’s see what happens at our winners meta:
Dreadnought is still a powerful shell. However, once the main plan B gets cut, it gets a lot easier to combat. Replacing Tide with Brain Freeze is far from the answer. Brain freeze used to be good against U Control especially when Tide was deployed to start a counter war. Without that angle, it’s easier to retreat from a counter war and start again next turn to spread out the storm count, given the threat in question is now a 12/12 on the board and that’s it. Dreadnought becomes a significantly worse deck without the Tide Angle. Even the tideless versions benefited from opponents building and playing in ways that respected Tide.
Of course the best deck in the format has some margin to still be good after losing a piece, but any claim that Dreadnought is still the deck to beat will remain unverified. Polar Shrimp or the full commit Dave Kaplan styles are both highly regarded. They may keep it tier one, but I currently lack enough data to make that bet.
Replenish is now just a worse Enchantress. It depends on Opal Wave the same, lacks its consistency, and loses harder to both disenchant effects or opponents going for a longer game. Decree Of Silence is uncastable as Tide was castable turn 3. That deck has zero shot at remaining in the top tier. It will still beat creature decks or slower, less consistent combo from time to time. It either 1) cuts Sol Lands and goes closer to the control route, or 2) embraces variance in full combo mode, eschewing any fact or fictions or countermagic. Exalted Angel will still be a bad juke but now a lot closer to plan A, which is suddenly bad too. Would Pandeburst be the answer?
UW Tidestill reverts back to being Landstill. It will still beat bad decks and novice players, but will crash once it briefly catches a whiff of top tables. It now lacks ways to put the game away before an opponent can out disrupt the UW deck. I will also later predict the 3rd order effect of Tsabo’s Web rising in popularity, so don’t even bother. I am here once again asking you to not sleeve up the card Standstill.
Mono Blue Tide Control is put to bed. So long and good night.
Enchantress is still strong, however less so. The claims that enchantress now runs rampant are shortsighted at best. A significant portion of Enchantresses success was rooted on its 2025 iteration being a favourite versus Counterspell decks. It even found ways to beat the card Parallax Tide, mainly in the form of multiple Carpets of Flowers. With blue decks in the downswing, more space opens up for worse matchups and for cards that attack Enchantress directly. Replenish the archetype may be down, but there’s plenty of tools to combat Enchantress. I see it adapting to being closer to its 2024 version, with maybe even fewer anti-blue sideboard cards, and ceasing to be top tier due to lack of prey.
In the same vein, Moneyball Black loses tons of appeal with its prey under threat of extinction. It will have to update and potentially just fade into the bench until the meta is ripe again. Not top table related, but other mono blue predators like Zombies and Clerics will also become less prevalent. “I intend to make a change to push black in 2025. But I have to keep you guessing as to how…”. I expect us to be farther from that now than we were in January 2025.
Stasis and Psychatog are also Blue Killers, suddenly lacking a reason to be.
On the competitive side, I expect all of the above decks to see less play, less success or both.
Terrageddon, the premiere midrange deck with an “I Win” button, stands to gain. With a mana denial plan just as punishing as Parallax Tide, if not more, it will continue to prey on decks that mistake the recent changes as a carte-blanche to fool around. It will continue to punish the manabase of Enchantress, and it won’t mind seeing Replenish in the rearview mirror.
Oath Ponza and its cousin TerraOath, the other Llurgoyf decks, will love seeing all of these blue decks replaced with decks that either trigger oath or fold to mana denial. Both of these decks are proactive and HARD to attack.
Talking about unfun play patterns and deck building pressures, welcome to the ugly days half the format registering 4 Tsabos Webs in the 75.
As far as Sligh, Elves, Goblins and Madness, they all lose a bit in ways and gain in others. I like these decks for competitive play, and expect the red ones to improve a tiny bit, while the other two are harder to predict. Elves was already better than the others, gated only by Cradle prices and the subterranean skill floor.
In summary:
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Tier 1: Terrageddon, RG Oath Ponza, GW Terra Oath
Potential Tier 1: U Dreadnought, Elves
Tier 1.5: Sligh, Enchantress
Potential Tier 1.5: Madness, Goblins.
Black decks? 404. Control decks? MIA. Midrange? Just the same old one, as always, packing the white Tide.
From 10ish contenders, we potentially go to 6–7.
Enjoying Variety, Are We?
I am skeptical of the belief that variety is an absolute positive. Sure, two good dessert options are better than one. But three fragrances of manure are still all shit.
The discourse that bans bring variety is lazy. We have been playing poker and chess for ages without a need to ban aces or the queen. Magic as a system and the premodern format specifically are way more replayable than those. A fixed card pool and a stagnant ban list are far from meaning a stale format. Innovation in both deck building, planning and execution have kept a consistent influx of flavours into the format. Neither Enchantress or Moneyball were top contenders a year ago, and they rose without the need for changes to the banlist.
Bans are neither a necessary condition for variety, or a sufficient one. I would dislike periodic bans becoming a community expectation to maintain some arbitrary definition of vibrance or a vessel for copium. Premodern is not Standard.
And to my point above, the way variety presents itself will disappoint you here.
Are non Tide Control decks back? Is midrange back? Highly unlikely. It’s easy to find players who would love BW Control, The Rock, Domain and the likes to be viable. And the story that Tide was the thing preventing said viability is sweet to their ears. However, the Tide ban will not make mana better for these decks. It won’t make their finishers stronger, or make them stronger in the face of Armageddon and Cataclysm. Maybe they can withstand Wastelands, Ports and Stone Rains? To be fair, enabling these strategies should not be a goal. A deck is viable when it proves it is viable, rather than having a given right to exist.
Where does blue go? Dreadnought will retain at least tier 1.5 to 2 status. Sickos Will try to make Replenish work, as cringe men born before 1982 do with Landstill. Maybe Blue reverts back to being a full blown combo role player with Stifle being less prevalent, leading to some occasional success for Dream Halls or Brain Freeze.
Casual play? Although Tide has generated bad PR for its decks and pilots in casual circles, the truth is that it never stopped anyone from playing what they wanted. Brewers still brewed. The format experienced its peak popularity during Tide’s peak of success: 300 seat tournaments selling out in under two minutes, busy queues on MTGO and weekly tabletop events on the rise. Four dozen archetypes showing up on TC Decks.
How long until we see community outcry towards a next round of bans? Of course there’s already some poor soul on Discord — I do not dare looking at the Facebook group — hallucinating that a piece of OpalWave should be next. Sometimes I wonder if my fellow players actually like the format they’ve chosen.
In Summary: Play Pattern Over Balance
With its usage spread over 4 decks — Tide Control, Replenish, Tidestill and some Dreadnought — none of said decks using Tide were overly dominant. Each of them had predators in other winner decks or fringe decks alike.
Land Tax wasn’t a disproportionate winner five years ago, but the vibes were disliked. It was a justifiable ban as it made matches go too long and it basically served one deck.
Tide was a power player spread across four decks, in a format full of power outliers. It feels bad for those that pick favourite flavours of losing. Every format will have a “best card”, but the logic that the state of 2025 premodern would be excessive is flawed.
It would be a shame if a subjective definition of fun ended up being the motivator for future moves.
Tide was a beatable bully. You could go under it, disrupt their mana base, their hand, their stack, play nonland mana. Most decks that lost on the spot to a resolved Tide were either opposing Tide Control decks that lost a counter war, Replenish, or weak piles anyway.
On vibes, Tide was even a win condition that made long blue matchups end quicker!
With it banned, the decks that used to prey on its decks lose some of their appeal too. We are removing the hunter and the prey from the food chain all at once. More than anything, duress and cabal therapy which struggled to find winning shells but were a clean answer to Tide decks will lose their largest reason for being, again relegated to the X-2 bracket and putrid nostalgia.
In turn, some pre-existing players are left to reign on their own. If the format had a reasonable top nine-ten competitive decks, we’re now taking six-seven.
It would look like the road is open to midrange and non-Tide control shells. That stands to be proven wrong on the so called winners meta as Wasteland, Port, Weathered Wayfarer, Armageddon and Cataclysm continue to commit the crimes Tide took the fall for.
In summary, we wind up in a red vs green spiral with the other colours scrapping at the fringes.
Is Blue Dead?
What I Want Next
A Tide unban? Unlikely given the thrash to ban it after all. But it has happened before, it would be for the best, and Martin is a thoughtful steward.
A risky Black Unban? I doubt it since the closest cards, Entomb and Necro, are still not safe enough. Mind Twist, potentially less powerful in isolation, is just as much if not more of a feel bad than Parallax Tide. Maybe Martin can experiment with Probatory Unbans: take a card out of the banned list for 3 months after all large events of the year are done, and reassess at the end of its probation period. I’d be all for that in each of these black card’s specific cases.
Entomb specifically has been shot down on sight as a suggestion time after time for being deemed “more of a blue card than anything, and heavens know blue does not need the help”. Maybe now blue and black both do need it?
More bans? Nah. Please let powerful and backbreaking cards exist. Champions need antagonists.
By the end of 2026, we will look back and remember the days of Dr Surf and Turf with fondness.
Do I want to be proven wrong on most of these accounts? Please, pretty please.
However, I will more than likely continue to have fun with the format. Given privileged access to most of the cardpool and a predisposition to play the same deck and match up hundreds of times in service of optimization, count me into sleeving up Terravore and Swords to Plowshares. At least my next loss to David Grant will be the mirror.
Let’s see if that holds true for Twitch chat though.
Thanks for reading. See you on the next DLC.
A heartfelt thanks to FGR for their editing, proofing and brainstorming.
