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Artifact
This artifact doesn't untap during your untap step.
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may pay {4 generic}. If you do, untap this artifact.
At the beginning of your draw step, if this artifact is tapped, it deals 1 damage to you.
{tap}: Add {colorless}{colorless}{colorless}.
Ban history
Explicitly one of only two fast-mana cards Premodern bans.
- Banned in Premodern
- On or before May 2018
- On earliest archived list; likely since 2012 founding
- Category
- Power
- Research
- Research confidence: High confidence
- First printed
- First printed in Limited Edition Alpha (5 August 1993); Premodern-legal via Fourth Edition.
Why it’s banned
Fast-mana exception (official framing, 2018).
Official reason
Berlin (June 2018): the list reflects "the choice to allow all fast mana in the card pool, except for Mana Vault and Grim Monolith." No card-specific explanation.
Context (not an official statement)
Analytical/community: three mana on turn 1 enables turn-2 Dream Halls, Tinker and similar starts (Draftsim). Historically restricted in Vintage / banned in Type 1.5 (Sept 1999) and banned in Extended (March 2000, with Dark Ritual). Still restricted in Vintage and banned in Legacy.[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
The story
Mana Vault (Alpha, 1993; Premodern-legal via Fourth Edition) was restricted in Vintage and banned in Type 1.5 in 1999, then banned in Extended in March 2000 along with Dark Ritual. Premodern otherwise tolerates fast mana: Berlin wrote in 2018 that the list allows all fast mana except Mana Vault and Grim Monolith. Dark Ritual, by contrast, is legal in Premodern.
Premodern changes
- On listOn the earliest archived Premodern ban list.[7]
Other formats (Wizards)
Related cards
Sources
- Ban list update June 2018 (Martin Berlin, 2018-06-25)
- Draftsim: The Premodern Ban List: All 33 Cards Banned (A.L. Walser, 2026-04-24) — community
- MTG Wiki: Banned and restricted cards/Timeline
- MTGBans.info per-card timelines (effective dates; site's AI-generated rationales NOT used)
- MTG Wiki: Vintage
- MTG Wiki: Legacy
- Wayback: premodernmagic.com/banned-watched/ 2018-05-06 (34 banned, 5 watched)
- Scryfall card data (printings, release dates)
- premodernmagic.com legal sets endpoint
Research as of 18 October 2026.
In our decks
Not in any of our curated decklists yet. Find similar cards.
Played in tournaments
Share of published Premodern decklists that play Mana Vault (main or sideboard): 2,950 lists from paper events and MTGO in the last 90 days, through .
Not seen in any of the 2,950 tournament lists from the last 90 days. Browse the meta.
Printings (16)
Every tournament-legal paper printing (no gold-border, World Championship or oversized cards). Hover or tap a row to preview that printing.
