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Enchantment
Parallax Tide
Banned2 generic, blue, blueNemesis #37Banned in Premodern (power) · announced 2026-01-18 · why?
Enchantment
Fading 5 (This enchantment enters with five fade counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a fade counter from it. If you can't, sacrifice it.)
Remove a fade counter from this enchantment: Exile target land.
When this enchantment leaves the battlefield, each player returns to the battlefield all cards they own exiled with it.
Ban history
Most recent ban (Jan 2026): a de facto one-sided Armageddon that warped control decks.
- Banned in Premodern
- 18 January 2026
- Category
- Power
- Research
- Research confidence: High confidence
- First printed
- First printed in Nemesis (14 February 2000).
Why it’s banned
Not on founding list — banned 2026-01-18.
Official reason
"Parallax Tide is mainly exploited as a one-sided Armageddon effect... Parallax Tide has a polarizing effect on the metagame" and "a strong pull factor, cannibalizing other control strategies."
Context (not an official statement)
Tide's 'temporary' exile becomes permanent via Stifle on the return trigger, or by bouncing/destroying Tide (Chain of Vapor, Seal of Cleansing) while exile activations are still on the stack. Tide decks (Stiflenought, U/UW Tide Control, Replenish) made 81 of 271 (30%) top-8 slots in 34 large 2025 events. Berlin explicitly kept Phyrexian Dreadnought and Parallax Wave legal.[1, 2, 3]
The story
Parallax Tide (Nemesis, 2000) was never a problem for Wizards, but in Premodern players found ways to make its land exile permanent, with Stifle or by removing Tide in response using Chain of Vapor or Seal of Cleansing. By 2025, Stiflenought, Tide Control and Replenish held about 30% of top-8 slots at large events, and Tide had largely replaced UW Landstill. Martin Berlin banned it on 18 January 2026, calling it a polarizing one-sided Armageddon with a strong 'pull factor'.
Premodern changes
- BannedBanned, effective immediately (paper); Magic Online from 2026-01-20. Berlin: not an attempt at 'fair Premodern', not about colour balance, not a reaction to MTGO results.[1]
Other formats (Wizards)
Historical context, not Premodern decisions.
- All formatsnever banned/restrictedNo Wizards ban/restriction in any major format (absent from MTG Wiki timeline; no MTGBans page).[4]
Related cards
Sources
- Ban List Update 2026 (Martin Berlin, 2026-01-18)
- Premodern Chronicles: Premodern Banlist (2026) — community
- Draftsim: The Premodern Ban List: All 33 Cards Banned (A.L. Walser, 2026-04-24) — community
- MTG Wiki: Banned and restricted cards/Timeline
- 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 Parallax Tide (main or sideboard): 2,950 lists from paper events and MTGO in the last 90 days, through .
- Play rate · 90d
- 0.0%
- +0.0 ppnew
- Play rate · 30d
- 0.1%
- +0.1 pp
- Lists · 90d
- 1
- 100% main deck
- Avg copies (main)
- 4.0
- when main-decked
Monthly play rate (12 × 30 days)
Nov 22, 2025Oct 18, 2026
Months with few lists are noisy; early months have partial paper coverage.
Most often in (90d)
- Replenish1% of lists · 1
Printings (2)
Every tournament-legal paper printing (no gold-border, World Championship or oversized cards). Hover or tap a row to preview that printing.
