Loading…
Creature — Efreet
Tempest Efreet
Banned1 generic, red, red, redFourth Edition #225Banned in Premodern (ante) · why?
Creature — Efreet
Remove this card from your deck before playing if you're not playing for ante.
{tap}, Sacrifice this creature: Target opponent may pay 10 life. If that player doesn't, they reveal a card at random from their hand. Exchange ownership of the revealed card and Tempest Efreet. Put the revealed card into your hand and Tempest Efreet from anywhere into that player's graveyard. This change in ownership is permanent.
3/3
Ban history
Ante card — banned everywhere, including Premodern.
- Banned in Premodern
- On or before May 2018
- On earliest archived list; likely since 2012 founding
- Category
- Ante
- Research
- Research confidence: High confidence
- First printed
- First printed in Legends (1 June 1994); Premodern-legal via Fourth Edition.
Why it’s banned
Ante card: banned as a rules/format-convention matter (ante is not part of tournament Magic), not for power level. No Premodern-specific rationale published.
Official reason
No official reason published. (Premodern-specific). The official site's own data labels it an ante card only implicitly; the convention is universal.
Community & historical context (not an official statement)
Legends creature (reprinted in Fourth Edition) that trades itself for a random card from the opponent's hand, for keeps. Ante cards only function when playing for ante, which is not part of sanctioned Magic; Wizards banned all ante cards when the first DCI banned/restricted list was formed (Jan 1994) and they remain banned in every sanctioned format. Premodern simply follows that convention. Community sources (Draftsim, Premodern Chronicles) group these six as the 'ante' bans.[1, 2, 3, 4]
The story
Tempest Efreet is one of six ante cards in the Premodern card pool. Legends creature (reprinted in Fourth Edition) that trades itself for a random card from the opponent's hand, for keeps. Ante play was dropped from sanctioned Magic in 1994 and every ante card has been banned in every sanctioned format since, so Premodern bans it by convention rather than for power. It has been on every archived Premodern ban list (earliest: May 2018).
Premodern changes
- On listOn the earliest archived Premodern ban list.[5]
Other formats (Wizards)
Historical context, not Premodern decisions.
- VintageBanned
- StandardBanned
- LegacyBanned
- ExtendedBanned
Related cards
Sources
- MTG Wiki: Ante
- MTG Wiki: Banned and restricted cards/Timeline
- Draftsim: The Premodern Ban List: All 33 Cards Banned (A.L. Walser, 2026-04-24) — community
- Premodern Chronicles: Premodern Banlist (2026) — community
- Wayback: premodernmagic.com/banned-watched/ 2018-05-06 (34 banned, 5 watched)
- MTGBans.info per-card timelines (effective dates; site's AI-generated rationales NOT used)
- 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 Tempest Efreet (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 (4)
Every tournament-legal paper printing (no gold-border, World Championship or oversized cards). Hover or tap a row to preview that printing.
