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Enchantment
Yawgmoth's Bargain
Banned4 generic, black, blackUrza's Destiny #75Banned in Premodern (power) · why?Reserved
Enchantment
Skip your draw step.
Pay 1 life: Draw a card.
He craves only one commodity.
Ban history
Watched in 2018, banned in Aug 2019 for turn-2/turn-3 Rector-Bargain kills.
- Banned in Premodern
- 20 August 2019
- Category
- Power
- Research
- Research confidence: High confidence
- First printed
- First printed in Urza's Destiny (7 June 1999).
Why it’s banned
Not on the founding/earliest list — it was on the watch list (2018) and banned 2019-08-20.
Official reason
"The deck is too fast and consistent." Rector-Bargain goldfished a median turn-3 win; "The relatively common turn 2 wins is a dealbreaker, since there is little interaction before that in the format".
Context (not an official statement)
Samuel Korsell's Rector-Bargain (Academy Rector, Lotus Petal, Lion's Eye Diamond, Burning Wish) won in 25 goldfish games with 1 turn-1, 5 turn-2, 12 turn-3 and 5 turn-4 kills and only 2 fizzles. Berlin chose to ban Bargain rather than fast mana, in line with banning 'powerful draw spells' while tolerating fast mana and tutors.[1, 2, 3]
The story
Yawgmoth's Bargain (Urza's Destiny, 1999) was banned in Extended within weeks of release. Premodern started out only watching it: in June 2018 Berlin judged it too strong 'in a vacuum' but inconsistent without Tendrils or Brainstorm. Samuel Korsell's Rector-Bargain deck proved otherwise, and Berlin's own goldfish testing showed a median turn-3 kill with frequent turn-2 wins, so it was banned on 20 August 2019.
Premodern changes
Other formats (Wizards)
Related cards
Sources
- Ban List Update 2019 (Martin Berlin, 2019-08-20)
- Ban list update June 2018 (Martin Berlin, 2018-06-25)
- 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)
- 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 Yawgmoth's Bargain (main or sideboard): 4,173 lists from paper events and MTGO in the last 90 days, through .
Not seen in any of the 4,173 tournament lists from the last 90 days. Browse the meta.
Printings (1)
Every tournament-legal paper printing (no gold-border, World Championship or oversized cards). Hover or tap a row to preview that printing.
