Tempest Efreet

Premodern-legal editions of Tempest Efreet — old-border printings plus any period-appropriate foil promos (Arena/Judge, through Scourge). Hover to preview an edition on the card; click to select it.

Fourth Edition

1995·4edrare

Selected

Old-border editions + pre-Scourge promo foils (Arena/Judge). Modern-frame reprints (8th Edition onward) exist but are not period-appropriate printings.

Why It's Banned

Tempest Efreet can take a card from the opponent's deck via ante — a mechanic outlawed in sanctioned Magic. It is banned in Premodern by rule.

An early ante creature removed from organized play when playing for ante was prohibited.

Trivia & Lore

• Tempest Efreet was printed in Legends (released June 1994) as a rare 3/3 Creature - Efreet with a mana cost of 1RRR. It is the only red card among Magic's nine ante cards, and the first creature ante card ever printed - the only other creature ante card, Timmerian Fiends, did not arrive until Homelands in 1995. Every ante card before it was either black (Contract from Below, Darkpact, Demonic Attorney) or a colorless artifact (Jeweled Bird, Bronze Tablet).
• It is one of the 'Ante Nine' - the complete set of nine cards that reference playing for ante: Amulet of Quoz, Bronze Tablet, Contract from Below, Darkpact, Demonic Attorney, Jeweled Bird, Rebirth, Tempest Efreet, and Timmerian Fiends.
• Tempest Efreet was illustrated by NeNe Thomas, who has just 21 cards in Gatherer - all from Magic's earliest years (her first card appeared in Antiquities in 1994 and her last cards in Ice Age and Homelands in 1995) before she left to become a well-known independent fantasy print artist.
• Despite being an ante card, Tempest Efreet was reprinted twice with its ante text intact: in Fourth Edition (1995, rare) and in the European white-bordered Renaissance set (1995, as an uncommon).
• Ante cards as a class were banned in the very first DCI banned/restricted list, formed in January 1994 - the inaugural list merely restricted the Power Nine-era staples (Black Lotus, the five Moxen, Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, Timetwister) but outright banned all ante cards and Shahrazad. Tempest Efreet, printed in June 1994, was thus banned by category before it even existed.
• Legends - the set Tempest Efreet debuted in - was designed not by Wizards' in-house R&D but by Steve Conard (a Wizards of the Coast co-founder) and his friend Robin Herbert in Vancouver, B.C., who built it as fans on their own time; development was then handled by a separate team led by Skaff Elias.
• The last Magic card ever to reference ante was Timmerian Fiends from Homelands (1995); after that Wizards stopped printing ante cards entirely, in part over concerns that playing for ante could legally classify sanctioned tournaments as gambling.
• Tempest Efreet's ante effect is a permanent ownership swap: sacrifice it, and a target opponent must pay 10 life or reveal a card at random from hand, after which you keep that card and Tempest Efreet goes to that player's graveyard - the Oracle text explicitly states 'This change in ownership is permanent.'
• On the modern banned/restricted list the nine ante cards are handled as a single group ('cards that reference playing for ante'), banned in Vintage, Legacy, and Commander alike - Tempest Efreet is banned across sanctioned formats as an ante card rather than for power level.