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AskMagic: The Gatheringplayers what the best sets of all time were, and a large portion of them will say 2014’s Tarkir block. Khans of Tarkir is among the most beloved sets of all time for introducing us to a new world of clans and dragons, with an utterly fantastic three-colour-matters limited environment that still has yet to be beaten.
Magic’s next set marks Tarkir’s triumphant return, with Tarkir: Dragonstorm. The five clans are back, but with more dragons on the scene it’s shaping up to be a worthy successor to the Tarkir we all know and love.
Today marks the kicking off of Tarkir: Dragonstorm’s preview season, with ten days of card reveals to come. The debut also showed us each of the clans’ mechanics, all five commander decks, and a few very interesting reprints.
Story
As mentioned, Dragonstorm returns to Tarkir, a plane inspired by various Asian cultures. Life on Tarkir is split between the five clans, as unending wars between the Abzan, Jeskai, Sultai, Mardu, and Temur rages on.
Tarkir: Dragonstorm caps off the Dragonstorm arc, which started back in Bloomburrow. With Ugin gone, the dragonstorms that plague Tarkir have increased, leading to dragons escaping the plane and infesting others, like Bloomburrow and Duskmourn. With dragon attacks on the rise, Narset, Elspeth, and Ajani all work to put a stop to the spread of the dragons, and come into conflict with resident dragon fanatic, Sarkhan Vol.
If you’ve not read the story yet, definitely do so before Edge of Eternities later this year. The climax features the return of an old villain, which will leave a lasting impact on the multiverse for a good while to come.
Mechanics
As with Khans of Tarkir, Tarkir: Dragonstorm is introducing a hefty five new mechanics, with one tied to each of the five clans.
New Mechanic: Endures
The mechanic of the white, black, and green Abzan, endures is a triggered ability denoted with a number. Whenever a creature endures, you have the choice of either putting that amount of +1/+1 counters on it, or making an X/X Spirit creature.
For instance, Anafenza, Unyielding Lineage can endure for two whenever a nontoken creature you control dies. That means either she gets two +1/+1 counters, or you make a 2/2 white Spirit. This will help Abzan cement its position as the clan perhaps best at going wide with small creatures.
New Mechanic: Flurry
The red, white, and blue Jeskai are often built around spellcasting, with the now-evergreen prowess keyword originally being made for them. In Dragonstorm, they make use of flurry instead – an ability word tied in to casting at least two spells each turn.
Flurry abilities will only trigger on the second spell you cast each turn. Equilibrium Adept’s ability will give it double strike, which could be a decent payoff in the right deck. One thing to keep in mind is that flurry triggers on the second of any kind of spell cast, not just non-permanent spells like prowess. You’ll be able to cast permanents and get flurry triggering at the same time.
New Mechanic: Renew
The graveyard-loving Sultai (the green, blue, and black clan of Tarkir) may be better known for creature reanimation and recursion, but renew gives them a new, counters-focused gameplan instead. Renew is an activated ability that can only be used from the graveyard, but when you do you’ll be putting counters on creatures you have in play.
Keyword counters were first introduced in Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths, a set that used the same five three-colour wedges as Tarkir.
Qarsi Revenant is one such card with renew. By paying the cost and exiling it from your graveyard, you’ll be able to put a lifelink, deathtouch, and flying counter on a single creature. The kinds of counters you’ll put on things will differ from card to card, but Wizards has said that cards that give keyword counters will almost always have those keywords themselves, making Qarsi Revenant terrifying both on the battlefield and in your graveyard.
New Mechanic: Mobilize
The black, red, and white Mardu are the most aggressive of the five clans, and their mobilize trigger gives you even more attackers to swing out with. Like endures, mobilize comes with a number, like on Voice of Victory’s mobilize 2.
Whenever a creature with mobilize attacks, you make that many 1/1 red Warrior creature tokens who enter tapped and attacking. They remain in play until end beginning of the next end step, when they’re sacrificed.
Though the idea of not having permanent tokens may sting to some, this is actually an incredibly good ability. Creatures entering as attacking circumvens any Propaganda-like effects, and having creatures you can freely sacrifice opens up a lot of possibilities. Considering Mardu is black and red, expect plenty of sacrifice outlets to go with mobilize.
New Mechanic: Harmonize
Harmonize is the Temur mechanic, and it’s a very different take on the red, blue, and green clan. Temur is known for big, stompy creatures, but instead of a way to cheat them in, harmonize lets you use them to cast spells for cheaper.
Spells with harmonize can be cast from your graveyard for their harmonize cost. However, you can tap a creature you control to reduce that cost by its power; get a big enough creature, and you could be casting something like Ureni’s Rebuff for as little as just one blue mana.
This still rewards you have for the Temur tradition of big, brutish creatures, but in a creative way that helps bring the clan’s blue and red colours back into central focus over the green.
New Mechanic: Omen
Omens are the first of two new mechanics that aren’t tied to a specific clan. Instead, they have a vague connection with the colourless spirit dragon Ugin, and give you a neat way to recur spells as often as you’d like.
Omen superficially looks similar toAdventures. They’re two spells stitched together in one card, with a primary permanent spell and a nonpermanent spell added as the Omen itself. Templating aside, though, Omen is very different. Whenever you resolve an Omen, instead of putting the card into your graveyard or into exile like an Adventure, you shuffle the card back into your deck.
This means each Omen comes with a choice: play the creature and keep it in play, or play the Omen and potentially lose it in your deck for the rest of the game. Omens are often worth the risk, though, as you can see from Marang River Regent’s Omen, Coil and Catch. Drawing three and discarding one is a great way to build hand advantage, and the chance to draw it again later on makes Omens all the more appealing.
New Mechanic: Behold
The final new mechanic was teased a few weeks ago, when Sarkhan, Dragon Ascendant was revealed. Beholding is simple: if you control the specified card, or have one in your hand you’re able to reveal to your opponents, you get an additional effect.
Those effects are sometimes small, like Sarkhan producing a Treasure token. But it’s also a very easy ability to trigger. We’ve not yet seen anything other than a Dragon be beheld, but it’s almost guaranteed we’ll see more of them in the future.
Returning Mechanic: Sagas
It’s been a little while since we last sawSagasin Standard, but the ever-popular enchantment type is back in full force here. It’s nice to see that these are classic, no-added-frills Sagas that do Saga-y things.
These Sagas are meant to pull together how Tarkir has changed between Dragons of Tarkir and Tarkir: Dragonstorm. For instance, Rediscover The Way features Narset rebuilding the Jeskai through big hand advantage and buffing up creatures with double strike.
Returning Mechanic: Hybrid Mana
The final mechanic of Tarkir: Dragonstorm is hybrid mana, which we last saw in Standard inBloomburrow. Here, it’s being used as a way to smooth out the three colours, and allow for two-colour decks to make use of more cards in clan colours.
Instead of letting you choose between two colours, these hybrid cards will let you skip paying a colour by paying more in generic instead. You won’t have to find three types of lands to play a Rakshasa’s Bargain, for example, provided you can make enough to pay back the colour you’re missing.
Art Treatments
Tarkir: Dragonstorm features a surprisingly large number of alternate art treatments, including the return of a foiling style we’ve not seen in quite some type.
Draconic Frame
Found in both Play and Collector boosters, the Draconic frame is featured on Dragon and Dragon-centric cards. Full of scales, wings, and claws, it looks not too dissimilar from the Tarkir showcase frame we saw in March of the Machine’s Multiverse Legends bonus sheet.
Ghostfire Frame
Ugin is just as big a part of Tarkir as the clans, and this frame celebrates the all-powerful spirit Dragon. Blue and ethereal, you’ll find it on a huge spread of cards throughout Play and Collector boosters.
Exclusive to Collector boosters is the return to Halo foiling, which was introduced in Streets of New Capenna. Halo foiling gives the cards a swirly look to them that is fantastic, and it pairs nicely with the Ghostfire frame to put the ‘spirit’ in ‘Spirit Dragon’.
Clan Frame
Also found in both types of booster pack are clan frames, which take cards and lay them on top of their clans’ emblem. So far we’ve seen some big cards get this treatment, such as the Temur symbol on a much-needed reprint of Craterhoof Behemoth.
Naturally, we’ll also get the khans and the clans’ spirit Dragons in these frames, with Neriv, Heart of the Storm getting the Mardu treatment, or Kotis the Fangkeeper for the Sultai.
Borderless And Borderless Reversible
There are two types of borderless cards available in Tarkir: Dragonstorm. The first are regular, bog-standard borderless cards, which always look stunning. The Siege cards are particularly great, with the wars between the clans being reduced to models on tactical maps.
Alongside them, though, are the only double-faced cards in the entire set. These have the same game piece on both side, but bring some levity to Tarkir by reimagining ferocious Dragons as they were as hatchlings. Whether we needed it or not, Baby Ugin is in Tarkir: Dragonstorm in all its big-headed horror.
Retro Frame
This frame will only be found on one card in all of Tarkir: Dragonstorm – the retro frame, serialised Mox Jasper.
It may seem like a slightly odd choice, considering this frame was retired long before Tarkir ever debuted, but this card harkens back to the original Mox cards. It even features art by long-standing Mox artist Dan Frazier, to help complete the set.
Like other serialised cards, this version of Mox Jasper can only be found in collector boosters. Fortunately, the regular frame version can be found in Play boosters.
Prerelease Kits
Prerelease kits are usually pretty standard. Six booster packs, a promo, wham, bam, thank you Taigam. However, Tarkir: Dragonstorm is trying something different, with seeded prerelease kits.
Each kit will be based on one of the five clans. Five of the packs will be the usual Play boosters you’d expect from a prerelease kit, but the last one will be a themed Clan pack. Every single card in this pack will be at least one of the three colours of your chosen clan, giving you a solid foundation to build the rest of your deck.
Though it should be down to you which clan you represent at your prerelease, different stores may have different policies, especially if one clan turns out to be wildly more popular than the others.
Commander Decks
After just two decks in Aetherdrift, Tarkir: Dragonstorm is giving us a full range of not the usual four, but five preconstructed Commander decks. As you’d expect, they’re each based on one of the clans.
Interestingly, these decks don’t have a face commander and an alternate commander like other precons. Instead, both commanders are given equal billing, and are equally able to be the face of your deck if needed.
