Since time immemorial (or 2001 at least), there’s been a cycle to Magic, as soon as one new set drops, spoilers start coming for the new set, released in drips and drabs, until we have the full spoiler a week or so before the pre-release, and everyone and their mother starts writing a set preview.
It’s a circle of life kind of thing, when you think about it.
For those who haven’t read my set reviews in aeons past, I’m not going to review every card, but I will highlight cards you should pay attention to, cards you shouldn’t pay attention to, and jokes, there will be jokes, you have been warned.
But first: Tarkir! Back to an actual honest-to-goodness fantasy-based-on-actual-location set like they used to do in the old days, not a meme set set in a haunted mansion or on a racetrack!
The original set gave us dragons, time travel, and the first wedge-based set since Invasion block. Sadly, no morph, but you can’t always get what you want.
This set also promises little more power than Aetherdrift, an okay set on its own but when the breakout card from that set, after that busted-from-the-get-go Ketramose, was (checks notes) Stock Up? Well, nowhere to go but up from there!
Ugin, Eye of the Storms: I was going to try to say something about how this card isn’t quite up to the hype, it’s not as good as people say it is but no, in keeping with the Wizards business model of “drop a $50 mythic in there so people will buy the set if it’s good or not,” this card is completely bonkers … but to really abuse it, there’s really only one quality home for it, and that’s a Tron deck; not the newfangled Eldrazi Ramp decks that don’t even run the Urzatron. Nope, you want to dust off the Expedition Maps and Chromatic Spheres and try to live the dream of dropping Ugin on turn three.
Remember when dropping a Karn on turn three was considered a busted play? What an innocent time! Power creep is real, man.
Dragonfire Blade: Yes! My Omnath decks are really going to be awesome now!
Boulderborn Dragon: In keeping what seems to be a theme for this set, “yeah, you can have Dragons at common, but do you really want Dragons at common?”
Fine, you get Dragons at common, and each color gets Dragons with the adventure-like “omen” ability, but unlike the Eldraine adventure cards, you’re getting two fairly “meh” cards stapled together but “cooler because it’s a Dragon.”
The omen cards get much better once you get to uncommon, I will say that much. Might even be a few playables in there.
Wizards did admit that they needed more Dragons in a Dragon-centric set, so sometimes you just have to take what they give you.
Jade-Cast Sentinel: Wait, what? An “Ape Snake?” Look, I was willing to give you a “serpopard” since that actually was a thing in Egyptian mythology but dude I draw the line here. And to top it off, this card is just going to sit on the board and annoy the hell out of people. You will learn to hate this card, trust me.
Mox Jasper: Is it more Mox Amber or more Mox Tantalite? I’m leaning towards the latter. You need a critical mass of Dragons to make this work and compared to cheap Legends, I’m just not seeing it. Definitely grab one for a Commander deck, but if you can make this work in a more competitive format, you’re a better deck designer than me (which admittedly isn’t that hard anymore).
Lands: Yeah, just kind of lumping these all together; the wedge lands, the allied “gain 1 life” lands, and the new cycle of “tap to do something” lands, even the bajillionth reprint of Evolving Wilds, which have one connecting thread, and it rhymes with “comes into play schmapped.” We’re getting some multicolor mana fixing but at the price of an environment that is … slower. Even the aggro clans look more like “go wide” rather than “hit fast.”
We do have the new cycle of lands that come into play tapped unless you control a land of a wedge type, tap for a single color, and have another (somewhat?) usable ability tacked on. If that sounds like a lot of hoops to jump through for a glorified basic land, I would argue you are not wrong.
That said, I could see you running one, maybe two of these in certain decks that want the ability, and if you were forcing me to rank them (or simply asking nicely), I’d order them as such:
1. Cori Mountain Monastery
2. Mistrise Village
3. Kishla Village
4. Great Arashin City
5. Dalkovan Encampment
Now watch me be completely wrong here.
That’s it for this one, tune in next time for the next color(s) under review. Will there be surprises? Probably? Will there be jokes? Absolutely.
Will there be good jokes? That I can’t promise.