It’s not often that Wizards of the Coast add a new Plane to their universe, but that’s what has made Magic: The Gathering’s latest expansion, ‘Outlaws of Thunder Junction’, so exciting. This wild-west-inspired world has added a new genre to the hands of Wizards, who may have previously had cowboy-inspired heroes but not a full-on world.
I sent some questions for the folks at Wizards of the Coast to answer ahead of the release of Outlaws of Thunder Junction. Due to some delays, some of these questions were redundant after the set was released a couple of weeks ago, and so they’ve been cut.
Outside of the Western inspiration, the thing that grabbed me the most upon seeing the first piece of art for Outlaws of Thunder Junction was that some of the cards gave me Jonah Hex vibes, so I was interested to learn where the inspiration behind the art came from.
“The visual inspiration for Outlaws of Thunder Junction came from the Western genre and the grand beauty & possibilities of what we could deliver on for a fantastical Frontier. From rolling great plains, striking mountain ranges, rich turquoise rivers carving their way through epic canyons, and powerful shapes of rolling cumulonimbus clouds that can be seen through the landscape.” said The Magic: The Gathering Worldbuilding Team.
You can see all of that on any card you pick up in the set. From the sky seen in the Plains card through to the canyons in the distance behind cards like ‘Outlaw Medic.’ The set captures the feeling of a Western and the gritty nature of the early 1800s. It’s been done without losing the sense of MTG, which is by far the most impressive thing. As much as seeing characters draw on each other with guns can be exciting, there’s a special feeling to seeing characters do so with magic or the ridiculousness of an Angel or Griffin wearing a cowboy hat if you want to head in the less grounded direction of some of the characters and creatures in this set.
That said, with the portals between worlds now open within MTG lore, it’s great to see some reprints in here where it’s simply ‘this card you like, but now it’s wearing a cowboy hat.’ I finally got around to opening the cards supplied to me by Wizards of the Coast this week, and it’s the silliest yet the perfect way to have creatures you’d previously only see in their own Plane showing up on this one. And it makes for a fun experience flicking through the cards to spot some creatures you wouldn’t expect to see wearing any hat at all, wearing one.
That was a lot of talk about hats, so let’s talk a little about this set and how Wizards have, once again, recently changed up the boosters.
Drawing Out The Packs
With the release of Outlaws of Thunder Junction, it’s the second set to see none of the ‘Play’ and ‘Draft’ boosters, which have been combined into simple ‘Play Boosters.’ These packs contain 14 cards, and Wizards thinks they’re the perfect middle ground between the thematic packs and those made for competitive drafting. Honestly, I would have to play a lot more Outlaws of Thunder Junction limited, but I only have a limited pre-release period, which was fun, and I didn’t feel like the packs felt at all unbalanced. And opening a bunch recently for the fun of it, I don’t feel like they feel too random either. So I think they’ve nailed it, but I can’t be too sure.
With all that said, there are even more expansion symbols in this set than in the past few, and I have begun to wonder if it’ll confuse players or if it’s something Wizards of the Coast are worried about. According to Dave Humphreys, Set Design Lead, OTJ, it’s not something they’re concerned about, as he said:
“We appreciate that it’s challenging to compartmentalize what in each booster is legal where. In general, though, we hope that folks can navigate how to build their Standard decks and what is legal in that format and others through a variety of deckbuilding tools and search engines that clarify what can go into the Standard deck they want to build.”
– Wizards of the Coast
SET MECHANICS
There are four new mechanics in Outlaws of Thunder Junction, which is quite a lot for a new set to drop.
Spree
Spree cards are spells that include an additional cost that allows you to use more elements of that spell. So it could be {W} to cast the spell, and then you’d choose one or more of the Spree elements on the card.
Crime
The ruling for this one is simple as it states, “targeting opponents, anything they control, and/or cards in their graveyards is a crime.” And Wizards have clarified it’s targeting these things that count as crime, but nothing else:
- An opponent
- A spell or ability an opponent controls
- A permanent opponent controls
- A card in an opponent’s graveyard
But you’ll often want to commit a Crime in OTJ as it’ll reward you with something. I did have a rules question about committing crimes heading into the release of OTJ because anyone committing good crimes would be looking to get the best bang for their buck, so I asked:
If I were to DualCast a spell with a card with a crime-triggering ability like Gisa, the Hellraiser, would I be committing two crimes off of one spell and getting double Zombies? Or are we only committing one crime per card?
Fortunately, I had Matt Tabak, Editing Lead on OTJ, able to answer this for me:
“Each spell you cast is either a crime or it isn’t, even if it targets multiple opponents, multiple permanents they control, multiple cards in their graveyards, etc. An ability that triggers “whenever you commit a crime,” like the one Gisa, the Hellraiser has, will trigger only once for any one spell, provided it’s a crime. Copying a spell that’s already on the stack isn’t itself a crime, although if you cast a spell or activate an ability that targets an opponent’s spell, that’s a crime.”
Thanks for the tip, Matt!
“One nice thing about Saddle is that while creatively, the rider has hopped atop the Mount and bravely charged across the battlefield together in pursuit of that varmint or somesuch, from a rules perspective, the two creatures are still very much individual creatures. Removal spells aimed at your poor Mount will leave your riders unharmed and vice versa.”
Outlaws
‘Outlaws’ is a noun used on permanent types, most likely a creature and probably one of the following: Assassin, Mercenary, Pirate, Rogue, and Warlock.
Saddle
As a Western-inspired set, of course, it was going to feature some form of mounts, and in OTJ, the keyword is ‘Saddle.’ Cards with that keyword in this set all have a creature type of X ‘ Mount.’ They have a cost to Saddle, which you could perform by tapping X amount of creatures you control to equal X, and you can then Saddle that creature as a sorcery. It doesn’t combine the card’s power or anything like that, but it is flavourful, and all of the cards with Saddle have a triggered ability for performing something while being Saddled.
Ending out my interview questions for the team at Wizards, I mentioned that ‘Souldbond’ from Avacyn Restored was one my favourite mechanics and wondered what the teams were, which Matt got back to me on:
“This is probably the part of the interview where people are expecting the rules guy to profess his love for banding, right? Okay, back in the day, when no one else in my store understood it and I did, maybe a little, but no. The team-up mechanic I actually gravitate to is Convoke. I don’t want my creatures helping each other so much as I want them helping me. I want to cast even more gigantic creatures, and I don’t want to wait to do so, so come on team, let’s do this.”
Collecting Outlaws of Thunder Junction
There are plenty of cards to look out for in OTJ, and surprisingly, there is a lot of value for Standard and Legacy players. The inclusion of ‘ Breaking News’ cards, which are newspaper versions of classic cards like Mana Drain, is sure to tickle any MTG player’s fancy.
This is two out of two recent releases from Wizards for me where it didn’t matter if I was opening a Play or a Collectors booster; it felt exciting each time, with at least one card grabbing my attention. This is great for collectors and those wanting to crack some boosters for the fun of it!
From a play perspective, the game is a lot of fun in limited, even if I haven’t had enough time to jump into some more drafts or sealed. With four mechanics, though, and not a single colour feeling overly weak, there’s no reason to feel like you need to look up the be-all-winning limited strategy.
If you’d like to dive into some Outlaws of Thunder Junction, you can buy some packs, a Bundle box, Collectors Boosters or a pre-constructed Commander Deck now by heading to your local game store or buying from Amazon, EB Games or Gameolgy.
