We are just days away from Prerelease Weekend for Outlaws of Thunder Junction and your first opportunity to play limited with these cards and archetypes! From a flavor standpoint, Outlaws of Thunder Junction does a brilliant job bringing interesting and logical new mechanics that feel right at home in this Wild West plane. Let’s take a look at the new mechanics and the two color archetypes that you’ll find this weekend for the Outlaws of Thunder Junction Prerelease!
Mechanics of Outlaws of Thunder Junction
As I said, Outlaws of Thunder Junction has some unique new mechanics that will not only be interesting to play but also will have you grabbing your cowboy hat and shouting “YEE HAW!” when you open the perfect Outlaws deck in your prerelease sealed pool. These new mechanics aren’t necessarily tied to certain color combos, so having a good understanding of everything will help you more intuitively know which cards will compliment your deck best while deciding on your 23rd nonland card. Let’s hop into it!
Committing Crimes
Let’s start with the most obvious mechanic for a set based around outlaws in the Wild West, committing crimes. And no, we aren’t talking about playing with those ugly off brand art sleeves from 2017, we are talking about the mechanic where you can receive benefits for targeting an opponent in the game of Magic. To commit a crime, all you must do is target your opponent, a spell they control, a permanent they control, or a card in their graveyard. It’s that simple.
Payoffs for committing a crime come in a couple of different forms. Some cards have static abilities that are active if you committed a crime this turn. Other cards have triggered abilities that occur when you commit a crime. There is good value in both methods of payoffs for this mechanic. While committing crimes has enablers and payoffs in every color, black seems to have the greatest number of payoff cards followed by blue.
Plot
Another new mechanic from Outlaws of Thunder Junction is Plot. Plot is a cost that will let you exile the card and play it on a later turn without paying its mana cost. A card’s Plot cost can be more, less, or even the same as its normal casting cost.
This mechanic’s benefits have several different angles. Plotted cards allow you to essentially rollover mana into a bigger turn later. They also support several archetypes like U/W’s “Don’t Cast Spells” and U/R’s “Double Spells” (we’ll get more into that later). Many cards with this mechanic also have abilities that reward casting the card under certain conditions, which is made all the easier when you can just pay for it now and cast it later when it’s the perfect moment.
Like committing crimes, plot is found in all colors. The most common colors for plot are green and blue. You’ll see more plot-forward strategies further down when we address the limited archetypes.
Spree
Spree is a new mechanic built around modal spells. What Spree does is give ultimate flexibility to a card. Each mode you want requires you to pay its additional cost when you cast the spell. These spells are likely more powerful than you think, especially in limited where flexibility can often be one of the strongest factors.
Spree is also found in all colors, almost equally in fact. That means that Spree is a mechanic that you will definitely run into no matter what colors you prefer to play (or force).
Mounts / Saddle
The final brand-new mechanic is Mounts and the corresponding Saddle ability. There are 17 creatures with the subtype Mount in Outlaws of Thunder Junction. Each one comes with the ability Saddle. Saddle functions similar to Crew on Vehicles. Unlike Vehicles and Crew, Mounts are already creatures and don’t need to be Saddled to attack. The main benefit from Saddling your creatures comes in the form of additional effects that come into play when the Saddled creature attacks.
Mounts are in all colors, but primarily are in Green with White and Red as secondary colors. Mounts also come in a variety of creature types, from Cats to Sheep to Beasts, or even the more obscure like Porcupine and Brushwagg.
That’s it for new keyworded mechanics, but there are plenty of synergies that you should be aware of too.
Not Casting Spells
This seems really ironic, but yes, there is a synergy based around not casting spells. This synergy is mostly tied to the U/W archetype, which is where this synergy can be found.
Outlaws
Outlaws is a shortcut meaning creatures that are Assassins, Mercenaries, Pirates, Rogues, and Warlocks. This shorthand is used in a variety of ways; from effects when you cast outlaws, to effects for controlling an outlaw, and even Affinity for outlaws.
4+ Power
It’s not the first time we’ve seen a 4+ power synergy in a set, and now Outlaws of Thunder Junction is the latest set with this archetype. What’s more to explain. Have big creature, get bonus effects.
Deserts
Another theme that’s woven throughout Outlaws of Thunder Junction is Deserts. Every land outside of the rare land cycle has the Desert subtype. This theme is pretty minor in the set, and it’s payoffs are almost exclusively in green. While there are some great synergies that can help you build the wild 5-color Desert deck, it’s probably not going to be the biggest influence in your drafting decisions.
Draft Archetypes
Now that we know all the mechanics of Outlaws of Thunder Junction, let’s go over Wizard’s outlined two color draft archetypes. Draft archetypes are very valuable whether you are drafting or playing sealed. Knowing what each color pair wants to do will help you determine if your prerelease pool has the right cards to play a certain deck. Let’s get into it!
Azorius
As mentioned earlier, Azorius is based around not casting spells. Between Plot and flash, Azorius is well equipped to maximize it’s “not casting spells” strategy.
Dimir
Dimir is built around committing crimes. This is definitely not surprising since black and blue have the most payoffs for committing crimes. In a color combo with plenty of counters, kill spells, and hand attacks, it’ll be super easy for you to keep the crimes rolling.
Rakdos
Much like Dimir and Crimes, Rakdos is all about Outlaws since black and red have most of the baddies of Thunder Junction. So assemble your crew and take down your opponent.
Gruul
Gruul is where our 4+ Power synergy has landed. Outlaws of Thunder Junction adds a little bit of a twist in the form of Mercenary tokens, which can help boost slightly smaller creatures over the line so that you can have an even more consistent way of reaping this archetypes rewards.
Selesnya
The greatest number of Mounts are in Green and White, so Selesnya is all about saddling up your mounts! It also help that these are the colors that can provide you with the most creatures to help saddle your mount too.
Orzhov
Orzhov is built around a longer, aristocrat-esque strategy. Whether its death effects, easy and repeatable recursion, or benefits from a full graveyard, this color combination isn’t afraid of trading off creatures, sacrificing for bigger effects, or having to reset the board.
Izzet
I loosely mentioned this with the Plot mechanic, but Izzet is all about casting multiple spells per turn. Spellslinging isn’t anything new for this color combination, and with payoffs for your second spell AND prowess both in the set, you’ll find some quick and effective ways to eliminate your opponent.
Golgari
Graveyard matters is a classic staple of Golgari Magic and it returns here. Specifically, this mechanic focuses on creatures in the graveyard, so it’ll play well with Orzhov, making splashing one into the other very appealing.
Boros
While Gruul is using Mercenaries to get their 4+ Power payoffs, Boros is using them to just kill their opponents. Turn iffy combats into slam dunks by pumping up your creatures into big enough threats to tear through your opponents
Simic
And finally Simic. Simic is all about plotting. We’ve seen where Plot is going to be useful in other color combinations, but for Simic it’s a way of timing your spells and playing bigger things to the board that will kill your opponents. Even if they see it coming.
In Conclusion
If you are looking to explore the wild west and lay claim to your own gold mine of fun with Outlaws of Thunder Junction, there’s plenty to be excited for. With a ton of synergies with a ton of flexible, splashable elements, this set is sure to be a lot of fun to draft, play sealed, or however else you play limited Magic.
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