Outlaws Of Thunder Junction Debut Story, Mechanics, Commander Decks Revealed – TheGamer

For a game thats covered everything from Norse mythology to Japanese Cyberpunk, its incredible that Magic: The Gathering has gone this long without doing Westerns. Despite being one of the most heavily requested settings, weve never had a rootin, tootin cowboy set before Outlaws of Thunder Junction.

With it finally almost here, Wizards of the Coast has broken Outlaws of Thunder Junction out of the Sheriffs jail and ridden off into the sunset, letting us getting a mighty long look at some of the mechanics, art treatments, and Commanders well be seeing when the set launches on April 19.

Outlaws of Thunder Junction is the final set in the year-long arc thats followed Kellen through the multiverse. In pursuit of his father Oko, hes gone from Eldraine to Ixalan, to Ravnica, and now to the brand new world of Thunder Junction.

Thunder Junction was originally a barren plane, but with the opening of the Omenpaths after the March of the Machine, all kinds of folk from across the multiverse have settled here. Including, unfortunately, many villains. A ruthless and lawless world, Thunder Junction is full of too many criminals and not enough sheriffs to bring peace.

Thunder Junction is the first brand-new plane weve seen since Streets of New Capenna in mid-2022.

Of course, theres a bigger reason for coming to Thunder Junction: the Vault. Buried in the centre of the plane is a secret treasure that is sure to be the crux of the next big story arc, which should take us through to mid-2025.

Murders at Karlov Manor was fairly conservative in new mechanics, but Outlaws of Thunder Junction is going for broke with a whole gang of keywords not seen in the game before.

Partys back, but someone invited to bad kids. Outlaw is a batching mechanic, meaning it ties together already existing types under one banner, and then lets you do fun things with all of them.

Outlaw ties together five creature types: Mercenaries, Rogues, Warlocks, Pirates, and Assassins. The set is full of such creatures, like Kellen, the Kid being a Rogue, and Vraska, the Silencer being an Assassin.

One of the next sets after Outlaws of Thunder Junction is Universes Beyond: Assassins Creed, which could get a big power bump from the outlaw-loving cards in this set.

These creatures dont inherently do anything, but other cards will reward you for having them with buffs or special effects. For example, the face of the Most Wanted Commander deck; Olivia, Opulent Outlaw; will give you a Treasure token if one or more outlaws manage to deal combat damage.

In formats where both party and outlaw cards are legal, like Pioneer, Modern, and Commander, this mechanic could gives Rogues in particular a massive boost, as theyre the only creature type that is beefed up by both.

Finally, you can commit crimes while playing Magic and be rewarded for it. This doesnt mean you can do a cheeky bit of tax evasion while drafting, though; crime has a very specific meaning in Magic.

Any time you cast a spell or activate an ability that targets a permanent, their permanents, or cards they own in the graveyard or in exile, you are committing a crime. This means plenty of older cards also now automatically become crimes, which is the entire purpose of one of the sets two bonus sheets the crime-centric Breaking News.

On top of the crimes themselves, there are cards that care about committing crimes in other ways. For instance, Freestrider Lookout lets you go through the top five cards of your library for a land when you commit a crime, while Magda, the Hoardmaster makes Treasure tokens.

Kicker is one of the most successful MTG mechanics of all time, to the point that its a common joke in Magic that every other mechanic is effectively just kicker. This couldnt be truer for spree, which takes the idea of kicker and modal spells and makes them compusary.

Each spell with spree has two costs: the original mana value in the top right corner, and a series of extra costs listed in the card text. You must pay at least one of these, but can choose to pay for as many of them as you like.

Take Unfortunate Accident. You cant just cast it for one black mana, otherwise nothing would happen. You must pick at least one of its two other abilities and pay their additional costs as well, meaning Unfortunate Accidents actual mana cost is at least one black and one generic, and at most two black, three generic.

While weve had all sorts of Vehicles, from cars and trains to flying air ships, weve never been able to just ride a horse. Or, in Magics case, Innistrads Gitrog Monster.

To saddle a creature with the Mount creature type, youll need to tap other creatures for a total power of its saddle cost. This is just like crewing a Vehicle, but the big difference is that, as Mounts are already creatures, they can attack whether theyve been saddled or not. Instead, other effects become available by being saddled.

The Gitrog, Ravenous Ride lets you sacrifice the creatures that saddled it to draw extra cards and put lands into play. We can expect to see plenty of other saddle effects in this set, but Id personally love to see a way to give any other creature a saddle cost to turn Emrakul into a mount.

The final new mechanic of Thunder Junction is a reworked version of Kaldheims fortell. Like foretell, you pay a cost to exile a card from your hand to cast on a later turn. However, theres one massive difference: you get to cast the card for free.

Unlike foretell, you also exile the card face-up so your opponents can see whats coming.

You can only cast a plotted card on another turn, and only at sorcery speed. This means youre telegraphing to your opponents what youre going to play, but finding the right moment to play something for free can be devastating.

While there are costs that are the same as their mana value, and some cost more, the majority of cards with plot will be cheaper to plot than to hard cast. This also fits nicely into all those paradox-centric exile strategies that have emerged thanks to the likes of the Doctor Who Commander decks.

Outlaws of Thunder Junction is unfortunate because it has not one, not two, but three different subsets that can be found in booster packs.

This is a lot more than we normally get, but its due to the late cancelation of a March of the Machine: The Aftermath-style epilogue set originally called The Big Score.

The Big Score is now known as The Vault, and makes up the vast majority of this sets version of The List. These are all Standard-legal cards, despite not having the main sets OTJ set code, and of course can also be played in Commander, Modern, Vintage, Pioneer, Legacy, and Oathbreaker.

As this was originally its own mini-set, there isnt an overarching theme, and we could find just about anything as previews go on. The first card weve seen for The Vault is a new Sword Of card, with Sword of Wealth and Power protecting you from most crimes your opponents want to commit and also letting you copy instants and sorceries of your own for free.

Filling up the rest of The List are the Special Guests, which were introduced with The Lost Caverns of Ixalan last year.

Special Guests are reprints of older cards, but with new art flavoured to the theme of the set. Stoneforge Mystic, the classic Equipment deck staple, is now a blacksmith in the frontiers of Thunder Junction, and well definitely see more like it as previews go on.

The original bonus sheet actually intended for Thunder Junction, each and every booster pack includes at least one Breaking News card, and theyre all themed around the various crimes you can commit.

Anything that can target an opponent could be up for grabs in this slot, ranging from the simple direct damage like Clear Shot, to counterspells like Mana Drain, to even a whole Plainswalker with the infamous Oko, Thief of Crowns putting in an appearance thanks to his ability to steal artifacts or creatures.

Its only been a few weeks since the four Fallout Commander decks launched, but were already seeing our next batch of four thanks to Outlaws of Thunder Junction. There are a few neat surprises here though that set it apart from the usual set tie-ins.

The decks are:

Once the domain of booster fun and Secret Lair, the Commander decks themselves have been experimenting with including fun art treatments as of late. Fallout had full-art lands included as standard, and now Outlaws of Thunder Junction is making the face cards a bit fancier.

Each of the four Commander face cards are a full-art treatment, rather than the regular frame they usually get. We dont know if there even will be regular frame versions of these cards, as right now the only ones weve seen have been full-art.

These decks have an optional minigame to overlay your regular round of Commander, with bounty cards offering up a slightly different twist on the format.

Note: Like Planechase, Bounty is completely optional.

Youll need at least six Bounty cards (with each deck having three included), but twelve are preferred. Theyre shuffled into a face-down deck, and, on the third turn of the game, you reveal the top card to see a condition. If youre able to meet this condition, you collect the reward.

However, if you dont complete the bounty, its reward level goes up, the next player reveals the next bounty card, and they could try and take both at once.

The rewards you get become greater the longer a bounty is out, ranging from making a Treasure token to making two of them and drawing a card. Spread that out over potentially 12 different bounties all out at once, and it could be incredibly explosive to go for the bounties.

The bounties themselves arent too tricky, though, so theres a good chance your opponents could steal them from you. For instance, all The Outsider wants you to do is cast a card from anywhere other than your hand like casting your commander, or playing a plotted card.

Outlaws of Thunder Junction releases on April 19.

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Outlaws Of Thunder Junction Debut Story, Mechanics, Commander Decks Revealed - TheGamer