1.1 Tarkir preface

1.1.1 Designer lore

A pretty short video essay about Tarkir that really holds up. And the longer one, more recent one, maybe you’re thinking about this one too.

The original block reeks of this very different era when designs were very deliberate, like you really thinking about the “draft structure” back then: the first set by itself, the second set can use the first set, but the last set only also uses the second set, and now you just cut 6 boosters out of the play booster box to pretend the box’s price hasn’t inflated as much. Not all deliberations back then were good through, one definitely stands out in how allied pairs and shards get eons more cards and bigger sets dedicated to them than enemy pairs. I can list them: Legends and Ice Age are all allied, Invasion and Planeshift are 3/4th of the block dedicated to allied just so Apocalypse didn’t flop by not having enemy, Shadowmoor and Eventide wasn’t equally sided, Alara was all shards, and obviously a bunch of dual land cycles good and bad.

Obviously the biggest deliberation was about the fact that you’ll have to make 5 different clans that each have 2 different variants and therefore keywords to them. Actually it started out as 4, in the same way Ixalan would go on to be, it had Mardu like we would know now, Temur was just Gruul, Jeskai was actually Dimir and Abzan was Bant. That would be horrible to think about a second variant, so just look at Mardu and think “It’s time to do the wedge set, the cowards back in Alara haven’t done that!” So now 5 wedges for the first variant, what should the second be? It can’t be shards because 1. Alara 2. Drafts too similar 3. Shard Elder Dragons have already existed, they were the first ones. It turns out also can’t be enemy pairs because to draft a wedge set, you actually start by drafting an enemy pair and eventually decide which color to add to complete the wedge or just stick to 2 colors for a faster deck less reliant on mana fixing, and doing an enemy pairs set means it can’t distinguish against that as well. So the remaining reasonable option are allied pairs, lame I know but Unstable would eventually unfortunately go down the same path and it somehow was better than Unfinity just by having factions at all.

1.1.2 Rapid set skeleton reviews

May I move on to a little recap of the cycles in these sets? Just a little.

First off, Khans, which is obviously the best set of the block for having the most cycles.

• Mythic: There’s the five clan leaders, no surprise.
• Rare: There’s a cycle of 5 enemy pair cards, the infamous cycle of 5 allied fetches, and each clan gets 4 cards, one of them an Ascendancy which apparently was supposed to be this set’s version of the Ultimatums, the second one a magecraft, the third one a 5 mana creature that could have been commanders because they thought they wouldn’t have chances to make more wedge cards but well this was that very different era so these things turned out not to be commanders and lastly a creature not costing 5 mana, Siege Rhino is among them.
• Uncommon: there are two cycles of enemy pair cards divided between the clans, each clan gets three cards, one of them their tri taplands, secondly their Charms, which premired the fact that modal cards can now use bullet points instead of just cramming all the choices into a giant paragraph, and lastly a 5 mana creature.
• Common: There are 10 off color enemy pair cards, 5 banners that power creeps Alara’s tricolor rocks with a clue clause, 5 creatures costing 6 that can morph to be turned up for 5 mana.
• And lastly, the cycle of 10 gainlands, you’re probably familiar with these, meanwhile just pray for the Zendikar’s enemy Refuges. There’s some comparison to be made with Alara and New Capenna, with this being my favorite kind of set to see exists, but well, one day.

Fate Reforged isn’t as interesting unfortunately:

• It prides itself on having these 10 monocolored cards with an enemy colored ability to let these things fit along both wedges and allied pairs, and now I’m still thinking about where the other 40 cards are (5 wedges, 15 shards, 20 jumpstart style really).
• It should be more prideful of its cycle of Sieges through, which actually calls back to their respective trio taplands’ names.
• Lastly, are the five allied pair dragons, just a reminder Strixhaven still don’t have these for their Elder Dragons.
• The last gold cards are in common, 5 enemy pair cards, yeah zero uncommons, the gainlands actually take the basics slot now too, only Dragon’s Maze did that back then.
• And lastly there are a bunch of monocolored cycles I’m too tired to list.

And lastly, Dragons, honestly doesn’t really live up to being an “allied pairs” set, you’ll see.