It seems like the most important set to get right. I live in Asia, so you gotta get the flavor right unlike those North American planets of hats (i.e. Thunder Junction) or Halloween episodes (i.e. Karlov Manor). I care about my color balance, so you gotta get the wedges right unlike basically the last 3 years of precon sets really. Both things that the original Tarkir block from a decade ago get quite right, which initiated a return now. Probably should have happened much earlier, but well, how many different things got in the way.
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 manes 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.
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. At mythic, there’s the five clan leaders, no surprise. At 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. At 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. At 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. At mythic, there’s obviously the cycle of Elder Dragons. At rare, there’re just 2 allied pair cycles, one of them Dragons and the other the Commands, also in “monocolor” there’re the new versions of the 5 khans, quotation marks because you know, Narset wouldn’t be seen as mono blue until WAR, and never a mono blue commander in fact. At uncommon, there’s also only 2 allied pair cycles, one of them is a mana rock to be animated as Dragon, and the other a 6 mana Dragon. And yeah at common there’re zero gold cards at all, not even gain lands, not even off colored, just zero.
There’s a reason those two sets share a paragraph, huh? Dragons just aren’t as relatable to us Humans really, especially in their reasons to get rid of the third color. Like let’s be real, WAR’s anime Narset has been called someone’s waifu more than all the dragonlords combined. Also did you know that dragons from Tarkir lorewise came about from the Dragonstorm to just be adult dragons from the get go, which means they always has to be big creatures, which means they 1. Can’t have the most interesting design spaces 2. Can’t have the highest volume. So to make the feeling of a Dragon set comes through, they decided to fill in with a bunch of cards that asks for you to behold a Dragon for a bonus effect, the question to you is does that actually help? Turns out still no, your chance of opening one in a pack of DTK was 58.16%, while for context in FRF was 37.5%, so still too low. Keywords wise, you can read MaRo’s review here, but in short Delve was broken (cough cough Hogaak), Outlast sounds worse than it actually is, both of Temur’s mechanics were lame, and they should certainly should have had better ideas than Megamorph. Another issue stems from the Asian flavor, Sultai’s specifically, where they didn’t do enough cultural consulting (same reason Avishkar got a new name) and these Cat Demons slipped through and now on Arena they got changed. Also just saying that New Capenna took like just 2 cycles from Khans and Strixhaven also took just 2 cycles from Dragons, like that’s the thing about these multicolored sets right, you’re tend to be fond of these for the big picture of getting to see all the things each faction has and then pick one for yourself, not so much the actual individual cards. I guess that’s why we haven’t seen one of these sets for like 3 years, really, it has been this long, is it that boring to design these sets compared to the current hat mess? It’s definitely a me kind of take to say I wish they stuck to the Ikoria experiment of the April set at least having the 5 color balanced multicolored factions if not fully fleshing out the set to be gold, that would means more balance for the precons really and therefore a better feeling me.
Enough hate for Tarkir, now onto what it very much did right. Having such a structured block gave way to a lot of flavor references between the cards of the different sets. You can see it best in the 45 basic lands and the 20 gain lands. Especially the basics, follow the artist credit to see which clans they belong in, four of them good, one of them not so much and Arena therefore cut half of the Khans lands, yuck. The flow was something like this: Khans would have 2 basics for the main color and 1 basic for each of the other colors, Fate Reforged would have only 1 basic of the main color and the other one is the color right enemy to it. And Dragons would have both basics of the main color and 1 basic of the color allied left to it, you can guess why the last color got left out. Knowing how infuriating that was to explain through, I still find that extremely fun and sad we might never try something that convoluted ever again. Oh right each of these artists also take on their respective clan’s trio land, that one only got one version. Obviously there are also references in the spells, hint: the funniest one concluded in Unstable of all places, but maybe you should look up those for yourself. Characters wise, outside of Narset being the autism rep (and Magali V. rep) there’s also Alesha the trans rep, you should know and her well at this point, and also Kolaghan has the bolts to ask for duplicates to exist while being able to be your commander, that certainly can’t be a thing anymore. Last fun fact, Sarkhan was supposed to regret the fact that he changed Tarkir to this dragon mess, according to the design document so who cares.
That much ranting should really cement Tarkir as something really important that once returned needed to be done justice. In the meantime, it got 4 different C16 partners (2 of them allied so there really could have been 6 had NotC not been cowards and finish that cycle power be damned), the most broken Buy-A-Box promo that we thought was a horribly cynical cash grab at the time, a character in C17 that got 2 different allied pair versions, 2 wedge commanders in C19 (you see the damage of color imbalance now?), a Dragon with Delve that can gets the magecrafts among the delved back (it was in MH2 so obviously it turned out to be broken), one very different showcase version for each of the Elder Dragons (from tournament promos to cards you can open in 2X2’s $70 collectors’ boosters), a transmasc Mardu creature in MOM, which is also the time they decide that Ojutai letting Zurgo ride to fight Phyrexians make sense and also to despark both of Tarkir’s planeswalkers, and lastly a new older Alesha, that’s just the most notable things Tarkir gotten in this decade. Maybe I should do one of these with a lot of the planes that hasn’t been returned in eons.
(Since I won’t be having a review for MOM anytime soon, might do this one frame now while I have the chance)
It was down there with the Ixalan gold coins for how horrifically impractical they were. Like do you ever think about Tarkir and come up with a monochrome ancient place where the best they have are cave paintings? No, we know it in fact for its gold colored wedge cards or even the Dragons are dual colored too. I mean there are these dragon scales at the sides to tell the card’s colors, and a really really minimal legend crown, so there’s a tiny bit of help. And honestly had this frame been properly colored I bet it wouldn’t be this bad, none of the fonts got changed for dumb reasons or anything. Artists wise, one did 7 of the 8 cards and the last one did a single team up, should that count as a double?