Wizards of the Coast throws a bone to players who miss vanilla Magic: The Gathering with a dragon-themed set called Tarkir: Dragonstorm

The previous few years of Magic: The Gathering have seen loads of crossovers, like Fallout and Center-earth, in addition to units with uncommon themes like the lovable animals of Bloomburrow and the grand prix race of Aetherdrift. Given how properly most of those units have bought, clearly this has been a preferred transfer with the gamers really shopping for playing cards—not that you simply’d realize it primarily based on Reddit threads and YouTube feedback, that are stuffed with gamers demanding a return to Magic’s trad lore.

The complainers get their want in Tarkir: Dragonstorm, a set that places probably the most straight-up fantasy creature you possibly can think about entrance and centre, and returns to a setting that debuted in 2014’s Khans of Tarkir. It is a aircraft the place 5 khanates, every primarily based on a unique east or central Asian tradition, are in battle with impossibly highly effective Dragon Lords, and the place a magic storm retains giving beginning to extra dragons. It is generic fantasy sufficient that Brandon Sanderson may get a trilogy out of it by lunch.

Current units have foreshadowed this return to Tarkir, with an odd dragonhawk showing within the in any other case fuzzy Bloomburrow, and dragons showing out of mysterious storms to disrupt the Ghirapur Grand Prix in Aetherdrift. Whereas I am not at all times sizzling on Magic’s storytelling it’s enjoyable how a card in a single set can, should you take a look at it intently, comprise a touch about what’s to return months down the road.

What occurred is that the 5 khanates labored collectively lengthy sufficient to carry out a magical ritual to overthrow the Dragon Lords, which they did by tapping into the dragonstorm to summon spirit dragons. They are saying when all you have got is a hammer each drawback seems to be like a nail; on Tarkir all they’ve is dragons and I suppose each drawback seems to be like a thatched-roof cottage.

Whereas the ritual labored and the Dragon Lords have been ousted, it labored slightly too properly and now the storm is spitting out wyrms everywhere in the planes. A few of Magic’s well-loved heroes, just like the archangel Elspeth, are touring to Tarkir to see what is going on on and that is the place the set will kick off. (By the way, I really like that Elspeth, who comes from the Twenties-themed Capenna, nonetheless wears pinstripe pants beneath her angelic plate armor.)

It’s going to be fascinating to see how properly this return to Magic’s deep lore does in comparison with, say, the Closing Fantasy set due in June. On condition that Wizards of the Coast declare greater than 50 million folks play Magic, you gotta assume there’s room for crossover units and gimmicky theme units and plain vanilla fantasy units.

We’ll discover out in April, with Tarkir: Dragonstorm launching digitally in Enviornment on April 8 after which bodily in shops on April 11. Pre-release occasions will run from April 4–10.

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