We got our first detailed look at Tarkir: Dragonstorm last week. It is our next Standard-release set, and it’s scheduled to drop on April 11th. And the pre-sale begins March 5th here at Card Kingdom!
The original Tarkir block was highly influential, especially because it introduced five factions that occupy each of Magic’s three-color wedges. The names of these factions (Abzan, Jeskai, Sultai, Mardu, and Temur) have stuck around as the terms we use for any deck or card that occupies the same three colors.
It’s been a decade since our last visit to the plane of Tarkir, so I thought it would be a good time to give you a little bit of a refresher on the plane. In particular, I’ll be focusing on the plane’s most prominent feature – its five factions – the Khans of Tarkir.
If you were playing Magic last time we visited this plane, this article will be a nice refresher for you. And, if you’ve started playing Magic at some point in the last 10 years, it’ll be a good introduction to the plane.
SARKHAN AND THE CLANS OF TARKIR
In the storyline, Tarkir is a plane that was once dominated by dragons, but by the present day dragons are extinct and the plane is instead dominated by the five Clans. These are warring factions with different philosophies.
However, the Khans were eliminated by the time-traveling shenanigans of the dragon-loving Sarkhan Vol, who went back to ancient Tarkir to make sure that the plane’s powerful dragon lords were never defeated. This creates a new timeline, one where the dragon lords are once again dominating the plane and the plane’s factions are now devoted to these dragons.
However, it’s already been revealed that in our time away from the plane, the Clans have re-emerged, and now coexist alongside dragons. As such, the five Clans we were introduced to in 2014’s Khans of Tarkir will once again be the focal point of the set.
THE ABZAN HOUSES (White-Black-Green)
The Abzan Houses believe in peace and stability. They occupy the desert plains of Tarkir and they protect the trade routes that go through their harsh territories. They may not have the same manpower as many of the other Khans, but they make up for it by effectively equipping their soldiers and building fortifications.
They have no interest in fighting the other Khans anywhere but their own territory, and they always have the advantage there as a result of their familiarity with the harsh deserts. This allows them to construct superior supply lines and simply outlast their opponents.
Mechanically, we’ve seen this focus on fortifying positions and soldiers conveyed with +1/+1 counters . Khans of Tarkir had the Outlast mechanic, and Fate Reforged had Bolster. The former allows your creature to hunker down (tap) and wait things out, while increasing it’s own stats. The latter makes sure your weakest creature is more prepared for battle by putting counters on it.
It’s very likely we’ll either get one of those old mechanics or a new +1/+1 counter mechanic for the Abzan in Tarkir: Dragonstorm.
THE MARDU HORDE (Red-White-Black)
The Mardu Horde are warriors who love fighting. They live in the rocky wastes of Tarkir where there are very few resources. To compensate for this, they conduct lightning-fast raids on the other Khans of the plane and take their resources.
As their name would imply, the Mardu Horde are numerous and often attack with their superior numbers when their enemies least expect it. Mardu cards are often good at helping you go wide. The two Mardu mechanics we’ve seen so far – Raid and Dash – do an excellent job of communicating how the Horde operates.
Raid makes your cards better on turns when you’ve attacked with a creature in a turn, showing that the Mardu are at their best when they are raiding their enemies. We’ve seen this mechanic return on two separate occasions since Tarkir (in Ixalan and Foundations), and since there are other Raid cards in Standard right now, I think there’s a pretty good chance this mechanic makes a return in Tarkir: Dragonstorm.
Meanwhile, the Dash mechanic allows you to pay an alternate casting cost for a creature. If you do, it gains Haste until the end of turn and it returns to your hand at the beginning of the next end step. This allows you to conduct your own lightning-fast raids on your opponent.
THE TEMUR FRONTIER (GREEN-BLUE-RED)
The Temur live in the harsh arctic biome on the plane. They have a strong connection with and believe in the importance of nature, often befriending and taming the creatures of the wilderness. They value the offensive power of their people and often adapt the characteristics of animals in battle.
As such, the Temur have a mechanic that is all about having high power – Ferocious. These cards check to see if you control a creature with power 4 or greater, and if you do they get stronger. While we’re used to seeing cards these days that check for creatures with power 4 or greater, the Temur is where this originated.
Because “Power 4 or greater” payoffs have become so common in Magic, it makes it more likely than not that we’ll see Ferocious return in Tarkir: Dragonstorm.
THE SULTAI BROOD (Black-Green-Blue)
The Sultai live in the jungles of Tarkir. They greatly value scheming and ruthlessness. They spend much of their time in their jungle palaces trying to find a way to dominate the plane and eliminate the other Clans. Their greatest weapon is their mastery of necromancy.
Mechanically, the Sultai are very good at loading the graveyard and manipulating it as a resource. Their Delve mechanic lets you exile cards from your graveyard to help pay for a spell.
Delve ended up being an insanely strong mechanic in 60-card formats. It’s just too easy to load the graveyard in formats with large card pools and you can cast Delve cards way ahead of schedule. For example, Treasure Cruise basically became Ancestral Recall in many decks. In the end, multiple Delve cards had to be banned.
That makes it very unlikely that we see this Clan mechanic return in Tarkir: Dragonstorm, but I think it’s a safe bet to think that the Sultai will once again be interested in the graveyard.
THE JESKAI WAY (Blue-Red-White)
The Jeskai occupy monasteries in the mountains of Tarkir. The bulk of the Clan’s denizens are monks who are master martial artists. On the battlefield, they are expert strategists who always have something unexpected up their sleeves.
Mechanically, the Jeskai have a focus on noncreature spells. Prowess is used a ton these days, but it originally made its debut as the Jeskai Clan mechanic. This mechanic buffs creatures when you cast noncreature spells. In other words, you can surprise your opponent with a strategy that they never saw coming.
There’s a solid chance Prowess returns for the Jeskai in Tarkir: Dragonstorm. It’s a very popular mechanic. However, Prowess has been used so much over the last 10 years that I think it is no longer thought of as the Jeskai mechanic. That’s why it wouldn’t surprise me to see them go in a completely different direction, either.
END STEP
Those are the Clans of Tarkir! I’m excited to see what direct we go in during our visit to the plane later this year. What do you think, will the Clans resemble their original appearance? Or will we get completely new mechanics? Let me know over on X.
Jacob has been playing Magic for the better part of 24 years, and he especially loves playing Magic’s Limited formats. He also holds a PhD in history from the University of Oklahoma. In 2015, he started his YouTube channel, “Nizzahon Magic,” where he combines his interests with many videos covering Magic’s competitive history. When he’s not playing Magic or making Magic content, he can be found teaching college-level history courses or caring for a menagerie of pets with his wife.