Howdy partner, why don’t you sit and rest a spell while I tell you a tale. A tale of theft, reunion and more legendary creatures than you can poke a stick at. So rest up as I rustle up our Outlaws of Thunder Junction review.
Outlaws of Thunder Junction Review – Story
We arrive on our first new plane in quite a while, Thunder Junction, a wild west set where outlaws from across the multiverse have traversed the omenpaths to find fortunes and battle it out to see who’s the baddest of the bad.
And there’s one villain who makes his long-awaited return. A character who terrorised the standard format for months before his eventual ban. Hell, he terrorised all the formats to the point he was banned in all except vintage. We have the return of the Planeswalker Oko. Oko has arrived to find an ancient vault on the plane and has put together a posse of the multiverse’s most wanted to see it through.
He’s back! and as smug as ever.
On top of the many villainous faces we see return in this set, we also have a couple of pleasant faces return as well. Kellan returns and finally finds his estranged father, Oko. But more surprising than that, we have the long-awaited return of the fan favourite Planeswalker Jace Belaren. Last time we saw Jace he had been compleated by the Phyrexians but now he’s relatively back to normal and searching for the vault as well.
Outlaws of Thunder Junction Review – What’s in the Set?
Well, they did it folks, this is Magic’s 100th expansion set! And with this milestone set, you can receive 276 regular cards plus the usual assortment of special showcase cards including some full art wild west-inspired lands.
In addition to standard showcase cards, you can expect to some very special additional cards dotted throughout the packs, but we will come back to this in a moment.
Outlaws of Thunder Junction Review – New and Returning Mechanics
I suppose I should retitle this section to just New Mechanics as for the first time in a long time we don’t have any major returning mechanics and have instead been given 4 new mechanics to play with!
Crime
As this is a plane full of criminals, the concept of crime isn’t lost on them. You commit a crime when a spell or ability you control targets your opponent or any of their spells or permanents. That means by targeting your opponent’s creature with a kill spell or using a burn spell on your opponent is considered committing a crime. This means even countering a spell is committing a crime (WHICH IT SHOULD BE!)
Plot
Plot takes inspiration from the Foretell mechanic where you can exile a card from your hand and cast it at a later time. The difference is that Plot is a one time mana investment, you pay the Plot cost and you can then cast the spell for free on a later but only at sorcery speed. This means there’s no tricks to Plot, the opponent can see the spell coming. That being said, as of the writing of this article there are a few cards with Plot that are doing remarkably well, especially in red decks.
Saddle
Saddle is the keyword associated with the new Mount creature type. This mechanic is remarkably similar to the Crew mechanic introduced in Kaladesh but unlike vehicles that need to be crewed, mounts can attack and block as normal, however by saddling them they activate unique and powerful abilities.
Spree
Who doesn’t like options? The new Spree mechanic gives some instants and sorceries options on what to cast. Spells with the Spree mechanic will have an initial casting cost followed by a small + in the title bar. Then the card will give 3 options with additional casting costs to use. This gives the spells the flexibility to be used early game for a small effect or much later for a wider and stronger impact.
While that’s it for the mechanics, there is one more thing I want to touch on and that’s the new typal coupling term Outlaws. When a card specifies an Outlaw it’s referring to any creature with the type Assassin, Mercenary, Pirate, Rogue and Warlock.
Outlaws of Thunder Junction Review – Showcase Art and The Big Score
If you’re a collector of pretty cardboard, then this set has it in spades. You can almost think of this as 3 sets in one with their own unique showcase styles.
To start off we have the borderless or extended art cards. Nothing to really mention about these, only that they remove the side borders of the cards to extend the artwork out. Following that is the showcase style of the base set. These see some of the more notable legendary creatures smiling for the camera as their mugshots are taken for this wanted poster style. Compared to the showcase designs from other sets, I actually really like these. There’s a minimalistic design to them that just hits right while also altering the cards completely.
Next up is Breaking News. These cards are from the first bonus sheet printed for the set and are supposed to depict different crimes happening across the plane. While a small number of these are standard legal, the vast majority of them aren’t and can only be used in other formats. Styled in a way to make them look like they’re on the front page of a newspaper, you can pick one of these up in either a play or collector booster. However, if you pick up a collector booster, you may be able to pick up one of the mythics with new and extended art.
Finally, we come to The Big Score. These cards are supposed to represent the opening of the vault on Thunder Junction and all the riches inside. Unlike Breaking News, all of these cards are standard legal and apart from three of them, all are brand new to the game and actually quite powerful. The Big Score was supposed to be Thunder Junction’s version of March of The Machine’s Aftermath which was a mini epilogue set to, what else? March of The Machines. However, due to the poor reception of Aftermath, Wizards of The Coast decided to bundle these cards as a 2nd bonus sheet in with the packs. Unlike Breaking News, these cards are only sprinkled throughout the packs and all at a mythic rarity. While you can find regular art versions in Play Boosters, you may be able to find extended and altered art versions in Collector Boosters, and let me tell you, these cards are downright beautiful to look at.
Outlaws of Thunder Junction Review – Commander Decks
As usual, we have 4 brand new commander decks to play with but these ones have a special twist inside. But I’ll explain that in a minute.
Desert Bloom
As the name suggests, this is a Desert theme deck. Deserts are a land type that are known to cause a little pain. This green/white/red deck looks to discard them then bring the land back and bring them to life.
Quick Draw
It’s always best to be the fastest in the showdown. This Blue/red deck does what this colour pair does best, casting multiple spells a turn and giving you big payoffs for casting as many as possible.
Most Wanted
Sometimes crime really does pay. This red/white/black deck has an outlaw subtheme while focusing on amassing treasure tokens. A go-wide strategy that literally pays you to focus on a specific creature group is always a good time.
Grand Larceny
What’s better than using your cards to beat your opponents? Using their own cards. This blue/black/green deck is built around the theme of stealing your opponents’ cards and using them against them.
Now for the twist. As we all know, Commander is inherently a casual format and as such, sometimes Wizards of the Coast like to add a little something to the product. This time Wizards have added Bounty Cards. Each deck will contain 3 bounty cards that feature an outlaw you’re to bring to justice. Each player may start with a bounty deck with a minimum of 6 cards in it and can’t use more than one of each bounty. On the starting player’s third turn, the first card in the bounty deck is flipped over and reveals just how you can claim the bounty. One of the ways to claim a certain bounty is to cast a spell from anywhere other than your hand. Only the player whose turn it is can claim the prize from the bounty but if they can’t the reward for the bounty increases from a treasure token all the way to level 4 which is 2 treasure tokens and drawing a card. Once the bounty is claimed, flip over the next card in the deck. While these cards are 100% illegal in tournament play, I can definitely see the fun in sitting down for some kitchen table commander and playing these for a bit of extra fun.
Controversy
While this part is titled as such, there isn’t any real controversy with the set, I just have one major gripe. In the story with the Omenpaths opening up this has allowed non-planeswalker characters to travel the multiverse. So far I’ve felt this had been slightly underutilised, but more importantly it never went overboard. Unfortunately, that has changed with Thunder Junction. There are a total of 43 legendary creatures in Outlaws of Thunder Junction with another 8 in the commander decks bringing that up to 51 (quick maths) and 29 of those legendary creatures are characters we’ve seen before and a vast majority of them have virtually nothing to do with the story taking place on Thunder Junction.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m down to have some new commanders to build, but when they’re not offering anything storywise it makes me wonder if they even needed to be on the plane in the first place when all that’s happening is they’re getting cowboy hats and calling it a day. The most unforgiving of these in The Gitrog Monster. Wizards, please explain why a giant frog horror from the swamps of Innistrad is suddenly in the middle of a desert?! The only way I’ll accept this is if Thalia herself rode him into Thunder Junction to dish out some cathar justice!
As always I want to thank Wizards of the Coast for giving us the chance to write these reviews on the game we love so much and sending some product our way to review.
A review set was kindly provided by Wizards of the Coast for our Outlaws of Thunder Junction review. Be sure to check out more of our Magic the Gathering content and join us over on the Qualbert Discord to chat all things MTG!
