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Outlaws of Thunder Junction Sealed Quick Guide:Top 10 Archetypes, Cards & Mechanics
Intro
In a couple of days, you’re going to battle in a fierce pre-release tournament and I know you want to emerge on top!
In today’s piece I will go over the mechanics of Outlaws at Thunder Junction and all *ten* archetypes, so you know exactly which way to go with the cards you open.
Without further ado, let’s dive in!
Relevant Mechanics
Let’s start off with all the mechanics that you’ll encounter ripping up those booster packs.
Plot
Plot N means to pay the N cost and exile a card with this ability from your hand. From this point on, you can play that exiled (plotted) card for free on any turn that’s not this one, the one you plotted. On top of that, both plotting and playing it later has to be done sorcery speed.
In practice, you can pay 3U to plot Loan Shark and play it, say, two turns later when you’ve met its condition of having cast two or more spells. Without plot, it’s much more difficult to squeeze in a four mana spell on a turn when you want to play multiple spells. Plot circumvents that nicely.
Mounts and Saddle
Vehicles have become an evergreen fixture of Magic and Saddle is a twist on that concept.
Saddle N means you can tap at least N power of other creatures you control to saddle a Mount, where Mount is a creature type. Crucially, it can only be done sorcery speed, contrary to Crewing Vehicles.
When you tap Grizzly Bear to saddle Bridled Bighorn, you meet the condition of Saddle 2, as Bear has 2 power. Then, whenever Bighorn attacks you’ll create a 1/1 Sheep.
Spree
Spree will be found on cheap cards and it’s a version of modal spells. The spell itself won’t do anything and you’ll have to choose at least one mode - but you can choose multiple different ones. For every mode you choose, you pay the cost associated with it.
Explosive Derailment is a R instant that does nothing but when you put it on the stack you have to choose to deal 4 damage to a creature, detroy an artifact, or both. In these cases you’d pay 2R, 2R, 4R, respectively.
Committing a crime
Committing a crime is a broad term that refers to a situation when your spell or ability targets the opponent, anything they control, or cards in their graveyards.
If you play the previously mentioned Explosive Derailment killing an opposing Loan Shark, you have committed a crime. Now, Slickshot Vault-Buster can enjoy the +2/+0 bonus.
Outlaws
Some cards in the set refer to ‘outlaws’. When they do, they mean a set of creature types: Mercenary, Assassins, Pirates, Warlocks, Rogues. With that in mind, always pay attention to the creature types of your but also the opponent’s threats. When looking at two similar creatures, it might be better to kill the one with the set-relevant creature type!
The 10 Limited Archetypes
Let's take a look at the different color combinations and their archetypes.
Boros Mercenaries
In Boros, you want to go wide with Mercenary tokens thanks to cards like Form a Posse which is a classic example of a mass token maker. These Mercenaries also provide an attack boost, so you can decide to go tall and wide.
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Orzhov Aristocrats
An archetype as old as time that evokes great sentiment. Your job will be to sacrifice creatures to enable synergies. To make the most out of it, you’d best sac creatures that die in combat anyways, i.e. after blocks, or disposable tokens.
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Rakdos Outlaws
This is an outlaws-matters archetype. Be on the lookout for creatures with the following creature types: Mercenary, Assassins, Pirates, Warlocks, Rogues. Depending on your payoffs, you might be better sometimes playing a worse on-paper card that has one of these types than an alternative.
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Dimir Crime
This colour pair is all about committing a crime. Your payoffs will get counters, trigger abilities, get discounted. Similarly to this colour combination in the past, it can be built in a more controlly way.
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Golgari Graveyard
Much to nobody’s surprise, Golgari is a graveyard-matters archetype. You will be returning creatures from the graveyard to your hand or even straight to the battlefield! It’ll be accompanied by self-mill to enable these reanimation tactics.
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Gruul Big Creatures
Here we will be focusing on 4 power as the key stat line that will enable synergies. You want your creatures to reach that size, be it by organically having that size or pumping them.
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Selesnya Mounts
In White and Green you want creatures that are Mounts, as there are plenty of Saddle synergy. It will heavily affect the way you play out your combat, as your plan will frequently be to attack with fewer creatures than you have (as some of them will be saddling).
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Izzet Plot Spellslinging
Izzet is all about spellslinging and casting at least two spells a turn. While sometimes a tough challenge, plotting a card beforehand allows you to set up multi-spelling a key turn later.
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Azorius Plot No Spells
This is a particularly unique archetype, as it incentivises you not to play anything to trigger end-step abilities. While in Constructed passing the turn is the default for UW, in Limited you can be heavily punished for doing nothing. Thankfully, plot allows us to circumvent that downside.
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Simic Plot
Simic wants to plot cards and preferably do it much cheaper with Doc Aurlock, which can lead to super explosive turns. Make Your Own Luck can also cheat a little bit by plotting a card that would otherwise be unable to be plotted. This can catch an opponent by surprise!
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Conclusion
I am pumped for this limited environment. Archetypes feel super unique and I think they’ll provide challenging games.
The world full of outlaws, multispelling but also passing the turn awaits you.
And as always - hold my hand and let’s pass the turn together. Cheers!