Khans of Tarkir comes to Arena today, in it’s entirety! Khans of Tarkir is an amazing Limited format that features color pairings commonly referred to as the “wedge” color pairs. These include Abzan, Jeskai, Sultai, Mardu, and Temur. While three-color archetypes aren’t a requirement, it’s rare that you won’t want to be. The multicolored cards are extremely powerful, and the mana fixing is strong enough to support three colors.
Because each mechanic is tied to a tricolored guild, I wanted to briefly speak about the mechanics, and shed a little light on the archetypes along the way. Let’s go!
Ferocious
Ferocious is Temur’s mechanic, though Gruul does most of the heavy lifting with the best payoffs and enablers (shoutout to Force Away, though). For the most part, you don’t need to focus too much on enabling the mechanic. Most cards with ferocious are powerful enough on their own, and there are plenty of good creatures that fulfill the four-power requirement that it shouldn’t impact your deck building decisions too much.
Delve
Delve can be incredibly powerful, but there are very important deck building considerations to be made. It’s important to keep the amount of high cost delve cards low, otherwise you will end up with a handful of Treasure Cruise, and Hooting Mandrills. It’s also important to identify what cards will help fill your graveyard efficiently. Khans of Tarkir doesn’t have dedicated enablers for the mechanic, but cards like Rakshasa’s Secret, Embodiment of Spring, or Bitter Revelation are some of the best options for filling up your graveyard.
Raid
Raid is pretty straight forward, appearing within the most aggressive archetype – Mardu. There are some powerful creatures with raid, like Mardu Hordechief, Mardu Skullhunter, or Mardu Heart-Piercer. Combat tricks, like Feat of Resistance will allow you to attack reliably, and enable Raid creatures. It’s important not to shy away from one drops, like Monastery Swiftspear, or Ruthless Sniper, to enable early attacks. Late game the deck often ends up with a wide array of small creatures, making Trumpet Blast into a strong finisher.
Outlast
Outlast is an interesting mechanic, rewarding the Abzan player during any sort of board stall. There are plenty of passive outlast creatures that enable other creatures with counters like Abzan Battle Priest, Mer-Ek Nightblade, and Tuskguard Captain, that can turn anything into a threat via Feat of Resistance, or Incremental Growth. The outlast mechanic is at its best paired with a diverse removal suite, providing board stall opportunities you can leverage.
Prowess
Jeskai can have some absurd speed via the prowess mechanic, but can also fall flat when things don’t line up well. Seeker of the Way, Jeskai Elder, Jeskai Windscout and Monastery Swiftspear are the best prowess creatures for the deck. If you have a prowess focused deck, cantrips like Defiant Strike, or Crippling Chill become extremely potent. Tormenting Voice is an amazing, cheap tool to trigger prowess, and refill your hand for aggressive builds. There are more passive Jeskai builds that don’t care about prowess as much, but try to utilize cards like Quite Contemplation, or Goblinslide as win conditions, but I’m not much of a believer in them.
Gain Lands
While these lands may seem abundant to the untrained eye, it’s important to prioritize them if they are on-color. These will be most deck’s primary mana fixing utility, assuming most decks want to be three colors, pick these early!
Wedge Lands
The “Wedge Lands” are also at a premium, and should be taken highly. These are great at enabling splashes for multicolored rares, or powerful uncommons. You will also be happy to include these in your deck in the event that you only need two of the three colors!
I’m very excited to jump back into this format, and if you haven’t played it before – it’s a must!
Lose and Learn, Learn and Win!