Khans of Tarkir

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Happy Tuesday MTG peeps,

Hope all have had a great weekend.  Up here in Canada-Land, it was the Victoria Day Long weekend (Fête de la Reine) where we celebrate Queen Victoria's birthday but actually are celebrating the final snow melt off decks and patios - and good thing too as Prince Charles and Duchess of Cornwall are freshly arrived here.

Since we were not near a wifi connection for a large portion of long weekend, we now have a lot of Magic: the Gathering news to catch up on.  This does not mean that we did not have a great weekend without some magic.  Kicking off on Friday, we took in the Friday Night Magic event at OMG! Games here in Barrie, and happened to pull one of those very cool Conspiracy card previews - the censored Pick, Plot, Play on the back of a 1/1 Soldier token.  We then returned Saturday evening to play in a Pauper Commander tournament which we took third place with Imperious Perfect as our Commander and a bunch 'o' Elves pumped with an assortment of auras and pump spells.  We had collected a number of rather inexpensive commons for this decklist from MTG Mint Card and have to admit we had a ton of fun in this format.  Anywhoos, lets' get straight to the MTG news now -

First up - Patrick Chapin defeated Nam Sung Wook in the finals to win Pro Tour Journey into Nyx in Atlanta, Georgia.  The tournament witnessed top players from around the world to battle for fame, glory, and $250,000 in cash prizes in the Theros Block Constructed and Theros Block Booster Draft formats.  Chapin won with a junk midrange deck (white / green / black).

Secondly, as part of the Pro Tour Journey into Nyx, there was an announcement on the fall set which was posted yesterday to the mothersite.  As many had suspected, we did already have the name via the trademark registery and it is a fairly sure bet that the other registered names of Dragons of Tarkir and Warlords of Khanar will be the following two.  Very happy this time around that two pieces of art were also provided to generate fodder for the speculation engine.

Set Name : Khans of Tarkir (codename 'Huey')
Block : Set 1 of 3 in the Khans of Tarkir block
Number of Cards : 269
Prerelease Events : September 20-21, 2014
Release Date : September 26, 2014
Launch Weekend : September 26-28, 2014
Game Day : October 18-19, 2014
Official Three-Letter Code : KTK
Twitter Hashtag : #MTGKTK

Initial Concept and Game Design - Mark Rosewater (lead), Mark L. Gottlieb, Zac Hill, Adam Lee, Shawn Main, Billy Moreno, and Ken Nagle
Final Game Design and Development - Erik Lauer (lead), Doug Beyer, David Humpherys, Tom LaPille, Shawn Main, and Adam Prosak, with contributions from Matt Tabak

Please check out the brief video WotC MaRo (Mark Rosewater) MTG Lead Designed and MTG Tournament coverage kingpin Rich Hagon.

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Creative and Story
Sarkhan Vol is a primarily red planeswalker who came from Tarkir, a plane scourged by war. This plane was controlled by constantly battling warlords, who had a tradition of slaying dragons for sport and glory, driving the beasts to extinction.  This horrified the shamans of the plane, who worshiped the dragon as the pinnacle of predation. 

Design and Mechanics
• Sarkhan will appear in the set.
• It is a Large-Small-Large block.
• They are doing something never done before with the block structure.
• The block contains two things that players have been wanting for a long time.
• One of them is something they are bringing back after a long absence.
• The other is something they haven't done yet.

More news will be forthcoming during the San Diego Comic-Con on July 24-27.  Feel free to speculate away with regards to the intriguing teasers provided by MaRo.  Some gamers are suggesting a return to full-art lands for this set, while others are calling a wedge block and others betting on orcs to return.  Just a few of the numerous speculations floating right now.
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