Anafenza, Unyielding LiegeAnafenza, Unyielding Liege | art by Matt Stewart

There is no plane in all of Magic that has a deeper relationship with time than Tarkir.

Time of course, features heavily within the storyline of Tarkir, with Sarkhan's return to the past in order to save Ugin and thus changing the course of the entire multiverse forever.

Yet even in the real world, Tarkir represents temporal milestones in Magic that no other set has before or since, being the turning point for when Magic went from the three-set block structure to the two set, leaving Fate Reforged to have only a month and a half of relevance where it would have normally had three.

This also marked a time where the player base itself was living through one of the most memorable standard and draft environments ever, with iconic cards like Siege RhinoSiege Rhino and Utter EndUtter End giving Magic's first five-wedge set powerful universal resonance with players.

Times were good with Tarkir; life was simpler during Tarkir, and Magic felt Magic-al with Tarkir; in ways that it hasn't felt since.

"Now Kuro, this is an article about Mechanics, I agree with all of this, but where is this going?" I hear my editor saying through choke-backed nostalgic tears.

Well on this return to Tarkir, WOTC has promised a lot. On top of revisiting a beloved world, they've promised that the Mechanics and themes of the plane's five clans will connect directly with the mechanics of the past.

Meaning that beyond just pointing out how Endure is a cool mechanic, my job today is to talk about how it fits alongside Outlast and Bolster as the iconic abilities of the Abzan.

Even moreso, I literally cant stop get to flex my Vorthos brain and share with you exactly how each of these mechanics, old and new, relate to the ever-changing identity of the clans from before during and after the Dragons got involved.

So, enough preamble! It's TIME to look at the fourth set in the Tarkir tetralogy and its lovely gorgeous flavorful mechanics!

The Enduing Scales of the Dragon

The story of the Abzan is one of honor, unity, endurance and most of all the unbreakable bonds of family. In the original timeline, the Dragons were extinct and therefore their scales were not abundant.

So the armor of the Abzan was handed down from family member to family member along their ancestral or kin-tree as they reached different milestones in life.

Meaning that each Abzan character we see is someone whose ancestors once fought and triumphed over Dragons, leaving the present owner with a profound sense of duty to make sure they're worthy of such lineage.

From achieving the ranks of your Khan'sKhan's herald to mastering the bond between man and falcon, investing time and mana into these warriors earned them their armor and allowed them the join the ranks of the largest family in the multiverse.

After the events of Fate Reforged and Dragons of Tarkir we see the Abzan have changed yet their reverence for the Dragons have not.

The respect for the scales of the Dragon are still present in the new Dromoka clan, but instead of earning your scales from your family's storied past, you earned them directly from the Dragons themselves for performing feats of valorvalor.

The Dragons of Dromoka's brood themselves were about raising the weakest members of their family to higher heights which we see on the Bolster mechanic's line of text.

Now that the khans are back in control, and the Abzan identity has returned thanks to Betor'sBetor's revival of the ancestors, the new and improved Abzan are more connected than ever to their roots.

Leaving the Dragon scales behind and clad in new armor housing the spirits on their ancestors, the Abzan's Endure X mechanic enables to you to choose between adding X +1/+1 counters onto the enduring creature or to make an X/X white spirit creature token.

Choosing between being empowered by your ancestor or having them pop out of your armor like Stand from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, is peak.

The Endure mechanic is rather straight forward when you look at it, either put between 1-3 or X counters on the chosen creature or make a spirit of that size.

Note that the spirits do NOT fly which is a shame but I suppose we shouldn't be able to endlessly fight Dragons in the air.

I like how it fits a rather simple design space, as we know +1/+1 counters are pretty universal, but its about HOW you get them that makes the difference and they have always given the Abzan an interesting way to do so.

Similar to the Outlast mechanic, most of these endure cards are just there to get a +1/+1 counter on there once on ETB so that these creature can join in on the true Abzan sub-mechanic which is +1/+1 counter typal.

Once your creatures gain the ability to represent themselves as part of the Abzan fold, they are granted the powers needed to form ranks and weather any storm!

With the lightning speed of the Dragon

The story of the Mardu is one of respect, martial prowess, and the horde. When we think of "horde" we imagine a rabble of beings with one single-minded and bloody desire, which honestly is not too far off from what the Mardu clan has represented.

Yet its not a single-minded desire but a many-minded one, as we see beings from the handful of different races and backgrounds of Tarkir, Dragons included, being drawn to what all Mardu share; the desire lose oneself in the thrill and glory of battle.

Attacking is the name of the game for the Mardu, and they have been the poster child for mechanics that honor you for taking a more active role in meaningfully reducing life totals. Raid coming to mind of being perhaps their most tame yet evocative mechanic.

As long as an attack has happened, you honor the Mardu and you are seen as worthy and trustable to get more out of your clan.

In the form of additional reinforcements or buffed up spells, if you were strong enough to attack once, you'll attack again, and we like that sort of consistency!

When we see the Kolaghan arise, the Dash mechanic represents who the Mardu who turn from many-minds to one, a true horde of hundreds of warriors throwing themselves at you no longer with any regards to tactics or preservation.

No one is left to defend yourself from the knock back, as the Dash ability puts the creature back into your hand after you put them into play with haste for an often lesser cost.

That white aspect of unity of purpose and passion was lost to the Dragons and they were left with nothing more than the need for speed.

Yet that aspect of unity has returned with the birth of Neriv, Heart of the StormNeriv, Heart of the Storm and the new Mobilize mechanic brings everyone to the party!

When a creature with Mobilize X attacks, they put into play X 1/1 red warrior creature tokens that are tapped and attacking, and then sacrifice those tokens at the end of the turn.

Every creature with Mobilize is someone whom the rest of the horde sees as a respected leaderrespected leader and who has seen and opening in the enemy's defenses further assault.

No longer is each warrior individually hoping that their sacrificial charge in works, but are instead waiting to strike with the force of lightning where their tacticianstacticianspoint.

Once that assault is over, they go back to the rearguard (I can't imagine the sacrifice part working any other way) and await the next signal.

While it might not seem like a real mechanic, similar to the +1/+1 counter typal of the Abzan, the Mardu have the general and all encompassing mechanic of "attacking".

Yet it's all about how fast the creature is attacking with them, and it's usually by finding ways to have creatures enter tapped and attacking or have haste in some regard.

We love meaningful reduction of life totals through combat and combat accessories here. So make sure you strike as swift, fast, and relentlessly as lightning!

Be the Dragon's Fang, Subtle, Deadly, Ambitious

The Sultai, where to begin? Or rather, where to end? As the Sultai have gone through the most changes in identity among all of the clans both within and beyond Magic.

It was a different Time in Magic, where one could argue the same modern-day level of care wasn't invested in when delving into the real world cultural influences of their settings.

While one could say Innistrad was "based" on European gothic horror, that's not quite the same thing as Khans of Tarkir's east-Asian cultural influences.

That is to say, there is a reason we went from Sidisi, Brood TyrantSidisi, Brood Tyrant to Sidisi, Brood TyrantSidisi, Brood Tyrant and Sultai AscendancySultai Ascendancy to Sultai AscendancySultai Ascendancy.

The Sultai were far less regal in their original depictions, far more cruel in their actions and desires and it's honestly not very fun to see your culture depicted as such.

The OG Sultai were the cruelest aspects of Blue Black and Green all tied together and while it made for fun gameplay, its been acknowledged that it could have been done better.

What does this have to do with the Mechanics? Well in line with how the lore is how we can mentally depict the mechanics in action, Delve, as seen through the original lens, was using the dead, decaying, and stolen memories of friends and foes to empower and enhance your spell casting.

Sidisi was a cruel and brutal tyrant, freely Lord Farquaad-ing their subjects to amass their army and opulence.

The rest of the society was similar, with mostlyDemonsDemons and the richrich able to make use of the mass sacrifices fed to them for their advantage. There isn't anything to aspire to be in the Sultai other than on the top.

As I said, this set is a set about Time, and the vibes of Empty the PitsEmpty the Pits are off in 2025.

Then things got worse

Slim dog MillionaireSlim dog Millionaire made the depiction worse when you add in the Exploit mechanic.

When a creature with Exploit enters the battlefield, you may sacrifice a creature and if you do, trigger an additional ability. Which you can kinda get how not great that looks when you think about what was mentioned previously.

This isn't to say that I think the mechanics are bad or that we shouldn't use them or anything like that. I LOVE Exploit, it's one of my favorite mechanics and it FITS cards likeColonel AutumnColonel Autumn.

I say all of this to point out how Tarkir has changed both as a set and that we (and clearly WOTC) can look back at the good times and go "huh, yea maybe it wasn't all perfect. I get the want to change".

Lets just say that Wizards knocked that change out of the park with Tarkir: Dragonstorm.

Sultai is beautiful. No longer is undeath a curse forced upon the masses for eternal servitude, or as a means to keep the strong on top forever.

No longer is the life or memories of the person next to you just a means for exploitation both inin and out ofout of the grave.

No longer do we only see the powerfulpowerful depicted on cards, but the every dayevery day liveslives of these people get to be shown in new light.

Death, unlike on other planes or even the other clans, is a brief interruption to a conversation and the Sultai casually enjoy thatcasually enjoy that. They are Renewed.

The Renew mechanic works only in the graveyard, and allows you to pay a cost and exile this card. Once done, activate a multitude of abilities that range from tapping a creature and placing a stun counter to buffing up a creature of yours with +1/+1 counters and most excitingly, ability counters.

In the head cannon, these are creatures who are willingly entering the cycle of life and death to give renewed strength to the living.

From a Kheru GoldkeeperKheru Goldkeeper giving its natural born gift of flight to a Sultai champion or a old Sage of the FangSage of the Fang empowering their living students, these are choices made by these creatures, not forced upon them.

Even Teval, Arbiter of VirtueTeval, Arbiter of Virtue's sharing of Delve to all can be seen as a truly altruistic act as its tempered with the loss of life, reminding you not to drinkToo Greedily, Too DeepToo Greedily, Too Deep

The Sultai sub mechanic was originally just "self-Mill" or at the very least get cards into your graveyard at any cost. Yet when we look at the overall scheme of Magic, having things end up in the yard is almost as universal as +1/+1 counters and land.

While I would still say that is the majority of what Sultai is about, the Renewed Sultai are more about celebrating things leaving the graveyard.

Getting some sort of passive benefit from either delving things away, reanimating, or renewing cards is the springtime of unlife look for the Sultai and new Farmer-turned Khan Kotis rocks it.

See life through the Dragon's Eye

My favorite clan, the Jeskai have always been rather consistent on what the clan is about, but somehow always a little clunky on how to get there.

The Jeskai are the Monks of the plane of Tarkir. Living in monasteries atop tall mountain peaks (Or Skyships if you're cool) and live to practice their mystical ways.

The teachings of "the way" from Khans of Tarkir were to emulate the fury and passions of what the Dragons were, which were free beings that ruled the skies, able to travel wherever they wished, yet still had the intelligence and wisdom to find their natural place in life.

That practice in simulating such mystical creatures manifested in the Prowess mechanic. Prowess, as I'm sure we all know by now, is when a creature earns +1/+1 until the end of turn for every single noncreature spell you cast.

Much like the Way itself, building a Jeskai deck is all about balance. Finding the balance between creatures in your deck and non-creature spells in order to trigger prowess.

Meaning that each creature had to, in some ways, do the job of multiple creatures when you trade a creature slot for a non-creature instead, which is why the monks were so adaptable as long as you could gas them up.

To help with this creature vs Non-creature ratio issue, the Rebound mechanic was re-introduced to the Jeskai Ojutai.

Rebound, present only on instants and sorceries, exiles the card upon resolution and gives a delayed trigger of casting it on the start of your next upkeep.

So now you get double duty out of the Non-creature side similar to how you had to get double duty out of the creature side. This was, seemingly, a Jeskai paradise, as the Jeskai were always trying to emulate the Dragons before.

Now that they are living among them they got to strive to be LIKE the Dragons for their entire lives.

Yet with the loss of the passion of Red that the Ojutai no longer have access to, prowess was a thing of the past, and no monk would ever be able to rise up to the strength of the Dragons for as long as the lived.

Their passion was traded away for order and redundancy (rebound, get it?) inherent in every Blue White faction.

Until the return of NarsetNarset to Tarkir during the Phyrexian invasion and the subsequent losing of her spark.

Her experiences traveling the multiverse had led her to where she was always destined to be, freedom.

Now being stuck on Tarkir and realizing the unfairness of the draconic system, she traveled and discovered the hidden past of the clans and that they were once free to forge their own fates.

So she lead the ritual that would end up creating the spirit Dragons who lead to Tarkir's current future. Now the Jeskai no longer want to emulate the ways of the Dragons, which were simply not conducive to the overall creature vs non-creature strategy of most magic decks and have the Flurry mechanic to connect them.

Flurry is whenever you cast your second spell per turn, you trigger this permanent's ability. It no longer matters if the spell is a creature or non-creature, as long as you have cast one spell before it, it will trigger and I think that this is the perfect capstone to the story of the Jeskai.

To get the most out of Flurry, you will still want to run instants in order to trigger flurry on your opponent's turn.

It's a lot easier to cast multiple non-creature spells with flash than it is to find creatures, but at the very least on your turn, simply playing the board will get to you the card's value and them some!

I think Flurry is a very fun ability especially if you can find way after way after way to cast stuff twice especially on your opponents turns as that is a puzzle in itself.

There are also tons of cards even from this year like most cards from <em>Outlaws</em><em>Outlaws</em> of ThunderThunder <em>Junction</em><em>Junction</em>that basically have Flurry and might one day be errata'd to get the keyword.

I encourage you to look into abilities that let you cast spells twice with at least one cast being free.

Now one would think that the super secrete Jeskai sub mechanic would be something like "main phase typal" or "+1/+1 until end of turn kindred." but the mechanic is actually token making.

Not just any tokens but specifically tokens that have prowess. There are an increasing amount of cards in Magic that create a token creature with prowess and those spells themselves are non-creature spells or at least cards that you can build a Spellslinger deck around.

From 1/1 white monks with prowess all the way up to 4/4 Dragons with prowess, this range of "spellslinger army in a can" is getting bigger every couple of sets and are only in the Jeskai color scheme. Go forth and teach the multiverse the Way!

With the Claws of the Dragon

Lastly, the Temur who I think have had the strangest run of the Tarkir timeline.

From a shamanic people who have a deep connection to the land, to the same kind of people but this time with Dragons, this is a clan whose identity is more a reflection of what is going on instead of what they are.

For example, their opening mechanic from Khans; Ferocious, which was simply looking for creatures who were are 4 or more power.

Seeking to be akin to the apex predators of the plane, they Temur prided themselves on being the strongest around, usually earning this title by proving their mettle against nature's next best strongest creatures ala Surrak DragonclawSurrak Dragonclaw.

This leader who could prove to be the strongest would be the leader of the clan, both spiritually and politically. Their magic was tied to the land and the environment and when the whispers of the plane said that the strongest is the wisest among them, they followed without question.

They were a pretty cool depiction of the praise and pursuit of power but without most of the reckless abandon that usually comes with it that red or black typically have in their characters, which was and still is a unique breath of fresh air. Air that seems to be...burning?

The Temur, more than every clan, lost just about anything that made them unique when Atarka took over. Stripping them from their connection to the land and nature around them, the Atarka were forced into a truly threatened existence of hunters who were only kept alive thanks to their usefulness to the Dragon's endless appetite.

An existence where you are forced to ignore the wind that bristles through the trees of your homeland or else be tossed into the nearest uncaring Dragon's maw is one of pure terror, and only the truly Formidable can thrive survive here.

Which is why it's truly such a blessing that the Khans prevailed in overthrowing the Dragonlords, as the Temur would absolutely not have survived.

he new Khan Eshki DragonclawEshki Dragonclaw represents the best of the new Temur, who continue to praise nature's natural strongest, while also reconnecting with the winds and whispers of the land.

Harmonize is a mechanic only on instant and sorceries that allows the owner to recast the spell from the graveyard for its Harmonize cost, and you can tap a creature you control to reduce the Harmonize cost.

The truest synergy between big creature and big spell I have ever seen and one that fits in with the clan perfectly.

Be it the idea of shamans touching the great beast next to them and recasting once forgotten spells or just the very theme of the leader recanting a battle hymn that inspires you to greatness, Harmonize slots right into Ferocious and Formidable in the long line of Temur classics just as much as SurrakSurrakalways embodies the perfectperfect leader for what the TemurTemur need at the time.

That being said the Temur sub mechanic tends to be less "power four or greater" and actually more "whatever nature tells me is the vibe" because most Temur cards, even in the new Tarkir set, are either based on MorphMorph.

This was part of Tarkir's Nature thanks to its relationship to Ugin or "Tons of Dragons but not the mean ones" as Temur is home to the largest portion of Dragons representing them and their themes.

Both versions of their spirit Dragon, Ureni, the Song UnendingUreni, the Song Unending and Ureni of the UnwrittenUreni of the Unwritten are more pro-Land or pro-Dragon than anything else.

The real Temur is the nature that we met along the way honestly, and Tarkir's Nature is always changing.

So there we have it, not just the Mechanics of Tarkir:Dragonstorm but the mechanics of the entire Tarkir block as a whole. Because just like Lorwyn and Shadowmoor this is a four set block; it just took about a decade to finish.

Did this article help you see the ties between the lore and the mechanics within Magic: The Gathering? While this is still jut a game, it's a game that has many teams working on it all at once in order to ensure that each set has as much love and passion going into it as the last one.

There are aspects that every player picks up on that means a little bit more to them than just the gameplay and we're lucky that WOTC seems to keep that to heart most of the time.

Let me know what your favorite clan mechanic is below!