Magic’s Tarkir: Dragonstorm previews include a new card with a very rare old rule

On Tuesday Wizards of the Coast revealed Tarkir: Dragonstorm, the next set for Magic: The Gathering. It revisits a setting of giant dragons and warfare, one that is now beset by magical maelstroms that literally give birth to monsters in the sky. Three new cards, revealed today exclusively on Polygon, expand the game in new ways — including one that breaks a major rule.

Of the three, the one card that stood out the most for us was Tempest Hawk. In Magic’s most popular format, Commander, you can only have one of each type of card in your deck. Many other formats allow at most four copies of a single card. Tempest Hawk has no such limitations, and players can have as many copies as they like in their decks. That brings it in line with novelties such as Persistent Petitioners and Relentless Rats, which also share the same, extremely rare rule. Putting these decks head-to-head should make for some fun games across multiple formats.

Set design lead Adam Prosak also tells Polygon that the card reinforces a major theme in the set as a whole.

“The different white clans [in this set] are all about having lots of creatures [on the battlefield],” said Prosak. “This is a way to get multiple creatures out of one card. […] This spell is casting two spells in the same turn, so this is [also] a good way to cast a spell without lowering your hand size, [that way] you’ll get to be able to cast two spells over and over again.”

Also getting a reveal today is Fortress Kin-Guard, which specifically represents the Abzan Houses, one of the five great clans of Tarkir.

“Abzan are very versatile,” Prosak said. “They can either make a bunch of creatures, like this one can make a one/two and a one/one, or it could just make a single two/three. And this set has a variety of ways to take advantage of both having creatures with plus-one plus-one counters on them and having a bunch of extra creatures around. So this is a really good glue piece, mostly for sealed and draft [formats].”

The final card revealed today is Winternight Stories, which also introduces a new mechanic called harmonize. It’s a riff on the classic flashback mechanic, which lets you tap a creature in play to reduce the cost to cast the spell from the graveyard. But the art here, in particular, speaks to the deeper creative vision of the set.

“One of the things that we  intentionally did in the set was [consider the fact that] there’s going to be a lot of combat; there’s going to be a lot of very serious, potentially dour stuff happening in the set. [So we] wanted to expand the world not only vertically, but also horizontally [and] show these different moments in the clan that can speak to the broader world building.”

“This piece by Zara Alfonso pulls that off that conceit so incredibly well,” he added. “And just look at the woman’s face in the background! Her delight at hearing the story is coming across exactly. She’s just so delighted with the storytelling here, and again, it just adds this extra layer of nuance to the Temur as a group of people to show these traditions like this. And I’m so incredibly happy with how this came out.”

Magic: The Gathering – Tarkir: Dragonstorm arrives on April 11. Check out our buying guide for more details on what’s in store.