Dragons of Tarkir is here, and with it come all kinds of exciting new cards, stories, and Magical adventures. Which new cards have exciting promise in formats from Pauper to Commander? What kind of interesting stories were told across this three-set block? Dragons of Tarkir has something to offer for everyone, and this week Team Gathering Magic digs in to the cards and themes they found most interesting.

Picks of the Week: March 15, 2015

Alex Ullman is Associate Editor for Gathering Magic, a renowned Pauper (cube and Constructed) player, and member of the victorious 2009 Magic Online Community Cup team.You can find him on Twitter as @nerdtothecore.

There’s only one thing on my Magical mind these days, and to be fair, it’s easy to understand why.

Dragons of Tarkir

Holy heck this set. I was away from my computer when the spoiler when live Friday morning, but I managed to load up the set on my phone to sneak multiple peeks throughout the course of my day. My first pass was focused on the commons for my Cube and for Pauper for Magic Online and my second was on the cards themselves. I felt compelled to return to the spoiler over and over, finding new nuggets that pulled me deeper. Finally I recognized Summit Prowler for exactly what it was and the floodgates were open.

I devoured the spoiler, then looked back to the Khans of Tarkir and the Fate Reforged card lists. I started to see how these timelines wove together and I started to see the art that went into crafting the last three set block ever.

It is so many things. It wasn’t until today that I realized that the locations in every Siege matched the names of the wedge lands from Khans of Tarkir. The names of the uncommon dragons from Dragons of Tarkir all include the dragon attributes of their respective broods. But we can go so much deeper than this. The creative in this block is phenomenal, tying together ends I never even thought were loose.

I’ve said it before but it bears repeating - I am not currently a big time Vorthos. I never got into the story as part of the game. Sure, I read many Magic novels (The Artifact Cycle was pretty darn good) but I saw that as game adjacent. Now with Khans of Tarkir block, I am able to see the story unfold as easily as I can tap a land. The recent stellar run of Uncharted Realms has surely helped.

Here are just a few more of the links I’ve fallen in love with in the first days of full knowledge:

Here are just a few more of the links I’ve fallen in love with in the first days of full knowledge:

• The art link between Feat of Resistance and Scale Blessing, bridged by Honor's Reward
• Chief of the Edge and Chief of the Scale changing into Blood-Chin Rager and Herald of Dromoka
• The flavor text of Highland Game and the card Shaman of Forgotten Ways
• Gvar Barzeel on Defeat and on War Behemoth
• Salt Road Patrol and Resupply
• Silumgar Spell-Eater and Kheru Spellsnatcher
• Fascination and Damnable Pact

And so many more!

This doesn’t even touch on all the sweet cards with Exploit I can’t wait to….abuse. I’m looking forward to so many things with this set I can’t list them all. Magic seems to be going strong, and I’m very excited to see the games’ next steps.

Carlos Gutierrez is an Associate Editor for Gathering Magic, an engineer-in-training, and a Commander and Pauper enthusiast. By day, he works as a STEM educator, but he spends his weekends hitting all his land drops and trying new board games, puzzles, and video games. You can find all of him sharing Commander craziness, baked goods on Twitter, and complaints about graduate school at @cag5383.

All things considered, this has been a relatively quiet week as far as Magic is concerned. We had a breakout Standard deck last weekend, and had a new set fully spoiled, but I haven't yet had enough time to really sink my teeth into Dragons of Tarkir and find out more about what I want to do with these exciting new toys. Consequently, I've got just two things that I'm excited about that I'd love to share for this week. Let's start with the easy one:

Sidisi, Undead Vizier

What's not to love? I've always been a fan of Disciple of Bolas in Commander, and this is an enormous upgrade in most situations. Sure, it doesn't provide the same raw card advantage, but it lets you turn random bodies left on the board into a Demonic Tutor plus an enormous deathtouch creature. I can't wait to start sacrificing Bloodghast, Gravecrawler, and Child of Alara to this new take on Sidisi.

What I'm more interested in is what Sidisi can do as a Commander of her own deck. What are the best tutor targets? how degenerate can that deck get? How similarly will each game play out? I don't think that Sidisi is too good for a format like Commander, but I do wonder how quickly the novelty of having a repeatable Demonic Tutor will wear thin. Of course, you can also use the consistency provided by Sidisi to delve into all manner of corner case strategies that were previously impossible. Sidisi could cover the whole spectrum from a fun enabler of thematic and interactive decks to a super degenerate and oppressive combo-control engine, and I'm excited to find out what kind of crazy things people are going to do with her.

The Addiction Continues

Over the last few weeks I've discussed how my girlfriend and I have rediscovered our childhood love for Pokemon. That theme has continued this week, but we've reached exciting new milestones. It's been a fun way for us to do things together even when we're not able to hang out every night over the course of a week, and gives us something to discuss and look forward to that doesn't involve work and other daily grind activities. For us, it's been a great couples' activity, and I don't think I see that changing any time soon.