Outlaws of Thunder Junction/Trivia

Outlaws of Thunder Junction/Trivia

 

Commander decks

 

Breaking News

 

The Big Score

 

Art Series

 

Trivia

 

Card comparisons

 

Maro's Outlaws of Thunder Junction Teaser

Mark Rosewater gave his traditional teaser with the following hints.

First off, here are some things you can expect:

• A new batch of five related creature types — Outlaw batches Assassins, Mercenaries, Pirates, Rogues, and Warlocks.
• A card capable of returning three different card types from the graveyard to the battlefield — One Last Job
• A mechanic players have been asking us to do for many years gets made as the setting was the perfect place to finally do it — Saddle
• Dual lands with a land subtype that has never been on dual lands before — Desert on the "crime Desert" cycle.
• A new modal mechanic that introduces something different to think about — Spree
• A card that can swap/exchange control of up to three different card types — Shifting Grift (creature, artifact, and enchantment)
• A new creature token that has an ability no creature token has ever had before — 1/1 Mercenary creature with ": Target creature you control gets +1/+0 until end of turn. Activate only as a sorcery."
• A typal card for Skeletons and Zombies — Gisa, the Hellraiser
• Creature tokens in the set: (some might have abilities) 1/1 white Sheep, 1/1 blue Bird, 1/1 black Vampire Rogue, 1/1 red Mercenary, 2/1 green Varmint, 2/2 white Ox, 2/2 white Spirit, 2/2 blue and black Zombie, 3/1 red Dinosaur, 3/3 white Angel, 3/3 green Elk, 4/4 red Scorpion Dragon, X/X green Elemental, */* Blue Ox — See Tokens
• Some of the planes with legendary Villains in this set: Dominaria, Eldraine, Fiora, Innistrad, Ixalan, Kaladesh, Kaldheim, Kamigawa, New Capenna, and Ravnica — See Thunder Junction#Planeswalkers and other visitors

Next, here are some rules text that will be showing up on cards:

• "Then repeat this process X more times." — Another Round
• "...if it wasn't cast or no mana was spent to cast it." — Freestrider Commando
• "Plotting cards from your hand costs less." — Doc Aurlock, Grizzled Genius
• "You can't cast this spell during your first, second, or third turns of the game." — Jace Reawakened
• "That card gains flashback " — Archmage’s Newt
• "Target creature becomes a white Rabbit with base power and toughness 0/1." — Metamorphic Blast
• "When you win that flip, copy that spell." — Breeches, the Blastmaker
• "If a triggered ability of a legendary creature you control would trigger, that ability triggers an additional time." — Annie Joins Up
• "...you get that many additional upkeep steps after this phase." — Obeka, Splitter of Seconds
• "Oxen you control have double strike." — Bruse Tarl, Roving Rancher

Here are some creature type lines from the set:

• Creature — Armadillo — Armored Armadillo
• Creature — Shark Rogue — Loan Shark
• Creature — Plant Bard — Raucous Entertainer
• Creature — Coyote — Cunning Coyote
• Creature — Homarid Mercenary — Deepmuck Desperado
• Creature — Rhino Brawler — Railway Brawler ("Brawler" was a typo and should have been Warrior.)
• Creature — Ox Angel — Holy Cow
• Creature — Porcupine Mount — Quilled Charger
• Legendary Creature — Kor Advisor — Ertha Jo, Frontier Mentor
• Legendary Creature — Giant Scout — Bonny Pall, Clearcutter

Finally, here are some names in the set:

• Claim Jumper — 3/3 Rabbit Mercenary
• Form a Posse — Sorcery
• Gold Rush — Instant
• Great Train Heist — Instant with Spree
• High Noon — Enchantment
• Quick Draw — Instant
• Reach for the Sky — Enchantment - Aura
• Resilient Roadrunner — 2/2 Bird
• Shoot the Sheriff — Instant
• This Town Ain't Big Enough — Instant

Gavin's Outlaws of Thunder Junction Teaser

Gavin Verhey released a teaser with the following hints about the new cards in the Commander decks:

1. There is a new card that creates Sand Warrior tokens — Sand Scout
2. There is a two-drop creature that taps for two mana, with a restriction — Thieving Varmint (only to cast spells you don't own)
3. There is a new card with storm — Elemental Eruption
4. There is a card that cares specifically about Command Tower — Tower Winder (tutors Command Tower to your hand)
5. There is a card that is a sly reference to a blue rare from Odyssey block — Smirking Spelljacker (Spelljack)
6. There is a card that does something for "each time you've cast your commander from the command zone this game" — Thunderclap Drake
7. There is a card named Rumbleweed — 8/8 Plant Elemental for
8. There is an 8-mana black board sweeper — Heartless Conscription
9. There is a new creatureland — Cactus Preserve
10. There is a card that does something "for each mana from a Desert spent to cast this spell" — Cataclysmic Prospecting (creates a Treasure)
11. There is Magic's 13th ever mono-black "enchant land" Aura — Discreet Retreat
12. There is a new Ninja with ninjutsu and one other returning ability — Orochi Soul-Reaver (Manifest)

Cultural references

Outlaws of Thunder Junction references many Wild West tropes, movies and songs. The following is a list of cards within the set that reference specific works within the genre.

Card(s)	Reference	Notes
Bonny Pall, Clearcutter and Beau	Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox	A giant lumberjack and folk hero from American and Canadian folklore.
Bounty: The Outsider and Path to Exile	A Fistful of Dollars (1964)	Spaghetti Western that introduced the Man with No Name, as portrayed by Clint Eastwood.
Failed Fording	The Oregon Trail (1985)	A popular educational game designed to teach about life during the period of the Oregon Trail. It's also the source of the "You have died of dysentery" meme.
Fblthp, Lost on the Range	Home on the Range	Classic cowboy song, sometimes called the "unofficial anthem" of the American West.
Final Showdown	The Magnificent Seven (1960)	American Western, in turn inspired by Akira Kurosawa's 1954 Japanese film Seven Samurai.
Full Steam Ahead	Runaway Train (1985)	The film that the Runaway Train trope is named after.
Great Train Heist	The Great Train Robbery (1903)	Silent film that follows a gang of outlaws who hold up and rob a steam locomotive at a station in the American West.
High Noon	High Noon (1952)	Western starring Gary Cooper.
Iron-Fist Pulverizer	3:10 to Yuma (1957)	Western starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin. It was inducted into the National Film Registry in 2012.
Lavaspur Boots	These Boots Are Made for Walkin'	Song by Nancy Sinatra.
Resilient Roadrunner and Cunning Coyote	The Road Runner Show	American Saturday morning animated series produced between 1949 and 1964, featuring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.
Shoot the Sheriff	I Shot the Sheriff	1973 song by Bob Marley and the Wailers
Spirit	(Ghost) Riders in the Sky	Often covered Country song, written by Stan Jones.
This Town Ain't Big Enough	The Western Code (1932)	Western that featured the first known instance of the phrase "This town ain't big enough for the both of us" in popular media.

Miscellaneous

• Loan Shark is a literal interpretation of the name for a person who offers loans at extremely high interest rates.
• Similarly, Holy Cow is the literal depiction of a well known exclamation of surprise.
• Prickly Pair is a wordplay on the prickly pear cactus fruit.
• Vraska, the Silencer shares her epithet with Etrata, the Silencer.
• The Oxen in the art for Bruse Tarl, Roving Rancher include Ox of Agonas (left), Pillarfield Ox (center, as Bruse's mount) and Vigor (right).
• Roxanne, Starfall Savant creates Meteorites.
• Servant of the Stinger's unusual color palate is a reference to scorpions' fluorescence.
• Smuggler's Surprise is a reference to the Ancient Greek Trojan Horse and a call-back to Akroan Horse being used a second time on a plane where nobody is aware of the first use.
• Jace Reawakened has a collector number of 271 (despite being a monocolored card) and is the second planeswalker of the set. This is because he was meant to be from the canceled Outlaws of Thunder Junction Aftermath set and was deemed important enough of a character reveal to port into the set; his place was swapped with Grand Abolisher.
  • When the set was released on Magic: The Gathering Arena, the art for the borderless Jace Reawakened (Outlaws of Thunder Junction, #306) featured the Phyrexian probes that Jace had acquired while undergoing phyresis. These details were not included in the art of the physical card.
• Although not originally designed as such, The Big Score is the first and only Standard-legal set to feature only one rarity. All cards in the set are mythic rare; there are no common, uncommon or rare cards.
• The Commander printing of Villainous Wealth uses the card's original art, featuring the old Cat Demon representation of a Rakshasa, even though Khans of Tarkir's digital release had updated the art for cultural sensitivity only three months prior.