#Outlaws of Thunder Junction: The Big Score

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Harvester of Misery by Jorge Jacinto

[niuttuc]

My Favorite Cards of 2024: Outlaws of Thunder Junction

The year is pretty close to over, so let's go back over the sets released this year (with new cards at least), and go through a few of my favorite cards from that release. I'll group together stuff released together, in this case it'll be Outlaws of Thunder Junction, its commander cards, and the Big Score. I'll probably go through one set a day for the next week, though I might skip some days for personal reasons.

Let's start with these! The Spree mechanic offered us plenty of versatile cards to play with, and I enjoy having options in my game of magic. I'll single out these three because they're solid and can fit in more decks than one would think!

Lavaspur Boots are Boots number 3! Better than Swiftfoot for haste, worse for protection, but much better by being tutorable via Urza's Saga. If you want things (like Karnstructs) to attack or activate immediately, grab a pair of boots!

Seeing more stack interaction in White is nice, and Aven Interrupter being able to completely blank enemy counterspells is even nicer. The card isn't too oppressive, but it's very solid and I like it!

Any black deck with enough creatures to cast Hollow Marauder for even 3 or 4 mana in commander should consider it. It's just a big flying body that often draws two or three cards while making the opponents go down some precious resources. Basically a better mulldrifter that sticks around!

Plenty of powerful artifacts in the Big Score, but Legion Extruder is I think the most underrated of them. 2 Damage immediately removes a utility thing, but the ability to sac any artifact, including tokens, at instant speed to get a 3/3 blocker, or to replace a chump blocker, or to sac ITS OWN TOKENS to have "unkillable" blockers, or.... Just a lot of utility in this one.

Criming is easy. Ramping for free for every crime is incredibly good, and Freestrider Lookout has shown up in plenty of environments already. Just double check whether your deck (or just your commander) can commit crimes trivially!

Didn't end up as big a player in the long run than Yuta Takahashi's, but Nathan Steuer's World Championship card is still nice and worth a mention. This is an incredibly cool prize for Worlds and I want to see it keep going for many years.

Commanders that do something entirely new in relatively little text are incredibly rare these days, and Obeka's new card executes on it very very cleanly. And Obeka herself is neat!

Knight of the White Orchid is the best white card to ramp in Commander, and Sand Scout is toeing its spot. Somehow, people underrate it enough you can still grab copies for about 20 cents. You do not need to be a Desert deck to run this card, just about any white non-green deck probably should... And some green white decks if they expect lands in graveyard.

The typical play pattern is a 2 mana 2/2 that searches up a bounceland, Arid Archway, ramping you while maintaining your land count the same. This is extremely important in white because this means it's catch-up ramp that breaks the symmetry, and keeps your other catch-up ramp enabled by itself. With that said, in a pinch it can fetch a ping desert for mana fixing or a Scavenger Grounds for graveyard hate, and that's extra utility that's nice on an already powerful ramp card. Furthermore, if you're playing fetchlands, you'll randomly get some extra 1/1s for no effort.

I wouldn't fill a manabase with deserts for this, it's already an excellent card with three of them in the entire deck. If you blink it three times already or get enough lands on the field that it turns off because you're out of deserts, you probably have enough lands it's not ramping anyway and it's late in the game.

Is Simulacrum Synthesizer a good design? The jury is still out on that. But it's certainly an impressive one! The larger the format and the more affinity cards in it, the stupider it becomes, but it's still an incredibly flashy card and it hasn't broken anything yet.

Taii Wakeen is a really nice top down design of a sniper, in an area that hasn't been explored much in the game. I wish the activated ability wasn't so open as to make that first part almost irrelevant in commander, since they just end up being a way to cheese face damage instead of something that takes down creatures precisely.

Another artifact from the Big Score I enjoy the design of, Collector's Cage has had moments of fame since it was released... But for the most part it's still sleeping and waiting for its time. Instant-speed +1/+1 counters on anything are easy to underestimate, but threat of activation on that makes blocking the Collector's Cage player VERY annoying... And then they might even have any spells hidden away down there!

Finally, Slickshot Show-Off technically shouldn't be on this list, but I wanted to add it because it's one of very few cards released this year that actively made me enjoy magic less, an anti-favorite if you will. They just pushed it slightly too far, we've already seen half decent Kiln Fiend decks in the past WITHOUT evasion AND without Haste. Adding BOTH plus a way to cast it with all your mana open for spells just ends up in cheesy wins that are deeply unsatisfying, and forces everyone involved in matches with these to constantly be sitting on instant speed removal the entire game or praying they don't just die out of nowhere.

You could have removed any one ability from this (except the pump) and still had a good card. But everything together makes for an obnoxious package.

[overgrown-estate]

Bristlebud Farmer ~~~ {2}{G}{G}

Creature — Plant Druid

Trample

When Bristlebud Farmer enters the battlefield, create two Food tokens. (They’re artifacts with “{2}, {T}, Sacrifice this artifact: You gain 3 life.”)

Whenever Bristlebud Farmer attacks, you may sacrifice a Food. If you do, mill three cards. You may put a permanent card from among them into your hand.

5/5

Illustrated by Adrián Rodríguez Pérez

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Woo-Hoo! Another Cactusfolk has been previewed. This one is part of the Big Score, what would have been Thunder Junction's Epilogue set so it's Standard Legal. That makes seven Cactusfolk in Standard so far.

[markrosewater]

Why is Jace Reawakened collector number 271 ??? He isn't part of the U cards?

Jace Reawakened was originally part of the Outlaws of Thunder Junction Aftermath set. That product was killed pretty late, so much so, that we couldn't change the collector numbers when we moved Jace into the main set. I think the rest of the cards from Aftermath (at least the ones we kept) are part of the Big Score.

[overgrown-estate]

Two reprints that come from The Big Score, Thunder Junction's 'epilogue set' legal in Standard.

[markrosewater]

I just want to say I'm really happy with how the Outlaws of Thunder Junction product line spoilers have been done. Having each part of the product line, Special Guests, Main Set, Breaking News, The Big Score, and the Commander decks their own largely self contained time to be shown made everything really focused. My one point of feedback is commander decks probably should have had two days instead of BIG. Four full decks is a LOT of information to dump in a single day and is better over two imo.

I’ll pass that note along.

[markrosewater]

What’s the story behind the BIG cards? Were they meant to be an aftermath set originally and changed after Aftermaths reception?

Yes, The Big Score was originally planned to be Outlaws of Thunder Junction's Aftermath.

[niuttuc]

Outlaws was overall simultaneously a good set and a disappointing set. The skin of a western set was nice, and what we saw of it, but the execution of it as a roster of villains set stole a lot of its Thunder (pun very much intended.)

Just like Karlov Manor had named characters be detectives and care about murder investigations for no reason, Thunder Junction randomly had a bunch of named characters from across the multiverse abandon everything to fool around in the middle of a western theme park. This is visible down to the main crew of the heist at the center of the set's story. Half of them contributed very little to the actual story, only there to open a keyhole conveniently put there in their shape in the plot and then irrelevant for the rest of the story. A heist crew half the size would have worked just as well for the story, without feeling like it was dropping names for the purpose of cheap nostalgia. The surrounding legends that were just there and not part of the main plot didn't help that feeling either. I understand why it was chosen to make Thunder Junction an empty plane before Omenpaths, but I still think it made for a lesser set. And further muddled by the weird status of the cactusfolk.

Mechanically, I'll start by saying that Plot was fantastic! It read like a boring mechanic by itself, but it was employed VERY well across cards in the set to play in a few different ways, and that translated to interesting gameplay. Saddle wasn't particularly exciting but it was very intuitive to explain and play with, and played well, it feels natural alongside vehicles, even if they have their particularities. Spree was an interesting twist on modal spells and I liked those cards, the french translation of the name of the mechanic is pretty poor, though. Outlaws was certainly a batch that existed in the set and played its role. Committing Crimes was a cute addition to the game that played well, it didn't feel as forced a trope word as the ones in Karlov Manor because it mostly checks out with historical gameplay, instead of just standing to the side.

The full art basics for this set were, once again, excellent.

The wanted poster treatment was slightly better than the showcase dossier to tell the color of the cards, but still not ideal. Similarly, the Breaking News Sheet was pretty hard to tell apart cards and colors for.

To the bonus sheet! The Breaking News Bonus sheet was certainly there. It didn't feel as memorable or good as Enchanting Tales, even if a few inclusions were notable. Might be because of the big score, the art style, or the card selection.

The Big Score! Making the best of a bad situation to put it here. It was probably better to release it this way than the one planned. It did mean a lot of possible stuff in play boosters with one bonus sheet, the big score and special guests all vying for slots. Some fun cards there though, and more memorable for sure than Breaking News.

Feedback on Outlaws of Thunder Junction

I’m about to write this year’s “State of Design” article, and I’m interested on your feedback of Outlaws of Thunder Juncrtion. What did you like? What did you not like? Tell me all your thoughts.