Going into the Friday Night prerelease for Tarkir: Dragonstorm, I mostly rode on nostalgia. The original Tarkir block left a strong impression—vibrant clans, wedge colors, and of course, dragons. With the return to the plane, I was hoping Wizards would strike a balance between familiar themes and something new for the players.
I visited this place, Elves and Espresso, for the first time and saw a unique and relaxing ambiance that is far from the usual LGS setting. The shop is half coffee and gaming store, and they had the only schedule of an in-store prerelease on a Friday night. The owner was friendly and accommodating and greeted me when I arrived. He allowed the players to choose their clans for the PR kits, and I decided Abzan. I believed in a Reddit post that this clan has a better seeded pack than the rest.
We started deck-building at 7:10 pm and my cracking the packs brought immediate excitement: clan-flavored cards were back, but the mechanics had evolved. The Abzan developed the Endure mechanic, a choice between spirit tokens or +1/+1 counters on your creatures. Once I got to play, it was clear the set was built for momentum but still maintained a long-game strategy. My deck, a Black-White-Green midrange build, curved into a few dragons surprisingly well thanks to a few mana support creatures that fixed the color and made sure you have your land drops.
Every round felt dynamic. I saw games in my creatures curve well, with a few spot removals to deal with opposing blockers. Some games went long enough for dragons to hit the board, and when they did, they took over.
The mix of pressure and payoff made for one of the most engaging prerelease experiences I’ve had in a while. The deck build I think is nothing special but I am happy to develop a three-color deck strategy again after a long while. See below the video preview of my Abzan PR sealed deck.
Notice the creature curve and the Rare card choices I played out of my limited MTG card pool.
Tarkir’s back, and it brought teeth. Thanks for reading and until the next blog post.