If you’re not excited about the prerelease, you’re doing it wrong!

Ixalan is a crazy new world to discover, touting a mechanic we all know and love alongside a slew we’ve never seen before. Let’s dive right in and break down some of the tribes and themes you’ll encounter in this limited format.

The Dinosaur in the Room

Starting with Ixalan’s most obvious tribe, Dinosaurs are spread across Red, White and Green. Similar to the eponymous tribe of Dragons of Tarkir, they are backed up by a number of synergistic smaller creatures from the Sun Empire. This supporting crew back up their mightier friends either by making your dinosaurs more powerful, or otherwise becoming stronger themselves when teamed with them.

Dinosaurs themselves are sporting the Enrage mechanic fresh out of [redacted – competitor card game], rewarding you for getting them involved in combat. If your opponent doesn’t want to play ball, cards like Rile and Pounce help to force the issue – in many instances these effects can be worth a card on their own, and can make combat difficult for your opponent.

As a limited deck, these are best in a critical mass. Whilst most of the dinosaurs are defensible on their own, the support staff tend to be overcosted when not paired up. Try to prioritise dinosaurs more highly in this deck, as the synergy cards are more easily replaced at the lower end of the curve.

Bloody Hell!

Vampires have dipped into White this time around, and while the Legion of Dusk don’t have a mechanic to call their own, they have a strong mechanical feel to them.

Vampires will spare no expense for power, giving the player opportunity to manage their life total as a resource – juggling it well can power up your cards far beyond your opponents, but without proper management can leave you vulnerable to Ixalan’s slew of evasive creatures. There aren’t tonnes of synergy cards here, and instead a good Vampires deck will end up mostly just being a good-stuff deck with a lot of removal and a couple of sticky threats. Prioritise a low curve to ensure that you are the aggressor in most matchups, and you will be able to leverage your higher life total.

Scurvy Dogs

And a warm returning welcome to: Raid!

Pirates have ended up with the lion’s share of the mechanical booty, sporting Khans block’s combat-centric mechanic as well as the means to generate a mana advantage in Treasure tokens.

Pirates are core across Red, Black and Blue, and seem to have a two-fold gameplan. Whilst a number of your cards will create Treasure tokens, the payoffs come in being able to lever these into card advantage with spells like Chart a Course and Pirate’s Prize. Many of these treasure generators are overpriced on the upfront, and the discount they provide to your later spells can often be wasted if they don’t enable you to start casting multiple spells per turn. With a pirate deck, you will want to ensure you have a low curve to fulfill your Raid requirements, backed up by a few high impact removal and card advantage spells to top the curve.

Smaller Fish to Fry

Merfolk have landed in a strange spot in Ixalan, straddling Blue and Green. Whilst they also don’t have a core mechanic, there are a number of cards here that pay you back for getting +1/+1 counters on your creatures, alongside a slew of evasive and disruptive beaters.

The Merfolk are easily outclassed for size by their competitors in the mid to late game, and I think will ultimately be the most aggressive tribe. These decks will seek to convert tempo plays into as much early damage as possible, followed up with an evasive threat to chip away the last few points. This deck won’t always come together as it relies on amassing a high quantity of disruption to stay competitive – start your curve as low as possible and prioritise making sure you always have something on the board by turn two.

The Bertoncini special

Explore is Ixalan’s final new mechanic, and spreads itself across all five colours, with a focus in Green. These cards provide either virtual card advantage with a good stat line when you flip a non-land card, or otherwise provide a hard two-for-one. While not really a build-around mechanic, I would recommend you fill your decks with as many of these as possible. If you do end up hitting a high density of this effect (roughly five or more), consider upping your curve with an expensive finisher to pay you back for the extra land drops.

I hope you’re all as excited to dive into the wonders of this new world as I am – what are you most excited to play with this weekend?