Earlier this week, Wizards of the Coast finally obliged eager fans with a deep dive into Magic: The Gathering’s next set, Tarkir: Dragonstorm. With its Asian-inspired setting, dueling factions, and focus on everyone’s favorite lethal-yet-awe-inspiring creatures, dragons, it’s hardly surprising that the set has garnered a lot of attention despite several high-profile Magic collaborations–including both Final Fantasy and Avatar: The Last Airbender–being scheduled to release later this year. Though exploring “Universes Beyond” is always a fun time, Tarkir acknowledges a powerful, universal truth: Dragons are cool as hell.
During March 18’s Tarkir: Dragonstorm livestream, the team showcased a good amount of the majestic monstrosities, as well as the set’s upcoming Commanders, spells, land cards, gameplay mechanics, and more. GameSpot then got the opportunity to take a look at two unannounced cards, Disruptive Stormbrood and Whirlwing Stormbrood, and chat with lead art director Forrest Schehl and set design lead Adam Prosak about Tarkir and how these cards will shake up Limited formats and make drafting even more fun. Below is a first look at two of the five unaffiliated Stormbroods, followed by an exclusive interview with Schehl and Prosak.
GameSpot: Tarkir is very focused on its five clans, so I’m curious, how do these Stormbroods fit into those?
Schehl: These two creatures represent a non-clan alignment–they’re not [part of] a faction. These are both wild dragons that are spawned from these brand-new, or at least worsening, Dragonstorms that have appeared on Tarkir. And one of the things that we did during early design of the entire set, from a visual standpoint, was really give the artists that we were working with carte blanche in terms of how they could approach specifically wild dragon design.
When it comes to the clans, there’s a lot of historical context you need to keep in mind as well as their color alignment, and then [there’s] also where they find themselves in the story and when this set takes place. But with the wild dragons, it was really a wide-open field where the only rules were they needed to have four limbs and two wings minimum because that’s what defines a dragon for us.
Whirlwing Stormbrood is very shark-coded in its design. It has that slick skin, some fins, tons of teeth, but it is also very much a dragon in this beautiful art by Fajareka Setiawan. The Disruptive Stormbrood is where we’re poking at our own rules. It has two clear back legs and then it has two [sets of] wings, but one of [these sets] are used like you might see it in a pterodactyl, which folds over and walks on them. So it has a set of dedicated wings and then ambulatory limb wings.
That’s the thing with wild dragons–they really run the gamut and their designs are very creative. The Whirlwing Stormbrood was brilliantly executed by Edgar Sanchez Hidalgo, but the initial design was created by an artist named Alexander Ostrowski, who made just a ton of different dragons along with Victor Adame Minguez in the world guide that we sent out to all of our artists, which included these two specific designs. I’m really glad that we got both of them in.
Was there ever any creative pushback? Any debates on ‘Is that technically a dragon?’ I feel like there could be some funny stories there.
Schehl: That was really the beauty of the wild dragon concept. Those rules that I mentioned [form our] The Golden Rule and beyond that, we really pushed the boundaries of what that meant to be a dragon in any format. And that was really necessary.
The dragon designs in the original block of Tarkir were already super inventive and creative. So then we had to literally amp up that entire shape language and that entire design language to be even more impactful, and that is definitely a challenge. What I found that worked best for me in that situation was really letting people go wild.
Not only are you going to see dragons that look like sharks; you’re also going to see some dragons that don’t fly all that far–they probably only glide. You’re going to see dragons that are based on bulls, mudskippers, and all sorts of things that you wouldn’t necessarily in your mind connect with being an inspiration for dragons. Those were all on the table and really they were necessary to pay off this idea that these storms are just so chaotic and bursting with magic that they are birthing things that are just far beyond what we have seen in Tarkir up until this point.
I think that that freedom and that breadth of creative inspirations that the artists could draw from really netted us some super-creative designs. And a lot of that was just by not saying no to a lot of stuff. Obviously, as just part of a design and artistic process, there were some that were left on the cutting room floor because we can’t take everything. But that wasn’t ever because they were too out there. Really, out there is what we wanted from a lot of these designs.
Mechanically, these are really interesting cards, too. They’re both Omen cards, which feel similar yet very different to Adventure cards. What led to the decision to differentiate between the two?
Prosak: For the most part, dragons are the biggest, most awe-inspiring creatures in the set. They dominate the battlefield when they’re on the battlefield and we definitely wanted a mechanic that lets you fill your deck with a whole bunch of dragons. But any Magic player will tell you, if you just stuff your deck full of big, high-mana-value creatures, that’s not a really functioning deck. So that’s where the desire for a game mechanic to help out [came from].
On almost all of the Omen cards, you’ll see a big dragon and then a small incident or sorcery. So you cast the incident or sorcery when you don’t have the ability to cast the big dragon, but on balance, you’ll want to cast the big dragon.
One of the things our early playtesting revealed, because we did try Adventure, [was that] Adventure didn’t feel right as a name. Dragons aren’t an adventure party–they just eat people. Outside of that, the gameplay wasn’t great. What we found is, if you put all these big dragons in Adventure, both players know how the game is going to end. It’s going to end with these big awesome dragons and we wanted to have a little bit more suspense. [And] from a game-balance point, [Omens let us] make each half bigger and more impressive. We were getting down to, ‘Okay, what’s the smallest dragon we could possibly make here attached to this Adventure?’ And we didn’t like that. We wanted the dragons to be bigger. These are actually some of the smallest dragons in this set. They’re all big, as big as we can make them, and Omen really helped with that.
I [also] think shuffling [the card back] in is a really cool mechanic because it’s not great if you’re like, ‘Oh, I should hold this because I want to cast my big cool dragon.’ Omen allows you at least the chance to do that again. You’re not getting rid of your dragon forever if you do that.
Omen went through a lot of iterations. I’m really happy with how these turned out. And like Forrest said, these represent the wild dragons unattached to any of the clans–we wanted both clans and dragons, and then some overlap. But we also wanted some distinct dragons that were separate from the clans. And I think these Omen cards do a really good job at showing that. They’re both very easy to put into your deck and impressive when you actually cast them–and there’s all sorts of cards that pay you off for having lots of dragons in your deck.
That’s brilliant, I didn’t even think about it as a way to counter high mana costs but it is a bummer when you have to choose the cheaper option for one of your big creatures and you’re like, ‘Well, that’d be really fun to bring back later.” I get why you presented these to us as exclusives because I feel like they do represent [Tarkir’s] core concepts really well. Are there any additional reasons these are so special to the team?
Prosak: There are a handful of Omen creatures [in Tarkir: Dragonstorm], but I think these are two of the cooler and more versatile ones–especially in Limited formats. They’re mostly designed for Limited formats with a little bit of Commander applications. If you want to play a bunch of dragons, [Whirlwing Stormbrood] gives them all flash and that’s pretty powerful, and [Disruptive Stormbrood] can remove a lot of things, which is pretty valuable.
These are also two of part of a cycle of five, and each of their colors are chosen so that they can go into two different clan decks. So [Disruptive Stormbrood] can go into either an Abzan deck or Sultai deck, whereas if it were blue-black, it could only go into a Sultai deck. There’s only one clan available for some of the color combinations, so these are all in the color combinations that allow you to play them in two different clan decks. And that’s what a lot of Draft and Sealed environments are about– being able to play three colors and still have lots of options. The set has a lot of heavy three-colored play, in a way that most of our sets don’t; that’s one of the defining aspects of Tarkir. But that’s why we have the best of both worlds. We have the clans, which are focused on three-color play, and then the dragons which are big, awesome fliers. And the set has loads of both.
Schehl: From a creative standpoint, these are both very special cards to us. Though I think if Lauren were here, she would say that every one of these dragons are our special children and we couldn’t possibly pick our favorites out of all of them. In addition to that, I think we haven’t actually, we’ve talked a lot about the wild dragons. We haven’t actually previewed a lot of them. We’ve looked at a lot of the spirit dragons and stuff, but… I think it’s really interesting to see not only the mechanics, but the art of wild dragons and really show how truly wild we have made them.
It’s been 10 years since we last went to Tarkir. What is it like revisiting the plane and designing these dragons, both mechanically and visually? Are there certain things that you look back on where you think, ‘Oh, I love that. Let’s bring more of that going forward?’ or maybe ‘I didn’t really love how this worked and I think with our knowledge now we could do it better?’
Prosak: So a personal story from me, Tarkir was the very first set I worked on at Wizards 11 or 12 years ago. So I was ecstatic and begged to be able to lead the design of this set. I’m a really, really big Tarkir fan and think it’s a really, really cool plane–visually and structurally.
When we started working on the set game design, we were like, ‘Okay, Tarkir had this, do we want it? Do we want something else?’ We knew that we couldn’t just do exactly the same thing. If we brought back the same five mechanics and Morph, we’re not making a different set. We’re not advancing what Magic is.
So when we return to sets, we have to keep the spirit of the sets–keep the core of the set intact–but still make a new set. And that’s a big challenge. As an example, we spent tons and tons of time discussing whether or not we wanted Morph to come back. It was one of the more beloved mechanics from the original Tarkir, but we had just done Cloak, a similar mechanic, in Karlov Manor. We decided we didn’t want to.
We ended up with clans plus dragons as Dragonstorm’s central thing; it’s what makes it [classic] Tarkir and a new set at the same time. I’m really, really happy with that big direction that we made that early and we got to spend a ton of time working on the details and the smaller points that really help this set shine in the way that it does.
My goal for revisiting Tarkir was to not screw it up. The first Tarkir was an amazing set and beloved by our fans. I love working on it and it’s one of my personal favorites. My goal was to make something that is awesome enough to be worthy of Tarkir. And I think we nailed it. I think both Forrest and Lauren did an amazing job bringing Tarkir to life visually, too. And I did the best I could to bring it to life mechanically.
Schehl: Just to echo, a lot of us who work here have been fans of Magic for a really long time. I have been playing since Ice Age–well, on and off and when my wallet would allow me to–over the years. Being able to work here and work on something that is as storied and beloved as Tarkir is always a mix of emotions. On one hand, you are just so excited that you get to tell the next chapter and in such a storied plane that has just so many interesting aspects to it. On the other hand, you are terrified. Because like Adam said, our goal is to get it right.
There were plenty of times when we were working together where I would go to Adam and just be like, ‘How do you feel about this? Is this what you would expect Tarkir to evolve into?’ Because we are talking about someone who was not only a fan of Tarkir, but worked on Tarkir. Having Adam being part of the project and a font of knowledge about Tarkir was just so helpful as we developed it together.
Tarkir: Dragonstorm releases April 11, 2025, with pre-release events kicking off as early as April 4 at some local game shops. Online preorders for booster boxes, pre-constructed Commander decks, and bundles are available now. For more information on what cards and mechanics to expect from the upcoming set, be sure to read our comprehensive Tarkir: Dragstorm explainer.