Though February saw Magic: The Gathering dip back into the fan-favourite setting of Ravnica for Murders At Karlov Manner, the rest of 2024 sees the trading card game carving out new thematic locales across the remainder of its major expansion releases. First among these is the frontier adventures of Outlaws Of Thunder Junction, complete with its recognisable array of Wild West tropes such as cargo-hauling robberies and high-noon duels.
Wizards Of The Coast and Double Jump have given WellPlayed an exclusive preview of an impressive game-closer of a card in artist Inkognit’s Full Steam Ahead. This is a sorcery card that bombastically represents a player’s summoned crew of creatures taking over an armoured train of sorts. Nothing will stand in your way, not even that poor bull-dude creature. As the card implies, if this spell makes it onto the battlefield, there’s likely going to be nothing standing in the way of that player securing the victory.
For five mana, three of which must be green, Full Steam Ahead will only make an appearance in the mid-to-late game and will perform best as a match closer. The player who wants to cast this sorcery effectively will want to wait until they’ve got at least a few creatures under their command already, as this card is reliant on the casting player already having a veritable army that is ready to go sicko mode. For the duration of the turn this spell is cast, the casting player will see all of the creatures under their command gain a temporary +2/+2 bonus to their power and toughness. These buffed creatures will also get the condition “trample”, which means that any additional damage left over from their confrontation with an enemy creature will go to the commanding enemy player instead. Lastly, and this is delightfully mean, none of these boosted creatures can be blocked by more than an opposing single creature each. However, casting Full Steam Ahead will fall a little flat if the commanding player only has a couple of creatures to benefit from its effect. If they were to have half a dozen then the opposing player is likely to start sweating bullets if they can’t pull a trick from up their sleeve that round to mitigate all these creatures suddenly boarding a train set for destination destruction.
Experienced Magic The Gathering players will immediately see the game-closing potential of Full Steam Ahead from a quick glance at its description. For everyone else, casting a glance over the art and accompanying flavour text will reliably give the impression of the chaos this card will introduce. Full Steam Ahead’s flavour text reads:
The runaway train tore through the manicured streets of Prosperity, its new conductors revelling in the sheer destruction.
This leads me to wonder if we will see this new location of Prosperity before or after we have merrily torn it up with our frightening locomotive.
If you’re interested in seeing more about this new setting of Thunder Junction with its spellslingers and enchanted bandits, Wizards Of The Coast are continuing their popular transmedia hype build-up over on their YouTube with a series of impressively animated features in the leadup to the set’s release on April 19.
Would you whip together a green deck to take advantage of this wild steamroller? Let us know in the comments or on social media.
