How many cards are in Dragons of Tarkir?

Dragons of Tarkir contains 264 cards: 15 basic lands, 101 commons, 80 uncommons, 53 rares, and 15 mythic rares. Premium foil versions of all cards are randomly inserted into booster packs.

What are the new mechanics in Dragons of Tarkir?

Dragons of Tarkir introduced Bolster (put +1/+1 counters on your weakest creature), Exploit (sacrifice a creature for a bonus effect when a creature enters the battlefield), and Megamorph (an upgrade on morph that gives the creature a +1/+1 counter when it flips face-up). It also continued Dash and Formidable from Fate Reforged, and brought back Rebound.

What is the story of Dragons of Tarkir?

Dragons of Tarkir takes place in an alternate present-day Tarkir after Sarkhan Vol traveled back in time and saved the dragon Ugin from death. As a result, dragons never died out and now dominate the plane. Characters from Khans of Tarkir have altered fates — Zurgo Helmsmasher is now a minor orc called Zurgo Bellstriker, and Narset, who died in the original timeline, survived and became a planeswalker.

What are the five clans and dragonlords in Dragons of Tarkir?

The five clans each align with a dragon brood and dragonlord: Dromoka (W/G, Bolster, Dragonlord Dromoka), Ojutai (W/U, Rebound, Dragonlord Ojutai), Silumgar (U/B, Exploit, Dragonlord Silumgar), Kolaghan (B/R, Dash, Dragonlord Kolaghan), and Atarka (R/G, Formidable, Dragonlord Atarka). Each clan is a parallel to one of the original five Khans of Tarkir wedge clans.

Dragons of Tarkir (DTK): Set Guide & Card List

Q: What sets can Dragons of Tarkir be drafted with?

Dragons of Tarkir was designed to be drafted with Fate Reforged — not with Khans of Tarkir. The typical draft format used two packs of Dragons of Tarkir and one pack of Fate Reforged.

Q: When did Dragons of Tarkir rotate out of Standard?

Dragons of Tarkir rotated out of Standard with Magic Origins in September 2015 — not alongside Khans of Tarkir and Fate Reforged, which rotated earlier. This was due to a one-time change in Standard rotation rules.

Something strange happened to Tarkir. The warrior clans that defined Khans of Tarkir - the Abzan, Jeskai, Sultai, Mardu, and Temur - are still there, but they're not the same. The dragons won. Dragons of Tarkir (DTK), released March 27, 2015, is the set where Sarkhan Vol's meddling in the past reshapes the entire plane, and the result is one of the most dragon-dense sets Magic has ever produced.

What is Dragons of Tarkir?

Dragons of Tarkir is Magic's 67th expansion and the third and final set in the Khans of Tarkir block. It was released on March 27, 2015, and contains 264 cards: 15 basic lands, 101 commons, 80 uncommons, 53 rares, and 15 mythic rares - along with randomly inserted premium (foil) versions of every card in the set.

The set's expansion symbol is a dragon's head, a nod to the dragon's-head symbol that appeared on Scourge (2003) years before. That's fitting, because Wizards designed DTK to be the ultimate dragon set: it contains more than twice as many dragons as any other set before it, with dragons appearing in all five colors.

Format check: Dragons of Tarkir was part of Standard from its release until it rotated out alongside Magic Origins in September 2015 - not alongside Khans of Tarkir and Fate Reforged, which left Standard earlier. This was a deliberate regulation change at the time, so DTK had a slightly longer Standard life than the other sets in its block.

Themes and mechanics

Each of the five clans in DTK is now aligned with one of the five dragon broods, and each pairing comes with its own mechanical identity. Where Khans of Tarkir leaned into three-color wedge combinations, DTK is built around allied color pairs - a meaningful structural shift that carries through into how the set drafts.

| Clan | Dragon Aspect | Colors | Mechanic | Dragonlord | |---|---|---|---|---| | Dromoka (parallels Abzan) | Endurance | W/G | Bolster | Dragonlord Dromoka | | Ojutai (parallels Jeskai) | Cunning | W/U | Rebound | Dragonlord Ojutai | | Silumgar (parallels Sultai) | Ruthlessness | U/B | Exploit | Dragonlord Silumgar | | Kolaghan (parallels Mardu) | Speed | B/R | Dash | Dragonlord Kolaghan | | Atarka (parallels Temur) | Savagery | R/G | Formidable | Dragonlord Atarka |

The clan symbols from Khans of Tarkir are gone. In their place, the five dragon brood icons - first introduced in Fate Reforged - appear as watermarks in card text boxes. These are purely aesthetic and have no rules impact.

The mechanics

Bolster puts +1/+1 counters on your weakest creature, rewarding a creature-heavy strategy and giving the Dromoka clan a resilient, ground-based feel.

Rebound lets you cast a spell again on your next upkeep for free - a returning mechanic that fits the Ojutai clan's theme of learning and reflection. It appeared originally in Rise of the Eldrazi (2010).

Exploit lets a creature ETB (enter the battlefield) trigger sacrifice one of your own creatures for an additional effect. The Silumgar clan leans into this ruthlessly, often sacrificing expendable tokens or creatures that have already done their job.

ETB = "enters the battlefield" - a shorthand for triggered abilities that fire when a permanent comes into play.

Dash lets you cast a creature as a temporary, haste-fueled attacker that returns to your hand at the end of the turn. It first appeared in Fate Reforged and carries over here as the Kolaghan clan's signature move.

Formidable is a keyword condition rather than a keyword action - effects check whether you control creatures with total power 8 or greater. Atarka creatures reward going wide and tall simultaneously.

DTK also features Megamorph, an upgrade on the morph mechanic. Megamorph creatures turn face-up for a cost and get a +1/+1 counter when they do. Boosters even included a special overlay card - a sixteenth card insert - that you could place on face-down Megamorph creatures to track their stats and remind you of the flip cost.

Dragon synergies

Beyond the clan mechanics, DTK leans hard into caring about the Dragon creature type as a category. Many cards reward you for controlling or casting Dragons, playing into the fantasy that you're a dragon-lord's lieutenant rather than just an adventurer wandering a plane.

Limited and draft

Dragons of Tarkir was designed to be drafted with Fate Reforged - not with Khans of Tarkir. The typical draft format was two packs of DTK and one pack of Fate Reforged, which meant Fate Reforged cards provided some enemy-color payoffs while DTK itself pushed allied color pairs.

This is a deliberate contrast to the Khans draft experience, which was a slow three-color format built around enemy-color combinations. DTK draft tends to play slightly faster, with the allied color pairs creating cleaner two-color synergy lanes.

Each clan's mechanic shapes a draft archetype:

W/G Dromoka - go-wide creature strategies that bolster the team
W/U Ojutai - tempo and card advantage through rebounding spells
U/B Silumgar - sacrifice and control using exploit triggers
B/R Kolaghan - aggressive creature strategies built around dash
R/G Atarka - big, stompy creatures pushing the formidable threshold

Notable cards and impact

DTK's prerelease and launch promos give a good snapshot of the set's power-level highlights. Among the cards players could earn at prerelease events were the five Dragonlord cycle - Dragonlord Dromoka, Dragonlord Ojutai, Dragonlord Silumgar, Dragonlord Kolaghan, and Dragonlord Atarka - along with each clan's Command cycle: Dromoka's Command, Ojutai's Command, Silumgar's Command, Kolaghan's Command, and Atarka's Command.

The Buy-a-Box promo was Ojutai's Command, and the Game Day Top 8 prize was Thunderbreak Regent - both signals of cards Wizards expected to see a lot of competitive play.

The launch promo was Deathbringer Regent, and the Game Day participation prize was Scaleguard Sentinels.

Preconstructed decks

DTK launched with five intro packs built around the allied color pairs, each headlined by a rare:

| Intro Pack | Colors | Foil Rare | |---|---|---| | Massed Ranks | W/G | Arashin Sovereign | | Enlightened Mastery | W/U | Pristine Skywise | | Cruel Plots | U/B | Necromaster Dragon | | Relentless Rush | B/R | Boltwing Marauder | | Furious Forces | R/G | Harbinger of the Hunt |

The event deck - Landslide Charge - ran in U/R/G colors.

Lore and setting

Dragons of Tarkir picks up where Fate Reforged left off - but in a very different place.

Sarkhan Vol traveled back in time and saved the dragon Ugin from death at Nicol Bolas's hands. That single act changed everything. In the present-day Tarkir that DTK depicts, dragons never died out. They thrived. They dominate the plane, and the five clans that once stood as independent warrior factions now exist in the shadow of dragon broods.

The differences are jarring if you came in through Khans of Tarkir. Zurgo Helmsmasher, the fearsome khan of the Mardu Horde in the original timeline, is now Zurgo Bellstriker - a diminished, minor orc with no power base to speak of. Narset, who died in the original timeline, is alive here - and has become a planeswalker. Several cards in the set are explicit "crossover" cards that show alternate-timeline versions of characters, letting you hold two versions of the same person side by side.

The Magic Story content for DTK - published in early 2015 - followed characters including Sarkhan Vol, Narset, Ugin, Sorin Markov, Sidisi, Surrak, and others as they navigated this changed world. Stories were written by Kimberly J. Kreines, Doug Beyer, Ari Levitch, Sam Stoddard, Nik Davidson, and Kelly Digges.

Lore aside: Sorin Markov's appearance in the DTK story, in the piece "Sorin's Restoration," connects threads from Fate Reforged about Ugin's fate - a reminder that the Khans block's story is deeply intertwined with the larger Planeswalker arc running through that era of Magic's history.

Prerelease events

The Dragons of Tarkir prerelease ran March 21-22, 2015, and came with one of the more memorable in-store gimmicks of the era: the Tarkir Dragonfury board.

Each participating store received a landscape game board depicting Tarkir, with character pieces that stood upright on it. Players would roll a special spindown life counter - themed to one of the five dragonlords' breath weapons - and try to knock the pieces down. Pieces had point values, and landing the die in the central circle doubled the score. Each player got two rolls, with the board reset between them. Depending on the score achieved, players could earn up to four alternate-art promotional cards: an Evolving Wilds, a Dragon Fodder, a Dragonlord's Servant, and a Foe-Razer Regent.

Players chose a clan before the event and received a seeded prerelease pack aligned to that clan, each containing clan-themed promotional card options from a pool of eight per clan.

Set legacy

Dragons of Tarkir is remembered fondly for a few reasons. The alternate-timeline concept - seeing familiar characters transformed by a changed history - gave the Khans block a memorable narrative payoff. The dragon-as-brood-lord aesthetic landed well, with the five Dragonlords becoming enduring Commander favourites.

The allied color pair structure gave DTK a noticeably different draft feel from Khans of Tarkir, which I think helped it stand on its own rather than just feeling like an extension of the earlier set's format. And the Command cycle - one per clan, each offering four modal choices - became some of the most played and discussed cards of the Standard era, with at least a few seeing play in formats well beyond Standard's rotation.

It's also worth noting that DTK stayed in Standard longer than the other Khans block sets, due to a one-time rotation rule adjustment. That extended shelf life gave its cards more time to define the format - and more time for players to build around the dragons.