Outlaws of Thunder Junction (OTJ) Limited Introduction: The Big Score (BIG) & Special Guests (SPG)

Note: This article was translated from Chinese by AI and may contain errors. Read the original Chinese version.

Outlaws of Thunder Junction (OTJ) will hold its prerelease events on April 12, 2024, and be officially released a week later on April 19, 2024. Want to learn more about the Limited ratings of the individual cards and some potentially fun synergies? Then check out this series of OTJ Limited introductions!

For the mechanics, see this article: OTJ Mechanics Breakdown

Grading Scale

5.0: An unconditional must-pick
4.0: Worth a first pick
3.5: Strong enough, but not necessarily a first pick
3.0: Above average (you will really want it in your final deck)
2.5: Average, maybe around the 6th or 7th pick in a draft
2.01.0: Below average (you would rather not play it than play it)
0.50.0: Unplayable (basically don’t play it; it will only help you lose)

The Big Score (BIG)

14 of the 30 cards in BIG are artifacts, which fits the spirit of Big Score followed by coming home with The Big Score perfectly! But how powerful are all these artifact cards? Let’s take a look!

cephille: 3.0

To unlock the card exiled with hideaway 5, the difficulty is probably keeping three creatures alive. As long as you have three or more creatures with at most two sharing the same power, you can activate its ability to reach the goal! Remember that if you want to interfere with the opponent’s hideaway card, you have to respond to the trigger that puts the counters on it; once they’re placed, it’s too late.

cephille: 3.0

A reprint of Grand Abolisher. Although the two white mana in its cost makes it harder to land on time, as long as it enters successfully it guarantees that the rest of your turn goes undisturbed. Note that its effect only affects activated abilities of artifacts, creatures, and enchantments on the battlefield; activated abilities of creature cards in other zones can’t be locked. The cards in this Limited format that interact with it are Harvester of Misery, Colossal Rattlewurm, and Spinewoods Armadillo.

cephille: 4.0

A three-mana 2/4 body is not easy to remove, and it fits very well into black-white/red-white token-making plans; if you have powerful artifacts, the ceiling of its second ability gets even higher.

cephille: 0.5

A reprint of Rest in Peace. In Limited you don’t need graveyard hate in the main deck; just swap it in from the sideboard if needed. Note that when it enters it exiles all graveyards, including your own.

cephille: 1.5

The effect triggers far too slowly, and it only becomes a little more useful alongside Treasures, Clues, or other artifacts with sacrifice effects. Of course, the jankiest line is that once it lands on turn three, you can pay four mana each turn to draw a card (2+2, sacrificing it and then copying it) and repeatedly trigger the enter/leave effects of artifacts. I’ll leave that to interested friends to develop.

cephille: 2.0

Speak of the combo and it appears! Paired with an Esoteric Duplicator, you can repeatedly sacrifice itself to put out a pile of enormous Constructs. It feels like BIG was designed with a white-blue artifact axis in mind, and it can also pair with the earlier Oltec Matterweaver, but considering how rarely BIG gets opened, it’s fine to just know about it.

cephille: 2.0

If you’re good at making Treasures it will perform well, but it still can’t escape the fate of single cards that need support to become strong. And the odds of opening BIG in Limited are still a real weakness.

cephille: 2.0

Want to enjoy a burst first and then destroy it yourself, bounce it, or give it to the opponent with Shifting Grift
? But if you cast this when you’re behind and can’t use the surge of resources to turn the game around within two turns, it may still be a slow death; if the opponent destroys or bounces it, you will very likely just blow up.

cephille: 4.0

A five-mana 5/4 with menace that enters and casts an Infest that doesn’t include itself; when you’re stuck with it in hand you can also discard it for two mana for a single-target -2/-2, which makes it quite flexible. It isn’t well suited to being played by yourself in a token-flood deck, though.

cephille: 4.0

A four-mana 4/3 Ravenous Rats; afterwards, while it’s on the battlefield, the first time each turn a discard happens, you investigate, including your own looting actions! You can imagine casting a Disinformation Campaign for six mana that also gives you a 4/3, with no need to bounce anything and a chance to keep earning Clues. So strong!

cephille: 3.0

During upkeep you can choose whether to give both sides Treasures; you can use yours first, and attacking out on your turn deals extra damage. If you don’t want the opponent to profit from Treasures, just don’t make any yourself. But people are always greedy, and sometimes you may lose the big picture over a small gain.

cephille: 3.5

Entering and dealing 2 damage to any target isn’t a bad deal, and when you can put out lots of Treasures or other artifacts, it’s a one-man army by itself. Although it still needs an artifact theme to support it, its effect is immediate.

cephille: 0.0

If it could be activated at instant speed it would be a 4.0 worth a first pick. But a sorcery-speed activation timing always lets your opponent earn a bunch of resources, so I don’t recommend playing this card.

cephille: 1.5

A more win-more card that doesn’t help much when you’re behind.

cephille: 0.0

It probably wasn’t designed for Limited; there are better choices for blowing up artifacts, and destroying a land for five mana isn’t critical either.

cephille: 3.0

Besides being a decent three-mana mana-fixing artifact, each turn you cast a colored spell you gain life equal to the number of colors. Considering how many multicolor cards this set has, it should help you ramp while pulling your life total back. If you open it in a more midrange deck, use it!

cephille: 4.0

A four-mana 5/5 trampler that enters and gives you two Foods; sacrificing Foods when attacking also earns cards, and even if you do neither it can gain you 6 life. A very strong card!

cephille: 0.0

Compared to the immediate effect of Explosive Vegetation finding two lands to put onto the battlefield, this enchantment may only perform better at the end of the third turn after it enters, and although you choose the five lands yourself, which land enters at end of turn is still random… What, you picked five Forests? Then forget I said anything I think it’s better not to play it.

Since you asked so sincerely,
I shall graciously tell you!
To protect the multiverse from destruction, to preserve the peace of the world,
To pursue love and truth through evil, the cute and charming villains!
Jace! Vraska!
We are the SPY FAMILY who dash along the Omenpaths,
White Hole, a white tomorrow awaits us!
That’s right, meow!

cephille: 3.5

A Blade Splicer with a higher ceiling: as long as she survives she keeps pumping up your creature tokens. But green may not be the main color of token-flood decks, so mixing in white or red may be a necessary choice.

cephille: 4.5

Even if it’s removed the moment it appears, it’s still seven mana to draw two and gain 6 life, plus using up at least two removal spells from the opponent! A huge gain, and it has two lives. A deck that can accelerate it out is its best home! Remember that when it dies it comes back as a copy of an artifact, so some blue artifact-copying tricks might work very well with it!

cephille: 4.0

If it isn’t removed, you earn at least a card every turn, but be careful: if you have many types of permanents on your battlefield, it’s very profitable, but your library will be consumed very fast, and its effect is mandatory, so don’t have too much fun and mill yourself out!

cephille: 1.5

A sideboard card in Limited; swap it in when the opponent has lots of tokens. I added 0.5 points because it can cycle, but it’s really not a strong Limited card.

cephille: 3.5

A shrunken, weakened version of Umezawa’s Jitte. Of course, this Jitte with a bunch of small flyers should let you grow while attacking, every now and then make the whole family unable to block and keep attacking, and occasionally untap a land for acceleration, so happy! Facing an opponent who plays a creature on turn one and equips the Jitte on turn two and starts attacking, the game begins to tilt their way, so it’s a card with a very high threat level when it comes out early! However, in builds whose curve isn’t sharp enough or whose creatures lack evasion, the Jitte becomes much weaker, and don’t forget a Jitte with no charge counters is just a waste of equip mana!

cephille: 4.0

Cast for three mana and equip for three mana to make a creature with +3 power and vigilance, giving each of your small creatures in the mid to late game the right to join combat; don’t forget that besides acceleration it’s also a sacrifice outlet, and provided all your creatures are past summoning sickness, whenever you can equip you can pay three mana to sacrifice your whole family of creatures! As for whether that is actually powerful, don’t ask me.

cephille: 4.0

Once it enters for six mana, at the beginning of each of your combats you can draw an extra card, and exiling a creature or artifact from your hand lets you make a 3/3 artifact creature. Do the latter whenever you need to, but at least an extra card in hand each turn is very attractive, and it also gives you a plan B of winning with a mass of 3/3s. It should perform quite well in midrange decks and is worth a first pick.

Cards named Nexus always give people a start! Looking at that pile of Nexus of Fate, Inkmoth Nexus…

cephille: 5.0

Once equipped, +2/+2 usually gives an advantage in creature combat, and it can’t be removed by instant/sorcery removal; when it connects with the opponent you can make a Treasure and copy the next instant or sorcery you cast this turn. A bomb among bombs; if it isn’t bomby enough, it can only be because you have no creatures.

cephille: 1.0

Just bring it in from the sideboard to lock out the opponent’s deadly creature ETB abilities. Remember that it affects the whole battlefield, so when you board it in, consider taking out some ETB creatures that aren’t strong enough and swapping in other curve fillers to avoid jamming yourself.

cephille: 3.5

Although it can keep making Blood, Clue, or Food tokens, for a five-mana card it’s a bit too slow; you need a stable early board or a dominant position, and then connecting this card lets you crush the opponent with sheer volume of resources. When you’re behind, this card still has a chance to rescue you from a crisis, but it may not help much; but at least when both sides are in topdeck mode, drawing this card lets you pull ahead of the opponent in one go.

Notably, this is a card that links with many themes, and I believe it will be a great five-mana card that transforms your deck.

• An artifact enters
• Sacrifice an artifact
• Draw a card
• Discard a card
• Sacrifice three artifact tokens with different names to find Mindslaver in your library and put it onto the battlefield. Congratulations, you win!

cephille: 2.0

With enough artifacts it’s a decent looting land, but because you must discard a card as the price, it feels more comfortable when X >= 3. If you don’t have enough artifacts, don’t play it.

cephille: 2.5

It enters tapped and you choose a color; tapping it produces mana of the chosen color, which can help fix the colors you need, but when choosing pay attention to your upcoming game plan, so you don’t pick wrong and jam yourself. For the second ability to give you acceleration, you need at least three monocolored permanents of different colors. If you have this card, keep an eye out for cards that can put out the third or even fourth color you don’t have, to make your mana smoother!

Playing white-black, with a black monocolored permanent on the battlefield, play a white Prosperity Tycoon to make a red 1/1 Mercenary token, and you can activate the land’s second ability to produce black, white, and red mana.

Special Guests (SPG)

cephille: 2.5

Little sis is a bit awkward in OTJ Limited: if the only equipment available is Gold Pan or Lavaspur Boots, that’s her score; but if your deck has equipment worth playing such as Sword of Wealth and Power, Assimilation Aegis, or even super-strong equipment like Lotus Ring, her score can go up to 4.0.

cephille: 3.5

A two-mana instant that bounces, or a flash 3/1 flyer, is very flexible either way; I would really like to be able to use it in blue decks!

cephille: 2.0

Not meant for Limited. Of course, if the opponent has powerful creatures or artifacts you’d like to borrow, you can swap it in from the sideboard to try, but casting it for five mana usually costs more than those creatures/artifacts themselves.

cephille: 4.0

Super card advantage: whenever your opponent’s creatures or yours die, you can draw a card each turn, and if it isn’t removed, your hand-size advantage will quickly overwhelm the opponent.

cephille: 3.0

The ability is very strong, but only if it can connect with a player.

cephille: 0.0

Unless you open something like Bristly Bill, Spine Sower, you probably shouldn’t put Scapeshift in your Limited deck.

cephille: 2.0

A four-mana counterspell with four colored requirements that also gives you a flash 2/2 creature. If you can cast it, you can make a tempo trade, but the colored requirement is really too heavy.

cephille: 3.0

Limited today has a lot of drawing and looting, so stopping a rummage the opponent does on their own turn feels great. At worst it’s a flash 3/1 that you can swap for a ground x/3 for four mana.

cephille: 3.0

Considering this set doesn’t have many creatures with toughness 1, it’s mainly used to deter the opponent’s 1/1 Mercenary tokens from attacking; it can also finish off creatures after combat damage. Note that when you block the opponent’s 3/3 with a 2/2 first strike/double strike creature, your creature will still trade and die, and you can’t use this land to kill the 3/3 after the first-strike damage resolves.

cephille: 3.0

A land-finding card; if you open it in Limited, play it!

Conclusion

BIG and SPG, which replace The List, have a third of their cards reinforcing the artifact theme, and in SPG there aren’t many overly broken cards aside from Morbid Opportunist, or Notion Thief in extreme situations, so the cards worth watching are still the strong ones in BIG, especially the impact of the three super-strong pieces of equipment on Limited.

This time there are a total of 40 BIG and SPG cards

• The average score is 2.7
• The highest score is 5.0
• The lowest score is 0.0