Outlaws of Thunder Junction (OTJ) Limited Guide — Blue

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

Outlaws of Thunder Junction (OTJ) holds its prerelease events on April 12, 2024, and officially releases a week later on April 19, 2024. Want to learn more about individual card ratings in limited and some possibly fun synergies? Then check out this series of OTJ limited guides!

For the mechanics, see this article: OTJ Mechanics Explained

Rating Scale

5.0: Unconditional must-pick
4.0: First-pick quality
3.5: Strong enough, but not necessarily a first pick
3.0: Above average (you’ll really want it in your final deck)
2.5: Average, maybe around 6th or 7th pick in a draft
2.0 to 1.0: Below average (you’d rather not play it than play it)
0.5 to 0.0: Unplayable (basically never play it; it will only help you lose)

Blue

Jru: 1.5

Although connecting is a win whether or not it’s saddled, that assumes you connect while you have suitable cards in your graveyard. In combat this guy is just a Grizzly Bears, with no built-in way to improve its ability to get through. It isn’t easy in this set to clear the way for your other creatures either, and its creature type doesn’t even count toward Outlaws, so at times it may perform worse than a vanilla creature.

Jru: 3.0

Blue’s approach in limited this set is tightly bound to the Plot ability, but Plot is a design that favors long-game play, so the need for defense early on is especially high. This Crab does very well on that front, and it comes with some trading ability, so it isn’t just a plain wall. Its card filtering also offsets, to a degree, Plot’s side effect of easily leaving you with nothing to do on a turn. I expect it to be an important early curve card for the Plot approach.

Jru: 2.0

With the Outlaw type bonus, a 4/4 body for four mana is relatively playable. If your deck has a lot of counterspells or combat tricks, where casting timing matters a lot, this flash is quite nice, but the sorcery-speed Plot cost may make it harder to hold up mana, and you could instead get burned by this enters-tapped ability when you urgently need a blocker.

Jru: 3.0

With both the Outlaw type and the commit-a-crime theme bonuses, a 2/4 body for three mana is solid, and it is the kind of early defensive body the blue theme needs most. Milling has always been quite deadly in limited.

Jru: 2.0

Basically a curve filler. It can use Plot to improve deck synergy a bit, and a 4-power flier can still apply some pressure.

Jru: 3.5

This set has quite a lot of Outlaw creatures, so as long as you land this enchantment it should be easy to gain a wave of value. Still, it requires the right creature type and the right spell-casting order, so it isn’t a bomb that a single card can brainlessly rake in value with all the way.

Jru: 3.0

Although its power growth ceiling is low in limited, it is at least a low-cost flying vigilance creature that doubles as a looter, which is acceptable for the two-drop curve.

Jru: 2.5

A card that fits the Plot approach, easily making the equivalent of a two-mana 3/3 flier. The surveil mana sink contributes some stability once the game goes long, and it is also a reasonable outlet for extra mana when you want to turn it into a creature but have no Plot cards.

Jru: 1.0

I avoid bounce-style spot removal that loses value the more you use it whenever I can. The surveil 1 that comes with the Desert is better than nothing, but really, if the opponent has some bomb you can’t deal with, consider it in a sideboard game.

Jru: 3.5

In a long game it can earn a very high ceiling, but it has no ability to take part in combat itself, and Plot affects the board a turn later, so how to survive until it pays off is a test. Ward {2} making it not so easy to remove is a nice bonus.

Jru: 2.0

The ceiling can be very high, but it also demands a lot from the board. When used as a protection spell it may really be just a protection spell, and the creature-reset ability is the one that more easily gets the opponent when blocking.

Jru: 3.5

With both the Outlaw type and Plot theme bonuses, and it is a super payoff card for Plot. Getting two tokens is basically enough value, and if they come in the same turn it’s a huge win. Even with Plot’s help, though, casting 3 spells in the same turn still isn’t that easy, and its demands on setup keep it from being rated a top bomb.

Jru: 2.5

Another entry in the Wind Drake super-evolution line. The cost reduction ability is strong, but this set happens to make playing Draw-Go quite difficult, so most of the time it will be just a pure flier with a solid body.

Jru: 3.0

The last few sets have really kept overturning my understanding of a “one-mana common creature”… It is a one-mana flier and also a looting mana sink, and when it comes down mid-game its enter-the-battlefield ability can clear the way for teammates to push tempo. Also, since it can be cast for one mana at any time, it supports the cast-multiple-spells-in-a-turn theme. And finally, don’t forget this guy commits a crime when it enters.

Jru: 1.5

Passable as blue removal that doesn’t lose card advantage, but because it doesn’t fully solve the problem and it’s a sorcery, it’s hard to rate highly, and the other mode, granting evasion, is also on the expensive side.

Jru: 3.5

A creature equipped with this equipment wins big once it connects, but the equipment itself gives the equipped creature no bonus, so how to connect is the problem. When building, pay attention to whether you have enough evasive creatures. As long as you can start connecting, you should be able to snowball to a win.

Jru: 2.5

If you gain cards, it’s a pretty good curve play, but if it doesn’t come together, it’s a below-average creature.

Jru: 3.5

Just a very, very solid, quality flier for the air war. Nothing more to say.

Jru: 3.0

Used well, it is removal that can gain you cards.

Jru: 2.5

Its body is a bit flimsy, but the fact that it can easily become an unblockable card-draw engine is still quite attractive. To keep it running, remember to include more cards that can commit crimes.

Jru: 3.5

Although the cost goes up after Plotting, the payoff is also big. It may be the strongest source for blue in this set when it wants to compete with others on creature size.

Jru: 2.5

Even though creatures like Man-o’-War have always been good in limited, only being able to bounce tapped creatures is a bit awkward… Luckily the creature type is right, which salvages a bit of its score.

Jru: 2.5

Neither half is impressive on its own, but put together for added flexibility it’s still usable, and sometimes you still need a counterspell to save the day against certain bombs.

Jru: 2.0

Surveil 3 is nothing special; surveil 3 and draw 3 is a god card, provided you can empty your hand. Although resources are easily tight in limited, actually getting your hand size to 0 is not that easy, and what’s more, there are some key answers you wouldn’t want to squander on scrubs. Fortunately this guy can Plot itself too, so you can put it in exile in advance, then replenish your fighting force right after the hand swap with your opponent is done.

Jru: 2.0

The benchmark common creature for the cast-multiple-spells-in-a-turn approach, but awkwardly this guy isn’t an Outlaw itself, and by the time you’ve stockpiled enough to trigger it with Plot, its body may already be hard-pressed to affect the board. However, in a low-curve aggro approach, if you can manage to cast two spells in one turn for two turns in a row, then it’s a decent payoff.

Jru: 2.5

A Divination that has a chance of costing less still performs well in limited.

Jru: 2.0

For the Plot approach, its impact on the board or on tempo is fairly limited, and it doesn’t even have the Outlaw type, but for aggro, tapping the opponent’s creatures helps the attacking tempo more.

Jru: 2.5

The ability to swap artifacts and enchantments has less room to shine in this limited format; in most cases it’s just a four-mana swap of control of one creature. The ceiling for trading a small one for a big one is high, but often the creatures on the board aren’t necessarily worth a card to swap, so don’t think of it as ordinary removal. Still, keeping one around to deal with an opponent’s bomb or high-curve effect is pretty good.

Jru: 3.5

A Snapcaster Mage that changed careers from wizard to drifter (Outlaw) in the adventuring party. The Plot design happens to solve the problem of the original Snapcaster Mage not having enough mana in one turn: even if there’s no suitable instant or sorcery in the graveyard right now, you can Plot it out first and call it when the graveyard has a suitable play. As long as you’ve picked up enough instant-speed removal, this is a card advantage point I’d like to see. Also, casting it from exile and giving flashback to an instant or sorcery lets you make two spells from a single card, which also helps cast-multiple-spells-in-a-turn cards work.

Jru: 2.0

If you can steadily keep committing crimes, it’s a nice payoff that does both offense and defense, but most of the time it should be filler.

Jru: 1.0

A card that only delivers value on offense, but even with the -3/-0 ability, a 2/1 going out is still far too likely to be a one-way trip, and it’s even doubtful whether it can make a meaningful creature trade with the opponent.

Jru: 1.5

In limited, with this kind of “everyone has fun together” card, it’s really hard to say who comes out ahead in the end, and you also have to consider the cost of casting it yourself. To use this card, you’d best have a deck whose hand tends to empty out faster than the opponent’s, and that has more cards that want to cast multiple spells in a turn. The only silver lining is that this guy has Plot, so it won’t be like the old days where you spend all your mana, draw seven new cards, and the opponent gets to have fun first.

Jru: 4.0

An extremely hard-to-answer high-power flash flier at a modest cost that puts great pressure on the opponent. On the turn you flash it in, you also have a chance to get a free trade with a small, advantageous creature.

Jru: 3.0

The cost is a bit high, but still acceptable. With flash plus lose abilities, it’s nearly equivalent to instant-speed removal in limited.

Jru: 2.5

It would be hard not to have Outlaw creatures in this set, and upgrading to -4/-0 is quite easy. Although it’s a combat-trick-type effect, because it costs only one mana and draws a card back, it easily becomes one-mana removal that gains you cards. Also, one-mana draw-one supports the cast-multiple-spells approach, and targeting a creature commits a crime, so it can be called the starting point for the operation of decks with several different approaches.

Jru: 2.5

Although I said earlier that limited doesn’t much like bounce-style plays, if it’s an instant that bounces multiple targets, the evaluation improves a bit: when your own permanents are among the targets, the cost is reduced, so while disrupting the opponent it also doubles as a more flexible protection spell, or lets you reuse your own cards to boost your spell count and enter-the-battlefield abilities.

Jru: 3.0

Each of the three modes is usable on its own, and combined, as long as you can do two of them it’s basically a big win.

Jru: 2.5

Plot happens to solve the pain point of creatures like Clone: getting stuck in hand early with no good creature to copy, then coming down late when a quality creature finally shows up, which is slow and makes awkward use of mana. Now you can Plot it for three and set it aside, and cast it for free the moment you have a quality creature to copy, instantly widening your board advantage. It also keeps the Outlaw type, so it can enjoy more synergies.

Jru: 4.0

The beauty of this card is that its first two abilities are both [+1]. Continual card filtering or Plotting helps quite a bit with consistency, and the second ability’s Plot in particular is exactly the core of how some blue approaches run.

Remember you can activate the second ability without actually plotting anything: when your hand is too good to loot or you have no hand and don’t want to effectively mill yourself, just activate the second ability for nothing. As long as you can stall until you can use the [-6] and cast two spells, that’s basically enough value.

Conclusion

The officially designated limited themes for each color pair in this set are:

• White-blue: didn’t cast a spell this turn
• Black-blue: commit a crime
• Red-blue: cast multiple spells in one turn
• Green-blue: Plot with high mana value

As you can see, apart from blue-black, the themes of the other color pairs all run almost entirely on Plot, so when picking blue material in this set’s limited, if I consider things from the theme level, I care more about Plot-related cards and about the survival tools that help you get through the early Plot gap.

This time there are 40 blue cards in total

• The average score is 2.6
• The highest score is 4.0
• The lowest score is 1.0