A couple of weeks ago,Magic: The Gatheringrevealed a new card type coming in its new expansion, Phyrexia: All Will Be One.Atraxa, Grand Unifier confirmed the new card type is called “battle,“with fans speculating it’ll be a reworked version of the “skirmish” mechanic that was cut from 2019’s War of the Spark expansion.
Atraxa also did us the benefit of listing what Magic considers its essential card types, and fans noticed that “tribal” wasn’t on the list. Tribal hasn’t been around for a while (it was last spotted in Rise of the Eldrazi), but it’s apparently still got its adherents despite being retired as a card type.
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In case you’re new to Magic, Tribal was a card type introduced in the Lorwyn block (technically it was first spotted in Future Sight, but we’re going to overlook that) as a means of conferring a creature typing to non-creature cards like enchantments and artifacts. Tribal cards would all correspond with Magic’s creature “tribes,” such as elves, faeries, giants, goblins, merfolk, rebels, warriors, and wizards. It stuck around for a while, but it was eventually retired in Innistrad when it was revealed that Magic R&D found tribalsimply added a lot of words to cards for little mechanical gain.
You can be forgiven for thinking tribal is dead given the fact it hasn’t been seen in years, and Atraxa seemed to confirm this. Head Magic designer Mark Rosewater recently confirmed, however, that tribal is still technically alive.
“FYI, I’ve seen a few people questioning whether tribal is being removed for the game primarily because of Atraxa’s new card not referencing it, though it should be noted her reminder text says ‘are card types’ not ‘are the card types’,“wrote Rosewater. “It’s still a card type.”
We should note that this doesn’t necessarily mean that tribal will return in future sets, but it does mean that if you run tribal cards in your Atraxa Commander deck, you’ll snag an extra card using its effect.
Phyrexia: All Will Be Onearrives on February 10.
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