New additions to existing tribes
Advisor: One new card. Possibly of interest in Commander or similar formats, but poor synergy for this tribe.
Angel: Five new cards. A couple of them look good, but this tribe is already so stacked that it probably doesn’t matter.
Ape: One new card. This tribe continues to get strictly chaff and no real reasons to play it.
Berserker: Two new cards. I doubt that they make the cut.
Bird: Five new cards. There’s actually some potential here for a more aggro-leaning build.
Cat: Two new cards and neither one is good.
Cleric: Five new cards. Somewhat awkwardly for this report, the most interesting ones have synergies for tribes they’re not members of, so they’re relegated to supporting roles.
Construct: One new card. With so many amazing utility options in this tribe, the new member is probably not worth running.
Crocodile: One new card. Planeswalker deck card for synergy with Vivien. So that’s a bummer for our purposes, probably.
Demon: Two new cards. I am currently skeptical. One of them is a graveyard-based beater that could be mana-efficient, but ensuring that it has enough value might be too conditional. The other is a huge legendary creature with great abilities, which would be a prime target for cheating onto the battlefield if this tribe didn’t already have a million other options for that exact role.
Dinosaur: Three new cards and all of them are quite good. The prospect of squeezing black in as a color for Dinosaur Tribal remains questionable, but the new red dinosaur is superb.
Dragon: Two new cards. Outside of highlander formats, they don’t make the cut. If you do find yourself in a highlander format with Dragon Tribal, then these new additions are worth consideration.
Drake: One new card. I was pretty confident that “Cerulean Drake” was already the name of a Magic card, but apparently not. I must have been thinking of Cerulean Wyvern, which is now retconned to be a drake. Go figure.
Druid: Three new cards. One is appallingly bad and Wizard of the Coast should be shamed harshly for this affront. The other two are decent. I’d guess there’s a slight chance that one of them is worth running.
Elemental: Twenty-six new cards if I counted that right! Look, core sets have a lot of reprints and this core set also heavily features elementals. With so many new elementals, does the tribe get improved potential for actual Tribal decks? I’m saying probably yes! Some of these are Chandra-themed, which is probably no good. Some are draft fodder, which is right out. Some of the cool ones are black, which rules them out if I’m still correct that “Temur” is the color scheme for a strong Elemental Tribal deck. But there are some efficient creatures here and some tribal synergies too. The new Omnath is especially promising.
Elephant: One new card. It’s interesting and unique, but also a member of a stronger tribe (clerics), and probably too expensive to be competitive. Unfortunate, but hey, this is the Casual Players Alliance. If you are willing to overlook the mana cost and awkward nature of this card, it really might be able to accomplish something.
Elf: Five new cards. Tired of me saying, “Elves don’t need anymore help anyway”? Good, because this set actually gives them something interesting. An unnecessary boost, but it’s potentially a real boost for once. Oh, two of them are bad and two more are borderline-mediocre and not of interest to such a power-packed tribe. But Elvish Reclaimer tutors for Gaea’s Cradle. Amazing.
Elk: One new card. Vivien synergy. Since Tier 5 is so bad that a Vivien synergy might actually be meaningful, I can’t immediately dismiss this as an addition to the tribe. But it is a five-drop, which is just what the tribe does not need.
Fish: One new card. It’s remarkably bad.
Giant: One new card. Doesn’t really fit with what this tribe would usually be going for.
Goblin: Five new cards. They’d probably be fine additions to a weaker tribe and just aren’t strong enough for Tier 1.
Golem: One new card. Interesting ability, but I’d guess probably not viable in this tribe.
Griffin: One new card. Ajani synergy, but only for the bad one in the current Ajani Planeswalker deck. So that’s a disappointment.
Horror: Two new cards. In my estimation, Horror Tribal is already kind of locked in and it would take something really special to change the way an optimal Horror Tribal deck is built.
Hound: One new card. It’s mildly interesting and plays into the tribe’s overall strengths, but without doing anything about its glaring weaknesses.
Human: Sixteen new cards if I counted right. A bunch more humans are in the set, but are reprints. Any good new cards for this tribe? I’m beyond caring! Probably the answer is no, but I don’t want to sift through the eleventy-billion different humans in Magic to figure out which ones are good.
Hydra: Two new cards. One of them is yet another X-costed hydra. The other one is almost certainly the best tribal synergy that this creature type has ever seen. In my original report when I ranked the tribes for the first time, I wrote, “Trying to mentally weigh the advantages against the disadvantages, I am tentatively placing the tribe in Tier 2. And if it’s close, the relatively new role of the tribe as ‘iconic’ ensures that more good hydras should be printed in the near future.” Well, here you go! Congratulations, Hydra Tribal fans.
Insect: One new card. Although I don’t see myself using it anytime soon, it is a bit interesting as an asymmetrical +1/+1 counter hoser. Protection from green also means it is robust against the color most likely to be hosed by it, which is something of a double-whammy. It’s also, um, not really what Insect Tribal needed.
Knight: Eleven new cards. Knight Tribal just got a bit better. The new mythics are unlikely candidates, but the set gives the tribe excellent two-drops and an insanely good one-drop, which is just what it needed.
Lizard: One new card. It’s a one-drop with a relevant ability, which is nice for any low-tier tribe and most of the strong tribes, even.
Merfolk: One new card. Interesting, but not really useful for such a strong tribe.
Minotaur: One new card. It is an interesting and powerful new three-drop, possibly one of the best three-drops this tribe gets. And as I’ve noted in the past, three-drops are not the deficiency that this tribe faces. So it might be a marginal improvement. But it’s not much.
Nightmare: One new card. It’s a Swamp-fueled creature. This is a step in the right direction for Nightmare Tribal, although the boost from War of the Spark is more important and might be a bit tricky to actually utilize.
Octopus: One new card. Limited fodder. The tribe still has no cheap creatures. It’s bad.
Ogre: One new card. It’s fine, but doesn’t shore up the tribe’s weaknesses.
Orc: Two new cards, both black. If WotC are moving orcs more into black to differentiate them from goblins, well, that probably doesn’t even work! Goblins still have better black cards than orcs and almost certainly will for years to come. Also, these are five-drops anyway.