Last updated on April 29, 2025
Xho Cai, Flickering Talon | Illustration by Jake Murray
Wizards of the Coast dumped the entirety of the upcoming Alchemy: Tarkir set on its YouTube channel last week, courtesy of host Amy the Amazonian, a well-established content creator and Brawl enthusiast. The 30-card Arena-only supplement to Tarkir: Dragonstorm previewed everything players have come to expect from Alchemy releases: tons of powerhouse cards across all rarities, combining the mechanics of TDM with digital-only mechanics like seek and spellbooks. One card really got heads turning though: Xho Cai, Flickering Talon.
The legendary bird monk is pushed so far it's basically falling off a cliff, but that sure looks like a lot of blue in the art of a Boros card… almost like it was supposed to be a blue card too.
source: Private Discord Server
Oh, oops. Looks like the card that was previewed to players was missing an entire colored mana symbol in its casting cost!
The Real Deal
As confirmed by WotC via Discord, this new Xho Cia, Flickering Talent card was previewed with a blue symbol absent from its mana cost. While that's an easy fix for a digital-only card, it's probably not clear to everyone who freaked out about it that the card they'll be getting on Arena this Tuesday is different from the card that appeared in the YouTube video. The actual card will have a casting cost of , with everything else that was previewed intact. Hey, still eligible for Tiny Leaders!
We've seen typos on cards in the past, or other small errors that were corrected between a card's preview and its full release. Remember Journey to the Oracle (the back half of Jadzi, Oracle of Arcavios)? The sorcery side of the borderless MDFC was previewed as a 3-mana card, though the actual card costs . That was fixed before going to print–the cost likely got booted up in development at some point, after a preview version was already sent to someone.
Ravenous Pursuit is another preview blunder that released in Alchemy: Innistrad. It was originally previewed as an instant but was confirmed to be a sorcery and subsequently changed before players could get their hands on it. Digital Magic makes these sorts of errors easy to fix, though one might say missing an entire colored mana symbol is a pretty big miss regardless.
Ok, So It's a Jeskai Card…
Jeskai Ascendancy | Illustration by Dan Scott
With the preview error out of the way, that leaves the question: How good is this thing for instead of just ? Well, certainly not as insane as it looks as a 2-mana card! For just 2 mana Xho Cai could set up some ridiculous turns early in the game thanks to its aggressive statline, evasion, and the cost reduction it offered to your next non-creature spell.
The “joke” here is that Xho Cai would make your next spell cheaper, allowing you to double-spell easily, trigger the flurry ability, and blink Xho Cai itself to then make another spell cheaper to cast. Note that it doesn't affect “the next noncreature spell you cast this turn,” just the next spell period, which carries over turns. And of course you could always aim the blink effect at other creatures you control, all while beating down with a hastey 2/3 flier for 2. That entire package seemed a bit too pushed, and as it turns out, that's not really what the card was supposed to be.
The original design was something akin to Lightning Stormkin, Goblin Electromancer, and Soulherder wrapped up into one card. With in its mana cost you're now talking about a 3-mana 2/3 hastey flier (much more reasonable, a la Skyknight Legionnaire) with a more committal mana cost. The correct Jeskai version is a much more balanced card, and actually makes sense in the context of the Alchemy drop (each clan gets at least one 3-color card from this Alchemy batch).
The Bottom Line
Jewel Mine Overseer | Illustration by Elizabeth Peiró
At the end of the day, Xho Cai is a digital-only card, so it's really only applicable to Arena-only formats anyway. While the Boros version of the card looked insane, it was only ever going to affect Timeless, Historic, Alchemy, and Brawl anyway, so maybe it would've been fine in those high-power environments. Being a Jeskai card lowers its Constructed viability, and it's no longer (read: was never) eligible in RW Brawl decks.
It is, however, a competitive Jeskai commander for Brawl for people trying to do blink shenanigans. There's also a chance that it makes it into one of Arena's various Cubes, though being a 3-color card means Chromatic Cube is its best home. Though even the straight Boros version would have a tough time dethroning Jewel Mine Overseer as far as Alchemy Boros cards are concerned.
The correct iteration is still a pretty cool card. Maybe not as cool as a stampede of Siege Rhinos, but clever nonetheless. It'll be a cool tool for Arena players to experiment with. And hey, if you want to know more about the character of Xho Cai, Wizards put out a lore guide on the legends of Tarkir: Dragonstorm (Alchemy characters included)!
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1 Comment
Glad to see that Xho Cai, the prolific and accomplished Jeskai student, is in fact a Jeskai card.
I do wish some of these cards could make it to print and she would def be one of them.
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