Cat tribal gained some serious umph with the addition of tribal land, an amazing dual land, and another tribal anthem effect.
Unclaimed Territory is most reliable when you literally only have creatures, and your non-creature spells are artifacts. It's frustrating when you are holding a spell in your hand and you can't play it because all you have is a land that can't produce color unless it's a creature. Sunpetal Grove is incredibly easy to play untapped which makes it a very reliable source of either color. Vanquisher's Banner gives you more power and toughness, but also much needed card draw. With such a low curve, you'll run out of cards pretty easily. The banner ensures that you are able to just keep getting wider. Scattered Groves is fine, and cycling gives it a some use later to replace itself for a creature you may have been looking for. On turns 3 or later you still have the ability to play 1-2 creatures even with it coming in tapped, you just don't want to be staring at a pair of these in your opening hand. Thankfully it is both a Forest and a Plains so it still enables the Grove. Hashep Oasis and Shefet Dunes are the only deserts as they are only intended to be used as pre-combat buffs and usually only once to finish the game. More deserts would mean less reliable drops with the Grove, and there really isn't a need for more.
One drops include the simple Sacred Cat and Wily Bandar. The Cat is slightly better since it gains you some life, but the Bandar eventually can be a sweet indestructible blocker. I do still like the Cat as a blocker since it has a one cost Embalm to basically bring it back and it still has lifelink.
Two drops start getting more useful with Adorned Pouncer for it's Double Strike that is even better once Eternalized. This is also incredibly powerful once you get out a Regal Caracal. A 5/5 Double Strike with Lifelink is just bonkers. Feral Prowler is on the other side playing defense and draws you a card when it dies. 3 toughness is nice to stand in front of the many 2/2's and 2/3's out there.
The three drops start to shape the rest of the game, starting with the Monuments making your creatures cost less. Oketra's Monument on turn 3 will let you play Regal Caracal on turn 4. That makes the Cats you played on turns one and two even better and brings two more 2/2 lifelinkers with it. Sure, you get a 1/1 non-cat with vigilance. Whatever. Rhonas's Monument doesn't make any big five cost plays cheaper, but it does take the rest of the 3 drops down to two while also pumping a creature and giving it Trample. This is HUGE because sometimes you'll be able to play 2-3 creatures and get up to 6 extra power and trample for up to 3 creatures (creatures that have lifelink btw). Prowling Serpopard makes sure your cats don't get countered, and since everything you play (with few exceptions) are cats you shouldn't ever have to worry about counter spells. It's a 4/3 for 3 (or 2) which isn't terrible. Also, it becomes a 5/4 for 2 with lifelink so it's pretty good.
Pouncing Cheetah
is the closest thing you have to a combat "trick" because it has flash. Depending on your board dropping in a cat by surprise can do a lot of things, especially if you have a Regal Caracal and this guy is going to have 4 power with lifelink. Finally, Pride Sovereign is a cat that gets bigger for each other cat you have and can even make more cats. This guy is no joke, and giving him trample with a simple Monument trigger by playing a creature that also gives him more damage is sweet. Add in lifelink from the Caracal and you should be in really good shape.
There are no 4 drop cats.
Five cost has the most important cat, the Regal Caracal. Dropping in with two tokens is one thing, but buffing the rest of your cats and giving them all lifelink is just stupid. Most big lords with a major upswing are the stuff of Legends, but this guy is just a Cat. This means you can play as many of them as you want. Silly. Vanquisher's Banner as discussed previously does a lot and is worth the five cost to play it. Buffing a swarm of lifelinking creatures is never bad, but letting you draw cards when you play more of them is sweet. This can chain drop multiple creatures per turn while hopefully triggering Rhonas's Monument. Big finish.
The sideboard allows you to take out some cats and put in some answers including a few board wipes like Fumigate which can turn around a race in your favor since rebuilding is fairly easy. Settle the Wreckage has shown to be a powerful one sided sweeper despite giving your opponent extra land.
Watchers of the Dead are mostly great against graveyard strategies, but being a colorless 2/2 "bear" (bear-cat?) means you have something to play no matter what kind of mana you run into. Sometimes it's good enough to just be a Cat.
Burn and Control are countered by Shapers' Sanctuary since every time they hit your stuff with spot removal or anything else you get to draw a card. Verdant Rebirth does the same thing but less transparently except it also returns the creature to your hand. It can also be used as a combat trick after blocking or becoming blocked by something that would kill your creature. The only other "trick" is Rallying Roar to take what looks like a desperate act by swinging out and leaving yourself vulnerable and turns around by untapping and buffing your creatures. This is mostly going to be useful in a wide aggro mirror, but on defense you can also stack block to kill bigger things and hopefully gain back a bunch of life.
A couple of Demystify and Slice in Twain are there to get rid of the new flip cards from Ixalan that do really powerful things once they flip over.
That's basically it, Cat tribal plain and simple. I doubt we'll see more cats in Rivals of Ixalan, but there may be some honorary cats or artifacts worth adding in.
