Magic’s newest expansion takes us back to the plane of Tarkir, as dragonstorms rage out of control after the departure of Ugin and the creation of the Omenpaths. A new set means new mechanics, and we’ve got some good ones. A new set means new cards, and we’re continuing our review with the white, blue, and black cards.
Tarkir: Dragonstorm will release to Magic: the Gathering Online and Arena on April 8th, 2025, and to the tabletop on April 11th.
Last time we covered the multicolor cards, and this time as usual we won’t be looking at everything, but what we will be looking at we’ll be looking at primarily but not exclusively with an eye for Commander play.
Anafenza, Unyielding Lineage
Loxi: I really like this as a support piece for aristocrats, but I don’t know if I’d really want this as a commander. The flexibility to go both tall and wide (becoming the ideal human body) is honestly a nice little bit of tech that can sometimes help you get enough damage for a kill with some cheeky evasion. Notably, I think there’s good value in decks like
Millicent, Restless Revenant or Kykar, Wind’s Fury as they both have synergies with all parts of this card, including the Spirit typing.
BPhillipYork: Pretty solid value generation for aristocrats decks, or Impact Tremors focused creatures enter decks.
FromTheShire: No per turn limit makes this much better, as does first strike. Not going to be a commander but not a bad include in the 99, and could have some legs in Standard.
Saffgor: I am a sucker for making monocolor Legendary Creatures meant for 60 card formats work in Commander, and the new Anafenza is no exception. Anafenza enables a lot of combos that use Nim Deathmantle alongside other cards which produce tokens and a sac outlet, and the fact she has flash means you can theoretically set this up on the player to your rights’ end step. Not the best, but not nothing.
Clarion Conqueror
Loxi: Evasion helps hatebears a lot since getting chip damage when you can really helps close out games, so that’s a nice touch here. It’s a nice tech piece in 5c Dragons as well if you need a way to shut down artifacts or resilient super friends decks.
BPhillipYork: A solid hatebear that locks out a lot of strategies and is also quite a bit heftier at 3/3 flier vs the standard 3 for a 2/2 nothing.
FromTheShire: Excellent hate piece in pretty much any format that is willing to pay for it, there are always a ton of each of the three types floating around, and this doesn’t have a mana ability rider like we frequently see soooo…. Plus it’s a 3 mana Dragon, and if you’re trying to get spicy with Sarkhan, Dragon Ascendant and Mox Jasper that can certainly be relevant.
Saffgor: The card is fine, but I’m mostly annoyed that this isn’t part of the rare dragon Omen cycle, would it have killed them to add in some middling alternate mode?
Descendant of Storms
BPhillipYork: Probably too expensive be worth paying 2 for create creatures over and over unless you have a related trick. Probably much more of a standard card given it’s a beefcake 2/1 for 1 status with a solid value generating ability on top.
FromTheShire: Kind of a mirror of Hired Claw, which is a staple in a lot of the aggressive decks right now. It remains to be seen if a white weenie deck emerges or if this doesn’t make the cut because say prowess decks are better, but I could absolutely see this getting played in aggro lists.
Duty Beyond Death
Loxi: In a vacuum, I think this card is solid as a board protection spell, but I do think Unbreakable Formation and Flawless Maneuver edge this out for me personally. 2 mana is pretty nice though, and extra board presence is nothing to scoff at. I think this shines in decks that go real wide with tokens so the sacrifice is less meaningful and the counters are more impactful. Good stuff!
BPhillipYork: Pretty solid defense vs Wrath of God and other board clears and also generates a +1/+1 counter, so you can easily just drop this prior to attacking to deal more damage or generate a lot of counters if that is what you need.
FromTheShire: Absolutely excellent for creature decks, especially super wide token ones. 2 mana to save your whole team and hand out an anthem? Incredible.
Elspeth, Storm Slayer
Loxi: A token doubler that also makes tokens is really great. A planeswalker that can protect itself and generate value right when you cast it is really great. All together? It’s a solid spell, a more explosive form of a token doubler that’s more fragile, but if you can make use of the window you’ll have her in play, she’ll wreck face.
BPhillipYork: Well a token doubling token generator that can also do creature control and or pump and given out evasion seems really but it’s a planeswalker, so an easy target, and a rather large investment.
FromTheShire: This is going to be one of the more expensive cards in the set hands down, wildly popular ability on wildly popular planeswalking character? Easy money. Perfect for when you don’t want to mess around with those pesky 2 card value engines, this does it all right out of the box. Demands removal immediately or she will end games quickly.
Saffgor: Token doublers are consistently overrated, but the fact this one does something immediately helps a ton. Still has a massive target on her back, but making blockers and getting rid of things which threaten Elspeth means this could have a home.
Osseous Exhale
Loxi: Behold! Darkchil…. oh sorry wrong game. It’s overwhelmingly fine, it reads similarly to something like Lightning Helix but a bit more restrictive. I can see it finding a spot in Firesong and Sunspeaker if you have other Dragons to leverage.
BPhillipYork: Behold, my deck is full of bad cards, like this one I’m casting, but wait, there’s more, I have dragons in my deck, which are almost bad cards. Oh wait, there’s even more, the behold effect is awful.
FromTheShire: What if your Lightning Strike did 2 extra damage and could possibly gain you a key couple of life? Not being able to go face is obviously a downside, but there are a whole lot of scary things like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse or most of the Overlords that this hits that Elspeth’s Smite or the many burn spells don’t. I suspect the behold is not something worth building around, but as a straight up removal spell I’ll be playing at least a few of these once Get Lost rotates.
Sage of the Skies
FromTheShire: Most likely you’re looking at casting this after an Opt, so 4 mana for 2 2/3 flying lifelinkers? I could see it, but I suspect you won’t consistently have both it and a 1 mana spell in hand on turn 4 having also hit all of your lands drops, and it doesn’t have prowess. Maybe one or two later game in Jeskai? Without storm though it doesn’t scale.
BPhillipYork: Okay, so the thing about auto-copying permanents will always be weird to me. That being said, this isn’t good.
Saffgor: This being a rare is just odd, on top of it kinda sucking. Limited concern?
Smile at Death
Loxi: I first read this without seeing the CMV and though it was bonkers, but 5 is a hefty cost for something that won’t do anything when you cast it. In a truly dedicated reanimation or sacrifice deck I can see some merit, but I don’t think I want to spend this much mana for such a delayed effect. It realistically needs to go off twice for it to feel worth that to me, so it depends on how aggressive/removal heavy your metagame is to determine if that’s reasonable or not.
BPhillipYork: This is slow, and expensive, but it’s a huge value engine, and people often can’t deal with enchantments. In slower, attrition style decks this can be used to generate huge value, and I’d shudder to see Accursed Marauder bouncing back into play every turn, most decks can’t deal with that all.
FromTheShire: Very interesting, basically slightly toned down Virtue of Loyalty and Virtue of Persistence stapled together. Both are seeing play, though both also have relevant Adventures and this doesn’t. The inevitability that this offers can still be very powerful against some decks.
Saffgor: It’s slow, but as a means to get back hatebears in something like a stax deck, you could see it shine. This being used for generic value won’t cut it though, if you’re smiling at death, be mean about it.
Starry-Eyed Skyrider
Loxi: Giving your whole board evasion in a token deck is absolutely baller at three mana, and getting to bring along a non-token buddy for the ride is just frosting. This is a great (hopefully budget) card for zoo token decks and works great in many Human builds as well.
BPhillipYork: Well, the real headline is the last line, give all your attacking tokens flying, and the use case is to enable go-wide token decks to swing in with a ton of flyers. The rest is just, meh.
FromTheShire: Giving evasion to your whole token army is fantastic so your little guys can get through, and this even piggybacks a nontoken creature along as well. It’s telegraphed so it’s best to have something in hand for protection but untapping with this can end the game on the spot.
Static Snare
Loxi: The potential for a one-drop removal spell is nice, but I think at that point you should just run the other white staple spot removal cards like Generous Gift that have flexibility waaay beyond this.
BPhillipYork: Oh, it’s this sets variant on this card. Okay.
FromTheShire: Hey guess what Up the Beanstalk decks like? Thankfully this is much worse than Leyline Binding, but that also rotates before too long so maybe we see a few copies of this. The argument against it is that if they’re attacking with enough things to make this cost 1 you’re likely already in trouble and removing one creature may not do enough, but if you played Beans last turn and having nothing to do, this on 3 plus draw a card still seems like some good value.
Tempest Hawk
Loxi: Borb, I think these decks tend to be popular, yet I think this doesn’t really have a lot of uniqueness to it. Birds aren’t as supported as Rats, and it doesn’t have any additional effects besides letting you draw a shitload more. While that’s a big boon in itself, this feels like a roundabout way of playing tokens without playing tokens. It’s fun and I’m sure folks will love it, but it definitely has a bit less hype for me than some of the other versions of this.
BPhillipYork: I do like “a deck can have any number of” and a deck with 20 Tempest Hawks could be kind of funny, you could use Urza’s Incubator to make birds cheaper and run a ton of bird buffers and just swing out with tons of 2/2 birds (yes that bird is as big as a grizzly bear why do you ask). There are some funky things you could do with this, like having a bunch, and using them to dump to your hand, and then use Skirge Familiar to dump them for mana to pay for another combat turn (obviously that’s Mardu colors at least) and it’s a combo depending on a lot of cards, so it’s not “good” per se, but kind of fun.
FromTheShire: By virtue of costing 3 I think this is on the lower end of this style of card but it does at least have built in evasion. Still expect to see people building this deck.
Saffgor: The true failing of this card is that it’s a bird, not a griffin. So close to being perfect for Zeriam, Golden Wind, yet so far.
United Battlefront
BPhillipYork: This really seems like a card for Standard, though you can use it for ramping out artifacts, or tutoring to the top then casting to drop it, use it to put reanimating enchantments like Animate Dead to bring out a huge fattie.
FromTheShire: This card is insane value, the fact that it hits planeswalkers, Simulacrum Synthesizer, and a whole bunch of other nasty stuff like Nine Lives + Solemnity makes it one to watch out for.
Saffgor: While I wish this was an instant, you can absolutely justify it as a means to get mana rocks, stax pieces, etc in Commander. 7 cards is a lot to see, and with ~34 successes in the population, you’ve got a ~75% chance to hit 2, and a ~95% chance to hit at least 1. This is a card for the folks with hypergeometric calculators.
Voice of Victory
Loxi: These effects are awesome, and being able to get a token generation effect stapled onto this is just amazing for tokens and aggressive playstyles. I can even see this being good enough to warrant play in Aristocrats decks since it sacrifices the tokens it makes anyway. Awesome stuff, Trynn and Silvar will eat this up, literally.
BPhillipYork: Yeah, your opponents can’t cast spells during your turn is amazing. The rest is just whatever, though making warriors slots into Najeela, the Blade Blossom really, really well. So this is like probably an instant staple of strong Najeela decks. The tokens will stick around through your Najeela additional combats (and likely the end of the turn will never come because the game will end first).
FromTheShire: Great body out of Burst Lightning range, generates tokens, shuts down interaction… I hate playing against this already. Wildly good card.
Saffgor: While this card is fantastic, and redundancy at mana value 2 is great, the lack of turning off abilities hampers this greatly. Even so many years later, Grand Abolisher is probably still the best at what it does.
Ambling Stormshell
Loxi: Turtlemaxxing, tortise-pilled gameplay. A creature with a huge body that lets you draw three cards on loop is pretty solid, plus built in protection. Don’t get me wrong, it’s real slow even with the turtle synergy, but if you can remove the counters from this or bounce it back to your hand to juke the stun, it’s a pretty neat draw engine. I would never play this without some outside synergy though, unless you’re really committed to going to turtle town.
BPhillipYork: I don’t uh, I’m sure there’s something really weird you could do with this, Tayam, Luminous Enigma comes to mind as wanting you to have lots of counters. But even then it costs 5. 5 mana is just too much to draw 3 cards and then go through some elaborate shenanigans to get it untapped so you can draw 3 more cards.
FromTheShire: Great callback to the original Khans durdle turtle Meandering Towershell, this is still just a meme card. Yes you can theoretically trigger it every turn by giving it vigilance but still.
Saffgor: This is turtley enough for the turtle club alright, but uh, have we ever had Turtles be a type that matters? Could be a plant for future support, who knows, but it’s certainly adorable.
Dispelling Exhale
Loxi: Not too shabby, being two mana is the selling point here. It’s not often people really want to have 4 extra mana to shell at spells, but I wouldn’t rate this up with things like Arcane Denial just because people technically can negate the effect. Definitely not bad at all if you want a more thematic/synergistic pick or you already have a few solid counters.
BPhillipYork: This is fine as a counter.
FromTheShire: We’re already seeing brews with Sarkhan, Dragon Ascendant and Sarkhan, Soul Aflame, and while those have been pretty straightforward aggro so far, having access to effectively a 2 mana hard counter is a nice piece of tech for sideboards at the very least. It’s not bad as a regular old counter in other decks either.
Dragonologist
Loxi: Hexproof and replacing itself isn’t too bad, I think this seems pretty nice for Limited but I think in Commander it might be a bit lacking. There’s a good case for any of the Niv Mizzets though, since they don’t often swing in and can use the hexproof and extra spell really well.
BPhillipYork: I think it would be Dracologist wouldn’t it? Or Draconologist. So don’t play it. It’s bad and wrong.
FromTheShire: The digging is pretty solid, and handing out hexproof for your big expensive Dragons until you can hopefully untap with protection for them is also nice.
Saffgor: This worse than the artifact-tutor mage cycle, but the fact it protects your dragons isn’t nothing. Expect to see this in things like Ur-Dragon.
Marang River Regent
Loxi: Instant speed draw with flexibility is great, even if sometimes you just need a 6/7 beatstick to close out the game after a board clear or something.
BPhillipYork: Draw three then discard one for 4 mana is solid on it’s own, the fact you can recast it over and over is a nice bonus, and the dragon you would likely never use becomes kind of irrelevant.
FromTheShire: Likely playable in control decks purely for the draw, with the bouncing body attached this seems likely to be a player if another Dragon control deck emerges like Esper Dragons from the previous Khans block.
Naga Fleshcrafter
Loxi: Probably my favorite of these 4-mana copy cards, the ability to be a nuisance on the board and then provide a potential game ending threat from the graveyard is bananas.
BPhillipYork: So clone with scary yard turn everything into a copy is pretty neato. Plenty of cards if you have 5 of them in play things get nuts really fast.
FromTheShire: Yeah turning your whole board into your best creature is super powerful. Outstanding clone.
Saffgor: 4 mana clones are already reasonable, and this means Gyruda, Doom of Depths finally has enough clones to play the ‘perfect game’. Jokes aside, doing such a splashy effect from the yard is phenomenal, and I think there’s a bright future for this in competition with the other clones.
Roiling Dragonstorm
Loxi: If this just drew you two straight up I would totally play this, and as it stands it’s decent enough. If you have any enchantress subtheme in your deck I can really see some strength here, but I haven’t seen too many enchantress Dragon decks floating around.
BPhillipYork: There’s a whole cycle of these, and this one is kind of okay, but they’re pretty underwhelming to be honest.
FromTheShire: Very nice card selection, filtering you to what you need to make it to the late game, at which point it digs for protection for your game ending Dragon threats. Quietly powerful roleplayer.
Stillness in Motion
Loxi: 3 self mill a turn for two mana isn’t bad as-is, protection from someone blowing you out when you don’t expect to mill out yet can be handy too. I don’t think I like it over things like Perpetual Timepiece, but when you need more mill like that this is a pretty safe choice.
BPhillipYork: This is an okay self mill card, has a weird defend you from dying to no cards, but in Commander that’s about the most common alternate win con, so it’s in a strange spot there.
FromTheShire: Yeah I think you mostly want this for the mill, though there will be piles you can set up to win the game in the event this triggers. It feels like at that point you just want to be playing Thassa’s Oracle instead and winning outright rather than on delay though.
Taigam, Master Opportunist
Loxi: The really neat thing here is how well this benefits from any copy synergies since it actually casts the copy and suspends the original spell. It’s basically like getting one spell a turn a free cast with suspend, and on a 2 CMV card that’s pretty awesome. It’s a bit open ended and I think potentially slots into other spellslinger decks that have access to extra colors, since mono-blue can be a bit restrictive for payoffs here, but I think overall it’s a really sweet new card.
BPhillipYork: This is a neat, slow but neat way to generate tons of chilling out value copies with suspend counters, and has a lot of synergy with existing cards that care about time counters and Time Lords from the Dr. Who Secret Lair.
FromTheShire: Massive value engine for Jeskai Prowess assuming it’s not too slow. Lots of fun things you can do with it in Commander as well.
Saffgor: The way Taigam interacts with Clockspinning especially makes me interested, and copying permanents as well is great. Similar to his blue-white counterpart, this stacks extremely nicely with both extra turn spells and means to recur instants & sorceries from the graveyard, with a time counter spin. This is a fantastic foray into monoblue, for those control-curious.
Wingblade Disciple
FromTheShire: Again it will depend what the makeup of the aggressive Jeskai deck looks like but this can generate an annoying number of flying tokens before you know it. Or maybe it will work better in control to continuously spin off new blockers.
Loxi: It’s a worse but cheaper Murmuring Mystic, so if you’re in blue and need more payoffs for spellslinging (see above) you could totally jam this if you needed. I wouldn’t play it over some of the alternatives though, especially if you have access to red.
BPhillipYork: Make birds guy is fine for Standard, kind of meaningless in Commander.
Winternight Stories
Loxi: Yeah this is an awesome draw spell, unless your deck really has the bare minimum of creatures this will often be a really good incremental draw piece to help smooth out rough hands and keep you fueled up.
BPhillipYork: Yes, this archetype of spells is running out of card types to use, though probably battle is still on the horizon as the discard upside. The ability to recast from your yard is pretty nice.
FromTheShire: Very solid draw that you can also flash back later, sign me up.
Saffgor: The blue members of the Harmonize pile feel a bit safer than their counterparts, especially Zenith Festival & Nature’s Rhythm, but I won’t turn my nose up at this level of card selection. Blue doesn’t often play a very high creature density, but in things like Oskar etc this has a clear home.
Avenger of the Fallen
Loxi: Fantastic for self mill, and psuedo-evasion in the form of Deathtouch means you can at least guarantee this will at least force something to happen on most board states, all for 3 mana. Really great when you’re committing to having a bin full of creatures.
BPhillipYork: Potentially really dangerous. If you can fill your yard with creatures you could be generating a ton of tokens really fast, and rather than merely mobilizing them if they are triggering Impact Tremors and linked up to Bastion of Remembrance as they die and you’re sacrificing them to draw card with Village Rites that’s a fairly nasty value generator.
FromTheShire: It’s a must kill creature against self mill decks, so having deathtouch is excellent for forcing difficult decisions and taking something down with you.
Saffgor: This is going to end a lot of games, whoa. Death triggers, sacrifices, etc all make this potent, and being a 2/4 deathtoucher at face means your opponents aren’t keen to block this.
Caustic Exhale
FromTheShire: Depends heavily on if this fits with a Dragon list, if you’re not able to behold consistently this compares unfavorably with Nowhere to Run, Go for the Throat, and Anoint with Affliction. That said this is still not a terrible rate, and as things rotate out this could improve in the standings.
BPhillipYork: This is okay, assuming you’re running Dragons or just generally want the creature removal, losing 3 toughness is generally safe to count on to kill anything except big fatties.
Loxi: Yeah agreed, I wouldn’t run this if you don’t have enough Dragons to consistently drop this for 1, but it’s pretty decent 1 drop removal in black that can get around Indestructible nonsense.
Corroding Dragonstorm
FromTheShire: This has the profile of a card that might start turning up in Esper Pixies decks more than in Dragon decks, though I wouldn’t be shocked if one of those played this. The question is what do you cut for it. Hopeless Nightmare is still probably better since it shreds their hand, Stormchaser’s Talent you still want for This Town Ain’t Big Enough, and Nowhere to Run is premium removal. Maybe you can afford to go down a couple of slots somewhere since surveil 2 digs pretty aggressively.
BPhillipYork: I’m bored of this cycle already and there’s 3 to go.
Desperate Measures
FromTheShire: Really great piece for sacrifice decks to get a one off activation of Skullclamp at instant speed. Pauper players are probably wildly happy that this is an uncommon with how the mono black sacrifice deck is playing these days.
Loxi: In an aristocrats deck, a one mana way to get a death trigger and draw two cards is wild, with some niche flexibility to snipe some small creatures here and there. Really nice piece for any aristocrats decks that run enough 1-health things to kill off.
BPhillipYork: This is like if Skullclamp was an instant. Makes you realize how busted Skullclamp was. But this is a solid card, generally you’re just using it to draw 2 for 1 mana, and it’ll kill the thing or you can cast it on something that’s already going to die or use it to trade, which is all upside.
Saffgor: A more flexible-ish Village Rites that also functions as removal? Sign me up, I was often using that card to sac away 1 toughness creatures anyway.
Qarsi Revenant
FromTheShire: Oh my how you’ve grown, Vampire Nighthawk. A better body that can hand out those counters is super good, a creature ‘surprise’ taking to the air and gaining lifelink can wildly tilt a board stall, and there’s a whole lot of pingers that would just LOVE to have deathtouch.
Loxi: Vampire with a bunch of keywords is a magic staple, and this isn’t an exception. The ability to give extra keywords to your board state for a pretty low opportunity cost being tied to a body with a hell of a lot of threat for incremental damage makes for a pretty scary package.
BPhillipYork: To this card is just a way to make your Mayhem Devil an absolute nightmare to deal with, which I am totally here for. There’s also plenty of creatures that a lifelink counter will really change the math on how they work.
Saffgor: This card yearns for the Jund players of yesteryear to hold it gently, and cherish it. In an odd sort of way, unless you’re chucking this on a pinger, I don’t know if a 3/3 nighthawk is good enough anymore? Wild times.
Rot-Curse Rakshasa
Loxi: First off, this is a really cool way to use the Decayed mechanic by leveraging it as a removal tool (or mass sacrifice tool in a pinch). My only fear is that this is really telegraphed if you want to play it as intended, so it’s really a piece for graveyard decks that will mill this down naturally – you’re basically playing it like a sorcery with that bottom part of the card being the only thing you’ll ever cast, but that’s certainly not too shabby at times.
BPhillipYork: Really strange card to me, I am having a hard time parsing if it’s playable in Standard. I think it is, handing out decayed I guess is kind of creature control, and it’s a 5/5 for 2 that gets to attack once.
FromTheShire: A 2 mana 5/5 with trample is in fact very playable in Standard, yes. There’s already an Unholy Annex deck that would love to turn the damage mode on as soon as you play it. You can also get tricky with Kaito, Bane of Nightmares if you activate his ninjutsu after damage has been dealt but before the combat step ends to bounce the Rakshasa. Then in a pinch you can use it as removal as well.
Saffgor: This is such a cool design, and really makes me want to see Decayed become deciduous.
Scavenger Regent
Loxi: This is a bonkers board wipe, even if you don’t have any Dragons I can totally see this seeing play as a Toxic Deluge substitute that can flex into a body when you need.
BPhillipYork: Yeah a reusable -X/-X is huge. The 4/4 flyer with ward – discard a card is totally meaningless to me in the face of reusable board clear that overrides indestructible.
FromTheShire: It’s a relatively cheap Dragon with a potentially annoying ward, but yeah you’re here for the gets around indestructible board wipe. Even better when it’s one sided. Black Sun’s Zenith is already a really great if somewhat forgotten card in Commander.
Saffgor: Esper control card in standard, but not especially exciting. Sometimes a functional, if a little boring, design is what’s needed.
Sidisi, Regent of the Mire
BPhillipYork: This is neat to see, basically it’s Birthing Pod but for reanimation, which is a logical thing. Really cheap, so a decent value and way to start generating huge value. Also really nice in that it’s not a temporary, or exiling, or decayed or something reanimation, just straight up sacrifice a creature and put the other creature into play.
Loxi: She definitely requires some setup to work right, but Buried Alive-like effects can get really scary with this, and it can be a really aggressive way to fetch graveyard combos and provide a cool combo-control playstyle that mono-black hasn’t really seen in this way.
FromTheShire: Extremely powerful and I expect we’ll be seeing this a lot. There’s already at least one infinite combo brewed for Pioneer looping Glasspool Mimic and Corridor Monitor with Zulaport Cutthroat but that is very disruptable.
Saffgor: The above combo is adorable, but I get the sneaking suspicion the degree to which this is telegraphed, and slow (being sorcery speed) means it’s not very good. Kind of a monoblack Vannifar, and she was a flop.
Sinkhole Surveyor
FromTheShire: Not a bad rate to start with, 2 mana 2/4 after the trigger resolves which means red decks basically need exactly Lightning Strike the turn you cast this or it’s going to get out of range. Realistically with the life loss this probably can’t race Monstrous Rage red but it does become quite the threat. More likely you’re hoping to swing 3-4 times with this in conjunction with other aggressive creatures and close out the game, and the flying makes that plan much more effective.
Loxi: I actually quite like this for aristocrats decks that need tokens to sacrifice, assuming you can attack at least one player it can easily make a bunch of token to get rid of, although I do wish it didn’t drain your life in the process. The tokens are really what you’re here for, the counters are often meh here.
BPhillipYork: Doesn’t seem worth it, consistently generating 1/1s is okay, and if you really need it then it’s fine for that.
Saffgor: If you squint, this is close to Bitterblossom, and starting as a 1/3 flying blocker isn’t bad at all. This gets out of control reasonably fast, and might be a role player in standard.
Strategic Betrayal
FromTheShire: Likely to be a sideboard card unless the graveyard decks get out of control, this is a great safety valve for when something like Ghost Vacuum hoovering up one card at a time is entirely too slow. The removal is icing on the cake.
Loxi: It’s stuck at sorcery speed which limits some of the raw power, but it actually is quite playable even as a slower removal piece. It can really smack down someone who’s relying on their commander and prevent them from setting up their graveyard at the same time – two things most commander decks will utilize at least one of.
BPhillipYork: Interesting, really powerful if your opponent is doing pure Voltron with no defense in the form of other creatures, but generally this just going to force a sacrifice of a utility creature or something like that, and then a graveyard removal. Given how many solid ways there are to remove yards, this doesn’t seem relevant to Commander. For standard it’s basically Diabolic Edict with additional upside, which is generally good.
The Sibsig Ceremony
Loxi: Yeah this is a weird one. I like the idea of this in something like Wilhelt, The Rotcleaver since that effectively can net you two Zombie tokens just for casting Zombies. I like this more for that use case than generic aristocrats, but I’m sure having death triggers immediately after every cast is nothing to scoff at for some situations. Sadly it doesn’t have a way to destroy itself though, so you better hope you don’t need anything but 2/2 Zombies any time soon.
BPhillipYork: This is a really kind of strange card to me. Normally you’d expect it to be a sacrifice, and an “if you do, then create” but it’s not conditional. So then it’s something to be avoided, and or ignored. Several really huge creatures have indestructible, in which case reducing their casting cost isn’t that important, cards like Blightsteel Colossus and ulamong, the Ceaseless hunger, going from 12 mana to 10 or 10 to 8 isn’t that huge. You could also run cards that you want to die, especially in aristocrats, and if they have on enter, or on death, or both effects then it’s just a simple way to force them to die, which is pure upside. In summary, powerful card, but situational and has to be built around.
FromTheShire: Very much a build around combo card, for instance in Modern you can loop two Myr Retrievers for infinite zombies, or in Standard you can use it in conjunction with Loran, Disciple of History to go back and forth with Marvin, Murderous Mimic and Syr Ginger, the Meal Ender. In Pioneer it can possibly slot right in to the existing Acererak the Archlich combo deck with Relic of Legends. I’m sure there are plenty of others as well given the obvious Bridge from Below energy.
Saffgor: This strikes me as a card that could have a place in black-red scramble decks in Commander, on top of the considerations above. It’s very close to Heartless Summoning, and can often be better, but this is a puzzle I’ve yet to crack beyond the above. Cool card.
Wail of War
FromTheShire: I suspect this sticks as a sideboard card if Mardu Tokens has legs, though there are obviously other X/1’s it preys on as well. The only way I see it having main deck play is if a good enough self mill deck emerges that cares about returning cards to hand enough that they want more than Overlord of the Balemurk. For the most part right now though you’re just drawing into the next Souls of the Lost or Huskburster Swarm or getting back an Afterburner Expert for free and don’t care a ton about recursion.
BPhillipYork: Doesn’t seem impactful enough to run in the 99 but for Standard it’s probably protection vs horde decks.
Yathan Tombguard
Loxi: Really great draw piece for aggressive strategies, not too much to add here. Golgari counters will make some great use of this.
BPhillipYork: Solid way to get card draw off creature contact, though it’s really more of a “Win more” type of card for some goofy black + something counters deck, and you need your main game plan to be stronger than just “draw a lot”.
FromTheShire: Solid draw for counters decks in Commander, for Standard as well if we have enough pieces to make a deck work.
Next Time: The Set’s Red, Green, and Colorless Cards
That wraps up our look at the white, blue, and black cards of Tarkir: Dragonstorm. Join us next time as we begin reviewing the red, green, and colorless cards, picking out our favorites, and talking about the future build-arounds.
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