A Deeper Look at Tarkir: Dragonstorm
- Mike Sigrist
- Apr 1
- 6 min read
While we don't have the full contents of Tarkir: Dragonstorm, we're in the homestretch. The hits kept coming as previews continue to roll out. Dragonstorm is shaping up to be one of the most high-powered Standard sets I can recall seeing. Let's take a peek at some more potential bangers.
Rot-Curse Rakshasa is an interesting take on Decayed, and it's a design we haven't seen before.
A two-mana 5/5 is pushing the boundaries, but this is more of a Ball Lightning than a creature. It can't block, only gets to attack once, and so on. There's a variety of ways to take advantage of this creature staying in play despite not blocking or attacking. We could use it to crew a vehicle or sacrifice to an effect that looks at power or toughness. Even as a Ball Lightning, it has the ability to Renew and decay your opponent's creatures, which blasts through blockers at no cost.
Rot-Curse Rakshasa could come in handy postboard when an opponent has a large creature sideboard plan. It's worth noting this is a demon, which is an upside for a card like Unholy Annex but a downside against Baneslayer Angel if that situation arises.
To top it off, you don't need to cast Rot-Curse Rakshasa to get value. If you discard it to another effect, you'll still have this powerful renew effect at your disposal, which would pair nicely with a card like Fable of the Mirror Breaker. You produce a goblin token when Fable enters, discard this little demon when you untap, and can immediately renew on a blocker pushing your goblin through.
Rot-Curse Rakshasa is solid, and I expect to see it on the battlefield in competitive environments. I'm excited to try this one out.
Augur of Bolas saw Standard play, and while Dragonologist is one mana more, it provides a better effect. It can find your top-end dragon and protect it once it resolves through hexproof. You're playing blue if casting Dragonologist, which means you can keep protecting your top-end with counter spells or patiently set up before you attack and expose the dragon. For instance, if you put multiple dragons into play over the next few turns, your opponent may not have a window to interact with both dragons at once, giving you a massive tempo advantage if you chew up your opponent's mana.
Dragonologist looks extra nice when paired with a dragon with vigilance, such as Shiko, Paragon of the Way, by casting an excellent spell from the graveyard, which protects Shiko and allows more card advantage. I hope we see this sequence regularly in Standard. This is the small-ball, grindy Magic I love and have been missing.
I'm looking forward to trying out Dragonologist. It has a shot in Standard and will almost certainly be a Commander staple.
Scavenger Regent doesn't look that good, and I doubt it will see much play. So, why am I looking at it?
Scavenger Regent does one thing that scares me. It can, in some circumstances, be a win condition on its own without ever having to attack. While it's not many decks, and this is more hypothetical, it's possible that with enough card draw, or the ability to mill yourself to a small or non-existent deck, you could cast a damnation effect every turn of the game until your opponent runs out of cards. This is the exact kind of effect I would have liked to see avoided on an omen, as it creates potentially bad incentives. Nexus of Fate was a massive problem when it was printed in Standard, and shuffling in this type of effect could be problematic. It's more likely that we rarely, if ever, see this card again, however, it's not too bad on rate and maybe sneaks in somewhere regardless.
I'm not a fan of Scavenger Regent's design, but it's likely much ado about nothing.
Cori-Steel Cutter is a twist on Living Weapon. The equipment doesn't play out well in Constructed. The reason is mostly that they're so easy to out tempo. Adding this flurry ability to Cori-Steel Cutter provides a cheap threat that delivers value over the course of the game, similar to a card like Young Pyromancer, however, Cori-Steel Cutter doesn't have easy interaction. You need to be able to interact with an artifact, and if you can't, it will keep supplying prowess tokens.
Cori-Steel Cutter looks custom-made for a low-curve, aggressive deck, specifically a burn deck that utilizes the prowess but also a deck that can play multiple spells a turn and pressure the opponent. It's worth noting that it will also trigger on the opponent's turn, making more traditional Izzet Prowess-type shells an interesting place for this equipment, as you can go wide quickly with cantrips and deal a lot of burst damage off of multiple prowess creatures.
Cori-Steel Cutter is a great Standard card, and we'll potentially see it in other eternal formats given its cheap mana cost and synergies with other cheap cards, which there are more of as the format gets older.
Weirdly, we have yet to see any dual-land cycle in Dragonstorm, but we have this land cycle of lands that produce one color and come in untapped if you control other basic types.
Mistrise Village has received a lot of buzz. While I see that this could be a powerful card in a Commander format with much longer games where mana is more abundant, this card seems merely fine to me in competitive formats. Adding an additional mana to your spell's cost is not optimal. Generally, the important turns against a deck with a lot of countermagic are early turns when you can't afford to activate this without falling behind. That doesn't make this a bad card in a vacuum, but even lands have opportunity costs these days. Depending on the format, you have options like creature lands, Otawara, Castle Vantress, just to name a few. While I suspect Mistrise Village will see play, it will likely be in small numbers and not warp the format that much.
The best home for a card like this is likely a deck that's trying to resolve one massive threat that single-handedly can end the game. A deck that could benefit from this printing is Indomitable Creativity, my favorite deck that I've played in years. Being able to push that through countermagic seems like a reasonable spot for Mistrise Village.
Mistrise Village will likely see a lot of play in small numbers in a variety of formats but might not impact deck building or matchups as much as some people think. It's not busted nor bad. It's just another solid utility land option in a world where we have so many.
Severance Priest combines Elite Spellbinder and Skyclave Apparition. Its stats are fine, and its ability is interesting, but ultimately I'm not a fan.
It will be excellent in certain matchups, like a combo deck with limited creature interaction, but in a normal interactive Magic game, leaving behind any kind of meaningful token when this creature dies is too big of a downside. You can proactively exile two- and, maybe, one-mana spells, but you'll often be in a tough spot if this creature dies and you exile that scary four-drop. We're not putting this in our deck to take nothing, and while the option is always there to not take anything, that's not a ringing endorsement either.
That's not to say Severance Priest is completely unplayable. I will need hands-on experience with the card to make a judgment. I could see it being excellent in an aggressive Abzan deck that closes the door quickly. That deck style in this color combination is harder to come by these days. As a three-mana spell, this card works with Collected Company, so there may be a home for it in eternal formats where combo decks are more plentiful and CoCo decks need more permanent ways to interact with the opponent's hand.
This is a tough one to gauge, but my hunch is that its downside is too large and we won't be seeing much of Severance Priest.
Rakshasa's Bargain is another solid card-advantage spell that would see play regardless of other interactions since it's essentially an instant-speed Stock Up with the additional upside of putting some cards in the graveyard.
Rakshasa's Bargain synergizes well with one of the best cards they've printed in years, Up the Beanstalk. Between these two cards, you don't need much else to keep cards flowing, producing a powerful card-advantage engine.
There's no doubt in my mind Rakshasa's Bargain will see heavy play in this kind of shell. I'm curious if the printing of this card cycle is what gets Up the Beanstalk banned in formats like Standard and Pioneer.
People can overhype interactions, but the Rakasha's Bargain and Up the Beanstalk duo will likely be a difficult engine to ignore because both cards are extremely good individually, as well.
Rakshasa's Bargain offers so much selection, provides a way to dump specific cards in the graveyard, and fuels delve, all at an efficient cost at instant speed. This is one of the best cards from one of the best sets I've seen in a long time.
That will wrap it up this time, but there are so many more cards I want to look at, and we still have a few cards left to preview. I'm excited to see how the set shapes out, and we'll continue to look at what the set has to offer.
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