White | Blue | Black | Red | Green | Artifacts & Lands | Allied & Shards | Enemy & Wedges | cEDH | Reprints | Pauper/Budget
Coming back to Tarkir feels like coming home, both for me and plenty of players who have been playing for roughly the same time as I have. This plane full of Dragons and Clans has stuck throughout the years with Magic fans, whether it be because of the fetch-filled Standard format it spanned, the all-timer Limited environment of Khans, or the quiet Core Set 2019 return that reinvented the origin of the Elder Dragons in its own image.
Tarkir: Dragonstorm brings us back to the plane in proper fashion and, as always, brings plenty of heater cards with it. Will any of those cards see play in competitive Commander? As I sifted through the card file, freakishly few things jumped out at me, probably because of the nature of the Clan mechanics and of its three-color focus, and also all these dang hyper-expensive Dragons.
I'm also narrowing the focus of these a bit moving forward, reducing the number of super-niche cards we cover that only have potential application in one deck. Also! At the end, I have something to add to my Aetherdrift review. Let's get into it.
White
Voice of Victory is the obvious winner of the set; we might as well get it out of the way now. Wizards of the Coast continues the recent trend of printing Grand Abolisher-like/-lite effects directly into Standard, and Voice looks to be the best one they've made yet. Not turning off activated abilities of artifacts, creatures, and enchantments IS relevant, obviously, so don't go straight to cutting old faithful, but Voice also brings a bunch of net benefits.
First off, obviously, the ability to turn off your opponents' spell-casting ability is the main attraction of this card; it's the only reason that cards like Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar and Grand Abolisher are played in the first place. No stopping your win attempt when there's no casting counterspells! Of course, it's worth noting that cards such as Touch the Spirit Realm, Otawara, Soaring City, and Talon Gates of Madara can and will still ruin your day when you least expect it.
Mobilize 2 will give you two tapped and attacking 1/1 red Warrior creature tokens that get sacrificed at the end step. Combined with a 1/3 body that should make most attacks pretty safe, this ability will juice up your Tymna the Weaver draws, increase your Professional Face-Breaker Treasure production instantly, and also make Najeela, the Blade-Blossom combat wins easier. Those are just the three most obvious use cases; the decks and role player cards within them that care about attacking and hitting your opponents only seem to be multiplying recently.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly: the cost. Grand Abolisher has often been a tough cast at , especially in four- and five-color decks that need to spread their colored sources out as much as possible. Other options, such as the aforementioned Kutzil, usually end up popping up into the three-mana-value space while bringing along easier color requirements.
Voice of Victory gives us the best of both worlds, costing only . Getting to use colorless mana, which is usually in high supply in the average cEDH game, to cast a Abolisher effect has massive implications on how easy it will be to perform protected combo turns. One more colored mana may not sound that dramatic, but that Scrubland can make for Demonic Consultation or Vampiric Tutor just as easily as it could have made the extra for Grand Abolisher.
Is this a sky falling moment? By no means! Heck, I'm a fan of more cards that will force people to think about doing more than getting to sit behind Rhystic Study and thinking about how they may be able to force a draw with their current hand.
Hatebears and Stax players, however many of them are left anyways, are winning with this tiny little Dragon. A three-drop flying 3/3 checks the obvious fun boxes (Tymna attacker, etc.) while also turning off the activated abilities of creatures, planeswalkers, and, most importantly, artifacts. It being a symmetrical effect means that many decks will be slowing themselves down as well, but cEDH pilots have been casting the likes of Stony Silence and Cursed Totem for as long as I can remember.
Packing it all into an efficient, attacking body makes for a card that will easily slot into the deck of anyone who's willing to take things back a notch. The problem here, of course, is that your Stax only is good for as long as it's holding people back, and a creature that dies to Lightning Bolt in addition to the rest of the more cohesive removal suite is much more open to disruption than the normal artifacts and enchantments that fulfill the same role. Is that enough to keep it out of lists? Not at all.
Blue and Black
Nothin'! Nothin' at all! I'm serious. I looked pretty closely over the cards included in both Tarkir: Dragonstorm and its Commander product and nothing in straight blue or straight black impressed me enough to be included here. A bit unprecedented for this article series, I realize, but I can't do something like go about opining about the potential of something like Servant of the Stinger ever again. If there are black or blue cards you find interesting from the set, let me know in the comments!
Red
Stadium Headliner is the type of small-ball Magic card I love. A one-drop 1/1 that quickly creates value when it attacks (something, something Tymna, I feel like a broken record at this point) that's also able to cash itself in to blow up a creature when its outlived its usefulness seems like the ticket for the weird red and Tymna decks that are emerging out of the woodwork the last several months. Heck, the world's most midrange-obsessed player could put this in their Blue Farm list and a specific flavor of Najeela pilots will try it too I'm sure. Don't look: this is the second card on the list so far that is also slam-dunk Winota, Joiner of Forces playable. She's always, always lurking.
Will of the Jeskai staples two strong effects together and pairs them with what is probably a bit too high of a mana cost to be playable. However, like the rest of the ongoing "Will of" supercycle, if we control our commander we can use both of the effects at once. What are those two modes? Each player may discard their hand and draw five cards, a form of non-disruptive mini-Wheel of Fortune, and "Each instant and sorcery card in your graveyard gains flashback until end of turn. The flashback cost is equal to its mana cost." The synergy of the two modes is obvious: discarding your hand lets you immediately recast any instants and sorceries that you had discarded in addition to ones already there. While these are both powerful, they don't seem to have a deck that would immediately benefit from them outside of something like Krark. After all, stuff like Past in Flames isn't played widely in cEDH. The combination of these two effects still strikes me as something that would be playable, so I hope someone proves me wrong in their latest Birgi brew.
Green
Ooooo, now Nature's Rhythm is an exciting prospect! Straight-to-the-battlefield creature tutors will never go out of style, especially with decks the likes of Kinnan and Thrasios running around. We already have plenty of cards that can do this, with the most recent playable option being Invasion of Ikoria. Nature's Rhythm's twist on the classic formula is the new harmonize mechanic, which will let you tap a creature you control to help pay for the massive casting cost from your graveyard. I think specifically in Kinnan, where mana is usually not a concern, having an X tutor that you can easily cast twice in one turn will provide tons of flexibility and also make turning excess mana into wins that much easier.
The problem it does have? Invasion of Ikoria, Finale of Devastation, and Chord of Calling already are a great spread that meet the needs of existing decks while each bringing a strong upside (hard to counter, alternate win condition, easiest to cast, respectively). Invasion does seem like the odd duck out, but dodging all of the instant- and sorcery-specific counters still is a huge boon, one that being able to recast from the graveyard (at massive cost) may not make up for.
Multicolor
Alright, I said no super Commander-specific inclusions in here, but I have to throw my poor Winota-heads a bone. Windcrag Siege seems like a fun way to charge Winota's gameplan up to 11, doubling your Winota triggers. Is that a bit too specific? In something that is already so commander-centric, probably not, but it's why she's the only deck I'd look to put this very strong card in. I'm always hoping that golden oldies of cEDH past will get the chance to come back around, no matter how annoying the decks may be, and new options, like Windcrag Siege, Stadium Headliner, and Clarion Conqueror, feel like we may be that much closer to seeing the ol' girl return to tables.
Lands
Y'all, I mean this completely seriously, this card is a huge trap in decks with three or more colors, especially if they aren't Temur-plus. I've spent a large section of this article already emphasizing what has the potential to make Voice of Victory so great, and it's all about colored mana. Mistrise Village bumps up against the already high number of single-color utility lands you absolutely should be playing (most notably Otawara and Boseiju). Mix in players' propensities to already play anywhere from one to three less lands than they know they "should" and you quickly find a stew of decks that, even with a City of Brass or Arcane Signet in their opener, will find themselves restricted on colored mana needs as a given. cEDH players are used to this, but it's a bug of deckbuilding heuristics that I've seen persist for a decade now, even through the vast improvement of the last three years. Lands Are Awesome. Getting your colors right and hitting untapped land drops consistently will improve your win rate exponentially more than including this land that:
- Only makes blue mana, restricting choice.
- Harmfully enters the battlefield tapped a nonzero percent of the time, unless you specifically (possibly inefficiently) fetch specifically to prevent this.
- Demands another blue mana, in addition to tapping (functionally costing two mana) in return for its effect.
"The next spell you cast this turn can't be countered." Flashy. Powerful on paper. Solves no problems for your deck that are meaningful enough for its inclusion. I would consider playing this if, and only if, I bumped my land count by two specifically for its inclusion, adding it and also another dual land that makes blue, probably whatever surveil land the deck I'm looking at wasn't playing that it should be.
Kinnan players, though? Have fun with this one!
Tarkir: Less Powerful Than I Hoped
As a biased player and observer, I was secretly hoping that Tarkir: Dragonstorm would give us several powerful new options to explore and keep around, something that would remind me of one of my favorite planes while I played my favorite format. Alas, it seems that past one or two potential all-stars, Tarkir has returned the same results as the most recent rash of Standard sets. Is there anything interesting that I missed? Let me know!
Aetherdrift Addendum:
Stridehangar Automaton is a new combo piece that several players are already proving the power of in lower-color decks such as Marneus Calgar, its main attraction is being an A + B mana-equal-to-life-total combo with Modern Horizons 3 all-star Warren Soultrader. A little less powerful than some combos that already exist, but for decks that are pressed for options and can find a way to win with an extra 20 or so mana, give that little combination a look and see if you can find room in your deck!
