The Most Impactful Cards from Tarkir: Dragonstorm in Standard

Hey all, Tarkir: Dragonstorm has been out for over a week now and has started to make an impact on Standard, both by revamping or adding to various existing decks, and even making a new one shoot to the top of the meta.

So I want to look at the cards that have made the biggest impact so far, and provide proven decklists from Magic Online challenges, so you can figure out which cards to craft and which decks to try as we settle into the next month or two of Tarkir Standard.

But enough yapping. Let’s dive right in!

Cori-Steel Cutter

Cori-Steel Cutter has proved to be the stand out card from Tarkir: Dragonstorm thus far. Single handedly shooting Izzet Prowess to a strong contender in the meta, Cori-Steel Cutter has become a must answer threat in the format.

While the prevalence of Zur Domain has had many players prepared to answer enchantments with cards like Pawpatch Formation, Cori-Steel Cutter demands artifact removal, forcing players to adapt their sideboard answers. Even when you do answer it, the Izzet player has likely cast it on turn three, followed by a one mana spell, to immediately get a token out of the deal.

Cori-Steel Cutter is the perfect threat for this type of deck, because they have so many cheap cantrips that they can consistently trigger it every turn, quickly running the opponent out of removal, and thanks to the haste it grants you can easily keep the pressure on after a sweeper.

Temporary Lockdown is a good answer to the guard, but one copy of Into the Flood Maw and a cheap cantrip later and the pressure is back on.

If you aren’t joining this train, then you had better be crafting plans to beat it.

Sunpearl Kirin

Perhaps the card that players were most sure of in spoiler season, Sunpearl Kirin has proved to be a worthy inclusion for Esper Bounce decks.

Flash is powerful here, because your opponent will have to guess if you have Sunpearl Kirin, Nowhere to Run, or This Town Ain’t Big Enough, giving you a lot of options and a chance to bluff your opponent into the wrong move.

On top of that, it isn’t impossible for Sunpearl Kirin to draw a card, bouncing an otter token or a role token for the versions playing Spiteful Hexmage.

It has made Esper Bounce a bit more flexible and a bit more scary, so expect to see a lot of it moving forward.

Glacial Dragonhunt and Winternight Stories

Jeskai Oculus got a couple of new tools in this set, with the most common being Glacial Dragonhunt and Winternight Stories.

Both of these cards are great at getting Abhorrent Oculusinto the graveyard from your hand, and don’t mind ending up in the graveyard themselves thanks to Harmonize. 

Glacial Dragonhunt is good removal early on, and Winternight Stories is decent card advantage/card filtering, giving the deck a bit of staying power into the mid to late game.

We’ve seen Jeskai Oculus vary in both popularity and power, but I think that these two inclusions from Tarkir: Dragonstorm help to keep the deck evolving and staying relevant.

Shiko, Paragon of the Way, Marang River Regent, and Jeskai Revelation

Jeskai Oculus isn’t the only Jeskai deck that has come out of Tarkir: Dragonstorm, as players have started to experiment with Jeskai Control as well.

The key inclusions here are Shiko, Paragon of the Way as a big finisher that can recast a removal spell or card advantage spell, such as Stock Up, when it enters, alongside Dispelling Exhale for a counterspell that scales into the midgame.

We also have Marang River Regent for some card advantage and a powerful stabilizing threat in the late game, and Jeskai Revelation is a big finisher that does a little bit of everything.

Time will tell if this traditional type of control deck has what it takes to compete in a Standard format warped by mice and Up the Beanstalk, but I like the experimentation here and think that this shows that Standard is far from solved.

In that same vein, the nightmare of Bo1 has come for Bo3 players as well, as Omniscience Combo has found the perfect new finisher with Jeskai Revelation, looping it over and over to burn the opponent out.

Marang River Regent is great for finding your combo pieces, and dumping Omniscience into the graveyard, and once you are going off it can bounce your opponent’s disruptive permanents or your own copies of Invasion of Arcavios.

If you are a combo player and haven’t given this deck a try yet, now is the time!

Tersa Lightshatter

Mono-Red Aggro also got a new toy to play with in Tersa Lightshatter, a powerful hasty three drop.

Tersa is great in this deck because she has the same stats as Screaming Nemesis, but can help find more action, discarding extra lands or irrelevant creatures to find what you need to close out the game.

In grindy games she is likely going to be able to start casting cards from the graveyard, giving you even more mid to late game power than the red deck previously had.

Where are the Green and Black cards?

I didn’t realize when I started looking at decklists and writing this article that it would include zero green or black cards, but I guess that is how sets go from time to time.

I’ve seen Golgari Midrange experiment with Surrak, Elusive Hunter, but the bar is very hard to clear to be included in Zur Domain, Golgari Midrange, Dimir Midrange, and Esper Bounce, in such a big standard environment.

Hopefully over time we will see even more cards break through and Green and Black won’t be completely absent from this set’s impact.

Wrapping Up

It seems like Tarkir: Dragonstorm is having more of an impact than Aetherdrift did in the early days, and I look forward to seeing how decks continue to experiment with powerful and fun cards from the set.

I hope this article gave you some new powerful decks to try, and maybe some ideas of which cards are worth crafting. I would encourage us all to keep trying new things though, and keep pushing to find the remaining sleepers in the set.

I hope you keep having fun with Tarkir: Dragonstorm, and as always best of luck in all your matches!