Wrapping Up Tarkir: Dragonstorm Previews
- Mike Sigrist
- Apr 8
- 6 min read
At this point we have all of the card pool of Tarkir: Dragonstorm. The set is nothing short of a home run in my eyes. Original Khans of Tarkir was a beloved set in the community, and I hope the hype translates to the cards seeing a ton of play.
We had a B&R announcement this past week and Standard remains unchanged. Let's hope Tarkir can shake it up enough to keep Domain and the Mice in check.
Let's take a look at some more interesting cards from Dragonstorm.
Sinkhole Surveyor looks solid. While it's not quite a Bitterblossom, as some have liked to call it (because it doesn't create fliers) it does have snowball potential since it could run away with the game on its own. It's a bit durable for a two-drop with three toughness and can get out of Lightning Strike range in a single attack if you choose. I think Sinkhole Surveyor has excellent potential in all kinds of strategies, as it's a good solid card that can work with various synergies but also does tons of work on its own.
Sinkhole Surveyor should find a home in Standard, but it may end up playing out well enough to fit into any black midrange deck playing creatures.
Voice of Victory is remarkably similar to Sinkhole Surveyor. It has the same converted mana cost and stats, but Voice of Victory loses flying and gains the ability to shut off opponent casting spells during your turn.
This card looks devastating against various control decks. It's a must answer if you're trying to play at instant speed, and it clocks the opponent quickly as it attacks for three damage on its own. It will even scale more with anthem effects as it creates multiple tokens.
Voice of Victory is a must play in white aggro decks if they exist in the format.
The best and most overlooked part of this card might be the potential surrounding play patterns. Reactive decks will be looking to kill your two-drop. Unfortunately, if you play Voice of Victory on two into removal, your opponent can't cast their removal until their own turn, which eats their mana and removal spell, thus opening the door for your next threat.
Voice of Victory could see play across all formats because of its stat line, mana cost, and ability to create tokens. I'm excited to see how this card pans out because it looks extremely strong and like the set's best white card.
People are excited to play Songcrafter Mage, a spinoff of Snapcaster Mage. Songcrafter Mage has a couple of advantages over Snapcaster Mage, mainly being that while Snapcaster Mage plays better with cheap spells, you can play with cheap or expensive spells with Songcrafter Mage because of how Harmonize works.
As an incredible tempo play, the most obvious spell we may see Songcrafter Mage targeting is This Town Ain't Big Enough.
Snapcaster Mage can tap itself to reduce the mana cost of anything it targets by three, but that provides a window of counterplay for the opponent, which may make this card more tricky to play with than it looks on the surface.
If I were to cast it targeting an expensive spell, like Sublime Epiphany, to start a chain creating more copies of this, and I have the available three mana I'd need, the opponent can cast removal on the Songcrafter Mage with the ability on the stack, making my targeted Epiphany uncastable and breaking up my entire turn.
Songcrafter Mage is a strong card that has the potential to see play in a variety of formats, but it is important to remember how the stack works when casting it and play carefully.
There's no doubt Songcrafter Mage sees play if there's a home for it in a Temur deck, but in today's Standard there are no guarantees on any strong cards. In a bloated Standard, there are so many awesome cards that some just won't see play. Those with more restricted costs like Songcrafter Mage need a good home to see play, rather than being a card that needs to be built around.
Speaking of Temur Cards, let's talk about the Elephants in the room. Roar of the Endless Song looks gross from the perspective of a Limited player. It is a lot of card for five mana, producing two giant creatures and giving you a chance to deal 20 damage in one attack phase with the two Elephants.
While this card looks strong, it will only play well in back and fourth interactive games since it's easy to kill the tokens with various bounce effects, such as This Town Ain't Big Enough. Oddly enough, it also works well with This Town Ain't Big Enough, so I'm interested to see if this could be the top end in a deck with both Songcrafter Mage and This Town Ain't Big Enough.
As far as the cycle of Sagas in the set, this looks to have the most potential, as the others are a bit bland. I'm interested to see if Roar has what it takes to break into a fast and powerful Standard format.
Kheru Goldkeeper is potentially the most breakable card in Dragonstorm. Kheru's stat line and renew ability are not very desirable, but its ability to create untapped treasures whenever any card leaves graveyards during your turn can be explosive and create some potential loops with a variety of cards. Specifically, creatures that enter the battlefield from the graveyard for a single mana, such as Gravecrawler or similar with any kind of sacrifice outlet.
Kheru Goldkeeper looks like it could be broken, but I have doubts that it will amount to anything, as it seems like a lot of setup is necessary. The body is vulnerable, and it has an issue against various graveyard hate. All of that rolled into a four-drop might be too much despite how broken it could be.
Personally, I think a lot of time will be spent on this card, and it will likely amount to nothing, at least for now. Kheru Goldkeeper likely won't live up to the hype.
There's a cycle of powerful mythic rares across each clan. None of them look bad, but they're all expensive. I could see any of them getting played depending on the contexts of the format.
The most raw power amongst these cards is Perennation. Perennation allows you to set up any permanent in play that doesn't permit interaction. Hexproof and indestructible is the hurdle to push through. It's likely better to target a non-creature permanent, as cards like Sunfall won't be able to pick it up.
Omniscience comes to mind as a potential target, but there are others, as well. Atraxa is the most obvious target. If we see any of this card, that is the likely spot it will find.
Unfortunately for Perennation, it's expensive and easily interacted with on the stack or with any graveyard hate, so its best home would be in a midrange deck as the only card that cares about your graveyard and likely in low numbers as a value add, rather than a build-around.
I wouldn't rule out that you can build around this since graveyard hate can be circumvented by cards like Leyline Binding, but the spell being so expensive and easy to counter makes that strategy more difficult to execute.
I won't be surprised to see a few copies of this powerful reanimation spell roaming around, but I doubt it's a serious contender in competitive formats, even with the scary keywords of hexproof and indestructible.
This will wrap up my Constructed review for Dragonstorm. While the set looks powerful, Standard is big and unchanging, so it takes a lot for cards to see play. Without another cycle of dual lands to help three-color decks, it might be a challenge for any of these cards to see play immediately. However, in the long run, we'll get more dual lands and these cards will become more castable. If these cards aren't seeing play immediately, it might be a good time to pick them up cheap before the mana issues are fixed.
Next week we should be able to play Dragonstorm Limited, and I'll focus my attention on that. This looks like it has potential to be a Limited all-timer and I can't wait to crack open my first packs.
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