Jeskai Instant Boasts a 69.2% Win Rate – Is It the Biggest Bomb Ever?

Last updated on April 14, 2025

Jeskai Revelation – Illus. Igor Grechanyi

The first week of Tarkir: Dragonstorm draft data is in, and the absolute best card you want to see in your TDM draft pool is…

… a seven-mana, three-color Jeskai card: Jeskai Revelation!

And it's not just currently TDM's card with the highest In-Hand win rate (GIH WR for short: the card you're most likely to win a game with if you ever draw it), but at 69.2% GIH WR it's also one of the bombiest bombs we've seen in quite some time, according to 17Lands data.

Source: 17Lands

For comparison, even other formats that are considered pretty “bomby”, like Outlaws of Thunder Junction last year…

Source: 17Lands

… or March of the Machine two years ago…

Source: 17Lands

… lacked such overwhelming power when looking at the first week of MTG Arena data.

And TDM is way, way above in power level when compared with a set like Foundations, which is by design on the lower end of the power scale.

Source: 17Lands

Thus far, the only recent set that would rival Tarkir: Dragonstorm would be Lord of the Rings, a Universes Beyond MTG set that was not Standard-playable…

Source: 17Lands

… The infamous Orcish Bowmasters at 71.5% GIH WR, still firmly holds the crown.

So what makes Tarkir: Dragonstorm‘s Jeskai Revelation one of the strongest cards, and among the very best in the recent history of Magic drafting?

Good Card Is Good

Narset, Jeskai Waymaster – Illustration by Randy Vargas

For starters, let's point at the obvious: Jeskai Revelation is great… 

… which should be of no surprise to frequent Draftsim readers!

“This is what dreams are made of,” wrote Andrew Quinn in our Ultimate Tarkir: Dragonstorm Limited Set Review last week, where they rated Jeskai Revelation as a 9-point bomb. “This is why Streets of New Capenna failed. None of the cards were even close to this in terms of sheer coolness.

And Bryan Hohns was similarly impressed by Jeskai Revelation, rating it as a bomb in his Ultimate Sealed Guide to Tarkir: Dragonstorm.

“Jeskai Revelation comes fairly close to “you win the game” as well, Bryan wrote last week, “and it costs a full mana less than Ureni, the Song Unending or Craterhoof Behemoth!”

Jeskai Revelation just does it all, to the point that many redditors were just laughing at how good the card is, and how it looks like a sales pitch by some Jeskai salesmonks. 

But a card being excellent is not the same as it being among the cream of the crop in recent history, so… what other factors make Jeskai Revelation that good?

My Kingdom For a Bomb!

While Redditor u/SilentBobUS focuses on commons and uncommons, in their Hidden Gems for TDM thread, they note that TDM is an outlier when it comes to the power level of mythics and rares.

“This set is the most rare/mythic driven set I've seen since I started taking records,” u/SilentBobUS notes. “Each rare/mythic drawn in TDM improves your win rate by 4.5% over drawing a common/uncommon.”

In other words, TDM is what drafters nickname a “Prince” format, where rares and mythics are in the driver's seat when it comes to power level (as opposed to “Pauper” formats, in which the best commons and uncommons can give most rares are run for their money).

Right Place, Right Time

A card also needs a good environment to shine in.

There are two good examples for that in Thunder Junction. First, green was heads and shoulders above any other color in OTJ…

Source: 17Lands

… meaning that although Railway Brawler and Bonny Pall, Clearcutter were obvious bombs in a vacuum, they were also very happy to be in OTJ's best color, pushing their WR higher.

Oko, Thief of Crowns was massively broken in Throne of Eldraine, where it punched at a 70% WR. But while still powerful, it ended up being slightly less powerful in the context of OTJ.

In Jeskai Revelation‘s case, experts knew it was extremely strong even before playing it… but the doubt remained about whether or not the format would be slow enough, and three-color decks playable enough, for a seven-mana Jeskai card to be relevant.

As it turns out, Jeskai is pretty solid in TDM, and Boros with a splash is among the best things you can be doing in the format:

Source: 17Lands 

An Expert Tide Lifts All Boats

Orcish Bowmasters – Illustration by Maxim Kostin

There's another interesting detail when you dig through the data: experienced players seem to be doing very well in TDM.

Something to keep in mind whenever checking win rates is that the sample of players is not random. This is something that happens across pretty much all videogames with third-party data trackers: What you're looking at is the winrate of players that opt in into that specific tracker. Which normally means they are more invested than the average player, which in turn reflects in the data.

And here's the interesting kicker, when comparing the average WR, for all decks, from Foundations, Outlaws of Thunder Junction, Lord of the Rings, and Tarkir: Dragonstorm:

It's tempting to think, “Simpler, lower-power formats like Foundations are better for inexperienced players because a stronger player's edge is dulled if the format is just about playing on curve and setting your cardboard sideways.” But there could be other reasons (maybe experienced players just get bored by FDN and play it less), and the above is just a quick comparison between four sets, anyway.

But it's clear that average WRs across sets can vary 1% or more – and, thus far, TDM is a set that experienced players seem to be doing particularly well in.

In other words: Jeskai Revelation is an excellent card, in a format in which slower, three-color cards can shine in, in a color combination that's doing fairly well, and in a format in which 17Lands users are doing particularly well in.

At any rate, there's something pretty clear: If you open (or somehow get passed!) a Jeskai Revelation, remember you've got one of the biggest bombs ever in your hands!