The Ultimate Tarkir: Dragonstorm Limited Set Review

Last updated on April 13, 2025

All-Out Assault | Illustration by Joshua Cairos

Hello everyone! I took the last couple of sets off to focus on some other work and now I’m back, and what a time to come back! Khans of Tarkir is by far one of the best Limited sets of all time, and now I get to review this highly anticipated follow-up 10 years in the making. Today, I’ll look over the entire Tarkir: Dragonstorm set and review each individual card for Sealed play and Booster Draft.

As always, this is a review based on my initial impressions of the cards. It’s hard to figure out how these cards will play out without knowing things like the speed of the format or the relative power levels of the colors and archetypes. My reviews are largely based on the card’s quality in a vacuum or the assumption that their specific archetype is playable.

I use a comparative rating system on a scale of 0-10. Here’s a rough guide to what each rating means:

10: The absolute best of the best. 10s have a meaningful impact on any game, especially when playing from behind, and they’re extremely tough to beat. Cards like Sab-Sunen, Luxa Embodied or Mu Yanling, Wind Rider.

8-9: Extremely good cards, usually game-winning bombs and the most efficient removal spells, though not quite good enough to be a 10/10. Could also be the mythic uncommon of the set (though these are harder to predict). Cards like Draconautics Engineer or Debris Beetle.

5-7: Important role-players. These are typically going to be great uncommons that really drive you towards playing a particular color, such as build-arounds, good removal, and very powerful commons. Cards like Autarch Mammoth or Embalmed Ascendant.

2-4: The average Limited card. Most commons end up in this range, and most of your Limited decks are made up mostly of these. Cards like Venomsac Lagac or Hulldrifter.

1: These cards aren’t playable in your main deck, usually because they’re too situational, but they could be useful out of the sideboard, or they might be the last card you add. Cards like Alacrian Jaguar or Brightfield Mustang.

0: Virtually unplayable in every scenario, and you should never put these cards in your main deck. Typically cards that were designed with Constructed play in mind but are useless in Limited. Cards like Ancient Vendetta or Radiant Lotus.

We also have a condensed review of just the best commons and uncommons in Tarkir: Dragonstorm if that better suits your needs.

Set Mechanics

Hollowmurk Siege | Illustration by Antonio José Manzanedo

Tarkir: Dragonstorm’s main mechanical focus is the five 3-color “wedges”, each represented by one of Tarkir’s five clans. There are 10 3-color combinations in Magic, and the wedges are the five of these that are formed from two pairs of “enemy” colors and one pair of “allied” colors. For example, the Abzan clan represents the combination of white, black, and green, which combines the Orzhov () and Golgari () enemy pairs with the Selesnya () allied pair. Each of the five clans gets their own mechanic. In addition, there are two more mechanics that represent the many dragons of the set.

Behold

To “behold a dragon” means to either reveal a dragon card from your hand or to control a dragon. As a reward for doing so, spells have additional benefits, reduced costs, or whatever else. We saw this back in Dragons of Tarkir on cards like Silumgar's Scorn or Draconic Roar, just without being keyworded. Back then, it was too difficult to reliably enable, so you tended to only play those cards if they were playable without access to a dragon. This time, the second dragon mechanic makes it a lot easier to run lots of dragons in your deck and enable this mechanic more. There are only six cards with behold, but you’ll soon see just how useful it’ll be to be holding a dragon.

Endure

Endure is the mechanic of Abzan Houses (), and it looks a lot like a more flexible version of fabricate from Aether Revolt. To “endure N” means to either put N +1/+1 counters on the creature that’s enduring or to create an N/N Spirit token. Generally speaking, creating a token is a much stronger ability than picking up +1/+1 counters, so you’ll probably choose this more often. There’s a +1/+1 counter subtheme in the set, though, and the Sultai mechanic also uses counters, so there could definitely be some reasons for using both. Either way, the fact that you get a choice makes this a very strong mechanic.

Flurry

Flurry is our Jeskai () mechanic. Last time, the Jeskai Way focused on casting as many noncreature spells as possible, as their mechanic was prowess. This time, we’re once again rewarded for casting multiple spells. A flurry ability is simply one that triggers when you cast your second spell in a turn. The noncreature restriction is now gone, so any spells will do. Unfortunately, we’ve seen this as a Draft archetype before, and it hasn’t played out very well, so I have fairly low expectations for this one.

Harmonize

The Temur Frontier () are my favorite clan by far. Their new mechanic, harmonize, is literally just flashback. The bonus is that each harmonize cost is rather expensive, but you can tap a creature you control to reduce that cost by X, where X is that creature’s power. Flashback is already one of best mechanics of all time, giving any spell the ability to be two cards in one, exactly what we like to see for Limited gameplay. Harmonize is bound to hit a lot of the same notes here, with the addition of rewarding you for creatures with high power.

Mobilize

The Mardu Horde () are the most aggressive clan, so it makes sense for their ability to reward you for attacking. “Mobilize N” says that whenever you attack with this creature, create N 1/1 red Warrior tokens that are tapped and attacking. You then sacrifice those tokens during your end step. Temporary attackers might not sound that powerful, but they add up very quickly. You can guarantee the set will have plenty of ways to utilize them beyond just chipping away for extra damage. Overall, this looks like a really nice, solid mechanic for aggressive decks, and I’m sure it’ll play out well.

Omen

The problem with dragons in Limited is that they all have expensive mana costs, and it makes very little sense to have too many cheap ones. To fix this issue, we saw a nice solution in Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate, where many of the expensive dragons at lower rarities had adventures so you could still use them on early turns. The new omen mechanic is basically a retread of that. Many dragons have an omen spell attached to them. If you cast the omen spell, you shuffle the card back into your deck when it resolves instead of putting it into exile like you would with an adventure spell. This allows you to run a lot more dragons in your deck than you usually would, as they still do something relevant in the early turns of the game. This looks very powerful, as do most mechanics that give you extra choices to make during gameplay.

Renew

The Sultai Brood () clan is basically all about using the graveyard. Renew is their new mechanic, and it basically allows you to exile a creature from your graveyard to put some counters on another creature. This is excellent for many reasons: It gives creatures additional utility after they die, it’s a positive for when you self-mill or discard them, it gives you a way to spend your mana in the late game, plus I’m sure plenty of other upsides. Each renew ability will use different counters, but this looks like a great mechanic right away.

Draft Archetypes

Tarkir: Dragonstorm isn’t going to be like most modern Limited sets. You’re not going to be able to draft all of the 10 2-color pairs like you normally would. Instead, the focus is on the 3-color wedge combinations associated with Tarkir’s clans. It’s also important to note that each allied color pair (Azorius , Dimir , Rakdos , Gruul , Selesnya ) is unique to a single clan, whereas the enemy pairs (Orzhov , Golgari , Simic , Izzet , Boros ) each overlap between two clans. As such, the multicolor cards in the set will mostly be in either enemy combinations or triple-color. Each of the enemy pairs has a mechanical focus that overlaps between the two clans that it’s in, giving rise to following archetypes:

• Orzhov (): Tokens/Sacrifice
• Golgari (): Counters
• Simic (): Cards Leaving the Graveyard
• Izzet (): Spells
• Boros (): Go-Wide Aggro

More often than not, you’ll end up drafting an enemy pair and then run a couple of cards in a third color to build a deck in one of the clan combinations. Four- and five-color decks also seem likely to appear. We’ll just have to see how it plays out.

White

Anafenza, Unyielding Lineage

Rating: 4/10

Anafenza, Unyielding Lineage is the kind of card that looks powerful and is really easy to craft ridiculous situations with it in your head, but it’s still really difficult to set up. I wouldn’t hesitate to just cast Anafenza in response to a removal spell so you guarantee getting its first trigger off. After all, a pair of 2/2 creatures for 3 mana is a good deal by itself. It has a lot of potential, but being so situational really limits Anafenza’s power.

Arashin Sunshield

Rating: 3/10

“Tappers” used to be a common mainstay of Magic sets, but they petered out due to being not particularly fun to play against. Arashin Sunshield is a little on the expensive side but does seem perfectly playable. It’s a nice answer to most of the set’s dragons, after all. Getting to snipe a couple of cards out of a graveyard is a nice bonus, too.

Bearer of Glory

Rating: 4/10

A 2/1 with first strike for 2 mana is a nice, solid attacker for the early game already. The ability to buff your team for 5 mana is one we’ve seen before, and it always plays better than it looks. The ability to do so at instant speed plays extremely well with the temporary tokens from mobilize too, so I have no problem seeing Bearer of Glory as one of white’s better commons.

Clarion Conqueror

Rating: 4/10

You really can’t go wrong with a 3/3 flying dragon for just 3 mana. The ability doesn’t look all that relevant in Limited, so I’m just looking at Clarion Conqueror as a vanilla creature, and it’s perfectly reasonable as that.

Coordinated Maneuver

Rating: 3/10

A removal spell that relies on the number of creatures you control isn’t particularly desirable. Not every white deck is going to be able to use Coordinated Maneuver, but if you go wide enough with endure or mobilize, this definitely could be useful. It’s also a decent sideboard card to keep in mind.

Dalkovan Packbeasts

Rating: 2/10

The idea of an aggressive 0/4 that creates attacking tokens is a fun gimmick, but not a particularly good one. A 0/4 can attack and not die on some boards, but it gets stopped by anything with enough power since it doesn’t threaten to take the blocking creature(s) with it in the same way that a 3/4 would. If you can support Dalkovan Packbeasts, it could definitely do some work, but I think it needs a lot of support before it can be considered playable.

Descendant of Storms

Rating: 6/10

Descendant of Storms reminds me of Usher of the Fallen, one of white’s best ever 1-drops. Except that not only can this expand your board with tokens, but you could give it +1/+1 counters from its own ability to help get it past blockers. This is going to be one of the best opening plays available for any white deck.

Dragonback Lancer

Rating: 2/10

I usually like Phantom Monsters, but they’ve definitely been getting worse in recent sets. Mobilize 1 is a nice additional ability to get, but I doubt it’ll be enough to save Dragonback Lancer from ending up in the mediocre commons pile.

Duty Beyond Death

Rating: 1/10

Right away, you’re down two cards by playing Duty Beyond Death (the card itself, plus the creature you sacrifice), so the effect has to be good. Of course, sometimes you can engineer board states where this is worth that investment, but those situations are not going to come up often enough for this to be something I actively want in my main deck.

Elspeth, Storm Slayer

Rating: 10/10

This might honestly be one of the easiest 10/10s I’ve ever given. Elspeth, Storm Slayer just has so much going on! The first thing I want to highlight is its 0 loyalty ability, which in some cases will just win you the game on the spot. Giving flying to your entire board is a ridiculous ability given that games of Limited often end up in stalled boards where you’re looking for something to break parity

One of the most important abilities for any planeswalker to have is the ability to protect themselves, as more turns with them in play equals more and more value. Elspeth does this perfectly with both of its other abilities, either destroying a problematic creature or creating two chump blockers for itself. Elspeth dominates virtually any board you play it on and is likely the card in TDM that I’m the most scared of seeing across the table from me.

Fortress Kin-Guard

Rating: 3/10

Whether you choose to play Fortress Kin-Guard as a 2/3 or a 1/2 plus a 1/1, you’re getting a good deal out of it. I’d advise choosing the latter more often than not, but this is just a good, solid common no matter how you do it.

Furious Forebear

Rating: 5/10

Most creatures that you can bring back to your hand like Furious Forebear tend to be too small to do much by themselves. But this is a 3/1! It’s great for early aggro curves and can trade off with good creatures in the late game. I think I’d give this white creature a much higher grade if it was in most other sets, but the tons of big flying dragons also don’t do it any favors. It does look like good sacrifice fodder, though.

Lightfoot Technique

Rating: 2/10

Take Up the Shield is a pretty powerful combat trick. The combination of a +1/+1 counter and indestructible is strong enough to automatically win a lot of combats as well as punish some removal spells. Dropping lifelink in favor of flying makes Lightfoot Technique quite a bit worse, but it’s still likely playable when you need combat tricks.

Loxodon Battle Priest

Rating: 5/10

This line of text on 2- and 3-mana rares in the past few years has ended up giving us some of the best Limited cards in their respective sets. Loxodon Battle Priest is significantly worse, of course. Five mana is a lot to ask for, and it can’t put the +1/+1 counters on itself. That said, a continual stream of free counters is still very good, especially with counters being a theme in the set.

Mardu Devotee

Rating: 3/10

This is the first of a neat little cycle of mana filterers in each color. Mardu typically needs mana fixing the least because its aggressive nature means it tends to be a lot closer to a 2-color deck with a very light splash of the third color than the other clans might be. That said, it does get on the board early and blocks opposing 1/1 tokens effectively, so it certainly pulls its weight.

Osseous Exhale

Rating: 5/10

These spells typically do either 3 or 4 damage and are somewhat mediocre. This is a set with much bigger creatures on average, so the 5 damage with Osseous Exhale is necessary to hit more targets. The gain 2 life part seems mostly irrelevant, though you’ll take it as a nice upside sometimes. For the most part, this is just very solid white removal that you’ll play in any deck.

Poised Practitioner

Rating: 1/10

This is exactly the sort of flurry card I don’t want to play. Poised Practitioner is awful before it triggers, and the trigger itself isn’t particularly impressive. If I ever have to play this card to make up numbers, I’m sure something will have gone seriously wrong.

Rally the Monastery

Rating: 7/10

Rally the Monastery honestly looks like it could have very easily been a rare, it’s that good. Prowess monks are a very valuable token and creating two of them for 4 mana is well worth the investment. Yet on top of that, this modal spell can also be a solid combat trick or a removal spell, plus its cost reduction helps you to double spell in a turn and trigger flurry abilities? What an incredible card!

Rebellious Strike

Rating: 2/10

Defiant Strike has proved itself a useful spell in helping to cast more spells. Doubling its mana cost for minimal upside just isn’t worth it. Sure, this is still playable, but it’s not something I actively want in most decks.

Riling Dawnbreaker

Rating: 5/10

Isn’t this basically just a Serra Angel? At common? While Serra Angel is definitely not as powerful as it once was in Limited, Riling Dawnbreaker is still one of the best common 5-drops I’ve ever seen. Five-drops have a habit of being highly replaceable, but the fact this is also a 2-drop when you need to be puts it way above the rest. This is a powerhouse that you can run as many copies of as you like, and that sounds great to me.

Sage of the Skies

Rating: 8/10

Just a 2/3 with lifelink and flying for 3 mana would already be a good card, but two of them for the same cost is just ridiculous. While Sage of the Skies has an obvious application in Jeskai’s flurry decks, it’s powerful enough that you can just play it in anything; sometimes it’ll be more than good enough to just run it out on turn 3 and start attacking.

Salt Road Packbeast

Rating: 5/10

I do love drawing me some cards. You might think the cost reduction is what matters here, but I’d honestly be happy with a 6-drop creature that drew me a card. I’d certainly like Salt Road Packbeast to cost less, and simply controlling creatures is a very easy condition to satisfy. Once it starts costing 4, or even less, it starts looking absolutely absurd. This beast also plays really nicely with the tokens from mobilize and endure. This has to easily be one of white’s best commons.

Smile at Death

Rating: 0/10

Even if you set this up and have a lot of creatures that pair well with it, it’s still a 5-mana enchantment that does nothing until your next turn. You can’t afford to play a card like that in the vast majority of games. This is just abysmal for Limited and clearly designed with Constructed in mind.

Starry-Eyed Skyrider

Rating: 6/10

It’s been a while since we saw a Pegasus Courser. This design is particularly good at making sure your creatures can’t be blocked, and Starry-Eyed Skyrider is especially good with mobilize creatures. It’s worth noting the sheer number of dragons in Tarkir: Dragonstorm might still make attacking difficult, but if that’s the only thing you have to contend with, you’re in pretty decent shape.

Static Snare

Rating: 7/10

The fact that this could be a 1-mana Banishing Light with flash is absurd. Even if only one creature attacks, casting Static Snare for 4 mana is still great. This is what premium white removal looks like, and it will be great.

Stormbeacon Blade

Rating: 3/10

It’s pretty easy to enable this with many mobilize creatures, but it’s still a bit too expensive. +3/+0 is an aggressive stat buff, but it’s not one that helps a creature to survive in combat, which is one of the most important aspects of an equipment. I don’t know. I do like drawing cards, so I’m sure I’ll play this in Mardu, but I’m not sold on it just yet.

Stormplain Detainment

Rating: 5/10

A simple Banishing Light is always good. These cards usually live or die based on how much enchantment removal is around, but there shouldn’t be too much of that to contend with. Stormplain Detainment should just be a solid removal spell for any white deck.

Sunpearl Kirin

Rating: 6/10

There are so many applications for cards like this. You can save a creature from a removal spell, pick up a Stormplain Detainment so you can replay it on a new target, or just reuse a sweet enters trigger. On top of all of that, this can just eat a mobilize token that was going to die anyway to draw a card or even just run out a 2-power flier on turn 2. Sunpearl Kirin might be the best version of this type of card that we’ve ever seen and I’m all here for it.

Teeming Dragonstorm

Rating: 6/10

This is a really cool cycle that incentivizes us to play more dragons. The real test of whether they’re good will be whether you’d be happy playing them if they never returned. With Teeming Dragonstorm, 4 mana for a pair of 2/2s is already a good deal. If you get to return it even once, it starts getting pretty messed up. This is a great way to generate a lot of free late game advantage out of just one card.

Tempest Hawk

Rating: 2-4/10

If you only have one Tempest Hawk, it’s not good enough. But if you have two or even three copies, then they start to look interesting. The first hit draws you a relevant card, and even if subsequent hits don’t draw you anything, you still got some good value. You still might have better 3-drops to play, but these birds look strong if you have a couple of them.

United Battlefront

Rating: 0/10

United Battlefront is kind of a cute callback to Collected Company, which was first released in Dragons of Tarkir. Except that was not good in Limited, and this is even worse. How many cards are you even going to have in your deck that can be found with this sorcery? Just avoid it at all costs.

Voice of Victory

Rating: 6/10

Knowing that your opponent won’t be able to cast any combat tricks is extremely useful. As long as you keep mana open, can your opponent ever legitimately block anything? Knowing that you can have a trick, and they can’t do anything to stop it probably stops them from doing so quite often, turning Voice of Victory into a very legitimate threat on the board.

Wayspeaker Bodyguard

Rating: 4/10

Gravedigger is an absurd Limited card, and Wayspeaker Bodyguard does a bad but still noteworthy impression of it. I don’t think the flurry ability is going to be all that relevant. At the end of the day, you should only play this if you have enough good stuff in your deck to get back with the first ability, and it’s not bad when you have the means to support it.

Blue

Aegis Sculptor

Rating: 3/10

Aegis Sculptor isn’t a card that you can freely put into any blue deck. Unless you’re filling up your graveyard with useless fodder, this isn’t very impressive. It’s also a really weak topdeck in the late game. This card is fine if you can enable it with some self-mill, but it’s not very exciting.

Agent of Kotis

Rating: 2/10

I doubt that many blue decks are going to be terribly interested in a vanilla 2-drop 2/1. Agent of Kotis does have good value when you discard it or mill it, as two free +1/+1 counters is very strong, but I’d want ways to enable that before running it.

Ambling Stormshell

Rating: 7/10

I’m not sure where I land on this guy, but I’m a sucker for drawing three cards. Ambling Stormshell is a fun reference to one of Khans of Tarkir’s weirdest rares: Meandering Towershell, and it’s a lot better. Right away, a 5/9 for 5 and no downsides is a powerful defensive option. Even if it dies in combat, you draw three cards right away when you attack, and that’s awesome. It does stay tapped for three whole turns, but maybe you could get around that. You could sacrifice it for value, or bounce and replay it. I think this turtle does enough that it’ll be strong, even despite its big downside.

Bewildering Blizzard

Rating: 7/10

I’m trying not to get too carried away with this rating, but I can’t see how Bewildering Blizzard isn’t just broken for an uncommon. The biggest issue with expensive draw spells is that you never have the time to cast them when they don’t affect the board. Except this does affect the board. You can use this instant offensively or defensively as a powerful combat trick that puts you up by at least three cards and maybe more. You can also just Fog an incoming attack while refilling your hand! This card just looks obscene to me, and I can’t wait to try it out for myself.

Constrictor Sage

Rating: 6/10

From Chillbringer to Berg Strider, we’ve seen that Frost Lynx can do perfectly well, even at 5 mana. Constrictor Sage is the best version of any of them that we’ve ever seen. Not only is it easy to cast, costing only a single blue mana, but it even has a ton of value out of the graveyard. You can randomly mill it or just let it die naturally and you still have a great play available to you. This is awesome, and it's likely one of blue’s better cards.

Dirgur Island Dragon

Rating: 3/10

A 6-drop 4/4 dragon isn’t the best, but the fact that Dirgur Island Dragon essentially has cycling for 2 mana via its omen spell means you can just put it in most decks and be happy with it. This looks good for enabling behold and other dragon/omen synergies, but it’s probably not good enough to play if you don’t have any of those.

Dispelling Exhale

Rating: 4/10

Despite being historically quite weak, the Quench variant in recent years has become quite playable. Beholding a dragon is particularly important here, as it can turn a useless counterspell into literally Counterspell when you’re in the right spot. I think I’d need to have some dragons in my deck to play Dispelling Exhale and be happy, but it’s still solid “removal” for blue.

Dragonologist

Rating: 4/10

How likely are you to actually get a card off of Dragonologist? That’s the real question here. If you hit nothing, this card is awful. Your average Limited deck has, say, 6-7 instants and sorceries, and I think 3-4 dragons doesn’t sound too unrealistic. If you have 10 things to hit, 30 cards left in your deck (because you played this turn 3 on the draw), you have a 93.4% chance of seeing at least one card to grab. That’s not too bad. The odds start to drastically decrease as you have fewer options, though. On balance, I think this is worth playing, assuming you have a good number of targets.

Dragonstorm Forecaster

Rating: 3/10

Dragonstorm Forecaster is a neat little throwback to Renowned Weaponsmith from Fate Reforged. Both Dragonstorm Globe and Boulderborn Dragon are incredibly mediocre cards, but the ability to draw them from your deck essentially for free means something. You can also curve one into the other, which is kind of cute. Still, the power level of all three cards here is lacking, so I don’t think it’ll end up being too good.

Essence Anchor

Rating: 1/10

While I’m a fan of 3-mana, do-nothing artifact and enchantment build-arounds (what a mouthful…), I just don’t see Essence Anchor coming together. Having cards leave your graveyard is the theme for blue/green, but renew and harmonize both come with some pretty expensive costs, so it’s not going to be something you can do turn after turn. I’d rather look towards payoffs for this archetype that are good even when you’re not doing the thing.

Focus the Mind

Rating: 1/10

The mana discount is a nod to helping to double spell in a turn, but the spell itself isn’t particularly desirable. I’m not happy casting this for 5 mana at all. At 3, it’s a good rate, but I don’t like having to jump through a hoop to get that. There are some great draw spells in the set already, I don’t think Focus the Mind is one of them.

Fresh Start

Rating: 4/10

-5/-0 and losing all abilities is enough to completely neuter just about anything. What I really like about Fresh Start is that in a set full of dragons, you should be able to easily fly over whatever this is on, which gets around the downside of it ending up as a big wall to block your ground game. Blue’s removal options are usually bad, but this does look pretty decent.

Highspire Bell-Ringer

Rating: 1/10

I do like the 1/4 flying creature for 3 mana, but it needs to have a better upside than this. While the ability helps the flurry deck by giving you a small mana discount, the creature itself doesn’t. Jeskai is likely going to be a tempo deck with aggressive creatures, so a 1/4 is completely antithetical to that. I doubt Highspire Bell-Ringer is good enough to play at all.

Humbling Elder

Rating: 4/10

Oh boy, do I love cards like Humbling Elder. Back in Lost Caverns of Ixalan, Cogwork Wrestler ended up being the best blue common, and with good reason. It’s so cheap and flexible that it just pays for itself several times over. The creatures in this set are a lot bigger than they were in LCI, which does limit some of the plays Humbling Elder can have, but I still think this is an exciting common that I’ll happily play in any blue deck.

Iceridge Serpent

Rating: 3/10

How much am I willing to pay for a Man-o'-War? I don’t think this much. The tempo swing you get is still very strong, but there are much stronger cards that you can play for 5 mana. Like dragons, for example. I have a feeling Iceridge Serpent will just fall flat, even though we’re usually happy to see this effect in any Limited set.

Kisha Trawlers

Rating: 6/10

I’m a huge fan of Archaeomancer and all similar effects. They play out so well in exactly the kinds of decks I enjoy drafting the most. Kishla Trawlers is a fair bit worse, but I’ll take it. There are a lot of premium instants and sorceries in TDM, and a chance to cast any of them for a second time has got to be worth it. You can also bring this citizen back with all sorts of spells, which gives you some awesome looping potential.

Marang River Regent

Rating: 8/10

Marang River Regent is a dragon that’s so powerful it doesn’t need to have an omen spell attached for me to be interested. Six mana for a huge dragon plus bouncing two problematic permanents is a great deal. You could even bounce your own permanents to reuse their abilities. The omen really is just icing on the cake here, because most of the time it’ll be far better to hold off and wait until you get to 6 mana for this huge tempo swing.

Naga Fleshcrafter

Rating: 7/10

Clone is always a good card to see, and it’s even better when they come up with random upsides. The renew ability is definitely a nice bonus, and there’s bound to be some sweet combos you can wrangle with Naga Fleshcrafter, but this is first and foremost a Clone and I’m pretty happy with that.

Ringing Strike Mastery

Rating: 4/10

This is a cool little throwback to KTK’s Singing Bell Strike. The fact that your opponent can just pay 5 mana and untap their creature at will means Ringing Strike Mastery is very ineffective at dealing with big threats, but it’s actually quite good for dealing with cheaper ones like 3-drops and 4-drops. It’s not the most reliable removal spell, but it’s cheap enough that it should be good in some decks.

Riverwalk Technique

Rating: 4/10

This is what blue gets as its basic, common removal spell in basically every set these days. I’m sure Riverwalk Technique will be just as good as the others, and the ability to counter any of the ridiculously broken spells in the set is a very nice upside.

Roiling Dragonstorm

Rating: 3/10

Getting to draw two cards and discard one for 2 mana synergizes really well with this set. You can pitch creatures with renew or spells with harmonize for some free value or just the usual play of throwing away an excess land. While it’s obviously good to get to rebuy it, I don’t know how often you can do that in an average game, but Roiling Dragonstorm is a solid card even if you don’t do that.

Sibsig Appraiser

Rating: 5/10

What rating would I give a 2/1 that literally just drew a card? Well, we’ve seen that before, and it’s often ended up as one of the best commons in a set, so it’s safe to assume this one will be too. In some ways, Sibsig Appraiser even draws you two cards: It can trade off, or it might find something sweet to renew or harmonize that you can ditch into your graveyard. This is awesome and you should take as many of them as you see.

Snowmelt Stag

Rating: 1/10

Getting to hit with this for 5 unblockable damage is no joke, but having to pay 7 mana to do so is. The raw stats on Snowmelt Stag aren’t good enough in 2025, but since this is very capable of ending long games, I could see it becoming useful if the format ends up being really slow.

Spectral Denial

Rating: 4/10

Spectral Denial is like a weird mashup of Syncopate and Stubborn Denial. It’s pretty flexible, and if your deck has enough creatures to support it, it should remain relevant even when your opponent has plenty of mana available. The only question is whether a counterspell is good in the format, which is something we won’t know until we play it, but this definitely has all the potential it needs.

Stillness in Motion

Rating: 3/10

I’d have killed for a card like Stillness in Motion in a set like Shadows over Innistrad, where turbo self-mill was the name of the game. Here, I’m not that impressed. Of course there’ll be decks that can benefit from some milling, but that’s all this does. This blue enchantment does set you up for a powerful endgame once you’ve decked yourself, but it seems far too slow until that point and it sounds awful to topdeck.

Taigam, Master Opportunist

Rating: 6/10

Taigam, Master Opportunist looks like one of the stronger flurry payoffs, but a weird one at that. Having to wait four whole turns to get your reward is a lot to ask for, so you probably don’t want to use this with situational spells that might be useless on the turn you end up recasting them. However, as a 2-drop, you can use Taigam as your first spell of a turn to enable its own ability. Taigam works very well with omen spells, as it exiles the omen spell and you can then cast the dragon side for free when it comes off of suspend. There’s a lot to like if you can enable Taigam, but it’s not too exciting otherwise.

Temur Devotee

Rating: 3/10

I say this in pretty much every new set, but I’m a huge fan of the 2-drop 3/3 defender creature that blue always gets at common. Unlike its predecessors, Temur Devotee has no option to allow it to attack, but it filters your mana instead. Given all the powerful multicolor cards in Tarkir: Dragonstorm, that’ll probably end up being far better for you.

Unending Whisper

Rating: 3/10

As much as Unending Whisper is supposed to be a Temur card, it actually looks a lot stronger in Jeskai. A 1-mana cantrip spell is perfect for helping to trigger flurry abilities, and the harmonize ability even lets this be both of those spells in the right scenario. Outside of that, I doubt you’ll ever need this in your deck.

Ureni’s Rebuff

Rating: 5/10

Two shots at bouncing a creature makes for quite an exciting spell. Silent Departure was always a powerful spell and Ureni's Rebuff is probably even better. You’re going to actively want to have good creatures to tap for it or be milling cards to get it for free, but it’s still good in any blue deck just to cast it twice.

Veteran Ice Climber

Rating: 6/10

Straight up unblockable creatures are so annoying. Veteran Ice Climber is the sort of creature you want to be using renew to buff up, so of course it helps that by milling you little by little with each attack. Thankfully, it doesn’t have something else dumb like ward or hexproof so you can kill it with removal, because it can become a very powerful threat if left unchecked.

Wingblade Disciple

Rating: 6/10

When WotC first tried out a double spell archetype in Kaldheim, it completely flopped. However, Clarion Spirit stood out as the best card in that archetype that just played well in any white deck. Wingblade Disciple is basically the same thing, and this card is still absurd even if flurry doesn’t pan out as an archetype.

Wingspan Stride

Rating: 1/10

We may have a bunch of huge, flying dragons to contend with, but there are better ways to compete than Wingspan Stride. Even as just a 1-mana spell that helps you to double spell, I simply think we can do better. Auras are just bad, and they open you up to big blowouts. This technically has an ability to help mitigate that, but it’s so mana intensive that I don’t think it’ll help.

Winternight Stories

Rating: 7/10

I really love seeing more variants on the Compulsive Research design. Discarding a creature card doesn’t seem too bad given the existence of renew creatures, but you can always discard a couple of lands instead. Getting to flash Winternight Stories back for as little as 1 mana is also huge. This single card ends up putting you ahead by as many as three cards, and that could be all you need to swing a game in your favor if this format is slow enough.

Black

Abzan Devotee

Rating: 3/10

Of all the designs they could have picked for black’s “devotee,” I wouldn’t have guessed Sanitarium Skeleton. Black/white does have a sacrifice theme to make full use of Abzan Devotee, but in other decks you can still trade it off, filter your mana, or even trigger the blue/green theme of having cards leave your graveyard. This is bound to be a very good common.

Adorned Crocodile

Rating: 2/10

Five-drops are extremely replaceable. They have been for a while, and they especially are in TDM given that so many fives are dragons with good omen spells attached to them. Adorned Crocodile is even one of the better looking 5-drops we’ve seen, so I’m not counting it out completely yet, but I’m still not hopeful for it.

Aggressive Negotiations

Rating: 1/10

Why couldn’t they have saved the “Aggressive Negotiations” name for an Anakin Skywalker meme card in the Star Wars Universes Beyond set that isn’t happening but probably will at some point? Why does it just have to be a crappy Coercion that’s going to stay in our sideboards?

Alchemist’s Assistant

Rating: 4/10

Lifelink is one of the most valuable abilities in Limited. Games often come down to racing and picking up little advantages in combat, so lifelink is perfect for swaying such races in your favor. The renew ability is the key for Alchemist's Assistant. It doesn’t matter how you get it in the graveyard, but unlike other creatures, it’s not so bad to just cast this and get it into combat.

Alesha’s Legacy

Rating: 1/10

We’ve seen this exact card before, and it didn’t see play. You could put Alesha's Legacy in a deck and it’ll be fine, but you can just do a lot better in black.

Avenger of the Fallen

Rating: 7/10

Your average aggro deck is bound to trade off a few creatures in the early game, which plays right into the hands of Avenger of the Fallen. Deathtouch means it’s guaranteed to take something with it in combat, which makes it very difficult for your opponent to profitably block it. Despite being a 3-drop, it actually gets better the longer you wait on it. Sometimes you’ll draw it on turn 10 when it happens to have mobilize 6, and it can just win the game in one attack.

Caustic Exhale

Rating: 6/10

Caustic Exhale has “best common in set” written all over it. -3/-3 is a huge debuff on such a cheap card. If you have no dragons in your deck, this is still just Last Gasp, an excellent card in its own right, but if you get to behold a dragon and get this to cost 1 mana, you’re really winning. The key is that unlike damage spells, this is a removal spell that can also be used as a combat trick to help kill much bigger creatures. It’s cheap, powerful, and flexible, what more do you even want in a common?

Corroding Dragonstorm

Rating: 1/10

I wouldn’t be happy to play Corroding Dragonstorm if all it did was enter once and do nothing else. You need to be playing a lot of dragons for you to feel like you actually got a card’s worth of value out of this. At this point, I have no idea whether you can feasibly do that.

Cruel Truths

Rating: 3/10

The format should be slow enough for this to be good, and 4-mana instants that draw some cards and help to fill the graveyard have definitely seen play in the past. You’d generally prefer to play something that adds to the board, but going up on cards is a big deal when playing for a long game, so you ought to be able to make room for Cruel Truths.

Delta Bloodflies

Rating: 1/10

In the right deck, controlling a creature with a counter on it should be pretty trivial. But even then, that only buffs Delta Bloodflies from being terrible to fine. I don’t want to have to put any work in for my creatures to end up being on par with the medium cards in my deck.

Desperate Measures

Rating: 4/10

This is a weird but tricksy little card. You can always use it to kill an annoying 1-toughness creature, so that’s nice. You can use it in response to removal or on a mobilize token to draw two cards. But best of all, if you get to line Desperate Measures up as a combat trick, you can get your two cards and kill a creature at the same time. This is situational, but the upside and flexibility are there to make this playable.

Dragon’s Prey

Rating: 4/10

Dragon's Prey is just simple, clean, good removal. The fact that it can’t kill some of the best creatures in the set without paying a full 5 mana for it is a letdown, but it’s still plenty good enough.

Feral Deathgorger

Rating: 2/10

Neither side of Feral Deathgorger looks especially good to me. They both just look too overcosted for what they are. I do think you’ll end up playing this in some decks. After all, it’s a dragon that effectively has cycling. It’s just not something I’ll be clamoring to get into my deck most of the time.

Gurmag Rakshasa

Rating: 4/10

With how big the creatures in TDM are, I don’t think -2/-2 goes a particularly long way, especially at sorcery speed. The upside is still there, and if Gurmag Rakshasa can’t outright kill a creature, it might be able to finish one off postcombat. It could also help you to push one of your creatures past a much bigger blocker. At the end of the day, this is fine, but there are a lot of stronger plays for this much mana.

Hundred-Battle Veteran

Rating: 5/10

I don’t think getting to three different types of counters is in any way realistic. Even if you did, you’d be one piece of interaction away from losing the buff in the middle of combat. Thankfully, Hundred-Battle Veteran is saved by having the ability to be cast twice, which is just awesome. Also, does anyone else think she looks a lot like Elizabeth Banks as Rita Repulsa in that terrible Power Rangers reboot movie?

Kin-Tree Nurturer

Rating: 4/10

I’ll definitely take a 2/1 with lifelink plus a 1/1 for 3 mana. Playing Kin-Tree Nurturer as a 3/2 sounds pretty bad, even with lifelink to back it up, but I suppose the counters theme means you might want that some of the time. Either way, this is just a great deal.

Krumar Initiate

Rating: 6/10

I think Krumar Initiate is the biggest reason to only ever choose to create a token when this endures. Imagine how you’d feel if you’d spent all this extra mana and life to grow this, only to have it killed. Plus, growing it makes little sense given that we don’t want to get into combat with it at all. Anyway, a creature that can create a free token every turn while only spending mana and life is exceptionally good. Even just 2 mana to create a 1/1 is great. This cleric is a threat that must be dealt with or it’ll straight up win the game by itself, making it a premium uncommon.

Nightblade Brigade

Rating: 3/10

Deathtouch and mobilize are a really good mix, helping to dissuade your opponent from blocking. Assuming you can make good use of the mobilize token, Nightblade Brigade is a very reasonable turn 3 play.

Qarsi Revenant

Rating: 9/10

Vampire Nighthawk is a ridiculous card in Limited. Qarsi Revenant can trade with anything and help catch you back up in a game you’re losing, and it’s near impossible to race. What could be better? I suppose a slightly bigger one that then turns any other creature into another Nighthawk? Yeah, that’ll do just fine.

Rot-Curse Rakshasa

Rating: 8/10

This is such a cool design. First things first, you want Rot-Curse Rakshasa in your graveyard so it can be renewed. Having decayed itself makes that really easy to do, though you might not want to go through the trouble of casting it and then attacking with it. I think the key to this card is the fact that decayed creatures can’t block. Having this demon in your graveyard gives you the ability to nerf your opponent’s entire board so you can attack for the win. Of course, you could just use it earlier than that to debilitate a couple of creatures in the middle of the game. I’m interested to see where this lands, but my first impressions are pretty high.

Salt Road Skirmish

Rating: 4/10

You can’t go too wrong with outright killing any creature, but 4 mana is a lot and getting two temporary tokens isn’t the best of upsides. At least, it’s not an upside that most decks will even care about. Salt Road Skirmish isn’t the best removal spell, but it’s still removal, so you’ll still play it.

Sandskitter Outrider

Rating: 3/10

Once you get to 4 mana, the allure of two creatures for one card starts to wear a little thin. Sandskitter Outrider is either a 2/1 with menace plus a 2/2 or is just a 4/3 menace. I really don’t care about the latter, so it’s the token that matters here. It’s fine, but like I say, these effects are still a lot better when they’re cheaper, so this one is only fine.

Scavenger Regent

Rating: 8/10

I do love seeing one of these omen dragons having a board wipe attached to it. Even though Scavenger Regent doesn’t kill dragons, it’s still very effective at clearing out early aggro boards, which is exactly what you need in any deck looking to go big. The dragon itself is also pretty nasty. Discarding a card as a ward cost basically makes removal spells terrible, as they all result in two-for-ones in your favor. You really can’t go wrong with this one; both sides are excellent.

The Sibsig Ceremony

Rating: 0/10

Triple black for an enchantment that makes it harder for you to win the game sounds like one of the least playable cards I’ve ever heard of. Please stay away from The Sibsig Ceremony.

Sidisi, Regent of the Mire

Rating: 1/10

My first thought is to compare Sidisi, Regent of the Mire to the utterly obscene Recurring Nightmare. Sadly, the mana value restriction is just too painful. You just need too many things to go right, starting with your deckbuilding, which you have too little control of, all the way to filling your graveyard and having the right fodder to sacrifice. I’d like to see this pan out, but odds are it just won’t happen.

Sinkhole Surveyor

Rating: 8/10

This might be one of the few exceptions to my rule with endure, where actually picking up the counters might be a better tactic. Not only will the counters push Sinkhole Surveyor out of range of a lot of removal, but it also makes it bigger than most of the set’s dragons very quickly. Best of all, putting a counter on with each attack kills your opponent in just five hits (2+3+4+5+6=20), which necessitates an answer. All of that on a 2-drop, which you can also use to create tokens if you need to play more defensively, sounds absolutely ridiculous to me.

Strategic Betrayal

Rating: 2/10

With a whole archetype centered around tokens, I don’t think Strategic Betrayal is going to pan out very often. Even when this trades for a whole creature, it’s not likely to be your opponent’s best one. This looks like much more of a sideboard option in this set to me.

Unburied Earthcarver

Rating: 3/10

There should be plenty of fodder available for Unburied Earthcarver to sacrifice, especially with mobilize tokens that are going to die anyway. The fact that this requires mana is what sets it back though. With that in mind, this is a fine, but very average common 2-drop.

Unrooted Ancestor

Rating: 5/10

Creatures like this that have the ability to become indestructible are incredibly annoying. There are answers to them, but sometimes you just have no good way to beat them. Strangely enough, Unrooted Ancestor is the first one we’ve ever seen that has flash. Flash makes this even more obnoxious, because it has the potential to really mess up a combat phase and then stick around and be annoying until you can find a way around it.

Venerated Stormsinger

Rating: 7/10

We’ve seen all sorts of variants on the classic Blood Artist design and time and time again they prove themselves. Venerated Stormsinger doesn’t need mobilize itself given how you rarely want to risk it getting into combat, but the way it synergizes so beautifully with other mobilize creatures makes me think this is bound to be one of black’s better cards.

Wail of War

Rating: 5/10

The ability to return two target creatures from your graveyard to your hand is what makes this card. I’d play that card in any black deck already, so the bonus mode of getting to shrink your opponent’s team in the middle of combat just pushes Wail of War over the top.

Worthy Cost

Rating: 4/10

We’ve seen a lot of Bone Splinters variants over the years, and they all fall into a similar category. They’re great when you have plenty of fodder to sacrifice to them, and mediocre when you don’t. We have mobilize and endure to fuel Worthy Cost, so my assumption is that this’ll be on the good side, but we’ll have to see if that pans out or not.

Yathan Tombguard

Rating: 4/10

If you can draw a card off of Yathan Tombguard on the turn you play it, it’s going to be great. As it stands, I don’t like the fact that it doesn’t trigger itself until you can put a counter on it with another card, as a 2/3 menace for 3 mana isn’t the most exciting creature to be playing with. As such, this will be a good inclusion for a deck that is heavily focused on counters, but it seems a bit mediocre otherwise.

Red

Breaching Dragonstorm

Rating: 4/10

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that I love this card. Cascade/discover are some of my favorite mechanics simply for how random and fun they can be. Yes, it’s possible that you end up spending your 5 mana only to hit a 2-drop off the top of your deck and Breaching Dragonstorm looks terrible. You could also immediately hit a dragon, cast it for free, then bounce this right away. Above all else, this looks like a really fun card with a good amount of potential to be busted, so I’ll hedge my bets and try it out first.

Channeled Dragonfire

Rating: 5/10

Well, it looks like Firebolt is back. Even if Channeled Dragonfire is situational removal and only kills small targets, getting two shots out of it is a great deal. Unlike its predecessor, harmonize’s ability to cost less when you tap a creature actually makes this very castable early. Don’t forget, it can also go to the face, so you can clear out an annoying creature early and then get a random extra 2 damage when you need it.

Cori-Steel Cutter

Rating: 7/10

Now, this is a flurry payoff I can get behind. Prowess monks are incredibly strong tokens, as anyone who’s played with or against Monastery Mentor can tell you. Cori-Steel Cutter is also cheap enough that you could just play this into a 1-drop on turn 3 and immediately get a trigger. I’m still not convinced that flurry is something we can reliably do, but this is exactly the sort of card that makes me want to try.

Devoted Duelist

Rating: 3/10

The flurry ability on Devoted Duelist is pretty negligible, but a 2/1 with haste for 2 mana is pretty solid. You’ll only want it in an aggressive deck of course, but I’m sure those decks will be happy to have it.

Dracogenesis

Rating: 0/10

Well, at least this is an easy one. Eight mana is a lot and definitely far too much to spend on a card that doesn’t do anything. You’re much better off spending your 8 mana on the dragon you’d have cast off of Dracogenesis.

Equilibrium Adept

Rating: 4/10

Equilibrium Adept is an absolutely fine card. Exiling a card and getting until the end of your next turn to play it is essentially the same as drawing it. It even helps you to double spell next turn and let this attack with double strike. Not bad at all.

Fire-Rim Form

Rating: 2/10

This always looks like a solid combat trick but weirdly tends to play out a lot worse than that. Fire-Rim Form is likely a good way to help get around all those big dragons that your average aggro deck will struggle with, but I’m guessing it’ll still underperform.

Fleeting Effigy

Rating: 6/10

A cheap haste creature that bounces every turn doesn’t sound like anything special. In fact, it sounds quite bad. However, I think Fleeting Effigy serves one very important function in Tarkir: Dragonstorm, and that’s to enable flurry. Since this bounces itself, it can be a 1-mana spell that you cast turn after turn to enable double spelling and triggering flurry abilities. In that specific context, I think this card looks excellent, but I doubt I’d want it in most other decks.

Iridescent Tiger

Rating: 2/10

This is a fun little card. It’s shockingly bad if you can’t follow it up with another spell, which is a significant downside. But Iridescent Tiger does offer some good upside. It fixes colors for you and allows you to double spell. I don’t think it’s especially good, but I’m sure I’ll find some use for it.

Jeskai Devotee

Rating: 2/10

Jeskai Devotee is probably the worst of the devotee cycle. A 2/2 for 2 with an incredibly minor ability is just not going to cut it these days. It still fixes your mana fine, so it’s far from useless, but the others in this cycle look a lot stronger.

Magmatic Hellkite

Rating: 5/10

Most of this grade is completely discounting its ability. In most Limited sets, the ability wouldn’t do anything, but this is a multicolor format. Every deck should have a good number of nonbasic lands in it. You’re not going to be able to deny an opponent an important color, but you can stifle their mana for a turn, which is really nice when you’re playing such a huge dragon for just 4 mana. Yeah, Magmatic Hellkite is pretty good, and I doubt I’ll ever cut it from my red decks.

Meticulous Artisan

Rating: 2/10

Four mana for a 3/3 plus a Treasure token doesn’t seem all that worth it to me. It was alright a few years ago in a much weaker set, but I think it’s too overcosted for this set. Prowess does very little to save Meticulous Artisan, as the decks that can support a prowess attacker don’t want any weak 4-drops.

Molten Exhale

Rating: 5/10

Two mana for 4 damage is always a great burn spell. It’s weird to see such an efficient rate at common, so this is really pushed, especially if you can behold a dragon and cast it during combat. Molten Exhale is very likely to be the best red common, and you should always prioritize this no matter what red deck you’re drafting.

Narset’s Rebuke

Rating: 3/10

Yes, this is a 5-mana removal spell, but it’s also one that enables you to double spell for flurry. Given that, I like this a fair bit more than the typical 5-mana burn spells that we get in sets these days, though I doubt you’ll want to run more than one of Narset's Rebuke.

Overwhelming Surge

Rating: 3/10

There are very few artifacts in Tarkir: Dragonstorm, so the second mode feels mostly irrelevant. Though killing Dragonfire Blade should come in clutch every so often. With that out of the way, Overwhelming Surge becomes a very inefficient and mediocre 3 damage for 3 mana, which you’ll definitely play, but you don’t need to prioritize over better burn spells.

Rescue Leopard

Rating: 3/10

Not only will this trigger when Rescue Leopard attacks, but also when you tap it to pay for a harmonize cost. I like that quite a bit, and with 4 power it’s even a nice aggressive creature for your tempo decks.

Reverberating Summons

Rating: 1/10

Reverberating Summons looks like a terrible payoff for flurry. It does nothing on turns where you can’t flurry. Even when you do, turning into a 3/3 for the turn is embarrassingly little to get for all that work. I’m not at all interested in playing this.

Sarkhan, Dragon Ascendant

Rating: 4/10

I still don’t know how many dragons we’re going to be able to play in an average deck, but Sarkhan is a good reason to try to load up. If you be holdin’ a dragon, a turn 2 Sarkhan can get that dragon on board a turn earlier than expected and become a legitimate threat in its own right. Naturally, this is purely a build-around card that you shouldn’t play without access to a good number of dragons, and only time will tell how many we can reliably get into one deck.

Seize Opportunity

Rating: 2/10

A spell that had either one of these modes without the other wouldn’t be very good, but the combination doesn’t sound too bad. Seize Opportunity is essentially a mediocre combat trick that has some form of cycling and those are always at least playable.

Shock Brigade

Rating: 3/10

Hey, is that you, Kari Zev, Skyship Raider? Shock Brigade is a really nice and aggressive 2-drop that synergizes nicely with the set’s themes, and the fact that it’s difficult to block lets it pair perfectly with combat tricks.

Shocking Sharpshooter

Rating: 5/10

This is a really innocuous card, but I think it’s going to surprise a few people. If you can support Shocking Sharpshooter with endure and mobilize tokens, the free damage starts adding up very quickly. Mobilize in particular might struggle to get damage through against large blockers, and this helps you to do that without connecting.

Stadium Headliner

Rating: 3/10

Right now, I doubt that 1-drops are going to be important in the set. Stadium Headliner is just going to get immediately outclassed by basically everything and doesn’t offer quite enough upside to make up for that. I can see this being fine in an aggro deck, but overall, this looks like a weak removal spell with a lot of hoops to jump through.

Stormscale Scion

Rating: 3/10

This is a hard card to evaluate. Stormscale Scion isn’t great by itself, so you really want to be able to enable storm somehow. If you can set up a turn where you cast a cheap spell and follow up with this so you have two of them, then the card actually looks really powerful. The problem is that even if you build your deck in a way that makes that a possibility, it still won’t come up often enough. Most of the time, this will just be stuck in your hand as an overcosted dragon lord.

Stormshriek Feral

Rating: 2/10

We’ve seen enough variants on Tormenting Voice by now (a card which first came out in Khans of Tarkir in fact) that we know the deal. There’s nothing wrong with Stormshriek Feral, but most decks don’t need it, so it’s usually best utilized by decks that need to cast spells. The fact that this is also a dragon makes it more likely for other decks to play it. It’s only a 3/3 though, and a lot of the set’s dragons are quite a bit bigger, so I don’t know if this’ll be good enough and I don’t think its firebreathing ability saves it.

Summit Intimidator

Rating: 3/10

Summit Intimidator is another callback, this time to KTK’s mythic common Summit Prowler. It turned out that in a set full of 3-drop 2/2s, a vanilla 4/3 for 4 was actually very good. This time around, of course we get some abilities, and very good ones at that. Making a creature unable to block for the turn is especially dangerous in a set with mobilize creatures looking for an opportunity to pounce.

Sunset Strikemaster

Rating: 4/10

This is red’s first unconditional mana dork since Sisters of the Flame back in Fourth Edition. In Limited, mana dorks are pretty good, especially when there are a bunch of expensive dragons that you want to cast. Sunset Strikemaster even lets you cash it in in the late game to kill an opposing dragon, so it looks pretty solid to me.

Tersa Lightshatter

Rating: 8/10

I don’t really know what to make of Tersa Lightshatter. It should be said that a 3/3 haste creature for 3 is already very good. The ability to trade off a couple of cards in your hand for new ones is also great. The last ability looks really powerful too, though it’s clearly situational and the random element might end up backfiring on you. All of that leads me to believe this orc has to be great, because it’s just a collection of very good things all piled onto one card. What’s not to like?

Twin Bolt

Rating: 2/10

Twin Bolt has done some good work in the past, but with so few creatures for it to hit, I don’t see it being what it once was. It’s inefficient and just a little weak. This is likely much better out of the sideboard, but even then, it looks to have quite limited use.

Underfoot Underdogs

Rating: 4/10

Three mana for two bodies is a tried and tested formula for a good card in Limited. You only get a 1/2 and a 1/1, so Underfoot Underdogs is less impressive than other versions, but I really like the bonus of getting to make creatures unblockable. There are a lot of mobilize creatures in Tarkir: Dragonstorm, and you really want them to survive in combat. This is a perfect way of allowing them to do just that.

Unsparing Boltcaster

Rating: 3/10

I loved Unsparing Boltcaster when I first saw it, but the more I read it, the more I actually hate it. This is just a red version of the typical black creature that we’ve seen in previous sets, like Manticore and Lurking Deadeye. This is a bigger creature than many of those and is a little cheaper, but that doesn’t change much. It also lacks flash, which is often what makes those creatures good enough to see play.

War Effort

Rating: 2/10

I don’t think Orcish Oriflamme has ever really been a good card. War Effort is clearly better, and it pairs well with mobilize, but I can’t see myself wanting to play this over a 4-drop creature that adds to the board. I think I’d try it in an aggressive deck with a lot of mobilize triggers, but it doesn’t seem all that exciting.

Wild Ride

Rating: 1/10

Wild Ride is nice to enable fast plays and flurry triggers, but not a particularly desirable card in a vacuum. I’d avoid this where you can, but there are much worse cards you could play if you need an extra spell in your deck.

Zurgo’s Vanguard

Rating: 4/10

This needs some support to be good, as it starts as a 1/3, or a 2/3 when attacking. That said, it’s not too hard to support. You literally just need creatures. I’d definitely play Zurgo's Vanguard in a mobilize deck where this can easily be a 6/3 or something, but the need for support means I’ll be unlikely to play it in other red decks.

Green

Ainok Wayfarer

Rating: 4/10

Ainok Wayfarer is an excellent start to any deck’s curve. Two mana for a creature, mill three, and probably a free land. We’ve seen versions of this in several sets and they’ve always been great, especially when you have a deck that really wants to mill itself.

Attuned Hunter

Rating: 5/10

This could have very easily been a lot smaller or overcosted with the same ability and been awful. But as it stands, a 3/3 trampler for 3 mana is a pretty great start, and the existence of renew and harmonize means Attuned Hunter should easily be able to grow at least once and become really annoying for an opponent to deal with.

Bloomvine Regent

Rating: 8/10

This is exactly what I want these omen dragons to look like. A forest-only Cultivate is great for enabling other dragons, guaranteeing that you’ll have 5 mana on your next turn, but it’s even better when you just cast it as a 5-drop. One of the biggest downsides to ramp decks is how easily fast aggro decks run over them, but Bloomvine Regent makes it really easy for you to catch back up in a game where you fall behind.

Champion of Dusan

Rating: 3/10

A 4/2 for 3 mana is probably worth playing in this set. It’s harder for dragons to block, and it pairs very well with harmonize spells. Champion of Dusan also comes with a lot of extra upside and I’d be very happy to mill it, so I’m sure this’ll make the cut more often than not.

Craterhoof Behemoth

Rating: 6/10

Eight mana is usually a pretty unassailable target for most games of Limited. If you’re casting an 8-mana spell, you’d better be winning the game with it. Fortunately, the Craterhoof Behemoth does exactly that. This automatically wins you most games when you’re in a board stall situation or even if you’re lagging slightly behind your opponent. That said, it’s a bad topdeck when you either don’t have enough mana or are behind by a significant amount. It can’t go into every deck, but if I have a green deck with some amount of mana acceleration, I’m probably very interested.

Dragon Sniper

Rating: 4/10

I love seeing cheap deathtouch creatures like Dragon Sniper. They threaten to trade for any creature at any point in the game. They did, however, run the risk of being useless in a set full of big, flying dragons, but of course, it can just have reach. Problem solved!

Dragonbroods’ Relic

Rating: 4/10

I really love seeing payoffs for having access to all five colors, and what a payoff this is! A bad Springleaf Drum is a really weak start, so you shouldn’t play Dragonbroods' Relic at all if you don’t have access to the second ability. But if you do, the Reliquary Dragon is basically just Archangel of Wrath, a 10/10 card in its own right. This dragon mode is going to be very hard for a lot of decks to beat, and I can’t wait to try putting this together.

Dusyut Earthcarver

Rating: 3/10

Most of the things we want to ramp into are probably going to be dragons, but 6 mana for a 4/4 reach creature plus a 3/3 is really solid. Honestly, even playing Dusyut Earthcarver as a 7/7 with reach could be a good play in some matchups, since that’s bigger than most of the low rarity dragons in the set.

Encroaching Dragonstorm

Rating: 4/10

Most ramp spells that are printed these days suck, but Explosive Vegetation is always a card I can get behind. Returning Encroaching Dragonstorm to your hand doesn’t sound all that useful, but if you ever have a spare moment to cast it again, it thins your deck out at least. I’m assuming we’ll have the time in TDM Limited to develop our mana to cast big dragons, and this is one of the better ways to do that.

Formation Breaker

Rating: 5/10

It shouldn’t be too hard to always have a creature with a counter on it in play. Formation Breaker could even be that same creature if you renew onto it. As long as you do, this is a great 3/3 with pseudo-unblockability. That’s incredibly efficient for the low price of just 2 mana.

Herd Heirloom

Rating: 4/10

Creature-only mana rocks for 2 mana haven’t played out well in the past, but this is a set that really wants mana fixing and has a lot of high quality dragons that we’d like to be casting. Herd Heirloom’s second ability makes it for me, as it gives the rock something to do once you’ve actually cast your creatures, which is important to make sure that it stays relevant through to the late game.

Heritage Reclamation

Rating: 2/10

The mode I care the most about here is the third one. The most obvious use for it is that you can preemptively exile problematic harmonize spells or renew creatures from your opponent’s graveyard, but you could also exile anything from your graveyard to trigger your cards that care about stuff leaving your graveyard. I’d probably be happy maindecking one copy of Heritage Reclamation if I could utilize that in some way, and it’s an excellent sideboard card otherwise.

Inspirited Vanguard

Rating: 3/10

The ability to pick up two +1/+1 counters or create a 2/2 token every time a creature attacks is extremely powerful. The big issue here though is that Inspirited Vanguard is way too small. You can’t just be creating a 2/2 token every time because a 3/2 will get eaten in combat. You can’t pick up counters too often because when this does die, the ability will have no lasting effect on the game. This feels like a card that should perform better than it actually will, and I think it’ll be a bit disappointing.

Knockout Maneuver

Rating: 4/10

As a sorcery, I don’t know why Knockout Maneuver is uncommon. This is basically just a Rabid Bite, which is fine. Green needs removal after all, but this isn’t better than any other similar spell.

Krotiq Nestguard

Rating: 1/10

I like my creatures to be able to attack. While I’m usually a fan of oversized defenders that can sometimes attack, they don’t seem like a good fit for green. Green already has big creatures without needing to play slightly bigger ones with hefty downsides like Krotiq Nestguard.

Lasyd Prowler

Rating: 7/10

You’ve got to love simple cards that are all upside. A 5/5 for 4 mana is great, milling four cards is great in the right deck, and the renew ability could end up being absolutely absurd. Imagine putting as many as five counters on something that has lifelink or is unblockable. Lasyd Prowler isn’t broken by any means; it’s just a pile of good things rolled into one great thing.

Nature’s Rhythm

Rating: 0/10

Aside from a handful of bomb rares, no creature in your deck is so valuable that you’d be willing to spend an extra 2 mana to play it. The quadruple green in Nature's Rhythm’s harmonize cost is also completely unrealistic in a 3-color format. Stay away for your own good.

Piercing Exhale

Rating: 5/10

Bite Down is basically the gold standard in green removal spells these days. You don’t even need to be holding a dragon for this to be exactly that, yet if you are, getting to surveil 2 is an incredible bonus. Piercing Exhale is green’s key removal spell in the set, and it’s worth paying attention to.

Rainveil Rejuvenator

Rating: 3/10

Four-drop mana dorks are a bit hit or miss, but Rainveil Rejuvenator does tap for 2 mana as a default, so that’s a really nice upside. There are a lot of premium 7- and 8-mana cards in Tarkir: Dragonstorm that we want to cast, and this is a really nice way of enabling them.

Rite of Renewal

Rating: 4/10

When a format is really slow, we really yearn for cards that help to give us more plays in the late game. Rite of Renewal is perfect for that. You can’t realistically play this if the format turns out to be aggressive, but picking up a pair of dragons from your graveyard when you’re trying to find a way to break through a board stall sounds amazing.

Roamer’s Routine

Rating: 2/10

I really think WotC should stop being such cowards and just give us Rampant Growth already. Doing this for 3 mana just isn’t good enough. The harmonize mode is interesting, especially as it could cost as little as 1 mana, but I don’t know how relevant that’ll end up being given how bad the front side is. There are bound to be better ways to get access to your colors than Roamer's Routine.

Sage of the Fang

Rating: 5/10

The renew ability on this creature is the selling point for me. The creature itself isn’t a particularly good rate, but it’s definitely worth it when you have +1/+1 counter synergies. The renew ability though has the potential to get really silly in a deck that can support it. I’d love to mill a Sage of the Fang at the right time so I didn’t have to cast it first, though I suppose it’s not the most embarrassing thing to play if you had to.

Sagu Pummeler

Rating: 5/10

This is an absolutely incredible rate on a common creature. More than that, this sounds like it’ll be especially important for this set. Sure, a 4/4 for 4 is a solid rate, but reach is extremely powerful in a set full of dragons. A 4/4 is even bigger than a lot of the common and uncommon ones. It even gets sillier when you get to turn something else into a reach blocker after Sagu Pummeler dies. I have a feeling this’ll be a key common for green.

Sagu Wildling

Rating: 4/10

I absolutely love seeing this. We’ve seen plenty of Lay of the Land variants with nice bonuses in the last few years, but none which can double up as a mini-Honey Mammoth dragon! Sagu Wildling is bound to be one of green’s more valuable commons given how important both dragons and mana fixing are going to be.

Sarkhan’s Resolve

Rating: 4/10

In a set full of dragons at every rarity, I didn’t need an extra ability to be interested in running Plummet. Even when you come against a deck with no dragons in it, you still have a fine, if overcosted combat trick to use. In most sets, Sarkhan's Resolve would be relegated to the sideboard, but I’d be very happy running multiple copies in my main deck in this set.

Snakeskin Veil

Rating: 4/10

We’ve seen Snakeskin Veil plenty of times already, so we know the deal by now. This is an excellent piece of cheap interaction that we’re always happy to play. It also has a lot of value in a set where you’re committing a lot of mana to cast big dragons and you want to make sure they don’t die to removal.

Sultai Devotee

Rating: 3/10

Our final devotee is pretty good. Green needs the mana filtering less than the other colors, but cheap deathtouch creatures always manage to pull their weight. You’re not likely ever to cut Sultai Devotee from your decks.

Surrak, Elusive Hunter

Rating: 5/10

Your opponent will be able to get around this ability to some extent by making sure they point their removal spells at Surrak, Elusive Hunter first. But if you have something better on the board and they only have one removal spell available, that puts them in a very precarious position, and you’ll typically come out on top.

Synchronized Charge

Rating: 5/10

Back in Innistrad, a random little common called Travel Preparations turned green/white into one of the strongest decks in the format. It turned out that getting four +1/+1 counters out of such a cheap card was incredibly powerful, and with Synchronized Charge, I’d guess that it still is.

Trade Route Envoy

Rating: 4/10

Just about any creature that draws a card when it enters is playable, assuming it’s not embarrassingly small. Trade Route Envoy definitely is, even if we have to enable it first. But that just means you should get as many of these as you want in a draft. Other green players that can’t enable it won’t care too much about it.

Traveling Botanist

Rating: 3/10

How exactly are we planning to tap this? Attacking isn’t too reliable as a 2/3 can get outclassed very quickly. Tapping Traveling Botanist to pay for harmonize spells is fine, but only reducing their costs by 2 doesn’t seem great. This trigger is powerful, so we want to trigger it a lot, but I just don’t see how we’re going to be able to do it very often.

Undergrowth Leopard

Rating: 2/10

Undergrowth Leopard is essentially just Qasali Pridemage, isn’t it? I don’t see a great deal of good targets for this, but it’s still a 2-drop that you could run if you need it, and it’s a great sideboard card.

Warden of the Grove

Rating: 10/10

Whether it’s Luminarch Aspirant, Siege Veteran, or Ornery Tumblewagg, this design of a creature picking up +1/+1 counters every turn just dominates games of Limited. Yes, Warden of the Grove keeps them for itself and doesn’t put them on any target, that’s less good, but we get a huge extra ability to make up for that. The turn immediately after playing this, every creature we play can endure. We can also buff this hydra with more counters and endure bigger Spirit tokens. The only downside I can see is that it basically dies to most removal spells, but with the caveat that you probably won’t win if you can’t kill it.

Multicolor

All-Out Assault

Rating: 6/10

This Mardu mythic really goes hard. Deathtouch is the perfect mechanic to pair with mobilize to disincentivize your opponent from blocking you, but All-Out Assault lives and dies by its extra combat phase ability. A worthwhile note here is that the ability that untaps your creatures is an attack trigger, just like mobilize, so you can put them on the stack in such a way that your mobilize tokens are untapped, so they can attack in the second combat. Additional combats have historically been very bad in Limited, but they rarely come with this level of synergy with a set’s mechanics. If you have a deck with a lot of mobilize, this enchantment looks like a perfect card to top your curve.

Armament Dragon

Rating: 6/10

Armament Dragon appears to be a reference to Armament Corps from Khans of Tarkir. The best use of this card is to spread the counters out and make sure that the power boosts allow you to make a strong attack that you otherwise couldn’t make on the same turn. But you could even make a large dragon if that’s what the situation called for, so this has a lot of inherent flexibility.

Auroral Procession

Rating: 3/10

“No Mother, it’s just the Northern Lights.” Auroral Procession is an interesting card to print, though I don’t think it’s all that good. Even if you’re rebuying a powerful card, was that card worth playing if it cost you 2 more mana to use it? It’s worth noting that we have a few options to get it back from the graveyard and that this in turn can get those options back. There’s some really nice looping potential, but it seems a little weak otherwise.

Awaken the Honored Dead

Rating: 7/10

When the first chapter of your saga says to blow something up, then yeah, we’re going to be interested no matter what the rest of it says. Awaken the Honored Dead is a perfect Sultai card, synergizing with the clan’s theme as well as just being a generally powerful card that you might even think about splashing in an Abzan or Temur deck.

Barrensteppe Siege

Rating: 9/10

There can’t be many sieges that are this one-sided, but the Abzan have very clearly won this battle. Getting a +1/+1 counter on your whole team every turn is an absurd ability, whereas the Mardu ability is pretty weak and easy to play around. We’ve seen this before, on Brokers Ascendancy, which ended up as one of the best rares in Streets of New Capenna. I have no trouble imagining Barrensteppe Siege will also be an excellent bomb rare in Tarkir: Dragonstorm.

Betor, Kin to All

Rating: 9/10

Since Betor, Kin to All provides 7 of the toughness required for this ability to work, you realistically only need one other good creature in play to draw a card at the end of every turn. That sounds incredibly good to me. I don’t think you’re going to be able to hit the 20 or 40 toughness modes in most games of Limited (though 20 isn’t too unreasonable), but you’ve already got a great card even without those abilities factored in.

Bone-Cairn Butcher

Rating: 6/10

This may have summoning sickness the turn you play it, but Bone-Cairn Butcher doesn’t need to attack to have a profound impact on the board. Other mobilize creatures will attack, and there’s pretty much no way that your opponent will want to block the tokens. Then, it can start getting into the fray itself and hit really hard as a 4/4 with mobilize 2.

Call the Spirit Dragons

Rating: 3/10

I love seeing incentives to draft five colors in multicolor sets. Call the Spirit Dragons isn’t that great for all the effort it takes to cast it, but giving all your dragons indestructible and having them pick up counters each turn is no joke. I could see wanting to draft a 5-color dragon deck around this, but it looks more fun than good. I really hope I get to win the game with its ability, too.

Cori Mountain Stalwart

Rating: 5/10

Gaining 2 life is probably the part of Cori Mountain Stalwart that interests me most. While this isn’t the most impressive flurry ability, just a couple of triggers add up pretty quickly. It’s also just got a solid stat line, so you’re probably happy to play it in whatever red/white deck you have even if you’re not set up to fully utilize the flurry ability.

Death Begets Life

Rating: 5/10

I tend to say that if you’re spending 8 mana on a spell, it needs to win you the game. Death Begets Life isn’t guaranteed to do that, but it looks like it’ll get pretty damn close. Clearing out the entire board and drawing you a ton of new cards sounds like a good thing to do. The main problem is that this sorcery costs so much mana that you can’t possibly commit a new creature to the board after using it, meaning your opponent will be the first to play anything, if they can. Still, this feels like it’ll be worth the mana investment.

Defibrillating Current

Rating: 4/10

This is a little weaker than I expected it to be. Four damage at sorcery speed is fine for 3 mana, but it starts to look much weaker at 4 or even 5. The lifegain is obviously nice, but given the mana cost, I doubt I’ll be prioritizing Defibrillating Current without access to all three of its colors.

Disruptive Stormbrood

Rating: 5/10

Disruptive Stormbrood seems like one of the weird exceptions where the omen spell is actually a lot more desirable than the dragon side. Two mana to kill anything with power 3 or less is a very solid removal spell that you’d happily play in just about any black deck. There are some very good rare/mythic targets for the dragon half, but it’s still the Petty Revenge spell that shines brightest here.

Dragonback Assault

Rating: 10/10

This looks like one of the most perfectly designed ramp payoffs I’ve ever seen. A 6-mana enchantment that “does nothing” but can create a big dragon token on landfall would already be excellent, except for the fact that Dragonback Assault likely does nothing on the turn you play it. Oh wait, this one also clears the board of any early aggression you were facing down and likely stops you from getting run over. Three damage doesn’t deal with everything, but if you know you have this coming down soon, you can prioritize killing those bigger threats with your other interaction to make this more effective. Once in play, there’s pretty much no way your opponent can win given that even your lands are live draws. This is just phenomenal, and I can’t wait to play it for myself!

Dragonclaw Strike

Rating: 5/10

This is certainly one way to make a fight spell look appealing. There are a bunch of 4/4 and 5/5 creatures in Temur colors, and doubling them up to 8/8s or 10/10s lets you kill basically anything and probably still get in for a huge attack without fear of losing your creature to blockers. Dragonclaw Strike gets a fair bit worse without all three of its colors, but I reckon I’d be happy paying 4 mana for it in the right deck.

Effortless Master

Rating: 3/10

A 6/5 vigilance and menace creature is no joke, but it’s ultimately just a large vanilla creature. Effortless Master can be the second spell of your turn to satisfy its own condition, so that’s something. I think this might need a little too much setup to be worth it, but maybe it’ll find a home.

Eshki Dragonclaw

Rating: 6/10

Trying to double spell in a turn is hard enough as it is, but the ability to cast one creature and one noncreature is surely way too hard. The best way I can see to do this is for Eshki Dragonclaw to be the creature spell you’ve cast, and then you tap Eshki to harmonize a spell for just 1 mana. Roamer's Routine would enable this play quite nicely actually. You need Eshki to trigger at least once for it to be worthwhile, so make sure to pick up good ways to enable it.

Fangkeeper’s Familiar

Rating: 8/10

Fangkeeper's Familiar is certainly not a bomb rare, but I just love tricksy value creatures with lots of good options. The easiest way to get value from this is to simply counter a creature spell, but that can be situational and hard to set up, so simply flashing this in as a blocker is often just as good. Gaining life is also a great option to help stay alive against aggro decks, and while you’re least likely to destroy an enchantment, it’s going to come in clutch against some of the powerful rare/mythic enchantments. Overall, it’s the flexibility that gives this card its power, and it looks incredibly strong.

Felothar, Dawn of the Abzan

Rating: 8/10

The ability to repeatedly buff your team with +1/+1 counters is pretty obscene. Felothar, Dawn of the Abzan is an excellent build-around that combines both of black’s archetypal themes in the set. You’ll need to have good fodder to sacrifice, but that shouldn’t be too hard with all the endure and mobilize cards lying around. Once you’ve played it, your board will soon look insurmountable as even your smallest creatures become threats.

Flamehold Grappler

Rating: 5/10

This ability is extremely powerful, but the card itself loses points for requiring too much setup. Luckily, Flamehold Grappler copies anything, but at 3 mana, you’ll need to have a lot of mana if you hope to copy anything particularly good. Cards like this in the past have often sucked, but this at least is a much more powerful version of that design. That counts for something.

Frontline Rush

Rating: 4/10

This is, first and foremost, a 2-mana spell that creates two tokens. For most aggro decks, that’s already good enough. Yet, being an incredible combat trick in the late game bumps Frontline Rush up a whole rating point. This card is relevant at nearly any time you draw it, and it also plays well with red/white’s go-wide theme.

Frostcliff Siege

Rating: 4/10

Giving trample and haste to all your creatures sounds nice, but it’s not something I’d typically want to play an enchantment to do. However, the Jeskai side sounds appealing. Ideally, you’ll want to play this on a turn when you have a creature that’s guaranteed to hit a player so you can draw a card immediately. Even then, this card seems quite limited in what it can do, and your blue/red deck might not even want it at all.

Glacial Dragonhunt

Rating: 6/10

Glacial Dragonhunt works particularly well with cards that have renew or harmonize, giving you an excellent way of ditching them into the graveyard while getting value for doing so. There are also bound to be situations where a “good” spell in your hand is better utilized as a Lightning Strike to kill a creature, plus you can always just cycle it. Not to mention that you even get two shots at it. This sorcery looks incredibly solid for any blue/red deck.

Glacierwood Siege

Rating: 2/10

Crucible of Worlds isn’t a remotely playable card in Limited, so we aren’t interested in the Sultai side at all. The Temur side looks a lot more interesting. Blue/green actively wants to mill itself to enable its themes, and it can also turn into a win condition if you can cast enough spells. You could also combo Glacierwood Siege with two copies of Auroral Procession and continually loop them (cast one to return the other and repeat) until your opponent is out of cards. I don’t think this is particularly good, but there’s some potential.

Gurmag Nightwatch

Rating: 2/10

If you’re paying 4 or more mana for this, something has gone wrong. Gurmag Nightwatch isn’t drawing you a card, and I have to imagine there are better ways of milling yourself. I’d only want this in a Sultai deck, and not in a deck that only touches two of its colors. Even then, the restrictive mana cost and weak ability isn’t selling me on it at all.

Hardened Tactician

Rating: 6/10

Now this is a proper token payoff. Limiting Hardened Tactician’s ability to just tokens allows it to be a lot less constrained than it would normally be. Mobilize tokens are going to die anyway, so turning them into actual cards is a huge plus. Endure tokens can chump block, then you can sacrifice them for value. Not to mention that this warrior is a good defensive creature in its own right as a 2/4. This is just awesome, and exactly the card I’ll want to see when drafting black/white.

Hollowmurk Siege

Rating: 7/10

Both modes of Hollowmurk Siege look pretty strong. The Sultai mode is a great build-around that I’m sure your black/green decks would love to make use of, and the Abzan mode is so easy to trigger that it’s bound to be relevant at all points in the game. Given that the Sultai mode looks quite slow and the Abzan mode is far more aggressive, you really can tailor this to suit the makeup of your deck, which means it’s just more widely playable.

Host of the Hereafter

Rating: 6/10

In the right deck, Host of the Hereafter has a really profound impact on the game. Now, killing off one or two of your creatures does very little to affect your board, as you get to keep a good amount of their power and toughness. Even more so, it might cause more problems if you can put those counters on something just as valuable, like a trample or flying creature. As such, this feels like something that must be destroyed on site, which means it’s going to be a high pick for a draft.

Inevitable Defeat

Rating: 8/10

Inevitable Defeat really does look like it has the makings of an all-time great removal spell. Four mana is a little bit much, but you certainly get rewarded for it. Exiling anything while hitting your opponent and gaining life? It has basically everything I want in a removal spell and is potentially even splashable in the right deck.

Jeskai Brushmaster

Rating: 6/10

Though this may just look like a “vanilla” creature, double strike with prowess can be a lethal combination. If you’re on, say, 10 life, are you really going to let it through? Suddenly, a flurry of cheap spells happens and you’re dead. Jeskai Brushmaster is no joke in combat and really ought to be removed as soon as possible.

Jeskai Revelation

Rating: 9/10

This is what dreams are made of. This is why Streets of New Capenna failed. None of the cards were even close to this in terms of sheer coolness. Seven mana is a lot, but Jeskai Revelation does literally everything and will massively swing any game in which you cast it. Above all else, it’s going to be so fun to cast. If you don’t have fun casting this, I don’t know what to say.

Jeskai Shrinekeeper

Rating: 4/10

On its surface, Jeskai Shrinekeeper looks like a great card. Big flying dragon, it draws you a card when it hits, what’s not to like? Well, its size is a problem. Five mana for a 3/3 is quite inefficient and is most notably a lot smaller than most other dragons in this set. A lot of Tarkir: Dragonstorm is designed to deal with dragons, and I don’t know if this is actually going to be able to attack a lot. I truly hope I’m wrong here, but for now, I’m not that impressed.

Karakyk Guardian

Rating: 8/10

Me: “Hey Siri, define ‘power creep’.”

Siri: “Check out Palladia-Mors, the Ruiner.”

Yep, that’s a thing. WotC just took a mythic rare that was printed a little under seven years ago, shaved off 1 point of toughness, and made it an uncommon. The biggest point here is that while other big dragons can simply die to removal, Karakyk Guardian can pretty much always get one big hit in before that happens. This is just disgusting to see at uncommon, it’ll dominate a lot of boards you play it on.

Kheru Goldkeeper

Rating: 6/10

What’s better than one dragon? Two dragons! The uncommon Sultai dragon looks a little unassuming, but it basically counts as two whole dragons, as the renew ability lets you turn anything else into one. Like other renew cards, Kheru Goldkeeper is just great when you mill it, and it’s perfectly fine when you cast it first and send it to the graveyard naturally.

Kin-Tree Severance

Rating: 6/10

Nice, clean removal that can hit all the set’s biggest threats? Yeah, I’m happy to play that. Even if it has to cost 4 mana, it’s still good that Kin-Tree Severance exiles and hits all but the smallest creatures that you didn’t want to spend premium removal on in the first place.

Kishla Skimmer

Rating: 6/10

Even if nothing is leaving your graveyard, Kishla Skimmer is still a 2/2 flier for 2 mana, which is great! Not only that, but drawing a card is one of the best rewards you can get for doing the thing. When I reviewed Essence Anchor, I pointed out that the “leaving graveyards” theme needs a payoff that does something other than just be a payoff. This is exactly the kind of card I was talking about.

Kotis, the Fangkeeper

Rating: 5/10

Kotis, the Fangkeeper is designed such that it starts out relatively weak but gets a lot stronger if you can buff it. Thankfully, Sultai has plenty of ways to do that thanks to renew, and Kotis is probably the best target for renew that I can think of. If it gets up to 5 or 6 power and connects, you end up casting a bunch of free spells and are very likely to win the game from there. Until that point, Kotis is a good blocker, but it’s too small to do much else, which is bringing its rating down for me. Just make sure you have plenty of ways to make this zombie bigger and it’ll be great.

Lie in Wait

Rating: 7/10

Lie in Wait looks incredible. Three mana to Raise Dead a creature and then kill something on the board? Yes please, easy two-for-one! This is something I’d actively want to splash for too, especially in Temur where my creatures are bound to be big enough to kill most things with this. In the past, Vengeful Rebirth was an extremely powerful card in Limited, and this looks like it hits all of the same notes.

Lotuslight Dancers

Rating: 5/10

A 3/6 lifelinker like Lotuslight Dancers is actually a really powerful defensive option. The ability to Entomb three cards is pretty interesting. It’s not something I’d ever choose to do unless it was a free bonus, which it is here. If I can pick and choose some sweet renew options, then this or something else could suddenly become a really nasty threat on the board. It’s like a build-your-own bomb rare of sorts.

Mammoth Bellow

Rating: 5/10

Five mana for a 5/5 token is aggressively mediocre, but getting a second one later down the line is awesome. You can even use the first token to cast the harmonize one for just 3 mana. I’ll take as many of these as I can get, and no one can stop me!

Mardu Siegebreaker

Rating: 7/10

Let’s start with the stats. 4/4 for 4 with deathtouch and haste. Awesome, what’s next? You really want to combo Mardu Siegebreaker with a creature with a great enters or dies trigger. I’m thinking something like a Salt Road Packbeast or a Sonic Shrieker. Then, you get one trigger off the token you create, plus another when this trades off and you get the original back. There are some really dumb things you can do with the right setup for this, and I can’t wait to see it happen.

Marshal of the Lost

Rating: 6/10

The mobilize payoffs just keep coming. You can stack your triggers such that Marshal of the Lost resolves after you’ve created your mobilized tokens, so keep that in mind. This ability looks great for doing the one thing that mobilize will struggle with, and that’s keeping the mobilize creatures themselves alive. It doesn’t even need to attack to trigger, so you get a trigger right away on the turn you play it. This looks great, and it’s a really powerful addition for any go-wide deck.

Monastery Messenger

Rating: 4/10

Sure, Monastery Messenger isn’t returning anything to your hand, it only sets up a draw for the next turn, but the trade off for that is that you get some really solid stats and a flexible mana cost. That sounds good to me, and there are some incredibly high value spells I’d really like to be able to pick up again.

Narset, Jeskai Waymaster

Rating: 2/10

Just how many spells are we going to be able to cast in a turn? Two is difficult enough. One might be pushing it if our hand is down to the kind of size where we’re happy to discard it. In the late game, Narset, Jeskai Waymaster can essentially draw you an extra card after you’ve topdecked a spell and played it for the turn. In that sense, it can help get you out of some sticky situations. As good as that sounds, it doesn’t make up for how weak it is outside of that scenario, and it honestly just looks bad because of that.

Neriv, Heart of the Storm

Rating: 5/10

Neriv, Heart of the Storm basically says that haste creatures and mobilize tokens deal double damage on their first turns. That’s definitely something, but nothing to write home about. Neriv is a decently sized dragon that can top your curve at 4 mana, but this ability is honestly just a little disappointing.

New Way Forward

Rating: 8/10

This is quite the complicated card to figure out, and similar cards in the past have been awful, but New Way Forward is definitely a cut above the rest.

Let’s say you’re losing and your opponent is attacking you with one large creature. This spell not only buys you a turn, but it draws you a bunch of cards and helps you to find an answer. If your opponent attacks you with multiple creatures, maybe you let the biggest one hit you while making profitable blocks on the other creatures, then use New Way Forward on that biggest creature.

The thing about draw spells is that you often don’t have the time to use them, but this card actually gives you that time. I think this looks great and I’m excited to see what kinds of fun plays I can make with it.

Perennation

Rating: 4/10

It’s easy to look at this and think it’ll be virtually unbeatable, but is it? All indestructible creatures have the same downside that they’re chump blocked, and they don’t do much against bigger creatures. As such, most of the creatures you’re likely to reanimate with Perennation aren’t actually going to win you the game. You need to get back something more worthwhile. Given that and the fact that this is 6 mana in three colors, the power level of this card is rather limited. It’s playable, don’t get me wrong, but it’s nowhere close to a bomb rare either.

Purging Stormbrood

Rating: 5/10

Both sides of Purging Stormbrood are pretty good. Whether you go with the 4/4 flying dragon for just 5 mana or the lifelinking combat trick, you’re going to get paid off for your investment. While this isn’t the most exciting of cards, it’s a good one that I’d be happy to play in any black/white deck.

Rakshasa’s Bargain

Rating: 4/10

If this ends up costing you 4 mana, then that’s not the worst, you’re still getting to draw two cards from a selection while filling your graveyard. At 3 mana, Rakshasa's Bargain looks great. I’d ideally want to have access to all three colors, but I could definitely see it finding a home in a deck that only used two of them.

Rediscover the Way

Rating: 3/10

The three colors of mana actually hold Rediscover the Way back. Once all the chapters have resolved, you’ve basically drawn two new cards and probably given one or two creatures double strike, though the last part isn’t even guaranteed. While that’s playable, cheap draw spells are good when you can reliably cast them, and it’s hard to do when Rediscover the Way costs three colors.

Reigning Victor

Rating: 4/10

The ability to give one creature indestructible for a turn is huge when paired with any mobilize creature, guaranteeing it’ll survive in combat. As such, Reigning Victor looks like a card I’d be happy to play even if I only had access to two of its colors, and it gets so much better when you have all three.

Reputable Merchant

Rating: 2/10

I want to like Reputable Merchant, but it only feels worth it for 3 mana. This is just far too inefficient if you only have two of its colors. As such, it’s strictly limited to Abzan decks and isn’t even particularly good there.

Revival of the Ancestors

Rating: 8/10

I was already well on board with getting three Spirit tokens for 4 mana. That’s already a very powerful card, no notes. But we also get three +1/+1 counters and a turn of lifelinking creatures out of this. That’s a lot of free board presence from Revival of the Ancestors, and it’s highly splashable too. It’s just great.

Riverwheel Sweep

Rating: 3/10

Two mana to tap a creature and put three stun counters on it is a card we’ve seen a lot of in recent years, but it’s never been all that good. Do I like it more if it costs 3 or 4 mana and I get a card back from it? I don’t think so. I may be proven wrong on Riverwheel Sweep, but I’m just not seeing it right now.

Roar of Endless Song

Rating: 8/10

Roar of Endless Song is already one of my favorite cards in Tarkir: Dragonstorm. It’s such a simple, clean design. You make two big Elephants, then your entire board gets huge. All for just 5 mana. This is powerful and efficient, and it has good value, everything I want out of a rare 5-drop.

Runescale Stormbrood

Rating: 4/10

I feel like this dragon is missing flash so you could hold up both sides of the card at the same time. Anyway, Runescale Stormbrood is a good lesson in the power of split cards. The counterspell is very weak, but the dragon is fine. Put them both together on the same card and you have something good, even if the counterspell mode is too weak for you to consider playing on its own.

Severance Priest

Rating: 7/10

So… Abzan has a Thought-Knot Seer now? Okay, cool. The three colors are a little prohibitive, but Severance Priest is clearly the set for it. The key here is that no matter what happens, your opponent doesn’t get their card back. Sure, they get a Spirit token when this goes away, but they never get their card back. You can nab bomb rares, key removal spells, or whatever else, and they can’t stop you. They can’t even kill the djinn cleric in response to the trigger or they’ll lose another card and not get a Spirit token at all. This is very powerful and a good reason to be in Abzan.

Shiko, Paragon of the Way

Rating: 8/10

Shiko, Paragon of the Way basically represents 8 mana of spells for just 5 mana. It shouldn’t be hard to have something in your graveyard to make a copy of, especially as Shiko can copy creatures. Even just trading something off in the early game gives you fodder. Shiko doesn’t exactly win you a game, but it likely puts two bodies on the board and catches you up when you’re falling behind, and that makes it a very desirable card.

Skirmish Rhino

Rating: 6/10

Ah, good old overrated Siege Rhino (yeah, you heard me, overrated). In seriousness, this Skirmish Rhino is pretty good. Draining your opponent for 2 is a good tempo swing to have alongside a decently sized 3/4 trampler. The best part is the lifegain, helping you to stay alive while you develop your board.

Songcrafter Mage

Rating: 8/10

Wait a minute… you’re telling me that my favorite clan gets their own version of Snapcaster Mage? Seriously? This was definitely not on my 2025 bingo card! Songcrafter Mage might even be better than Snappy in some ways since it can contribute 3 mana towards the cost of the spell you’re casting, or even more if you have a bigger creature out. This is much better at casting more expensive spells, and we have a lot of great options to choose from. Obviously, this gets a lot worse when you have fewer spells in your deck, but imagine casting Jeskai Revelation for a second time. You can’t tell me that’s not awesome.

Sonic Shrieker

Rating: 7/10

Two-for-one trades are the backbone of Limited play, and Sonic Shrieker provides exactly that. Whether you kill a creature or have your opponent discard a card, you’re up on the deal. Plus, you’ve gained some life and have a 4/4 flier for your opponent to deal with. This is powerful and splashable, exactly what you want to see in a premium uncommon.

Stalwart Successor

Rating: 6/10

This reminds me a lot of Cursed Wombat from Modern Horizons 3. Rather than just increasing the number of counters an ability would put on, the fact that this is a triggered ability means that it counts as a second source of counters. Anything that might trigger whenever counters are put on Stalwart Successor trigger a second time. It also means that your creatures get +1/+1 counters whenever any kind of counters are put on them, including the various ability counters that we can see on renew creatures. This is a great build-around for black/green and one that I expect to see a ton of play.

Temur Battlecrier

Rating: 6/10

Normally, I don’t care for cost reduction abilities in Limited. However, there are a couple of things to note here. First is that Temur Battlecrier counts itself as a 4-power creature, and it reduces the cost of all spells. Second is that the high number of dragons in TDM Limited means that getting to 4 or 5 mana quickly is likely to be a priority during gameplay. Put those together and I think this looks like an incredibly powerful mana dork.

Temur Tawnyback

Rating: 3/10

This is a really simple design and one that I’m perfectly happy spending 4 mana on and would be really happy to spend 3 on. It’s as simple as that really: You can’t go too wrong playing Temur Tawnyback.

Teval, Arbiter of Virtue

Rating: 7/10

Teval, Arbiter of Virtue might be the hardest card in the set for me to evaluate. Costing you a chunk of life whenever you cast any spell is a really significant downside, so is Teval worth it? I think it is. A 6/6 with flying and lifelink means it should dominate most boards it’s played onto. Your life total is a resource after all, and if you’re only casting a few cheap spells, the downside isn’t that bad. You can also just go nuts and cast 15 mana’s worth of spells for a massive discount thanks to delve and put yourself way ahead on the board. No risk, no reward, right? It’s worth mentioning that Teval is very vulnerable to removal and might just die, so try to get your first lifelink hit in before casting anything. Teval is very powerful, and I’m sure it’ll be broken in some Constructed format, while being a very solid bomb for Limited.

Thunder of Unity

Rating: 6/10

The other sagas in this set are more generic than Thunder of Unity, and so I’ve scored them a bit higher. This is the weakest of them in a vacuum, but if you surround it with all the right pieces, it could be the most disgusting of the lot. One of the issues with mobilize is that your tokens are pretty free to be blocked by bigger creatures, and they don’t accomplish much. This gives you two whole turns of every one of those tokens draining your opponent for 1 life, all while keeping your life total nice and healthy. This is very much a build-around, but in any deck carrying a lot of tokens, it looks brutal.

Twinmaw Stormbrood

Rating: 7/10

Once again, both the dragon and the omen spell are high value spells. The removal spell mode doesn’t kill any dragons, so it can be a little restrictive, but given how good the dragon itself is, that hardly matters. Twinmaw Stormbrood is a card that’s great at any point in the game, and that flexibility is key.

Ureni, the Song Unending

Rating: 9/10

My best result in a Magic tournament was with Dragonlord Atarka in 2015 Standard, making it one of my favorite cards in the game. So… I might be a tad biased on this card. I love Ureni! Eight mana is a lot, but Ureni, the Song Unending will always have a massive impact on the game. It won’t necessarily deal 8 divided damage thanks to mana dorks, cost reductions, etc.…, but it should be able to kill one, if not two or more creatures as soon as it comes down. From there, as a 10/10 with protection from white and black, it’s immune to nearly all removal in the set. Ureni is an absolute monster and one that’s absolutely worth taking early and building your deck around to make sure it works.

Whirlwing Stormbrood

Rating: 4/10

I really don’t like this omen spell, though the +1/+1 counter synergies in the set might make it useful. But on the other hand, a 4/3 flash dragon is pretty good. Ideally, we’d surprise an attacking creature with it, but the low toughness means that won’t happen all too often. It’s also good to just hold up alongside some removal or counterspells. Whirlwing Stormbrood isn’t a premium card by any stretch, but it’s fine.

Windcrag Siege

Rating: 9/10

Once again, we have a card with two options on it and both look incredible. Creating a free token every turn, even on your upkeep (so you don’t get one the turn you play Windcrag Siege), is a great way of generating free card advantage and board presence. On the other hand, the Mardu mode is more situationally relevant and could just be ridiculous if you stack up enough mobilize triggers at once. I think you’ll be picking the Jeskai in this fight most of the time, and you’ll be very happy with it, but when the Mardu mode is good, it’ll almost feel like cheating.

Yathan Roadwatcher

Rating: 7/10

It’s probably for the best that Yathan Roadwatcher only triggers when it’s cast, because you could do some really disgusting loops with it otherwise. No matter, this is still a powerful two-for-one that even nets you some mana by cheating the returned creature into play for you. Just trade off your 3-drop in combat and then return it with this and you're already up a card and maybe more. What’s not to love?

Zurgo, Thunder’s Decree

Rating: 7/10

This line of text on Zurgo, Thunder's Decree is pretty dumb. Letting your mobilize tokens stick around after they’ve been created is great. If your game plan is working and you’re creating a bunch of these tokens, then Zurgo lets you turn that tempo into pure card advantage and board presence, exactly what you might need for a longer game.

Just a quick note with the rules: Once the trigger to sacrifice a token has happened, it won’t happen again. Even if Zurgo dies, you won’t need to sacrifice the Warrior tokens that it has “saved” later.

Artifacts/Colorless

Ugin, Eye of the Storms

Rating: 9/10

Ugin, Eye of the Storms is absolutely dumb. This planeswalker was clearly designed with Constructed formats in mind, but it still shines in Limited. Right away, getting to exile the best thing on the board is massive. Planeswalkers need to be able to protect themselves, and Ugin manages this with great ease by not only exiling the biggest threat, but by also having a ton of loyalty. If you +2 it, Ugin will be on 9 loyalty, which most decks will have a hard time taking out, especially with their best creature obliterated. Since most of the colorless cards in this set are pretty weak, Ugin will then just sit in play gaining life and drawing cards, which I’m absolutely fine with. Costing 7 mana and having a somewhat limited scope is holding Ugin back for me just a little, but it’s still a very powerful bomb rare that you can play in basically any deck that isn’t aggressive.

The Monuments

Rating: 4/10

While I could review each one of these individually based on the quality of the tokens they create, ultimately the point of these is mana fixing. These monuments don’t cost colors to play, so you could even use them to help splash. You’re going to be better off with dual lands for the most part, but these are fairly decent and a big improvement over the old cycle of banners.

Boulderborn Dragon

Rating: 2/10

This grade is basically entirely derived from the fact that Dragonstorm Forecaster exists. I wouldn’t want to play Boulderborn Dragon on its own because it’s far too weak, but Forecaster might be worth playing and we’d naturally want one or two copies of this dragon to combo with it.

Dragonfire Blade

Rating: 8/10

This is a cheeky reference to Ghostfire Blade, one of the best Limited cards in Khans of Tarkir. This time, Dragonfire Blade costs 1 mana to attach to triple-colored creatures instead of colorless ones. Assuming you’re equipping it to any multicolored creature, you’re getting a good return on your mana investment. Hexproof from mono-colored also protects your creature from what I assume will be most of the set’s removal, so this’ll be pretty difficult for a lot of decks to deal with.

Dragonstorm Globe

Rating: 3/10

Given that we definitely need access to mana fixing, a mana rock surely won’t be so bad in this set. It’s also nice that we can search for Dragonstorm Globe with Dragonstorm Forecaster. I’d rather fix my mana in other ways, but I’d guess I end up playing this more often than I would in a regular set.

Embermouth Sentinel

Rating: 1/10

Yes, we need mana fixing. No, we shouldn’t need to play bad cards to enable it. Embermouth Sentinel is technically playable, but you basically shouldn’t play it unless you somehow managed to get no other fixing.

Jade-Cast Sentinel

Rating: 0/10

We’ve seen a lot of cards with this ability in the past, and most of them completely suck. The goal is to self-mill and then use Jade-Cast Sentinel to rebuy your best cards. Yet, even if you could do that, omen spells shuffle themselves back in, so you could stop yourself decking with those instead.

Mox Jasper

Rating: 0/10

Moxen have a tendency to be quite broken, but that’s only when you can play them early. Mox Jasper does nothing until the late game in Limited, and you can’t enable it like it as you would in Constructed. It’s completely unplayable, so don’t bother.

Watcher of the Wayside

Rating: 2/10

We’ve seen a lot of 3/2 artifact creatures with minor upsides in recent sets, and they’ve all been horrible. I do think Watcher of the Wayside looks quite a bit better than the rest, but it’s still not great. Its value might go up in a deck that likes to mill itself, but you can probably find better ways of doing that.

Lands

The “Gain” Lands

Rating: 5/10

This is a heavily multicolored set, which means we need mana fixing. These duals are in a lot of sets, and they’re usually fine pickups, but in Tarkir: Dragonstorm they become a lot more important. If you want to cast your broken triple-color cards reliably, you need to prioritize these over a lot more cards than you would in a normal set. I’d likely take an on-color dual above nearly every common in the set and over a good number of uncommons, too.

The Rare Utility Lands

Rating: 4/10 (0/10 for Mistrise Village)

I was going to do separate reviews for each of these lands, but in the end I just wanted to say the same things about each of them. Assuming you have the named basics in your deck, these are essentially strict upgrades over basic lands of the same color. Even if they’re likely to enter tapped, they’re well worth taking since they’ll improve a basic land slot in your deck rather than a spell slot.

That said, I doubt that they’re worth taking over especially good cards, which probably puts them right around the level of good commons. Also, a quick note, Mistrise Village is a 0/10 purely because its ability is next to useless in Limited, but the others are all very useful.

Evolving Wilds

Rating: 5/10

Evolving Wilds is a great card that’s good to see in any Limited format. In a 3-color set it gets so much better. It’ll probably be better than the dual lands for the most part because this gives you access to any one of your colors. You should take these over most commons and make sure you can actually cast your good spells. I also don’t think there’s a number of these that I wouldn’t play if I had them, so just take as many as you can get.

The Tri-Lands

Rating: 7/10

The tri-lands from the original Khans of Tarkir are back! These are perfect for mana fixing in TDM, and they’re honestly very good early picks in Draft. They’re worth taking over nearly any non-rare in the set because making sure you can cast spells is going to be that important.

Maelstrom of the Spirit Dragon

Rating: 1/10

Maelstrom of the Spirit Dragon isn’t going to be worth it unless you’re actually getting some benefit from the mana fixing. Otherwise, it’s essentially a colorless land with a minor upside in a format where you need your lands to tap for colors.

Special Guests

As with all sets these days, we have ten Special Guest cards to evaluate: the enemy fetch lands and the five ultimatums from Ikoria.

The Enemy “Fetch” Lands

Rating: 6/10

You probably don’t need me to tell you that you should draft fetch lands. In case you don’t know, the fetch lands are the most powerful lands in the history of Magic. Since they’re not restricted to fetching basic lands, if your deck is set up the right way, any one of them can fetch any of the five colors that you need it to, simply by fetching cards like Tundra, Steam Vents, or Indatha Triome.

Still, this is Limited, so we can’t do that. But they’re still good mana fixing assuming you’re in the right colors for them.

Eerie Ultimatum

Rating: 5/10

One quick note about the ultimatums. We’re a triple-colored set with a bunch of mana fixing, but these mana costs aren’t trivial. Even the good ones are going to lose some marks for their costs alone.

Eerie Ultimatum is a great start to the cycle. Most of the creatures in our decks are going to be one-of’s anyway, so it’s not unreasonable to assume that we can reanimate our entire graveyard in one go. As far as effects we’re willing to skew our mana base to make happen, that’s way up there.

Emergent Ultimatum

Rating: 0/10

As powerful as Emergent Ultimatum has been in Constructed, it’s only that good because of the quality of the cards it can search for. We can’t give it that quality here in Limited, so it’s just unplayable.

Genesis Ultimatum

Rating: 4/10

Drawing five cards and getting to cast them for free is quite the powerful effect. It’s a little too random, but that’s also what I like about it. There are going to be times when Genesis Ultimatum does far less than you want it to, but I think they’re balanced out by the times you cast multiple spells from it. While not the best ultimatum on offer, it’s still very playable.

Inspired Ultimatum

Rating: 5/10

Honestly, what more do you even want from a spell? Kill just about anything, gain a good chunk of life, and draw a new hand. Inspired Ultimatum is what Magic is all about.

Ruinous Ultimatum

Rating: 7/10

Finally, we have a buffed Plague Wind for 2 less mana. Board wipes are incredibly powerful, and since this is strictly one-sided, you don’t have to worry about needing to rebuild afterwards. I talk a lot about X-for-one plays being a big feature of strong Limited cards, and this is just about the easiest and most powerful example of such a card, securing its place as the most powerful of these ultimatums.

Wrap Up

Death Begets Life | Illustration by Justin Hernandez & Alexis Hernandez

I’m really looking forward to this set. I basically had to skip Foundations and Aetherdrift due to workload, so I’m really excited to get back to regular drafting.

What are you most excited for? Let us know in the comments below or over on our socials!

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Until next time, take care of yourselves!