Tarkir’s Biggest Meme is Also a Massive Card Advantage Engine

Last updated on March 27, 2025

Meandering Towershell – Illustration by YW Tang

If you're planning to go to a Tarkir: Dragonstorm prerelease (and, honestly, you should: Magic prereleases are peak Gathering!), part of the fun will be listening to battle-hardened players sharing fond memories of how things were back then, a decade ago, when Wizards of the Coast released the original Khans of Tarkir.

Tarkir: Dragonstorm sure has a bottomless bag of bangers when it comes to honoring the original Tarkir block. Even though we're just finishing reveal season, WotC just can't stop delivering with cards that are wonderful homages to the Tarkir classic – like the latest nod to Meandering Towershell:

Illustrated by Carlos Palma Cruchaga, Ambling Stormshell may be blue rather than green, but it has the same 5/9 stats, same “I'm off combat for a bit, boss; be back later!” vibe, and the same “Roaming Something-shell” naming as the KTK original, which we later saw zombified (and vanilla-fied) as Wandering Tombshell in Dragons of Tarkir. 

With some protection thanks to ward, and a hefty card-draw attack trigger, Ambling Stormshell may actually be a pretty good Magic card, and not just a meme!

Eternal Turtle Tricks

The first obvious pairing is with anything that gives Ambling Stormshell vigilance, which will make the stun counters moot.

In Eternal formats where you can always rely on turtle typal, you can use changelings (which will count as turtle spells when you cast them) to remove those stun counters.

But a better strategy probably involves blinking Ambling Stormshell in and out (given that permanents which reenter the battlefield do so without any counters they may have had). “Thassa, Deep-Dwelling and and Teleportation Circle,” notes u/commanderizer – “completely fix the lil sleepy card draw turtle.”

Another alternative is brewing with stun counter manipulation in mind Solemnity, Power Conduit, or Glissa Sunslayer.

Or, you know, making the Amazing Stormshell your friendly neighborhood turtle!

(Not Standard legal, sadly. This particular version of Spidey is Eternal only)

Will Ambling Stormshell See Standard Play?

We'll have to see how Tarkir: Dragonstorm shakes the Standard meta, but Ambling Stormshell seems a bit too slow for Standard: This MTG format is fairly aggressive, and a five-mana creature with no ETB is a really tough sell, even if it's a great blocker.

Plus, as u/Reviax- notes, “Poor man got lost in the wrong tribal set.” There are a couple of turtles that see Standard play (Blossoming Tortoise, Bedrock Tortoise, Fecund Greenshell), but they are all in green. TDM will bring along Naga Fleshcrafter, but you'll have a hard time trying to find other good shapeshifters in this format. Unless TDM shakes things up a lot, it's hard to imagine Simic decks being relevant, or turtle typal becoming a thing.

That said, drawing three is a lot of card advantage, and the two best Control decks (4/5 Color Control, and UW Control) represent about 15% of the Standard Metagame right now – maybe they have room for a beefy, stunning turtle?

And Bryan thinks it's going to be pretty strong in Tarkir: Dragonstorm Limited.

Foreshadowing Lorwyn?

Kappa Cannoneer – Illustration by Jesper Ejsing

“I think mostly the turtle text is meant to be a fun bit of mostly-trinket text,” says u/Stormtide_Leviathan. “But alternatively, or possibly additionally, it's likely seeding for Lorwyn. Since there's gonna be presumably a bunch of changelings there, I can see seeding the sets around it with a number of oddball typal effects that want a home.”

Either that or, you know, Ambling Stormshell is foreshadowing the true turtle typal that we'll get with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle crossover.

We've already got the SpongeBob SquarePants Secret Lair, so who knows?