A new Magic: The Gathering set is here, and just like that a brand new draft format opens up. Our Tarkir Dragonstorm draft guide will ensure you’re well and truly prepared to win some games.
If you want to learn even more about the exciting new set, check out our guide to the best Commanders in the format. Otherwise, here’s how to draft Tarkir Dragonstorm
Three color set overview
With most Magic: The Gathering sets, you build a deck centered around a particular color pair, but Tarkir Dragonstorm is different. This is a ‘wedges’ set, focused around five different three-color combinations, representing the five clans of this MTG plane.
With so many three-color cards in the set, you’ll usually want your Dragonstorm draft decks to be three colors to make the most of them. However, it’s usually a bad idea to build a deck where all three colors are equally weighted. If you do this, you’ll often end up with a dodgy opening hand, where your lands don’t match up with your spells.
Instead, the best strategy for Tarkir Dragonstorm draft is to identify two colors that will form the basis of your deck, and mostly pick cards from these colors. Once you know what two colors the core of your deck will be, you can begin to pick up three color cards along the way.
If the cards are really flowing, you may end up in two colors, but usually it will be tempting to dip into a third, as you’ll miss out on valuable spells otherwise. A possible exception is aggressive decks. If your plan is to hit the opponent hard and fast, there’s an advantage to keeping your manabase simple. Red/White or Red/Black decks that aim to win while your opponent is still setting up their colors, may be just as viable as Mardu.
When drafting Tarkir Dragonstorm, it’s often a good idea to aim for an enemy color pair initially – that is White/Black, Black/Green, Blue/Red, Green/Blue, and Red/White. This is because each of these color pairs has two clans associated with it. Start in these colors, and you will have two different directions you can transition to in the course of your draft.
Because you’ll often want to be three-color, you’re going to need to prioritize fixing quite highly. Often a land that’s in the right colors will be a better option than all but the strongest commons, and you should prioritize tri-lands and Evolving Wilds especially highly. Green decks have an easier time than most, as cards like Sagu Wildling can ensure you hit your colors.
Tarkir Dragonstorm draft archetypes
Each three-color combination in Dragonstorm has its own associated keyword mechanic. While these keywords aren’t always found on the three-color gold cards themselves, there are cards in all three of their colors that feature them. We’ll explain all five as we go over each archetype.
Abzan (White/Black/Green)
The Abzan mechanic is Endure. This keyword gives you an option to either place +1/+1 counters on a creature, or create a spirit token with power and toughness equal to the number of counters that would be placed. Abzan decks can therefore be just as wide or as tall as they need to be.
Some three-color Abzan cards like Armament Dragon and Reputable Merchant play into the +1/+1 counters theme – and they also want you going wide so you have plenty of creatures to receive the buffs. However, others, like Siege Rhino and Kin-Tree Severance are just efficient, useful midrange creatures or removal spells.
If the base of your Abzan deck is Black/White, you’re likely to focus more around the token-making side of Endure, as cards like Marshal of the Lost give you benefits from having lots of creatures, and Hardened Tactician can turn unwanted spirits into card draw.
Meanwhile, Black/Green has more cards that care about +1/+1 counters. The Abzan-coded card Stalwart Successor adds even more counters from each activation, while Host of the Hereafter keeps those counters around like a mini Ozolith.
Jeskai (White/Blue/Red)
The Jeskai mechanic is Flurry, a triggered ability that goes off, providing some kind of bonus, for the second spell you cast each turn. Helping you trigger the Flurry creatures are instants and sorceries like Focus the Mind, that become cheaper if you’ve already played another spell that turn.
As you might expect for this clan, there’s quite a strong spell-slinging, instants and sorceries theme running throughout. We have creatures like Jeskai Brushmaster with Prowess, while Monastery Messenger can fetch a good non-creature spell from the graveyard. Riverwheel Sweep provides impulse draw to keep your flurry going, while Narset’s Rebuke gives you a splash of extra mana.
The two Jeskai color pair options are quite similar – both want to make copious use of Flurry, but they have slightly different flavors. Red/White is the more aggressive option. It generally pulls off double-spelling by playing lots of small creatures. Cori Mountain Stalwart provides good stats and extra reach, while Wayspeaker Bodyguard both taps blockers down and brings creatures back to keep your flurries going.
Blue/Red meanwhile is a more traditional spells deck. You’ll often find Temur’s mechanic, Harmonize, showing its face here, as casting two spells gets easier when you can cast your spells twice. Effortless Master works great with cheap cantrips, and Runescale Stormbrood is also a great payoff for a spells deck – with what’s essentially mega prowess.
Mardu (White/Black/Red)
The most aggressive of the five clans, Mardu’s mechanic is all about tokens. Mobilize is a keyword that means a creature creates attacking 1/1 warrior tokens to join its assault, whenever it attacks. Those creatures are then sacrificed during your end step.
The signpost cards for this color combination work great with this fast-paced mechanic. Bone-Cairn Butcher gives your tokens deathtouch, making it very hard to block them, while Reigning Victor gives a creature indestructible, often allowing a Mobilize creature that otherwise couldn’t safely attack to swing in.
If the base of your Mardu deck is Red/White, you’ll likely build a deck that aims to go wide and play aggressive, taking out your opponent before they have time to muster a proper defence. Frontline Rush is a fantastic card for this strategy, helping you build your token army or convert a wide board into a massive attack. With this color pair in particular, you want to think carefully about how many black cards to splash for – only including the very best, most synergistic options.
If you’re mainly a white/black deck, however, you’re more likely looking to find other ways to use the Mobilize tokens for value. The obvious option is sacrificing them to cards like Hardened Tactician or Sunpearl Kirin before they would die anyway. Just like black/white Abzan, you can also make use of a wider board with buffs from Marshal of the Lost. You’re still looking to beat down and be the aggressor in most situations, but you’re more able to play the long game.
Sultai (Blue/Black/Green)
The Sultai mechanic is Renew, which lets you get extra value out of creatures in your graveyard. Renew lets you pay mana and exile a creature from your grave to activate some kind of effect related to it. Often this will just be +1/+1 counters, but other Renew creatures will provide ability counters like flying or trample, or even tap down and stun creatures your opponents control.
If you’re drafting Sultai, the gold card Gurmag Nightwatch can help you to fill up the yard while Kheru Goldkeeper and Lie in Wait both provide useful ways to make use of the graveyard.
Perhaps surprisingly given how often black is associated with death and the undead, in Dragonstorm it’s the Blue/Green color pair that is most graveyard focused. Here you’ve got the Renew cards from Sultai activating from the graveyard, and the Harmonize cards from Temur letting you replay them. Kishla Skimmer is therefore a card-drawing machine in this kind of deck.
With all these cards providing value from the grave, this is also one of the slowest combinations in Tarkir Dragonstorm. If you go down this road, make sure you have enough low-cost drops and interactive spells to survive an early onslaught.
A Black/Green Sultai deck, meanwhile, will look to gain more value from the +1/+1 counters that often come with Renew. It’ll play out much like the Black/Green Abzan decks, making use of cards like Host of the Hereafter, with Blue mainly pushing you towards slower value plays rather than tokens.
Temur (Blue/Red/Green)
Finally we have Temur, a clan that’s often remembered for big stompy creatures. It’s interesting, therefore, that the Temur mechanic, Harmonize, is found only on non-creature spells. Harmonize still plays well with big beasts though; you can play Harmonize spells from the graveyard for a high cost, and may tap a creature to reduce that cost by its power.
Those who like their MTG creatures big and stompy need not be dismayed, as there’s plenty of that in Temur’s gold cards. Mammoth Bellow can create some truly terrifying tokens, while Karakyk Guardian is a massive flying beater that’s almost guaranteed to get a hit in before a kill spell takes it out.
As we’ve mentioned already, Harmonize gels well with both the graveyard theme of Blue/Green and the double spell theme of Blue/Red.
In Blue/Green you’ll be able to make even mightier creatures with Renew, and Auroral Procession will let you replay your top-end creatures when they hit the graveyard. Meanwhile in a Red/Blue Temur deck you have Effortless Master, which becomes a giant threat if you can make it the second spell you cast for turn, and Glacial Dragonhunt, which becomes really good when you can cast it a second time for cheap using a powerful creature.
Best common cards in each color
It’s usually pretty obvious when a rare card is a stone-cold bomb, but commons and uncommons are more subtle. But they make great signposts to guide you on your draft. If you see these 5 or 6 picks into the draft, it’s a good indicator that that color may be more open than most.
White
- Salt Road Packbeast
- Fortress Kin-Guard
- Stormplain Detainment
Blue
- Sibsig Appraiser
- Dispelling Exhale
- Humbling Elder
Black
- Dragon’s Prey
- Caustic Exhale
- Kin-Tree Nurturer
Red
- Molten Exhale
- Rescue Leopard
- Shock Bridgade
Green
- Sagu Wildling
- Ainok Wayfarer
- Piercing Exhale
Armed with this new knowledge, you should be ready to take on Tarkir Dragonstorm drafts with confidence. You might also be interested in our guide to the best MTG Arena decks – or in checking out our Discord.
Source: Wargamer
