More and more spoilers are coming out every day, and Tarkir: Dragonstorm is starting to live up to the hype. From a neat rare land cycle to a Collected Company variant for noncreature permanents, we’ve seen an abundance of very powerful new cards that have potential in Standard and beyond.
Recently, one particular rare card draw spell caught our eye. As a three-mana sorcery, it is a bit clunky on its face. However, there are plenty of ways to abuse it and get your mana’s worth thanks to a new mechanic featured on the card.
Winternight Stories and Abhorrent Oculus
The card in question is Winternight Stories, and the mechanic is Harmonize. Winternight Stories offers you a burst of card advantage, assuming you have a creature to discard. While this alone isn’t bad, Stock Up is a much more reliable source of card advantage that digs even deeper for your strongest cards.
Fortunately, this is where Harmonize comes in to save this rare. Harmonize is a weird flashback variant where you can tap a creature to reduce the cost of casting it from your graveyard. As such, Winternight Stories becomes most appealing in decks with a high creature density and plenty of ways to get the sorcery into the graveyard. Abhorrent Oculus shells in Standard fit the bill.
Jeskai Oculus in Standard has tons of tools that synergize with Winternight Stories. First of all, you have a bunch of creatures that allow you to draw and then discard cards, such as Fear of Missing Out or Steamcore Scholar. Obviously, discarding Abhorrent Oculus and reanimating it with Helping Hand is your priority, but pitching Winternight Stories and casting it via Harmonize pulls you ahead on resources.
Once you add Proft’s Eidetic Memory into the mix, you’re golden. Proft’s Eidetic Memory grows your creatures, meaning you’ll be able to cast Winternight Stories via Harmonize for only one mana a lot of the time. Winternight Stories simultaneously has the ability to put a bunch of +1/+1 counters on your creatures if you cast it pre-combat, either via Harmonize or straight up for three mana.
At the end of the day, casting Winternight Stories for three mana to set up an Abhorrent Oculus reanimation is fine, even if it’s a bit inefficient. From there, Oculus reduces Winternight Stories’ Harmonize cost to one mana if you tap it, which is awesome. Once you factor in the other synergies mentioned above, you’ve got a real engine.
Other Shells for Winternight Stories
Beyond Jeskai Oculus, there are a handful of other archetypes that may be able to make good use out of Winternight Stories. Take the self-mill decks in Standard, for instance. Currently, Golgari is the most popular combination for these decks. The goal is to fill your graveyard to reduce the cost of cards like Hollow Marauder and Huskburster Swarm.
There’s a chance a blue splash is worthwhile. Milling over Winternight Stories with Overlord of the Balemurk and friends gives you a low-cost source of card advantage once you land one of your big threats.
Winternight Stories also works well in conjunction with Monument to Endurance. Winternight Stories gives you an easy way to trigger Monument multiple times over the course of a game. Alongside some beefy creatures, such as Marauding Mako, and you’ve got a gameplan.
It’s worth noting that Greasefang, Okiba Boss conveniently makes Winternight Stories castable for one mana via Harmonize. Perhaps Esper Greasefang shells in Pioneer can consider Winternight Stories alongside Greasefang and Monument, though the competition for slots in that deck is rather competitive.
Even using Winternight Stories as a discard outlet for Zombify shenanigans isn’t out of the question. All in all, Winterngiht Stories offers more value than may appear on the surface, and we’re excited to see if it meets expectations.