With the digital release of Tarkir: Dragonstorm yesterday, the new Magic: The Gathering Standard season has officially begun. The next few days will be an intense period of experimentation, in which some new format staples may well emerge. In fact, it looks like that process has started already. Just yesterday, in a 24-player MTG Standard tournament, Mardu Siegebreaker showed its quality to be the very finest.
This was one of the last rares revealed during preview season, so many simply glossed over it at the time. Now that it’s out in the wild, however, it’s proving to be an immensely powerful value engine and Aggro piece. The three-color requirement doesn’t seem to be holding it back, either. It’s always great to see new cards doing well in a new format. On top of that, the fact that three-color Clan decks may be possible in Standard is reassuring in itself.
Mardu Siegebreaker MTG
- Mana Value: 1RWB
- Rarity: Rare
- Type: Creature – Human Warrior
- Stats: 4/4
- Card Text: Deathtouch, Haste.
When this creature enters, exile up to one other target creature you control until this creature leaves the battlefield.
Whenever this creature attacks, for each opponent, create a tapped token that’s a copy of the exiled card attacking that opponent. At the beginning of your end step, sacrifice those tokens.
Mardu Siegebreaker starts out pretty good, and only gets more and more ridiculous as you work through its lengthy text box. Four mana for a 4/4 with Haste and Deathtouch is, honestly, pretty solid. It packs a punch, and is hard to block to boot. The Haste is also extremely important for the card’s second ability, which is really the main event here.
When Siegebreaker enters, it lets you exile one of your own creatures until it leaves play. In isolation, this is weak but not without applications. Enters and leaves play effects are common enough that you could get value out of this ability even if that was as far as it went. The idea of ‘storing’ a useful utility creature in exile to bring back on a later turn is interesting, too.
Luckily for Siegebreaker, you don’t need to get that fancy. Whenever it attacks, it brings in an attacking token copy of the exiled creature. This means you don’t really go down on board presence at all when using it. It also means you get to enjoy all those enters/leaves shenanigans right away, as well as when Siegebreaker itself leaves play.
As long as you have something to exile with Siegebreaker, it’s likely to make a huge impact the turn it comes down. The combination of pressure and value here is fantastic, to say the least. It actually gets even better in Commander, too, since that last ability makes an attacking token for each opponent, not just one. It’s very reminiscent of the hugely popular Myriad ability, in other words. While we’re focusing on Standard today, I’d be surprised if this didn’t end up in every Mardu Commander deck from here on out.
Hitting The Ground Running
As good an MTG card as Mardu Siegebreaker looks in theory, it seems to be even better in practice. Yesterday, to celebrate the digital launch of Tarkir: Dragonstorm, Rapsolo held an MTG Arena Standard tournament allowing the new cards. Siegebreaker showed up prominently in the winning deck from the event, which is a fantastic start in anyone’s eyes.
That deck, piloted by Rapsolo themselves, was a Mardu Mobilize/Blink list. The deck is an interesting mix of Mono-White Token Control, Nurturing Pixie decks, and straight-up Mardu Aggro. Caretaker’s Talent serves as a draw engine alongside the many token producers in the deck, from Zurgo, Thunder’s Decree to Voice of Victory. Nurturing Pixie and the new Sunpearl Kirin also feature, to bounce Hopeless Nightmare, Nowhere to Run, and Charming Prince for value.
Siegebreaker lets you get extra bounces by bringing out copies of Pixie/Kirin, and it also plays fantastically with Elspeth, Storm Slayer, which is the deck’s super-powerful top end. getting two copies of your exiled creature instead of one is a massive deal, especially when that means your opponent is going to have to eat two Hopeless Nightmares next turn. It’s also just a great attacker in its own right, which helps keep the pressure on as you transition into the midgame.
Further down the rankings, Brevas85 claimed eighth place with a Mardu Tokens list. There’s a lot of overlap between this and Rapsolo’s deck, but interestingly, Siegebreaker was omitted in this instance. Overall, the deck is very experimental, so I wouldn’t put too much stock in Siegebreaker’s absence there. Instead, I’d note that the presence of two Mardu decks in a Standard tournament already bodes very well for the wedge as a whole, and by extension, Siegebreaker itself.
More To Explore
Mardu Siegebreaker has a ton of potential beyond its promising start yesterday. Standard is stuffed with surprising synergies for the card, which may see it spread out beyond the kinds of token-based lists we covered above.
First of all, the card is fantastic with the new Amonkhet Gods. Both the new Hazoret and Ketramose have huge stats for their costs, but pay for that with an inability to attack a lot of the time. Siegebreaker removes that problem from the equation. Since the tokens it creates enter tapped and attacking, exiling a God will allow it to make full use of its impressive stats. Both Gods are on-color and come down before Siegebreaker on the curve, too, so the synergy lines up perfectly.
Alternatively, you could dip into the Prototype mechanic. This debuted in Brothers’ War three years ago, but it’s still legal in Standard until Fall. This lets you take advantage of a spicy synergy with Siegebreaker. If you exile a Prototype card cast in its smaller form, the token created by Siegebreaker will be the larger version. This lets you put devastating stats in play very early in the game. Phyrexian Fleshgorger is probably the best example, but there’s also a solid argument for Combat Thresher. This mechanic has never seen a ton of use overall, so it’s fitting that Siegebreaker gives it one last hurrah before it rotates out.
Mardu Siegebreaker has early results and wider potential on its side, which means it’s likely looking at a bright future in MTG, in Standard and beyond. It’s unwise to take a single success as gospel, of course, but I’d be surprised if the card lost much momentum as the format evolves in the coming weeks.