For a while now, the Simic color combination has been home to some of Magic: The Gathering’s most legendary design mistakes. Whether it’s Oko, Uro, or last year’s Nadu, there’s just something about blue and green together that brings out the reckless side of the designers at Wizards. Kishla Skimmer from Tarkir: Dragonstorm demonstrates that Wizards of the Coast has learnt their lesson, but that doesn’t mean the new MTG card will disappoint.
Skimmer is a very powerful new draw engine for green/blue graveyard decks. In fact, it’s so good that it’s already seeing significant play in both Modern and Vintage. For an uncommon, that’s good going. The card isn’t nearly as broken as those in the Simic rogue’s gallery I mentioned above, but it’s still clearly good enough for eternal format play. Maybe Wizards has finally figured out how to balance Simic properly?
Kishla Skimmer MTG
- Mana Value: GU
- Rarity: Uncommon
- Type: Creature – Bird Scout
- Stats: 2/2
- Card Text: Flying.
Whenever a card leaves your graveyard during your turn, draw a card. This ability triggers only once each turn.
At first glance, Kishla Skimmer is likely to give MTG players flashbacks to Nadu Summer. The easy card draw condition here is very reminiscent of that multi-format menace, after all, to say nothing of the typing. Thankfully, Wizards had the good sense to put a reasonable cap on things this time. Skimmer will only ever draw you one card a turn, and only on your own turn.
That doesn’t make the card bad by any means. The card draw here is simply tied to a card leaving your graveyard, which is trivial to fulfill for a lot of decks. Recurring cards to your hand with the likes of Auroral Procession will trigger it, as will casting spells from your graveyard via Flashback or Harmonize. Recursive creatures like Gravecrawler will also work, and even Undying/Persist creatures for all you combo fans out there.
Perhaps the easiest way to draw cards off of Skimmer, however, is via graveyard exile. With cheap artifacts like Ghost Vacuum and Relic of Progenitus, you can reliably draw a card a turn here. Powerful eternal mechanics like Delve also let you exile cards directly from your graveyard, which will generate value via Skimmer. The card is essentially a cheaper, color-shifted Ketramose in many ways, and we’ve all seen how good that card is by now.
Card draw aside, Skimmer is also just a hugely efficient creature for its cost. Two mana for a 2/2 Flier is great even in 2025, letting you apply pressure early or block pesky Slickshot Show-Offs. Not compromising on combat capability means that Skimmer is never a dead card, even when you can’t draw off it right away. Consistency is key in Magic, and this card has it in spades.
Making Moves In Modern
Naturally, an MTG card as good as Kishla Skimmer has found its way into a few lists already. While none of these are Standard decks so far, they are perhaps even more impressive by virtue of that fact.
First off, the card is cropping up in some new-fangled Murktide variants in Modern. Aspiringspike took a Sultai version of the deck to a 5-0 finish in yesterday’s MTGO Modern League, with a full playset of Skimmer in tow. Calling this deck ‘Sultai Murktide’ may be a bit of a misnomer, since the titular Dragon doesn’t actually feature in the list at all. The core strategy, however, leveraging a stocked graveyard to power out a tempo win, remains the same.
Between Emperor of Bones, Graveyard Trespasser, Abhorrent Oculus, and the ever-reliable Psychic Frog, this deck has plenty of ways to get cards out of its ‘yard. Every time it does, Skimmer can skim you another card off the top. The synergy here is pretty obvious, but that doesn’t make it any less potent. Skimmer comes down early enough to support the deck’s aggressive gameplan, while also offering long-term value via card draw.
In fact, Skimmer is such a good fit that, outside of a few sideboard pieces, it’s the only reason for the green splash in this deck to begin with. It’s always a sign of quality when players are willing to bend their manabase for a single card, and Skimmer is a clear instance of that in action. It might be a long shot to say that all Murktide lists will start running the card going forward, but Aspiringspike’s great early results mean it’s certainly a possibility.
A Fine Vintage
If 5-0 Modern results aren’t impressive enough for you, how about 5-0 Vintage results? It’s rare that any new MTG card manages to achieve that, but Kishla Skimmer has only gone and done it. In Wednesday’s MTGO Vintage League, CrazyDiamond513 ran a juicy three copies of the card in their 5-0 Dimir Lurrus brew.
Lurrus is a well-established archetype in Vintage by this point, relying mainly on the raw power of the cheap spells in the format. Lurrus was bad enough when it was just casting two drops in Standard, but here it can recast your Black Lotus, Moxen, and even powerhouse hate pieces like Vexing Bauble. Among all of this established eternal power, Kishla Skimmer slots in remarkably well.
For starters, as a two-drop creature, you can recast Skimmer from the ‘yard via Lurrus’ ability. That’s solid right out of the gate, giving you access to repeatable draw on demand. Second, Skimmer’s draw effect will trigger whenever you play your Lurrus card for the turn. With so many cheap or free options, this can add a ton of momentum to even your early-game turns.
On top of this, Lurrus decks tend to play a good bit of graveyard synergy themselves. Psychic Frog is just as good here as it was in Sultai Murktide, offering an easy way to get your Skimmer draw if need be. You can also draw four cards with Treasure Cruise instead of the usual three, which just gives you that slight edge you need in close matchups.
Both of these examples are great early showcases for Kishla Skimmer’s potential. If things carry on like this, Tarkir: Dragonstorm may go down in history as one of the most impactful eternal-format sets in recent years.