As week one of Tarkir: Dragonstorm previews draws to a close, it’s safe to say this is shaping up to be one of the best Magic: The Gathering sets in some time. There are some seriously flashy cards in the set, including a new rare land cycle and a spicy combo-enabling enchantment. Beyond these big flashy rares, however, Tarkir: Dragonstorm also features some unassuming uncommons with serious potential.
Remember Skullclamp? Well, it’s getting a spiritual retrain here as an instant. Regrowth? Similar story. Some of the most powerful effects in Magic history have managed to sneak their way into the uncommon slot here, which is always an encouraging sign for a new expansion.
Desperate Measures
- Mana Value: B
- Rarity: Uncommon
- Type: Instant
- Card Text: Target creature gets +1/-1 until end of turn. When it dies under your control this turn, draw two cards.
Anyone familiar with Skullclamp will get a bit of déjà vu here. For one mana it gives a creature an attack buff, a health debuff, and lets you draw two if they die this turn. That’s exactly what Skullclamp offers, albeit in a non-repeatable form.
Obviously, Skullclamp is much, much better than this, but Skullclamp is also one of the most notoriously broken Magic: The Gathering cards of all time, so even a lesser form is very good. In practice, this will often play very similarly to Village Rites. You’ll use it to trade one of your small creatures for two cards, possibly after attacking/blocking with it for value.
Village Rites sees plenty of play in Commander, and I expect Desperate Measures to replace it in most decks. Unless you specifically care about sacrificing because you’re playing a Commander like Korvold or Mazirek, Measures just offers more flexibility. The attack buff lets you sneak in extra damage with this, and the debuff lets it function as a cheap removal spell too. Remember: your opponent doesn’t get to draw two cards if you kill their creature with this!
In terms of Standard, I’m uncertain but optimistic on this card. Orzhov Sacrifice decks are on the up, and this is a great addition to those. With Corrupted Conviction also legal in the format, such strategies now have a ton of cheap draw power to dig into Raise the Past. Whether it’s enough remains to be seen, but Desperate Measures is a big step in the right direction.
Auroral Procession
- Mana Value: GU
- Rarity: Uncommon
- Type: Instant
- Card Text: Return target card from your graveyard to your hand.
Next up is another retread of a Magic: The Gathering classic. Regrowth was introduced way back in 1993’s Alpha, letting players get back any card from their graveyard for one and a green. Since then Wizards has gotten much more stingy with recursion effects. Most only let you get back specific types, rare exceptions like Eternal Witness aside.
Seeing unrestricted recursion for two mana again is a big deal. Auroral Procession is also the first card to give you this effect at instant speed, which opens up all kinds of avenues. If you’re playing a deck heavy on instants, it’s pretty much a non-creature Snapcaster Mage in terms of the reactive play it offers. Giving Tempo decks access to redundancy tools like this is scary stuff indeed.
Of course, the flexibility here is what really makes Auroral Procession great. You can use it as a pseudo-Snapcaster, sure, but you can also just use it in a creature deck to get back your best early threat. In Commander, the option to recur an artifact or enchantment is big too. Some of the best card draw engines in the format, from Rhystic Study to Sylvan Library, are absolute removal magnets early on. Getting them back for another round can help propel you to a snowbally victory.
In Standard, Auroral Procession seems like a shoo-in for Domain and Bant Control lists. Both can benefit a lot from the extra redundancy, and both enjoy being reactive. In Commander, I seriously think the card will be a new staple in the majority of Simic decks. Eternal Witness sees a ton of play in the format already, and the instant speed on this gives it more use cases in more situations.
Venerated Stormsinger
- Mana Value: 3B
- Rarity: Uncommon
- Type: Creature – Orc Cleric
- Stats: 3/3
- Card Text: Mobilize 1 (Whenever this creature attacks, create a tapped and attacking 1/1 red Warrior creature token. Sacrifice it at the beginning of the next end step.)
Whenever this creature or another creature you control dies, each opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.
The last of the spicy Tarkir: Dragonstorm uncommons we’ll be looking at today is also a bit of a throwback. Ever since original Innistrad block, Aristocrats has been the name given to decks that like to sacrifice their own creatures for value. Payoffs for such decks often include life drain creatures, like Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat. Venerated Stormsinger is the latest in this line of creatures, and it’s a doozy.
While four mana is steep, Stormsinger comes with Mobilize 1, which is a huge advantage for creatures like this. Generally, Aristocrats decks need to assemble a sacrifice outlet, sacrifice fodder, and a payoff in order to function. This gives you both the fodder and the payoff since it makes disposable tokens every time it swings in. This may be fragile in Standard, but in Commander there’ll usually be at least one safe attack available.
On top of that, Stormsinger is about as flexible as effects like these get. Its drain ability counts all of your creatures, token and nontoken, as well as itself. This makes it better than the likes of Falkenrath Noble and Vindictive Vampire, who compete in the same slot. It also drains each opponent rather than just one, which is fantastic in multiplayer games.
Though it’s a bit pricey mana-wise, I think Venerated Stormsinger has a serious shot at becoming a new Aristocrats staple in Commander. Bundling two crucial effects into one card frees up room in the deck for more, after all. In Standard, it’s almost certainly too slow, even with all the Orzhov Sacrifice support we have right now. Don’t count it out completely, however; sometimes all a deck needs to succeed is a critical mass of enablers.
