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Graham, also known as HamHocks42 on the internet, is a Twitch streamer who adores Magic: the Gathering in all its forms and tries to find the fun, even in the most competitive and sweaty environments.
Cascade and discover are keywords that conjure images of crashing Footfalls or Geological Appraiser dominating tournaments on the backs of combos able to power out threats far ahead of any reasonable curve or go infinite. Free-casting effects like this have been staples of various formats over the years, and can often be seen on banned and restricted lists with examples like Tibalt's Trickery sitting in the prestigious company of Channel and Demonic Tutor as one of only three cards too strong to be unrestricted in Timeless.
While Tarkir: Dragonstorm isn't giving us a new card with the keyword cascade or discover on it, we're getting an uncommon that behaves similarly in Breaching Dragonstorm. The titular Dragonstorms are uncommon enchantments that give an effect upon entering and then bounce themselves when a dragon enters under your control. Breaching Dragonstorm is the red installment and its text is almost “When Breaching Dragonstorm enters, Discover 8.”
Is This Good?
Blue is a powerhouse in Standard, appearing in plenty of meta lists from Dimir midrange to Azorius Control and Esper Pixie. This Town Ain't Big Enough and Stormchaser's Talent create a value engine that disrupts your opponent while creating an aggressive board state that's difficult to deal with, so it's not surprising it finds its way into a variety of decks. The one thing that's not overly popular at the moment is blue by itself, however. I set out to see if the powerful blue cards in Standard could create a viable deck without dipping into any other color, and after a few hours of tweaking and a lot of feedback from my Twitch chat, I'm pleasantly surprised by the results.
The Core Engine
Tarkir: Dragonstorm will be launching on Magic: the Gathering Arena on Tuesday, April 8th, so until we get our hands on the products, jank lovers like myself and, possibly, yourself are stuck speculating on which cards will be good enough to cut it in Standard. So far, with only a few days of preview season under our belts, a few have caught my attention as powerful enough to possibly make the cut.
A lot of the current meta, think of as Gruul Mice and Esper Pixie, are very tuned decks and I don't expect these to get many new toys that will be faster or more consistent than their current pieces. That said, I believe (or vainly hope) that a few new archetypes will get the support they need to step up and challenge the current meta in a fun way. Let's look at what those are.
Midrange
The Aetherspark is one of the goofiest types lines on any Magic: the Gathering card we've ever seen before. A Legendary Artifact Planeswalker – Equipment is certainly a novel string of words , and because the word “planeswalker” is in there, the card is eligible to be a Brawl commander.
So, of course, I built it.
How to Even Begin?
The best cards in Standard are making it difficult to brew these days, but where there's a will, there's a way. The current meta is dominated by "This Town Ain't Big Enough" and "Up the Beanstalk" piles, but other cards like Simulacrum Synthesizer and The Mightstone and Weakstone are powerhouse value engines in their own right if we can find a shell for them that works. We also have an absolute haymaker in Radiant Lotus that I'm finally willing to brew with and, I've got to say, I'm impressed.
The Wincon
Last week, Wizards of the Coast gave us a first look at the next Standard release, Tarkir: Dragonstorm, and that gives us an opportunity to analyze, overreact, and wildly speculate on what the future holds, which is an opportunity I rarely pass up. This first look was only nine cards from the Standard set itself, but it includes some eye-catching mechanics, so let's get into it.
For this article, I plan to analyze how these cards will impact Standard first and foremost.
The Headliner
The quest for a quality reanimator deck is never-ending for graveyard junkies like myself, and a Standard that includes Atraxa, Grand Unifier and Zombify is just begging for it. So today, I have a fresh take on the archetype in Abzan with a bit of a twist.
The Main Threats
One of the racing teams competing for the Aetherspark in Aetherdrift is the Speedbrood, a species of insects that have such a strong connection with speed itself that they literally transform into vehicles upon achieving their version of enlightenment. Well, that means they're well represented as a draft archetype in DFT and we're able to take advantage of it and ultimately build a pretty slick Standard deck that can hang in best-of-one (BO1) pretty well, even if it would likely falter in games two and three if we tried it in BO3.
The Win Conditions
Our primary finisher is Aatchik, Emerald Radian, which gives us a gigantic board state just for entering the battlefield, and each insect we have suddenly pings our opponent upon death. This makes blocking them a challenge and almost guarantees they'll give you the chance to push damage. Obviously, for us to get Aatchik's enters-the-battlefield (ETB) trigger to maximum value, we'll need to run lots of artifacts and creatures in our deck, along with ways to fill the graveyard. More on that below.