Pioneer: 5 Decks with Tarkir: Dragonstorm to Try Out!

Tarkir: Dragonstorm is coming with the return of the three-colored clans and several new dragons and cards to explore starting next week, creating the possibility of new archetypes and important additions to existing strategies in competitive formats.

From Songcrafter Mage with Collected Company to the new United Battlefront with lock pieces, as well as potential Dragon decks, the new set brings several possibilities that can be tested in Magic Online Leagues and Magic Arena ranked matches.

In this article, we present five Pioneer decklists with cards from Tarkir: Dragonstorm to try out, focused on specific abilities, mechanics, or support that these additions can provide to existing decks.

Mono White Lock Control

United Battlefront finds some key white combo pieces that can lock your opponent out of winning the game.

First, you can find both Nine Lives and Solemnity. With Nine Lives, whenever an opponent's source deals damage to you, it is prevented, and you put a counter on the enchantment. Solemnity does not allow counters to be placed on permanents, creating a game state where, as long as both enchantments are on the board, your opponent cannot win through damage.

The second lock is with The Book of Exalted Deeds and Mutavault, where its controller can activate the land and use the book's ability to put a counter on Mutavault, since it has all creature types. Then, simply never turning it into a creature again to considerably limit the opponent's chances of winning the game without cards like Field of Ruin.

Finally, Gideon of the Trials creates an emblem that makes its controller not lose the game while controlling a Gideon Planeswalker, and it has an ability to prevent damage from a creature - it is the weakest lock, but it is another way to considerably delay the opponent's game.

To win games, we have Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, which transforms into a threat and also puts tokens into play, in addition to creating emblems that complement Castle Ardenvale as a win condition.

Boros Caretaker

Elspeth, Storm Slayer has a passive ability that doubles the amount of tokens created by permanents, so we can make the most of it with Caretaker’s Talent and cards that generate tokens repeatedly, such as The Wandering Emperor and Urabrask’s Forge.

The plan here involves controlling the board in the early turns and using Caretaker’s Talent and Enduring Innocence with the token-creating cards to generate card advantage and pressure the opponent. With enough turns, The Wandering Emperor and Elspeth, Storm Slayer will take care of finishing the game.

It's possible to focus even more on token-generating permanents and include United Battlefront, but the deckbuilding tradeoffs involve losing early-game interaction and maindeck sweepers, so keeping the Midrange/Control mold with a late-game go-wide plan seems like the ideal take right now.

Orzhov Bounce

Sunpearl Kirin has a similar effect to Fear of Isolation and Flash in exchange for returning a permanent to the hand on the cast. With this new enabler, it's possible to focus on a Orzhov Bounce with new interactions.

Here, we use Temporary Lockdown with two functions: the first is as a cheap sweeper against Aggro and other low-cost archetypes. However, we can also use it with Sunpearl Kirin and Nurturing Pixie to return it to our hand and return all permanents of two mana or less to the battlefield, which include our Momentum Breaker, Grim Bauble, Nowhere to Run and Hopeless Nightmare, allowing us to control the board.

We can also use these creatures to reuse Unholy Annex and create more demon tokens on the board, establishing our main win condition, along with The Wandering Emperor and Yorion, Sky Nomad.

Izzet Dragons

There are many new ways to build a Dragon deck in Pioneer, but we opted for the initially safer choice.

Despite being named Izzet, this list has a slight splash for Twinmaw Stormbrood, whose main function is its Omen ability, which works like a Roast. However, if the game goes on for longer, we can cast it as another threat on the board with a relevant ETB effect.

Marang River Regent is another card with Omen that we run in the list, in this case as an efficient draw effect that doubles as a 6/7 threat with Flying that can bounce the opponent's permanents, or even our dragons that have relevant ETB effects and/or that we can reuse their alternative cost.

The added flexibility to dragons with the new mechanic allows for more consistency in an efficient early game while interacting with Dragon’s Fire and Silumgar’s Scorn, two of the main reasons to play a Dragon deck in the format today.

These are complemented by the new Magmatic Hellkite, whose ability seems to be the most relevant of the new dragons of Tarkir since its body is great and its ETB technically delays an opponent’s turn, and by Goldspan Dragon, perhaps the best five-mana dragon in the format today.

Temur Company

Songcrafter Mage has a powerful interaction with Collected Company. It allows reusing the card from the graveyard by paying only when tapping it when it comes into play, in addition to being found by Company itself, and recasting it in the same turn to put four creatures on the board at once.

We complement this interaction with the “power four or greater” theme promoted by Temur Battlecrier and Outcaster Trailblazer to reduce mana costs and create card advantage. We also have the new Surrak, Elusive Hunter to punish the opponent's removals.

We can use Battlecrier's ability with enough creatures to reduce the cost of heavier spells, and here we opted for Storm the Festival, which has the same interaction as Songcrafter Mage - but with the cost of . Other cards can and should be considered in these slots.

That's all for today!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks for reading!