Intro

Tarkir: Dragonstorm is a Limited environment that long-time players like me can really appreciate. Many formats in the past few years have felt aggressive and “snowbally,” such that a fast draw on the play could be nearly impossible to keep up with. (Think Phyrexia, All Will Be One; Murders and Karlov Manor; or Bloomburrow). On the other hand, Tarkir makes for long games where drawing cards and getting the most value out of your spells really matters. 

So we finally have a slower format where experienced players get to flex their skills and gain a real advantage in long, complicated games. Now how do we do that? What’s the secret?

In my opinion, the most important element to understand about Tarkir Limited is that the cards are created unequal. If Player A is casting generic, mono-color commons like Arashin Sunshield and Nightblade Brigade while Player B is casting multi-colored cards of higher rarity, it is not going to be a fair fight. Player A won’t be able to keep their head above water for very long at all. 

This–more or less–was my exact downfall when I played the Spotlight: Dragons event that featured Tarkir Limited. The manafixing in my Sealed pool was very poor, so I ended up building a two-color Boros deck. I felt badly outclassed in most of the games I played, and I failed to make day 2, despite my thorough preparation for the event. Link to Twitch if you'd like to watch.

The question becomes: how can you be the one casting more of the powerful spells? 

The way I see it, there are three approaches you can take.

Find an open color combination. Go towards the best cards in your Sealed pool. Or find the clan that nobody is drafting at your table. 

Play more colors. More colors means more gold cards. It also means that you can get passed rares of any color, so you’ll automatically find that open clan!

Improve your mana. If you can cast your spells more reliably than your opponents, your cards become more effective and you capture the equity of your opponents stumbling or taking too long to set up their plays. 

Let’s go over these one at a time.

Find an Open Color Combination

This is the straightforward option, and is a course I’d recommend for novice and intermediate drafters. After all, it matches what you expect from the world of Tarkir. There are five clans, so I should just pick one and go with it, right? That’s the way the Prerelease experience was designed. 

I do believe this to be a perfectly fine strategy, particularly if you open a very powerful multicolored card, or if you receive some signals that a particular combination might be underdrafted. 

In other words, having a really nice Jeskai or Temur deck is still a great place to be in Tarkir Limited - either Sealed Deck or Booster Draft. Sometimes there’s no reason to make it complicated. One of the best decks I’ve had so far has been a straightforward Temur deck centered around blue and red.

Play More Colors

On the other hand, Tarkir has a lot of manafixing. Plus–particularly if you have green as a base color–much of this fixing can get you any color of mana. 

Here’s an example of a common scenario: You’re drafting a Temur deck. You have a Mystic Monastery, a Sagu Wildling, and a Dragonstorm Globe - and then you open Jeskai Revelation. Well, there’s no reason to be stubborn! Four colors isn’t much different than three, and if you can build your deck such that you can cast this gamewinning mythic, then you should do so. 

Now go one step further. Knowing that this is a common scenario that you’ll face, why not make efforts to set yourself up for it right from the start? Steer your draft with the plan of playing four or five colors, and scoop up all of those busted cards that you happen to open - or that happen to get passed around the table.

One good way to do this is to center yourself in two colors. The advantage here is that you can play more sources of these colors, and choose your cheap spells to match. In the example above, you can center your mana around green and blue, and make your two-drops things like Ainok Wayfarer and Temur Devotee. You hope to have green and blue mana in your opening hand, but the white mana for Jeskai Revelation can fall into place much later. You’d avoid playing Bearer of Glory in this deck, because that card loses a lot of its value when you can’t reliably cast it on turn 2. 

Two base colors (especially enemy colors) with two small splashes is a common and effective structure for a deck. 

A second good way–a surprisingly good way–is to go hard on five-color dragons right from the start. I often find myself first picking uncommon trilands or common Dragonstorm Globes from unexciting packs. 

These decks will typically be based in green in order to take full advantage of cards like Sagu Wildling, Ainok Wayfarer, and Encroaching Dragonstorm, which are perfect for greasing the gears and making things run smoothly. You spend your picks on bombs, removal, card advantage, and mana fixing and simply overpower opponents when the games go long. 

Improve Your Mana

Improving your mana doesn’t necessarily lead to having more powerful cards in your deck. (Although it can! If you spend picks on mana fixing early, then you earn yourself the right to snap up that Jeskai Revelation in pack 3). Instead, the idea is that you cast the spells that you already have on time, and with greater consistency. Capture an advantage by reducing the number of games you mulligan, and the number of games where you have poor or nonfunctional draws.

Once again, there are multiple ways to approach this. One is to take more manafixing. Another is to lean all the way to the other direction! Reject the multi-color theme of the set, and draft two colors!

You won’t wind up with as many powerful gold cards, but if you can curve out with untapped lands and cheap threats while your opponents are spending time to set up, you can really put people in tough spots. Two-color Boros has the highest win rate of any commonly-played color combination according to 17lands. 

Note - you still need your strategy to be open, and you need to have premium cards. Otherwise you wind up like my Sealed Deck at the Spotlight event: underpowered and outclassed. The key is that a two-color Boros or Orzhov deck can utilize really strong cards that other drafters can’t. Things like Descendant of Storms, Salt Road Packbeast, and the like. 

If you can actually cast Voice of Victory on turn 2 and back it up with a supporting aggressive draw, then you’ve capitalized on an overpowered card just like the Jeskai Revelation player has. 

But improving your mana is a technique that absolutely every deck can employ - not just focused beatdown decks. It can mean cutting Bearer of Glory to focus your mana around green and blue. It can mean declining that greedy splash. It can mean spending an extra pick on a dual land or a Monument.

Which brings us to a beloved question. 

What is the optimal number of dual lands?

There is no reasonable limit to the number of dual lands I’ll play in Limited. (Okay - I had one deck with 12 dual lands, and that may have just barely crossed the line). In a four- or five-color deck, I’ll play as many as I can get. In a three color deck, I’m perfectly happy to play seven dual lands. There’s no such thing as a manabase being “too good” or “too reliable.” One of my sayings is that I’d rather cast my spells a turn late than not cast them at all.

But Reid? What about curving out with your base-Boros decks - surely all of those tapped lands are a bad idea! It’s true that there’s tension here. If I choose to add a third color to my deck (let’s say full Mardu), then I want a very healthy amount of fixing in order to support that. A very healthy amount of fixing means numerous tapped lands. Numerous tapped lands impact your ability to curve out.

Descendent of Storms plays much differently in a deck with 8 Plains versus a deck with 3 Plains and five white dual lands.

In other words, adding the third color to my aggro decks changes my strategy. A two-color Boros deck can be traditional aggro and attack the opponent’s life total aggressively. A Mardu deck still wants to take advantage of the aggressive potential of its cards. (There’s no way around that - it’s Mardu’s identity, after all). But the three-color version needs to take on shades of midrange. It needs to be more about setting up a big attack in the midgame, and less about blitzing them down starting on turn 3. In this way, your deck still functions if you miss a beat while you set up your mana. In this way, you don’t get brick walled and feel dead in the water against the bigger multicolored decks.

Midrange Stinks

There’s a category of cards which has been conspicuously absent from my discussion so far. Tarkir is a really bad format for filler-level creatures that cost three, four, and five mana. If the format is all about fixing mana, casting bombs, and generating card advantage, then it’s difficult to justify spending a slot on something like Arashin Sunshield or Dragonback Lancer.

These aren’t bad cards! They read pretty well, and you’re getting a fine deal for the mana you’re spending. They likely would’ve been pretty desirable if they’d been in Foundations. But in Tarkir, casting these cards puts you on the wrong side of the uneven battle. You aren’t fast enough to punish someone for taking a turn off to cast Dragonstorm Globe. But you aren’t powerful enough to keep up with someone casting gold uncommons and rares.

In short, Tarkir is a bad format for midrange. Abzan has proven to be one of the weaker clans because its identity is midrange. The goal is to build out a battlefield with lots of power and toughness. Unfortunately, that plan gets shredded in the early game by the format’s efficient removal. And it gets outclassed in the lategame by the multicolor decks going over the top with bombs and card drawing. 

Tarkir’s Dominant Strategy

I believe that Tarkir: Dragonstorm Limited has something that’s close to a dominant strategy. The word “dominant” has a very specific and powerful meaning in gaming, so I won’t go quite that far. Instead, I’ll say that Tarkir has a very strong strategy that I’m willing to recommend, and that I believe will serve you well across a wide range of situations.

There are two main categories of decks. There are white-based aggressive decks like Boros and Mardu. And there are green-based multicolor decks that play for the long game. Both can be strong when they come together nicely, but the green decks are so much more flexible, and have much less fail rate. 

The main problem is that it’s difficult to pivot if you start out drafting Boros and it’s not open. If your neighbor is doing the same thing, or the right cards aren’t flowing, then Boros won’t work out, and it can be difficult to move from Boros into a different strategy. 

For example, I believe that Salt Road Packbeast is the best (or “highest-potential”) common in the format. But I’ve had bad experiences taking it early and I’m no longer willing to first-pick it. Packbeast is only good when you wind up with a focused deck, while the removal spells (like the various Exhales) are good no matter what your deck looks like.

It’s good to know how to draft these aggressive decks when the stars align, but I don’t think expert players are well served by diving into them until they’re certain that the plan is going to work out. 

On the other hand, starting with a green/blue base is incredibly strong and flexible. From a U/G start you can be three-color Temur, three-color Sultai, or a many-color deck. You can take whatever strong cards are passed to you. (With the exception of the very aggressive Boros cards). 

If I’m to play another Tarkir Limited event, like an RCQ or an Arena Open, this is the general strategy that I’ll employ. I’m particularly hoping to get this chance because Tarkir has been a fun Limited format, and because I’m excited to stand behind the thoughts and tips I’ve outlined here.