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Main » Articles » Cori-Steel Learning Curve

Cori-Steel Learning Curve

Michael Flores
Posted on April 22, 2025
 Reddit

The degree to which Cori-Steel Cutter is "the best card in Tarkir: Dragonstorm" is difficult to exaggerate. There are lots of good cards in Tarkir: Dragonstorm; but none so potentially format-warping as this little token-maker. I'd say the closest analogue to Cori-Steel Cutter, contextually, would be Bitterblossom at the height of Faeries in Standard and Block...

Bitterblossom
Mistbind Clique
Blightning

... Where the Enchantment-ness (but also Faerie-ness) of the card undid presumptive spoilers like Volcanic Fallout. Where the best deck might have been Blightning Beatdown (because it was good against Faeries) (and where it might have also, secretly, been the best Bitterblossom deck).

The only problem with that - despite the Awesome Blossom's table-snapping pedigree - is that it just killed you sometimes instead of giving trample and haste as well as size.

That's the thing about Cori-Steel Cutter.

It provides both width and height in a single spell. Most token makers go wide. Some go tall; but not tall and wide at the same time. Try untapping with two Cori-Steel Cutters in play at the same time and see what the battlefield looks like in two turns. You might not have two turns, because that right there is probably 16 damage just sitting around.

It's Cori-Steel Cutter's world. We just live here for now. Best learn how to play the card!

My first foray with a Blue-Red Cutter deck ended with a little embarrassment. I was sending a Monastery Swiftspear plus then-3/3 Monk into my opponent's Bloodletter of Aclazotz (2/4). If the opponent blocked the Swiftspear I'd Shock the Demon. But they blocked the Monk.

Ooh, I can get a little fancy.

I Shocked the opponent instead.

Magic: The Gathering: Arena asked me if I wanted to trigger my Cori-Steel Cutter.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Of course I said yes; which moved the equipment off of the blocked previously-3/3 / now again-3/3 Monk. The Demon lived. I died a few turns later.

Lesson #1: Making the Monk is free; you get to pick if you want to move the Cori-Steel Cutter itself. I've been surprised how often you don't want to move it.

The best Cori-Steel Cutter archetype in Standard, I think, is Blue-Red. Here's a pretty good example:

Blue-Red Cutter | TDM Standard | 1337Waffles

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I've been playing this list essentially since prepping for this article, but previously I was running one with Boltwave and Shock instead of Sleight of Hand and Spell Pierce...

Lesson #2: Catching someone with a Spell Pierce is cute. In some ways you draw more cards and can (very conditionally) Counter Target Spell more effectively than most Control decks. But Spell Pierce isn't actually that good at triggering Cori-Steel Cutter. YMMV

Lesson #3: Winning with the card Cori-Steel Cutter is often about planning the next 2-3 turns in advance; setting up so that you can play two spells per turn to keep triggering Monk-making. Opt and Sleight of Hand are essentially "two spells" for planning purposes.

You can be beat. Theoretically, at least. But I don't think anyone has a better Plan A than Blue-Red Cutter. Your cards all just go together really well, and you build advantages "for free" as the game progresses. You're killing creatures, bouncing stupid Temporary Lockdown, sometimes just casting creatures... But cool stuff keeps happening. Your guys are getting bigger. You're in fact getting more guys.

Offensively, the Blue-Red deck can have speed comparable to a Red Aggro / Mice-type... But because you're using cards like Opt or Stock Up along the way, you simply feel smarter and less "cheesy" (even though you might be running a build with circa 10 burn spells, far more than the average Mice).

Lesson #4: Stock Up is a hell of a Magic card.

On the subject of Mice, Blue-Red is far from holding a monopoly on Cori-Steel Cutter wins. Consider this Challenge champion:

Black-Red Cutter | TDM Standard | stalonge, 1st Place MTGO Standard Challenge 4/19/2025

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Lesson #5: Wild Ride is... wild. I didn't really grok playing that card over the fourth Manifold Mouse. But this one time I was stuck on two, but with my Cutter in play. I topdecked Heartfire Hero (like you do), cast Wild Ride on it, triggered the Cutter, and the opponent basically died. Wild, like I said.

I've played this deck quite a bit as well. It's fine. Good deck (Challenge winner, obviously). But I can't say I like it as much as Blue-Red. Offensively you get a different spread of free wins. I had somehow forgotten about Burn Together over the last few months; what with all the Overlords and bouncing Pixies, Dinosaurs and race cars. The "Fling" potential of Burn Together is differently powerful with Heartfire Hero and Slickshot Show-Off... But Black-Red has a big gap that Blue-Red doesn't seem to have.

I think maybe forty percent of my losses with Black-Red were just to mana flood.

Lesson #6: Stock Up is not only a hell of a Magic card, but it helps to prevent you from flooding out. Opt (and Sleight of Hand) smooth out draws as well, and an underrated feature of Stormchaser's Talent is just as a mana sink. Both Blue-Red and Black-Red have about the same number of lands. Both of them have very low mana curves. But one of them is much worse at losing to mana flood.

The other thing I liked less about Black-Red is that it seemed at odds with itself. With Blue-Red your game plan is usually to try to set up a degenerate Cutter battlefield. Most of your decisions and planning are in service to getting a lot of Monks in play, and then both swarming and burying the opponent with however many Cori-Steel Cutters you were able to draw. That's not very Black-Red.

If you have a Heartfire Hero in your opening hand, and gaze over at one of the four three copies of Manifold Mouse in your sixty, you're kind of obligated to be a Mouse deck. You still have most of the Mouse draws that people hate to play against. This is great in its way, but it also makes you a far, far worse Cutter deck. You don't have Opt or Sleight of Hand to double up into triggers. I literally found myself casting Burst Lightning on my own Emberheart Challenger more than once just to see if I could get my Cutter going. I think you'll agree that that is a dangerous predicament to put one of your best creatures into... Not to mention a kind of a terrible use of a Burst Lightning.

Still, Black-Red has some things going for it that I can appreciate. Probably my favorite is Feed the Swarm in the sideboard.

Feed the Swarm

My guess right now is actually that you might want even more copies of Feed the Swarm!

This is the rare card that this color combination can use to interact with enchantments. And two of the best cards against any of the Cutter decks are enchantments.

Lesson #7: You should be playing a Cori-Steel Cutter deck. But in the case that you're for some reason not playing a Cori-Steel Cutter deck, you should be playing with Authority of the Consuls and Temporary Lockdown.

Authority of the Consuls is maybe at its all-time high right now. I mean it was good as a sideboard card against Urabrask's Forge. But Urabrask's Forge was just this great sideboard card, or maybe a weird Control threat in slow Boros. Cori-Steel Cutter is maybe the best card in Standard, and is seeing play in Izzet, Rakdos, Gruul... Who knows? It might show up in legitimate Control decks even! Authority of the Consuls doesn't auto-beat Cori-Steel Cutter the way that, if unanswered, it beat Urabrask's Forge. But by golly is it awkward to try to win.

Lesson #8: It kind of sucks, but if your opponent has Authority of the Consuls, you can't really plot your Slickshot Show-Off.

Let's close with one of the respectable non-Cori-Steel Cutter archetypes in Standard: Omniscience combo.

This deck was one of the first I saw after new set deck lists started to come out. I have to tell you you should probably not play it:

Omniscience Combo | TDM Standard | nedyahiske, 5-0 MTGO Standard League 4/20/2025

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There is just one main thing "wrong" with this deck, and it's in its creature configuration.

No no - not Marang River Regent. That card is awesome. Four mana to not only draw cards but discard an Omniscience you might have drawn? It's actually perfect for this strategy. It's part This Town Ain't Big Enough, synergizes with new hand-fixer Roiling Dragonstorm, and even provides a Plan B against graveyard hate!

The problem is that this version does not play Fallaji Archaeologist.

In my travels so far in Tarkir: Dragonstorm Standard, by far my favorite deck to play is Blue-Red; although Black-Red is also serviceable. I've mostly won against Omniscience decks, because the Cutter decks can "ape" being Combo decks and just out-race Omniscience... Especially with Burn Together and the one0mana Blue instants. Both Into the Flood Maw and Spell Pierce have murdered Omniscience mages with a brutal lack of emotion.

But when I lose? It's always - always - because the opponent was able to hide behind a Fallaji Archaeologist for a turn or two. Sometimes they'd draw more than one. Sometimes I'd bounce their Temporary Lockdown, get my stuff back... But also give them a Scout trigger that put Omniscience into the opposing bin. If little Red men teaming up with occasionally little white Monk tokens are going to define present Standard, you can't really leave home without Fallaji Archaeologist in this archetype.

Notable new addition:

Jeskai Revelation

Get this with your Invasion of Arcavios // Invocation of the Founders. Bounce your Invasion of Arcavios. Do all the things. Win on 40. Much simpler than basically every finisher that has come before.

For a contrasting view (with a strange distribution of Scouts that is not the strangest thing about the sixty, or seventy-five):

Omniscience Combo | TDM Standard | Hyper, 5-0 MTGO Standard League 4/20/2025

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I just wanted to raise that HYPER's deck plays a new card that I think should 100% go in the Omniscience archetype:

Mistrise Village

Enters the Battlefield tapped. Yes. True story. Also ensures that your Abuelo's Awakening resolves. Takes up a "land" slot, not a "spell" slot; and even taps for one of your main colors. Play. This. Card. And all four Archeologists.

I hope you like 6/7s!

LOVE

MIKE

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TAGS articles, standard, theory, constructed, analysis, decklist, michael flores, tdm standard, 04222025, cori-steel cutter, omniscience combo

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