Tarkir: Dragonstorm is finally here, and this preview season has felt like a breath of fresh air! The full set is finally out and I've been pouring over it to figure out what cards are going to impact Standard.

One thing you'll notice about my top ten list is the lack of big splashy spells. Look, I'm a Timmy at heart, and I love big ole Dragons, but I primarily review these sets for their Standard playability. Right now, I just don't see many expensive creatures being able to stand up to a meta full of Red Mice and This Town Ain't Big Enough.

A card like Ureni, the Song unending, while a personal favorite, might not be able to compete with the speed of the format. So, despite loving the huge Dragons from Tarkir: Dragonstorm, you won't find many of them in my Top 10 list.

Honorable Mention: Craterhoof Behemoth

Okay, I know I just talked about how these big expensive creatures are probably not worth seeing play, but I'm making an allowance for the Hoof, because it won't be played in normal decks. Whether you plan to sneak this in with a Collector's Cage, reanimate it with a Zombify, or just use a bunch of elves and Elvish Archdruid, this isn't a card you expect to play fairly.

10. Magmatic Hellkite

While I think this is fine as a 4-drop, I'm more excited about playing it on turn 3 thanks to ramp in a Gruul tempo deck. It has great size and a relevant ability. The design space of putting stun counters on lands feels like a great way to enable "land destruction" in Standard (since normal land destruction is the woooooorrrsssttt).

9. Kheru Goldkeeper

The fact that the design team didn't put the "only once per turn" or "only on your turn" safe guards on this one suggests that they pushed this one to see play (or, they just missed something again). Paired with something as innocuous as Scavenging Ooze this can create a stream of treasure tokens and could just be broken in some way. This is definitely a card for the brewers.

8. Flamehold Grappler

Never a great turn 3 play, this should start to feel busted around turn 5. Even copying something as simple as a burn spell could be enough to flip a game or board state. The fact that it can even copy creatures makes this an incredibly versatile spell.

7. Scavenger Regent

A decent sweeper stapled to a perfectly viable creature. This feels like a, "meat and potatoes" card, that'll help glue some decks together or sit in a sideboard for that crucial matchup. I especially like that this lets me find my sweeper effect off something like Overlord of the Balemurk.

6. Auroral Procession

The best Regrowth effect since Regrowth. This doesn't exile, so there may be shenanigans to be had form casting one to target another. In the last few years, all these style cards have been just restrictive enough to prevent them from seeing play I think this one breaks the streak and breaks out in Standard.

5. Herd Heirloom

A viable mana rock that works for multi-colored creature decks, and it even offers a second ability that generates card advantage or helps kill your opponent (there are so many good creatures with at least 4 power). This feels incredibly powerful, and I think there's a chance it should be higher on this list.

4. Ugin, Eye of the Storms

While this is priced to move in Modern, where it's easy to go 1-2-7 with your manabase thanks to the Urzatron, I can see it sneaking into a Standard deck. We have a bunch of viable 3-mana artifacts that can ramp into Ugin (and then trigger his static ability to exile an opponent's card once he's in play) but don't forget about Hedron Archive as a low cost way to jump from 4 to 6 mana (7 with your land drop). Most ramp decks right now look to go 1-3-5-7, but maybe there's room for a 1-2-4-7 deck.

3. Songcrafter Mage

The awesomeness of Songcrafter Mage's Standard run will entirely be determined by the viability of three-color manabases. If you can swing the three-mana requirement this is going to be an extremely versatile. It's not Snapcaster Mage, though it's close, but in some cases, it's going to be even better. It's not a card you want to play on turn 3, but come turn 5-6, it has the ability to be a game changer, whether you're flashing back an important early game spell, or using the Harmonize ability to cast an expensive spell at a reduced rate. This will be one of the first cards I build with when the set drops on Arena.

2. Voice of Victory

This won't entirely replace Grand Arbiter (since Arbiter stop activated abilities of cards like Ghost Vacuum too), but I can see this making its way into a bunch of sideboards because of the casting cost. It's a fairly aggressive beater too, and if you have something to do with the tokens, or static pump effects, this starts to look like the cornerstone of a new White deck.

1. Elspeth, Storm Slayer

Elspeth, Storm Slayer gets dropped into a Standard that's hostile to her mana value, but I think she might be good enough to see play anyway, Her abilities are great and work well together, but there are a ton of tools readily available in Standard that will work well with those abilities. Her static ability is the initial draw, but her 0 ability will be the ability to win games. Mono-White Token decks featuring Caretaker's Talent are already playable, and Elspeth may be the finisher that pushes them into Tier 1 status. It also doesn't hurt that she plays so well with the lands you can easily fit in a Mono-White deck in Fountainport, Mirrex, and the new land Dalkovan Encampment.

And there you have my picks for the best cards in Tarkir: Dragonstorm! I can't wait to try these out, and after Aetherdrift's lackluster impact, I think this set has the power to shake up the format.

You can find more of my Magic musings on Twitter/X @travishall456 and on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/anakinsdad.bsky.social