Abzan Armor Jeskai Striker Mardu Surge Sultai Arisen Temur Roar

Precon comparison · Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander

Which Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander precon should you buy?

Out of the box, Jeskai Striker is the Tarkir: Dragonstorm deck I'd pick, and its guide is also the cheapest of the five to follow. Mardu Surge gains the most from its swaps. Abzan Armor carries the set's only Game Changer, which starts it a bracket above the rest, and Temur Roar is the one box actually built from Dragons.

Art, left to right: Zoltan Boros, Chris Rallis, Lie Setiawan, Chris Rahn and Billy Christian

Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander came as five decks, a clan apiece, released on 11 April 2025 at $44.99 each. Each is three colours and no box's colours contain another's, and each ships a second legend who could take over the command zone. Here's who I'd hand each one to:

• Jeskai Striker (blue, red and white), to play unchanged. Its curve averages 3.13, the lowest of the five, and nearly every card that pays you for casting spells is in the box already. Its guide adds just one more, and half of its ten swaps are lands.
• Abzan Armor (white, black and green), for a table that plays at Bracket 3. The set has one Game Changer, Seedborn Muse, and it's in this box. Behind Felothar, the box's 40 creatures have 184 toughness against 61 power, and he's the card that turns the bigger number into damage.
• Mardu Surge (red, white and black), to upgrade. A third of its 99 make tokens and not one card makes an opponent lose life when a token arrives. Its guide's thirteen swaps add that reward and bring the curve down to 2.92, lower than any other deck here ends up.
• Sultai Arisen (black, green and blue), if you like a graveyard full of lands. Teval can return one on every attack, but the box also ships nine lands that always enter tapped, the most in the set, and twelve spells that want two black.
• Temur Roar (green, blue and red), if you came for Dragons. 29 of the 34 creatures in its 99 are Dragons, more than the other four boxes hold between them. It has the heaviest curve, 4.11, and the dearest guide as well.

Five clan decks, all $44.99 at release

Singles value is the TCGplayer market price of the printings each box shipped, summed, as of 23 October 2026. It moves every day, and each deck’s own page carries the current figure and what it means for the price you paid. All five decks cost $44.99 at release. The bracket floor is the lowest bracket the box can honestly claim before anyone changes a card.

Five Spirit Dragons, and the box that is full of Dragons

Every box carries its clan's legendary Spirit Dragon, and only two of them lead. Shiko and Narset, Unified, a Human Spirit Dragon, is Jeskai Striker's commander, and Teval, the Balanced Scale is Sultai Arisen's. The other three ship as the second legend in their boxes: Betor, Ancestor's Voice in Abzan Armor, Neriv, Crackling Vanguard in Mardu Surge and Ureni of the Unwritten in Temur Roar. Those three decks are led by Warriors instead, and each of their guides leaves the Warrior in charge.

So the boxes with a Dragon commander aren't the Dragon deck. Eshki, Temur's Roar is a Human Warrior whose trigger checks a creature spell's power and ignores its type, and 29 of the 34 creatures behind her are Dragons. The other four boxes hold 18 Dragons between them, commanders included. If you want a Dragon in the command zone, that's Jeskai Striker or Sultai Arisen. If you want a deck of them, it's Temur Roar.

Thirty-five lands that enter tapped

The five boxes share one flaw, and every guide spends slots on it. Between them they ship 35 lands that always enter tapped: nine in Sultai Arisen, seven each in Abzan Armor and Mardu Surge, and six each in Jeskai Striker and Temur Roar. Twenty of the 58 cards the guides add are lands, and once all five lists are in, 15 tapped lands are left. Jeskai Striker ends with the fewest, one, because its commander pays off only for a second spell in the same turn, and early on a tapped land is often the mana that second spell needed.

The scry Temples take most of the cuts. The boxes hold eleven of them and the guides remove nine: all three in Abzan Armor and in Jeskai Striker, both of Mardu Surge's and Sultai Arisen's one. Temur Roar's guide keeps its pair, Temple of Mystery and Temple of Abandon, because their scry asks for nothing, and each makes one of the two colours that deck is short of, blue or red.

Path of Ancestry splits the guides down the middle. It's in four boxes, and it only scries when the mana it made pays for a creature sharing one of your commander's creature types. Jeskai Striker's guide keeps it, because the 18 creatures behind them include 12 that share a type with Shiko and Narset, and Abzan Armor's keeps it for the three colours it makes. Mardu Surge's guide cuts it, with six of Zurgo's creatures able to set it off, and so does Temur Roar's, where only three of Eshki's can.

A Will card in every box, and every guide keeps it

Each box has one card named for its clan, from Will of the Abzan to Will of the Temur. You choose one of two modes, or both if you control a commander as you cast it. None of the five guides cuts its Will, and only Sultai Arisen's writes about it. Here's what each one does with both modes chosen:

• Will of the Abzan (four mana): each opponent you target sacrifices their creature with the greatest power and loses 3 life, and a creature card of yours comes back from the graveyard.
• Will of the Jeskai (four mana): every player may discard their hand and draw five, and the instants and sorceries in your graveyard gain flashback for the turn at their own mana cost.
• Will of the Mardu (three mana, and the only instant of the five): you make a 1/1 Warrior for each creature a target player controls, and the spell deals damage to a target creature equal to the number of creatures you control.
• Will of the Sultai (five mana): a target player mills three and your graveyard's land cards all come back tapped, and a creature gets a +1/+1 counter for each land you control, with trample for the turn.
• Will of the Temur (six mana): you make a token copy of a permanent that's also a 4/4 flying Dragon, and a target player draws cards equal to the greatest mana value among your permanents.

Sultai's is the one its guide builds on. Three of that guide's adds also put all your graveyard's lands back onto the battlefield, so the box's own Will stops being the only card of its kind.

Jeskai first, Temur last

This is how I'd rank them for someone getting one box to play now, with its guide to follow later.

Jeskai Striker: the payoffs came in the box

Shiko and Narset, Unified fly, have vigilance, and reward the second spell you cast in any turn, yours or an opponent's. If that spell targets a permanent or a player it's copied, with new targets if you like, and if it isn't copied you draw a card. The box already holds what that wants. Cards like Young Pyromancer, Archmage Emeritus and Storm-Kiln Artist pay you for each instant or sorcery, so its guide adds only one more, Ral, Storm Conduit. The other nine swaps are four cheap interaction spells and five two-colour lands in place of tapped ones, which takes the always-tapped count from six to one and trims the curve to 3.02.

Those ten came to about $33 at August 2026 market prices, and the nine that had a listed price added up to $32.85, as Chaos Warp's default printing had none. No other guide in the set spends under $50. What the list leaves alone is the double pips: two blue by turn three turns up 76.4% of the time as the box ships and two red 71.8%, and the guide treats both as mid-game casts rather than buying more sources. It's also the box with the fewest creatures, 18 behind the commander.

Abzan Armor: one card puts it a bracket up

Felothar the Steadfast has each creature you control deal combat damage equal to its toughness instead of its power, and lets your creatures with defender attack. For {3}, tapping him and sacrificing another creature, you draw cards equal to that creature's toughness and then discard cards equal to its power. Eighteen of the 40 creatures behind him have defender, and as a group they have three times as much toughness as power, so the box does what it was built for from the first game. Its guide reckons it gets further with no changes than most precons do.

No other box in the set carries a Game Changer. Seedborn Muse untaps your permanents during every other player's untap step, which lets Felothar's draw ability run once a turn instead of once a round, and on its own it sets the floor at Bracket 3. The guide keeps it. At a table that plays Bracket 2, it's the one card to take out.

The guide's eleven swaps came to $54.58 at the August 2026 market price of each card's default printing, and Heroic Intervention and Guardian Project were more than half of that. Most of the rest covers for the commander. Only two other cards in the box hand the whole team his toughness rule, Baldin, Century Herdmaster and Assault Formation, so the guide adds three more: Doran, the Siege Tower, Ancient Lumberknot and Huatli, the Sun's Heart. Its curve rises slightly, to 3.41 against the box's 3.34, and the guide means it to.

Mardu Surge: the box its guide changes most

Zurgo Stormrender makes a 1/1 Warrior every time he attacks, tapped and attacking, and sacrifices it at the next end step. Whenever a creature token of yours leaves the battlefield you draw a card if it was attacking, and each opponent loses 1 life if it wasn't. 33 of the 99 make tokens, but nothing in the box costs an opponent life when one arrives, so the damage a token does comes from attacking, or from leaving.

Its guide's thirteen swaps fill that gap first. Five of the adds, Impact Tremors among them, cost each opponent life as a token arrives, five more replace tapped lands, and the curve drops to 2.92 from 3.21, the biggest fall in the set. Priced in August 2026, the list came to about $54 at market, and the eight cards that aren't lands were $18.65 of it. The part that changes how the deck wins is the cheap part.

Sultai Arisen: a land engine on the slowest mana

Teval, the Balanced Scale flies, and each time it attacks it mills three cards and may put a land card from your graveyard onto the battlefield tapped. Whenever cards leave your graveyard, one at a time or many at once, you get a 2/2 Zombie. That counts events, not cards, so seven cards exiled to pay for one delve spell make the same single Zombie that one returning land does.

As it ships, this is the slowest mana in the set: nine lands always enter tapped, twelve spells want two black, and the curve averages 3.73, behind only Temur Roar. Its guide's thirteen swaps cut Tasigur, the Golden Fang and Treasure Cruise, bring the tapped lands down to four and the curve to 3.46, and add up to about $54 on August 2026 market prices. Nothing on the list but Altar of Dementia cost more than $10. Black falls from 24 sources to 22 along the way, and the guide accepts that for the speed.

Temur Roar: the Dragons, and the dearest fix

Eshki gets a +1/+1 counter whenever you cast a creature spell. If that spell has 4 power or more you draw a card, and at 6 or more she deals damage equal to her own power to each opponent. 25 of the 34 creature spells in the box are big enough to draw and 7 are big enough to burn, so the engine is there on day one.

Reaching it is the problem. The curve averages 4.11, the heaviest here, six of its lands come in tapped every time, and 19 spells want two red by turn three, a mark the box hits 78.5% of the time. Its guide spends about $83 on eleven swaps at August 2026 market prices, more than any other in the set, with Terror of the Peaks and Training Center over half of it. They lift the casts that draw to 30 and the casts that burn to 9, but the curve edges up to 4.15 and two red by turn three slips to 76.4%. The guide says outright that a swap list this size can't solve that. Buy it for the Dragons, knowing it's the box whose guide leaves its biggest problem standing.

Buying a second clan

Since no box's colours contain another's, none can take a sibling's cards wholesale. Each clan shares two colours with two of the others and one with the remaining two. The two-colour pairs are Abzan Armor and Mardu Surge (white and black), Abzan Armor and Sultai Arisen (black and green), Jeskai Striker and Mardu Surge (red and white), Jeskai Striker and Temur Roar (blue and red), and Sultai Arisen and Temur Roar (green and blue).

Abzan Armor is the box its neighbours feed best. 62 of the 84 non-basic cards behind Zurgo fit Felothar's colours, and so do 63 of the 84 behind Teval. Jeskai Striker into Temur Roar is next, at 58 of Jeskai's 85. The weakest are two pairs that share a single colour: just 17 of Jeskai Striker's non-basic cards are legal in Abzan Armor, and just 17 of Sultai Arisen's in Jeskai Striker.

The boxes have little in common. Arcane Signet, Exotic Orchard, Sol Ring and Command Tower turn up in all five, and Jeskai Striker and Mardu Surge share the most, eleven non-basic cards counting those four. No card turns up on two guides' add lists, and only four of the 58 already ship in a sibling box: Caves of Koilos and Llanowar Wastes for Abzan Armor's guide (from Mardu Surge and Sultai Arisen), Chaos Warp for Jeskai Striker's (from Temur Roar), and Anguished Unmaking for Mardu Surge's (from Abzan Armor). None of the four is a card its own box's guide cuts, so borrowing one leaves a gap where it came from.

FAQ

Which Tarkir: Dragonstorm precon is ready to play the day it's opened?

Jeskai Striker. Its curve averages 3.13, the lowest of the five, and the box already holds the cards that reward casting instants and sorceries, so its guide adds only one more. What it gives away is speed: six of its lands always enter tapped, and half of its guide's swaps go to replacing them.

Which Tarkir: Dragonstorm precon has a Dragon as its commander?

Two of them. Shiko and Narset, Unified in Jeskai Striker is a Human Spirit Dragon, and Teval, the Balanced Scale in Sultai Arisen is a Spirit Dragon. The deck of Dragons is Temur Roar, though: 29 of the 34 creatures behind Eshki, Temur's Roar are Dragons, while Eshki herself is a Human Warrior. Ureni of the Unwritten, that box's second legend, is the Dragon you could put in charge instead.

Is Abzan Armor too strong for a Bracket 2 table?

As it ships, the rules put it at Bracket 3, because Seedborn Muse is a Game Changer and Bracket 2 allows none. It's the one Game Changer across all five decks, and none of the 58 cards their guides add is one. Take Seedborn Muse out and, by its guide's count, nothing else in the list holds it above Bracket 2.

How much do the five Tarkir: Dragonstorm upgrade guides spend?

At August 2026 market prices: about $33 for Jeskai Striker's ten swaps (one of them, Chaos Warp, had no listed price), about $54 each for the thirteen in Mardu Surge and the thirteen in Sultai Arisen, $54.58 for Abzan Armor's eleven, and about $83 for Temur Roar's eleven. Terror of the Peaks alone was $28.60 of Temur Roar's list.

Why do all five Tarkir: Dragonstorm guides swap out lands?

Because the boxes ship 35 lands between them that always enter tapped, from six in Jeskai Striker and Temur Roar to nine in Sultai Arisen. Twenty of the 58 cards the guides add are lands, nine of the eleven scry Temples go, and after every guide's swaps 15 tapped lands are left. Temur Roar's guide is the only one that keeps its Temples.

Which Tarkir: Dragonstorm clans can trade cards with each other?

The pairs that share two colours trade best: Abzan and Mardu, Abzan and Sultai, Jeskai and Mardu, Jeskai and Temur, and Sultai and Temur. Abzan Armor gains the most, with 62 of Mardu Surge's 84 non-basic cards and 63 of Sultai Arisen's 84 fitting Felothar's colours. Jeskai Striker and Sultai Arisen share only blue, and only 17 of Sultai's non-basic cards are legal under Shiko and Narset.