Tarkir: Dragonstorm Draft Guide: Clans and 17Lands Data

Tarkir: Dragonstorm (set code TDM) is a draft format built around five three-color clans and a set-wide Dragon theme. This guide explains each clan's mechanic from the Comprehensive Rules and the cards' Oracle text, then shows what 17Lands data says about which clans and which commons and uncommons won the most. Every card named here was checked against a Scryfall search of the set (e:tdm), and every win rate below comes from 17Lands PremierDraft data, with the fetch date and game counts stated next to it. One note for readers looking for an old favorite: no card in Tarkir: Dragonstorm is named Ojutai. Dragonlord Ojutai was first printed in Dragons of Tarkir, released March 27, 2015.

Tarkir: Dragonstorm at a glance

Scryfall dates the Tarkir: Dragonstorm printing of its cards to April 11, 2025. A Scryfall search for e:tdm returns 276 cards, including the five basic land types; restricting the search by rarity returns 96 commons and 100 uncommons.

Two data sets drive the rankings:

• Card ratings: 17Lands PremierDraft card ratings for TDM, fetched April 4, 2026 (281 entries). The headline number is GIH WR, the "games in hand" win rate, and each card's game count is shown so you can judge the sample.
• Color ratings: 17Lands PremierDraft color ratings for TDM from this public endpoint, covering April 1, 2025 to August 1, 2025, with the combine_splash option on, fetched October 2, 2026.

To keep small samples out of the rankings, a card is only ranked here if it has at least 50,000 games in the card-ratings file. Of 91 commons in that file, 79 clear the bar; of 100 uncommons, 89 do.

The five clans, their colors and their mechanics

Each clan has a common "Devotee" whose mana ability names the clan's three colors, which makes the color pairings easy to confirm from Oracle text: Abzan Devotee adds {W}, {B}, or {G}; Jeskai Devotee adds {U}, {R}, or {W}; Sultai Devotee adds {B}, {G}, or {U}; Mardu Devotee adds {R}, {W}, or {B}; and Temur Devotee adds {G}, {U}, or {R}. The official release notes tie one mechanic to each clan.

A few rules details matter in actual games. Flurry and renew are ability words, which the Comprehensive Rules (207.2c) say have no special rules meaning; the card's own text is the rule. For flurry, the official ruling on Wingblade Disciple says spells cast before the permanent arrived still count, so if the Disciple was your first spell, the next spell you cast that turn is your second. For mobilize, the rulings say you choose what each Warrior token attacks, and because the tokens were never declared as attackers, "whenever a creature attacks" abilities do not trigger for them. For harmonize, tapping a creature reduces only generic mana, never colored mana, and a sorcery cast with harmonize still has to be cast at sorcery speed.

Dragons: Omens, behold and Dragonstorms

The Dragon theme runs through three card designs.

In this set, Omen cards (CR 720) are Dragon creature cards with a second, smaller spell printed inside the text box. As you cast one, you choose whether to cast it normally or as the Omen; an Omen spell is shuffled into its owner's library as it resolves instead of going to the graveyard. In every other zone the card is just the creature. The common Sagu Wildling // Roost Seek is a 3/3 flier for {4}{G} that gains you 3 life on entry, or a {G} sorcery that finds a basic land. The uncommon Twinmaw Stormbrood // Charring Bite is a white 5/4 flier whose Omen half is a red sorcery, so one card can serve a white deck and a red deck. The official rulings add that an Omen spell that is countered, or whose targets have all become illegal, is not shuffled back.

Behold (CR 701.4a) means revealing a card of the stated quality from your hand or choosing such a permanent you control. In TDM, Scryfall finds six cards with behold: one rare plus a cycle of five common "Exhale" spells, each of which beholds a Dragon for a bonus. Molten Exhale deals 4 damage to a creature or planeswalker and can be cast as though it had flash if you behold a Dragon; Caustic Exhale gives -3/-3 and requires either beholding a Dragon or paying {1} as an additional cost; Dispelling Exhale counters unless its controller pays {2}, or {4} with a Dragon beheld; Piercing Exhale makes your creature deal damage equal to its power; Osseous Exhale deals 5 damage to an attacking or blocking creature.

Dragonstorm enchantments are a cycle of five uncommons, one per color, that each return to their owner's hand when a Dragon you control enters. Roiling Dragonstorm, for example, draws two cards and then discards one when it enters, so each Dragon that enters lets you recast it.

Which clans won: 17Lands color ratings

The table shows deck win rates for the five clans in 17Lands PremierDraft data from April 1, 2025 to August 1, 2025 (fetched October 2, 2026), computed as wins divided by games. Across all decks in that window the win rate was 54.7%, so that, not 50%, is the baseline to compare against.

Three findings stand out. First, the five clans together account for 64.4% of all deck-games in the window, so most games in this sample were played by decks in exactly one clan's three colors. Second, the clans are close together: only 2.1 percentage points separate Mardu from Abzan. Third, the strongest result with a large sample is not a clan at all: two-color Boros decks won 57.9% of 111,209 games, the highest win rate of any color combination with more than 100,000 games. Two-color decks as a group won 56.2%, against 54.4% for three-color decks as a group. With splashes combined, a two-color deck with a light splash counts as two-color here, and these are correlations in this window, not proof that adding a color caused losses. Read them as a reason to stay in two colors when the cards allow it, and to move into a third color for strong cards rather than by default.

Top commons by color

Below are the three highest-GIH WR mono-colored commons in each color, from 17Lands PremierDraft card ratings fetched April 4, 2026 (blue lists four because third place is tied). Every card listed has more than 100,000 games.

The pattern is consistent. In black, red and green, the Exhale common is the top common of its color, and Dispelling Exhale is second in blue. Sibsig Appraiser, the top common in the whole file, is a 2/1 for {2}{U} that looks at the top two cards of your library and puts one in hand and one in the graveyard. Mardu Devotee is a one-mana 1/2 that scries 2 and, once each turn, can turn {1} into {R}, {W} or {B}, which helps hold a three-color mana base together. Salt Road Packbeast costs {1} less for each creature you control and draws a card when it enters.

The Devotee cycle shows how much the clan choice changes a card's results: Mardu Devotee recorded 58.0% over 319,465 games, Sultai Devotee 55.2% over 291,210, Temur Devotee 54.4% over 207,508, Jeskai Devotee 54.1% over 250,149 and Abzan Devotee 52.7% over 155,898.

Top uncommons

The uncommons with the highest GIH WR among those with at least 50,000 games, from the same 17Lands PremierDraft file fetched April 4, 2026. Cards with the same win rate share a rank; four are tied at 58.5% for eighth, so the list has eleven cards:

All three of the top three are Dragons, and two of them are clan-colored. Sonic Shrieker ({2}{R}{W}{B}) is a 4/4 flier that deals 2 damage to any target and gains you 2 life when it enters, and the player dealt damage this way discards a card. Karakyk Guardian ({3}{G}{U}{R}) is a 6/5 with flying, vigilance and trample that has hexproof as long as it has not dealt damage. Mardu Monument fetches a basic Mountain, Plains or Swamp when it enters, which helps a Mardu deck find its colors. Glacial Dragonhunt, a blue-red sorcery, draws a card, lets you discard, and deals 3 damage to a creature if you discard a nonland card; it also has harmonize {4}{U}{R}.

How to use these numbers in a draft

• The Exhale cycle leads the commons. An Exhale is the top common in black, red and green and the second in blue. Each Exhale works without a Dragon, and beholding one adds instant speed (Molten Exhale), a lower cost (Caustic Exhale), a bigger tax (Dispelling Exhale), surveil 2 (Piercing Exhale) or 2 life (Osseous Exhale). Holding a Dragon card in hand counts for behold, so drafting Dragons, including Omen cards, makes these spells better.
• Fixing has value beyond its own stats. The Devotees and Monuments each support one specific clan. In the color ratings above, Mardu had both the highest clan win rate and the top-performing Devotee.
• Lean toward two colors. Two-color decks (splashes included) won 56.2% of their games against 54.4% for three-color decks in this window, so a third color is worth it for strong cards, not by default.
• Weigh GIH WR against context. A card's games-in-hand win rate reflects the decks that played it. Use it to compare cards with large samples, not as a fixed pick order.

To practice, use the ScrollVault draft simulator with Tarkir: Dragonstorm selected, the sealed tool, and the manabase calculator for working out a three-color mana base.

Sources and method

Card text and types come from Scryfall's Oracle data; set membership comes from Scryfall searches of e:tdm; mechanic definitions come from the Comprehensive Rules effective September 25, 2026 (rules 701.4, 701.63, 702.180, 702.181, 207.2c and 720) and the official Tarkir: Dragonstorm release notes. Win rates come from 17Lands PremierDraft data as dated above; the ranking threshold and every percentage were produced by a script run over the downloaded files, so the tables can be reproduced exactly. The card-ratings file records its fetch date but not the date range of games it covers, so no date range is claimed for those numbers.