Ambling Stormshell – Tarkin: Dragonstorm
Date Reviewed: April 8, 2025
Ratings:
Constructed:
Casual:
Limited:
Multiplayer:
Commander [EDH]:
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Years before Zilortha and his friends established kaiju in Magic, Meandering Towershell was winning people’s hearts and confounding deckbuilders everywhere. It obviously has a decent ratio of cost to stats and abilities, but its inability to really do much of anything was frustrating to some players (even some builders of theme decks). But the animal type is apparently thriving in the new Tarkir, and Ambling Stormshell is an actually interesting build-around card. It’s equally slow if you’re depending on it as an attacker, although I think drawing three cards is pretty decent compensation for that. And it invites you to find ways to remove stun counters, or find other ways to untap it – it’s an easy pick for any decks or cubes that lean into synergy. It’s worth noting that turtles are not a very common creature type, even after sets like Bloomburrow, but some of the ones we’ve gotten recently are equally interesting and surprisingly powerful.
Constructed: 3
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 3.5
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
Turtles take their sweet time, don’t they? Ambling Stormshell is resistant to removal and slow to get places, but being able to draw three cards on attack is pretty nifty, especially if you have a way to give this turtle vigilance. It also rewards if you have more turtles (like more copies of this), though the proviso here is that it’s not wildly common.
Resisting removal makes Ambling Stormshell a better sort of value prospect, so to speak, as does its colossal toughness. And even as a one-time “draw three” sort of deal, it’s not terrible, though there’s obviously a desire to get more mileage out of the terrible turtle through support. I think it’ll be abusable with the right tools, but it might be a bit too pricey for anything more serious.
Constructed: 3
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 3.5 (think of this as a decent draw spell)
Multiplayer: 3.25
Commander [EDH]: 4 (blink this or give it vigilance to profit)
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