Shark Typhoon – Ikoria MTG Review

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

Sharknado – excuse me, Shark Typhoon – reminds me a lot of the Decrees from Scourge, which are very powerful when they do their regular thing for their mana cost, but arguably better when you use their cycling trigger. In the Typhoon’s case, it’s a very good card to go to if you’re afraid of your creatures being countered, and actually checks a lot of the boxes for a control win condition as well. It’s also worth noting that its enchantment mode triggers any time you cast a spell, not when it resolves, meaning that the sharks very quickly pile up, as with Young Pyromancer. You can get even bigger ones than with the Pyromancer, too!

Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 4/5
Limited: 4/5
Multiplayer: 4/5
Commander: 4/5

Sharknado in card form is actually pretty decent, a payoff for spellslinger-style decks that can get to six mana or cheat it in. An army of flying Sharks is a good way to end a game in increasingly gruesome fashion. But even if you don’t have mana to sink, cycling will keep this from being a completely dead card, and it’s possible that cycling will be the preferred way to make Shark Typhoon pop: Think Twice is marginally playable, but a Think Twice that makes a Shark is pretty legit. I’m not sure how good Shark Typhoon will ultimately be, but the cycling mode gives real legs to the spell that it might not have otherwise, so I think it has a solid chance to see a healthy amount of Constructed play and I’m a bit more bullish on it than I would be on a “do nothing” enchantment.

Constructed: 3.75
Casual: 4
Limited: 4.25 (probably more useful to make one big Shark than a bunch of little ones, but a nigh-uncounterable shark generating cantrip is pretty legit)
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander: 3.75

Phat
Pack
Magic
YouTube

Hello everyone and welcome back to Pojo’s Card of the Day! Today we’re looking at a swimming monstrosity that comes from what I consider the American SyFy style of Kaiju Films.

Shark Typhoon, obviously Sharknado has two modes. As an enchantment it is just an insane value machine that makes X/X Blue Sharks.. with Flying. Where X is the CMC of the spell. However what makes this card amazing is the modality, being able to Cycle it at instant speed for X1U and make an X/X Flying Shark is pretty legit. at 5 mana you get a 3/3 flier that draws you a card at instant speed. Not too shabby.

So where does this guy fit in?

Unfortunately not really a lot of places are looking for something like this. Jeskai Fires already has a pretty amazing finisher in the form of Will Kenrith who’s activated abilities make great use of all that spare mana. It’s definitely a Johnny Style build around card for it’s big ability but for the most part this is more of a kitchen table card.

Commadner Decks aren’t going to be too impressed with a cycling X/X creature even with all that potent artifact mana, there’s simply so much more that you can do with it than make a creature.

The main place that you’ll see this spell is hanging out in various Cubes, modality is really strong in Cube because of how random decks can be. A lot of players are angling this card to squeeze mulldrifter who’s a 2/2 that draws two cards at sorcery speed, but this typhoon can act as a smidge of trap door spider removal in blue. It snatches a creature in it’s jaws and draws a card or can act as just a really fat finisher. That draws a card. Which can happen more often than you think with all that juicy artifact mana like Grim Monolith.

In Regular Limited it’s fairly strong, evasion is really good, flash is even better, and card draw is premium. So this is definitely a high priority pick … And sure you can actually cast it and just make a buncha sharks too.

Constructed 1.5/5 – You can make it work at casual FNMs I’m sure but it’s probably not worth the frustration.

Commander 1/5 – Much better card draw available, especially with Cyclonic Rift.

Limited 5/5 – Draws. Makes Dude. Legit blue card!

Cube 4/5 – It has the potential to edge out one of the sacred cows of Cube. Mulldrifter. Tons of potential.

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