Every once in a while, a Magic: The Gathering card is revealed and gets a resounding shrug from the community. Then, once it actually hits tables, it turns out to be absolutely incredible, and its price skyrockets.
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Tarkir: Dragonstorm’s Cori-Steel Cutter is one such card. A fantastic addition to a wide variety of decks, nobody was expecting it to be as strong as it is. But how much has it spiked, and why is it so good anyway?
Cori-Steel Cutter, Explained
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Cori-Steel Cutter
One generic, one red artifact – Equipment – Rare
Equipped creature gets +1/+1 and has trample and haste.
Flurry – Whenever you cast your second spell each turn, create a 1/1 white Monk creature token with prowess. You may attach this Equipment to it. (Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, the token gets +1/+1 until the end of turn.)
Cori-Steel Cutter is a mono-red equipment introduced in 2025’s Tarkir: Dragonstorm set. It’s a cheap artifact Equipment, costing just one red and one generic mana, with a further equip cost of another one red and one generic.
Its basic ability is pretty standard: the equipped creature gets +1/+1, trample, and haste. This means it can attack and tap for activated abilities the first turn it enters, and any excess combat damage it deals goes to your opponents’ face instead. However, that isn’t why the card is good.
It’s the second ability, which uses one of Dragonstorm’s new mechanics, flurry. Whenever you cast your second spell each turn, you make a 1/1 white Monk creature token with prowess, and then you can attach Cori-Steel Cutter to it.
Prowess means the creature with it gets +1/+1 that turn for each noncreature spell it sees cast.
Why Cori-Steel Cutter Is Good
At first glance, Cori-Steel Cutter is a relatively bland Equipment. +1/+1, trample, and haste is good, but it doesn’t really explain why the card is so popular. It’s the flurry ability you need to be looking at.
Keep in mind that, with flurry, every spell you cast is counted, regardless of when the permanent with a flurry trigger entered. That means, if Cori-Steel Cutter is the first spell you cast in a turn, it will see the next spell you cast and trigger. You could play a Cori-Steel Cutter, then cast a one-mana spell like Boltwave, Cut Down, Hired Claw, or Stormchaser’s Talent to trigger it and make you an additional token.
This has allowed Cori-Steel Cutter to become a big part of aggro decks that want to deal damage as quickly as possible. In particular, it is a huge player in prowess aggro decks, that use the large number of prowess cards currently in Standard, like Stormchaser’s Talent and Monastery Swiftspear, to its advantage.
It isn’t just Standard that is having fun with Cori-Steel Cutter, though. This card has managed to break into almost every format it’s legal in, being played successfully in Modern, Vintage, and, of course Commander. If a deck is slinging lots of spells and wants to trigger abilities like flurry, prowess, or magecraft, Cori-Steel Cutter is probably a good pick for it.
How Much Has Cori-Steel Cutter Spiked?
From Cori-Steel Cutter’s low of $2.99 at the start of the month for a regular, near mint copy, it spiked by a whopping 490 percent in just two weeks, to a current high of $14.63.
Crucially, the price is still trending up, so it’s likely that Cori-Steel Cutter could become one of the most valuable cards from Tarkir: Dragonstorm. Perhaps not Ugin levels of expensive, but a nice pull for anyone cracking packs, nonetheless.
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