Surrak, Dragon Tempest

Commander / EDH Dragons RUG (Temur) Tribal

Jmax13

Creature (31)

• 1x Atarka, World Render
• 1x Balefire Dragon
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Bloom Tender
• 1x Demanding Dragon
• 1x Dragonlord Atarka *f-pre*
• 1x Dragonlord's Servant
• 1x Dragonspeaker Shaman
• 1x Glorybringer
• 1x Hellkite Charger
• 1x Hellkite Tyrant
• 1x Hoard-Smelter Dragon
• 1x Knollspine Dragon
• 1x Lathliss, Dragon Queen
• 1x Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius
• 1x Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind
• 1x Rattleclaw Mystic
• 1x Ryusei, the Falling Star
• 1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1x Savage Ventmaw
• 1x Scourge of Kher Ridges
• 1x Scourge of Valkas
• 1x Shaman of the Great Hunt
• 1x Skyline Despot
• 1x Somberwald Sage
• 1x Thunderbreak Regent
• 1x Tyrant's Familiar
• 1x Utvara Hellkite
• 1x Verix Bladewing
• 1x Vizier of the Menagerie
• 1x Whisperer of the Wilds

Sorcery (4)

• 1x Explosive Vegetation
• 1x Genesis Wave
• 1x Rishkar's Expertise
• 1x Vandalblast

Land (35)

• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Cascade Bluffs
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Crucible of the Spirit Dragon
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Flooded Grove
• 5x Forest
• 1x Frontier Bivouac
• 1x Gruul Turf
• 1x Haven of the Spirit Dragon
• 1x Hinterland Harbor
• 1x Homeward Path
• 2x Island
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 5x Mountain
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Rootbound Crag
• 1x Sheltered Thicket
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Stomping Ground
• 1x Sulfur Falls
• 1x Unclaimed Territory
• 1x Windswept Heath

Instant (8)

• 1x Beast Within
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Hunter's Insight
• 1x Kindred Summons
• 1x Krosan Grip
• 1x Nexus of Fate
• 1x Stubborn Denial

Commander (1)

Artifact (10)

• 1x Chromatic Lantern
• 1x Dragon's Hoard
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Gilded Lotus
• 1x Gruul Signet
• 1x Izzet Signet
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Simic Signet
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Urza's Incubator

Enchantment (9)

• 1x Crucible of Fire
• 1x Dragon Tempest
• 1x Frontier Siege
• 1x Kindred Discovery
• 1x Sarkhan's Unsealing
• 1x Sunbird's Invocation
• 1x Sylvan Library
• 1x Temur Ascendancy
• 1x Wild Pair

Planeswalker (2)

• 1x Sarkhan, Fireblood
• 1x Sarkhan Unbroken

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Through fire and fang, we rule the skies

Dragons hold a special place in the Johnny side of my heart. There's something great about playing these high costing, high damage, splashy flying lizards. I've tried to make dragons work under several commanders and I've become convinced that Surrak Dragonclaw has the perfect colors and abilities to make this archetype work in a game.

Why Surrak?

Surrak's colors give dragons, who are primarily in red, access to green (ramp) and blue (interaction/card draw). This makes our gameplan of jamming big splashy creatures much more resilient. Also, sticking to three colors as opposed to five makes our mana a lot smoother and easier to use.

Surrak also offers the utility of preventing our creature spells from being countered. If you've ever wanted to see how much a control player can sweat, just wait until you flash in an uncounterable Surrak before your turn and untap with tons of mana available. One of the worst things about any big creature deck is that your Utvara Hellkite can just eat a Disdainful Stroke and leave you with nothing to show for your mana. This doesn't happen under our commander.

Game Plan

Early game, we want to be establishing mana and card draw. Often times our best opening hands contain 3 lands, 2 ramp spells, and either a card draw spell or a dragon. As we don't really want to cast our big threats until Surrak is on board, we aren't too worried about drawing into our threats. Ramping to Surrak already puts a lot of pressure on our opponents by just having a psuedo-hasty 6/6 is often good enough on turn 3-4.

By mid game, we are hoping to have drawn into at least two big threats. I've chosen most dragons in this deck that have someway of interacting with our opponents board, have some form of token generation, or have some form of card draw attached. This makes sure that we aren't just spending 5-8 mana on a threat and passing turn. This is also when we really want to have one of our value engines set up. Whether it's Kindred Discovery, Temur Ascendency, or Shaman of the Great Hunt. We have several ways of making sure we don't go down a card by casting our dragons and that's absolutely crucial. We also have ways of "cheating" dragons into play with things like Wild Pair or Sunbird's Invocation. Often times, our splashiest late games will be with those cards on field.

Finishing the game is fairly straight forward. We have a bunch of huge flying dudes. We have several spells to finish out the game and swarm the board with tons of power. Sarkhan Unbroken is an insane finisher, if we can get to his ult. With a little bit of defensive play and tons of luck it is definitely possible. If we do, we have a psuedo "loop" that we can do to ensure we win the game even from zero board state. This also plays to our other two swarm cards that we use to close the game in Kindred Summons and Genesis Wave.

When we get one of these effects off, we are hoping to hit Scourge of Valkas first. With Sarkhan, we can choose to do this, we have to get a bit lucky or have him on board for the other two. The next priority is Lathliss, Dragon Queen. Every Dragon after that will deal ever increasing damage to our opponents upon entry and then also bring along a token dragon, which will also deal more damage to our opponents. With this stack of damage, we can often burn our opponents right then and there. If that's not enough, it will be very near enough and we will be left with a massive board of 50, 60, 100 power worth of flyers.

Conclusion

If you like creature decks or have too many control decks in your meta, you may very much enjoy this deck. It's not a super tight list, so if you have pet cards that you want to play you can jam them in and have fun. Let me know if you can think of any natural inclusions that I missed. As always, thank you for checking out my deck!

Date added	6 years
Last updated	6 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	14 - 0 Mythic Rares 52 - 0 Rares 14 - 0 Uncommons 8 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	4.12
Tokens	Beast 3/3 G, Dragon 4/4 R, Dragon 5/5 R, Dragon 6/6 R, Karox Bladewing, Morph 2/2 C, Monarch Emblem