Dragon You Down to Hell 3.0

Standard Knockadoon

SCORE: 10 | 26 COMMENTS | 2218 VIEWS | IN 3 FOLDERS


Kaitoghost says... #1

Needs more Stormbreath.

March 19, 2015 4:16 p.m.

Knockadoon says... #2

I was going all post-Theros block with this. Khans of Tarkir, Fate Reforged, and Dragons of Tarkir only.

March 19, 2015 4:30 p.m.

Kaitoghost says... #3

I've got a fever, and the only cure is more Stormbreath.

March 19, 2015 5:50 p.m.

Knockadoon says... #4

lol...sometimes, in the morning, my wife has what could accurately be called stormbreath...

March 19, 2015 6:12 p.m.

Knockadoon says... #5

I have a deck I'm using now, so I wanted to make this one really far forward. Most of it is from DTK, so even when Khans and Fate rotate out, I don't have to change much to keep it. I'll miss haste from Temur Ascendancy alot, but Dragon Tempest also gives haste, and hopefully there'll be something else along in the future to replace it. I'll badly miss Atarka, World Render for the double strike, but maybe Berserkers' Onslaught can replace it, it just doesn't give a big creature like Atarka does...summoning Atarka, World Render with haste and then swinging for 12 right away is great. I really really like Monastery Siege, so that'll be hard to replace, but it's a sideboard card so I can find something.

March 19, 2015 6:31 p.m.

Viral_Assassin says... #6

+1 because the name made me laugh. Also you wouldn't DTK rotate out with Khans and fate reforged or am I missing something here?

March 20, 2015 4:37 p.m.

Kaitoghost says... #7

After MTG Origins, the blocks move to a 2 set format, and the core sets go away completely. Sets will now be standard legal for 3 blocks instead of 2, but the rotations happen much earlier. And to keep this new rotation schedule, the first 2 sets of Tarkir rotate out in the block after Zendikar, and Dragons/MTG Origins rotate out the next block after.

March 20, 2015 4:41 p.m.

Viral_Assassin says... #8

Yeah I knew that but I didn't know they were gonna break up a 3 set block. That is just dumb. couldn't make it easier to just start making 2 set blocks instead of messing with people and break up the block. Can't even do a block constructed deck then cause wouldn't Ktk/mtgo be considered a block on its own?

March 20, 2015 4:46 p.m.

Veshuliq says... #9

Used this as to play test one of my own brews, and found this deck very inconsistent. It has some pretty bad starting hands/mulls, and if you get mana light or your servants get killed without drawing lands it falls behind really quick. I would recommend trying 24-25 land, and drop down on the number on Foe-Razer Regent has it is 7 mana, and you have no early ramp in this deck outside of Dragonlord's Servant. In which 2 copies of him and atarka will be enough 7 drops for this deck.

Also should probably have Roast in sb for them rhinos of the format, as can't have counter magic up all the time.

March 20, 2015 5:02 p.m.

Knockadoon says... #10

Viral_Assassin, thanks for the upvote! It's mine, so of course, but I do love that name.

March 20, 2015 8:31 p.m.

Knockadoon says... #11

Veshuliq, thanks for the comments. I've play-tested this a few times myself but haven't had time to do it as much as I usually like, yet. It's definitely a work in progress. I like Roast for the sb, and had been thinking about that myself, for the rhinos, as you say. I guess I was more worried about swarms of little creatures, and was counting on my dragons fighting the bigger ones. Seismic Rupture and Shockmaw Dragon are both in there to help out with swarms. I agree that I don't need 4 Foe-Razer Regent if I need to take something out. You mention I don't have early mana ramp other than Dragonlord's Servant...do you think Shaman of Forgotten Ways is too slow? He does accelerate the mana ramp when he comes out and can survive all the 2/1 warriors floating around, if they aren't enhanced with anything else. I have to admit that I'm wanting to stick with dragons as a theme for this deck, even if it makes it less competitive, and there are lower-mana dragons than Foe-Razer Regent, but not any that excited me in the Temur colors. If there were one I liked in Temur that only cost 5 mana, I'd use it. If I really want to break from the theme to make it faster I'd probably go with Temur Sabertooth as a solid 4-drop that can help protect my dragons.

March 20, 2015 8:43 p.m.

Knockadoon says... #12

I guess, for now, I could also break out of only using Khans and forward, and put some Elvish Mystic in. If I had turn 1 Elvish Mystic, turn 2 Dragonlord's Servant, and turn 3 Shaman of Forgotten Ways, then on turn 4 I could have 7 mana to spend on a dragon spell that would only cost me 6 mana.

March 20, 2015 9:14 p.m.

Knockadoon says... #13

Alright, I fussed with this. I lowered the mana curve and tried to be more sure about having things to play in the early turns. I like Haven of the Spirit Dragon for its ability to return dragons from the graveyard to my hand, but it does make getting the right colors for other things a little harder. Overall it'll be worth it, though, when it brings back dragons from the graveyard. I definitely can get stuck a little bit around turns 3 and 4 if I don't have either Dragonlord's Servant or Shaman of Forgotten Ways.

March 21, 2015 12:34 a.m.

Knockadoon says... #14

The interesting thing I hadn't thought of at first, is that the mana ramping is really ONLY for the dragon cards, with the exception of Elvish Mystic. I mean, of course, but I had been thinking of this as a mana ramping deck, and that's only partially true. Since Dragonlord's Servant and Shaman of Forgotten Ways only help pay for dragon creatures, the rest of the stuff I might want to cast has to be done with regular mana. I often am using all my mana to summon expensive creatures and have things like Temur Ascendancy stuck in my hand, plus I'm wanting to hold two mana back for Negate. So it ends up feeling important to get one regular land out every turn, even though there's some pseudo-ramping.

March 21, 2015 12:56 a.m.

Zexu says... #15

I like it. Nice use of only Khans stuff. I might run one fewer Temur Ascendancy and throw in another Dragonlord Atarka, Rattleclaw Mystic, or another Planeswalker. But that's just me.

March 26, 2015 11:29 p.m.

Knockadoon says... #16

Zexu, thanks for the comment!

I also though about not wanting 4 Temur Ascendancy because occasionally I'll have too many in hand, but the Haste is SO good with these giant creatures dropping down, and I have plenty of creatures to trigger for the extra card that it seemed OK. If I have two or three Temur Ascendancy on the board and drop a dragon I'll get three cards out of it. If it only gave haste I'd definitely not use 4, but since summoning even 1 dragon with it on the board gives a card back to replace itself, it seems OK to me. And the Haste is good good good with these powerful creatures.

Also, I'm using 3 Sarkhan's Triumph so that I don't have to rely on drawing Dragonlord Atarka or Atarka, World Render naturally. So I basically have 5 chances to draw either the dragons themselves or the card that'll get it for me. If I were going to replace a Temur Ascendancy with anything, it'd be another Sarkhan's Triumph.

March 27, 2015 12:03 a.m.

Zexu says... #17

My thinking with another Dragonlord Atarka was that if/when the first one gets removed, you have another chance of dropping a huge creature, with the added bonus of some removal, and less about being able to draw him consistently.

Also, why did you not want to run some Dragon Tempest? It functions like a Temur Ascendancy as far as the haste goes (at least for your deck), but with damage instead of card draw. I think that's more of a personal decision, though, whether someone would prefer card draw or damage. But I think it'd be cool to drop an Icefall Regent, lock a creature down, and do some burn to the opponent, especially with other dragons already out.

I'm definitely interested to see how this decks plays, though.

March 27, 2015 10:22 a.m.

Knockadoon says... #18

Zexu, I play tested it a bunch with a mix of Temur Ascendancy and Dragon Tempest, I think I had 3 of each, and the Tempest just never landed much damage since I usually didn't have more than one or two dragons, maybe three or four at best, and that only rarely. I ALWAYS like getting extra cards, so yeah as a personal preference I'd take that over damage. The Dragon Tempest could be useful against tokens/swarms, but that's what I'm planning to use Seismic Rupture from the sideboard for.

For working around removal, the Haven of the Spirit Dragon has a resurrection ability, and against decks with heavy removal I put 4 Temur Sabertooth into my sideboard so I plan to use the Temur Sabertooth's ability to return a creature to my hand and save the dragon that way. If it's Dragonlord Atarka that gets put back in my hand then I can land the ETB damage a second time. Or if I dont' have any dragons I can pull back a mana-dork to give the Temur Sabertooth Indestructible and save him that way.

March 27, 2015 12:25 p.m.

Babuchas3000 says... #19

Shamanic Revelation instead of Feed the Clan, its CMC is higher, but the effect is better. +1

April 7, 2015 6:48 p.m.

Knockadoon says... #20

Babuchas3000, thanks for the upvote! I added Shamanic Revelation to the Maybe Board. I even have one that I opened in a pack. I needed some cards to fill in at lower CMC, so Feed the Clan works, and the Ferocious is fairly easy to satisfy. During play testing I often only had one or two creatures, so I think with Shamanic Revelation that it wouldn't always get me a good amount of cards, and I might frequently be wanting to cast it with only one creature with power 4 or better.

The deck is relatively slow, so I often need the extra 10 life from Feed the Clan to extend the game. That's more important to me even than the card draw.

I'm making another version just for myself to test that has See the Unwritten in it, and I traded one Savage Ventmaw for Berserkers' Onslaught but haven't play tested with that yet.

Thanks for the comment.

April 7, 2015 9:53 p.m.

BigFace says... #21

I never thought I would see Frost Walker and Dragonlord Atarka in the same deck. Well done!

Feed the Clan is a sideboard card. I can't say I've ever seen that in a mainboard. Lol but that seems to be your thing.

Instead of Clan why not just stick in Sylvan Caryatid?? It will prevent aggro weenies. It may even save you 10 life in the end. Which is why you usually run Clan in the first place. Caryatid is almost always ran in 3 color midrange. The deck could use some extra defense/ramp badly.

May 4, 2015 11:01 p.m.

Knockadoon says... #22

BigFace, thanks for the interest!

I started out not using Sylvan Caryatid because I initially only used cards that would be good once Origins comes out (no Stormbreath Dragon either). I ended up breaking that a little because Lightning Strike and Stoke the Flames are so good, but that's why there's no Elvish Mystic either.

When Origins comes out and Theros and M15 rotate I can replace Lightning Strike with Draconic Roar (which is better anyway under the right conditions), and am currently planning to replace Stoke the Flames with Sarkhan's Rage, unless Origins has something better. I just wanted to be forward looking. I could still do that and use Rattleclaw Mystic rather than the Caryatid, but they're just soooo easy to kill (ie. Wild Slash).

The deck is a little slow, obviously, so I needed to either ramp faster or last a few turns longer. I decided to go with more of a last-longer approach with all the removal and a little extra life gain since opponents can kill mana-dorks but usually don't have any kind of response to removal or burn to the face.

Honestly, though, I own 2 Sylvan Caryatid that I have in a different deck and I had given some thought to swapping them in for 2 Shaman of Forgotten Ways since they're a little faster to put out, but I think I'll just stick with what I have. The main drawback to Shaman is that he doesn't help get a Thunderbreak Regent out any faster. With Elvish Mystic or Sylvan Caryatid I could get a Thunderbreak Regent a turn early, but if I put down a Shaman on Turn 3 I still wait until Turn 4 for the Regent, which does most of the heavy lifting for me game after game after game. I can, however, go straight to Savage Ventmaw on Turn 4, when I have the cards.

I've playtested a little with replacing Stoke the Flames with Crater Elemental instead of Sarkhan's Rage, but I haven't done it enough to decide if it works for me or not. I like the option of finishing the game off with burn when it gets close, so I don't like only being able to use the burn on creatures and never the player.

May 4, 2015 11:55 p.m.

BigFace says... #23

I'm hearing a lot of talk about rotation. Isn't that like months away?

I think Draconic Roar is just going to be strait up better than the other burn. With 8 Dragons there's a great chance you'll be getting value. All your burn can blast their faces but why not take out a creature in the process? I would still run other burn along side it but I think the deck will be more fluent with something like:

  1. 4 Draconic Roar
  2. 3-4 Crater's Claws
  3. 2-3 Lightning Strike
  4. 1-2 Reality Shift
  5. Couple of counterspells mainboard

Stoke the Flames is just a little bit much for this archetype. But you might enjoy it tho. Definitely not Sarkhan's Rage. Might as well go with another Crater's Claws. You could do 6 with claws for 5CC alone. Not to mention quick damage or much more to the head.

May 5, 2015 2:57 a.m.

Knockadoon says... #24

BigFace,

I don't get out to play very often, so if Theros/M15 rotates out in September I'll probably only get to the card store to play half a dozen times or less between now and then (married, kids, job, big yard to take care of...Game of Thrones that needs watching, etc). So just for my situation it made sense to tune the deck for the long haul. I already had Lightning Strike and Stoke the Flames so I didn't have to invest money in cards I'd only use a few times. If it had a longer shelf-life at this point I'd go straight for Stormbreath Dragon as a 4-of. They're still more than $10 each though, so just not worth it to me at this point. The money spent on Thunderbreak Regent made a lot more sense in that context, and I similarly don't have really any free time for trading, so I'm just buying whatever cards I have.

If I were going short term, and didn't care about any kind of budget, I'd probably go for something more like the Stuart Parnes RG Dragons in this article, here (about halfway down the page):

TCGPlayer article by Craig Wescoe

I've playtested a version of Dragon You Down to Hell that removes the , but I just like some of the Temur cards too much to take it all the way out, with Surrak Dragonclaw being my favorite, and I always like the groans from opponents when I play a Frost Walker, because it lets me know that's a good play. Play a couple of those in a single game, or even two in a single turn and the opponent's discomfort will be plain, unless they have a boardwipe of some kind. I basically like to use Frost Walker early to force them (or at least encourage them) to use their removal cards BEFORE my dragons start coming down. Putting down a couple Frost Walkers can force them to use an End Hostilities or something of that kind, and then my dragons are safer when they come out. Frost Walker also helps trigger Ferocious for Feed the Clan which I like to do as early in the game as possible to get it out of the way.

You make an excellent point about the damage that can be done with Crater's Claws for the same mana as Stoke the Flames, especially with a Ferocious trigger. I took out one Stoke and swapped it for a 4th Crater. The Instant-speed of Stoke is pretty nice, but the extra chance to have a giant Crater to finish the game off is probably worth the trade-off in speed. I think of Crater's Claws as a finisher more than as removal, but do use it as spot removal when I need to. Usually I don't have more than one in hand and try to hold it for the killing stroke, hyper-fueled by mana from the Savage Ventmaw. It's also my best tool for removing the opponent's planeswalkers, so having an extra chance at having the right card for that is probably good as well.

I definitely went back and forth between Draconic Roar and Lightning Strike and basically couldn't decide between them. Draconic Roar is more conditional, so there could be times when I would have used a Lightning Strike to end the game, but if the other player doesn't have any creatures then there's no way for me to burn their face to win if I had a Draconic Roar instead. I essentially called it a tie and decided to use Lightning Strike until Theros rotates and THEN switch to Draconic Roar so they each have their day. I don't think Draconic Roar can hit a planeswalker either, which I'm kind of weak against, so Lightning Strike is better for that as well. I mostly can only remove planeswalkers by attacking with my creatures, but people can plan around that more easily than they can plan around Crater's Claws or Lightning Strike since they can't see it coming.

Thanks for the ideas.

May 5, 2015 12:01 p.m.

BigFace says... #25

Good points on Draconic Roar. Usually I've noticed 4 Roars when there's limited removal. Those decks have little options so they're trying to get the best bang for there buck. Utilizing other cards to blast there faces.

And yeah, Game of Thrones has to be on the top of the list. Did you catch the last episode Sat night?? Sweet!!!

May 5, 2015 3:07 p.m.

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