Black/Red Dragons

Modern BR (Rakdos) Competitive Dragons

ShadowElysium

Creature (18)

• 1x Balefire Dragon
• 2x Dragonlord Kolaghan
• 4x Dragonlord's Servant
• 2x Kokusho, the Evening Star
• 2x Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury
• 4x Thunderbreak Regent
• 3x Thundermaw Hellkite

Enchantment (2)

• 2x Dragon Tempest

Land (24)

• 4x Blood Crypt
• 4x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 4x Dragonskull Summit
• 7x Mountain
• 4x Swamp

Sorcery (2)

• 2x Read the Bones

Instant (14)

• 4x Draconic Roar
• 2x Foul-Tongue Invocation
• 2x Kolaghan's Command
• 2x Sarkhan's Triumph
• 4x Terminate

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Sideboard

Sorcery (13)

• 2x Crux of Fate
• 4x Duress
• 3x Pyroclasm
• 2x Shattering Spree
• 2x Slaughter Games

Creature (2)

• 2x Steel Hellkite

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Maybeboard

Sorcery (3)

• 1x Fearsome Awakening
• 1x Inquisition of Kozilek
• 1x Thoughtseize

Creature (2)

• 1x Palladium Myr
• 1x Stormbreath Dragon

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Main Deck

Creatures

• Dragonlord's Servant is our main source of ramp, also acting as a decently sized body to block chumps. Ideally, one of these would be sitting in your first hand.
• Thunderbreak Regent is all around a fantastic critter; a free Lightning Strike to the face makes removing our dragons a little bit more painful.
• Thundermaw Hellkite brings immediate value by having haste, and can occasionally be used to kill a few key critters like Birds of Paradise, and taps other fliers to pave the way for the rest of our board to attack.
• Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury Buffs up all of our other creatures, and with a few things on your board, can immediately end a game. Dash cost can give this a lot of immediate value if you don't already have a Dragon Tempest out.
• Dragonlord Kolaghan gives all your other creatures haste, which can give solid, but slower cards like Thunderbreak Regent, Kokusho, the Evening Star, and Steel Hellkite immediate value. Additionally, its secondary effect can put the final nails in the coffin in a longer game.
• Kokusho, the Evening Star is a total pain to kill and can help to equalize life totals if you need some healing. Probably a non-essential card in this deck, but I haven't quite decided yet.
• Balefire Dragon is one of my favorite cards period. If you get that 6 damage off, it's usually a board wipe, and with a good number of cards that give haste in this deck, by the time this card usually comes in it has immediate value. On the downside, it is a 7 cost, which is extremely expensive in modern. There may not be enough ramp to justify playing this.

Instants

• Draconic Roar has great value in this deck; you'll almost always have a dragon sitting around, so this generally removes a chump and then is a lightning strike to the face. The great debate in this slot is whether or not to swap these for Lightning Strike, but I feel that these have better value for the cost.
• Kolaghan's Command does a lot of things. It's one of the few cards we can reasonably mainboard against potential artifact decks, and it can save a dragon that got removed earlier in the game. At worst, it's a weaker Blightning that can also target critters at instant speed, which isn't all that bad.
• Terminate is pretty great; hard creature removal at instant speed is hard to complain about.
• Foul-Tongue Invocation is all around great removal that will usually net us 4 life. Great to keep us in the game against aggro decks, and can get around target blocks.
• Sarkhan's Triumph helps to keep our deck running fluidly, and will often give us exactly what we need when we need it.

Sorcery

• Read the Bones is another card that keeps our deck fluid. Helps to bail us out of dead hands at a relatively low cost, especially if we're running out of options in the mid/late game.

Enchantment

• Dragon Tempest speeds up our slower creatures like Balefire Dragon and Kokusho, the Evening Star to give them more immediate value, and also gives us some ping damage every time we summon a dragon.

Land

• Bloodstained Mire is a cheap way to thin our deck and pull a land that we need. Fetch lands are king.
• Blood Crypt is a flexible source of / land, and as a Swamp Mountain, can be searched by Bloodstained Mire
• Dragonskull Summit will usually come in untapped with the landbase we're running, so this is another great source of /
• Cavern of Souls keeps our dragons from being countered by the ever pesky blue.
• 7 Mountain and 4 Swamp round out our landbase.

Sideboard

Creatures

• Steel Hellkite is a pretty underrated card I think; very good answer to a lot of cheap artifacts and critters, and can give us a lot more boardwipe potential if we need it.

Sorcery

• Duress is great against control decks and generally swap in for our usually dead copies of Terminate.
• Pyroclasm gives us some defense against very fast aggro decks, and is cheaper than Anger of the Gods. Also, it doesn't kill our Dragonlord's Servant.
• Shattering Spree in combination with Steel Hellkite and Kolaghan's Command helps to really wreck artifact-based decks.
• Slaughter Games can cripple a deck if you know what you're up against, removing key win conditions or other things we cannot otherwise deal with.
• Crux of Fate gives us hard board-wipe in case we are getting overwhelmed.

Maybeboard

Creatures

• Stormbreath Dragon is great against white decks, and can deal some good damage/get huge with Monstrosity, but I'm not quite sure this brings enough to the table to warrant swapping out any of the other dragons.
• Palladium Myr can let us ramp up a bit faster and gives us a 2/2 body. This one is being heavily considered, as I'm not sure that the servants are enough.

Sorcery

• Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek are both further options for hand disruption, but I'm not sure if they can fit in.
• Fearsome Awakening can give us a dragon back that was either removed or got kicked from our hand by disruption. Considering the haste offered by Dragon Tempest, this can be phenomenal, but it feels a little bit niche.

Date added	6 years
Last updated	6 years
Legality	This deck is Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)	7 - 0 Mythic Rares 22 - 6 Rares 12 - 5 Uncommons 8 - 4 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	3.44