This dragon deck has been a pet project of mine for a couple of months now, and I've really fallen in love with it. The ultimate goal was to go full-on dragon tribal, and while we initially succeeded, something was missing...
First, we looked to really amp up the dragon theme of the deck in every aspect that we could (not just the creatures!), and we've come a long way in that while still keeping the deck quite stompy, quite battleshippy, and quite powerful. Still, something didn't feel right...
Finally, we realized that we felt the commander was being forced into the role. It would work okay sometimes, but feel clumsy other times. We wanted something ... more ... something more devastating, something more consistent ... something with more ... OOMF!
That commander ended up NOT being a dragon!
/GASP!
Now that we're rolling with a new homie, we can get back to business. We want to completely annihilate our opponents to the point we feel bad even pulling this deck out to play ... yet, when we do, we want this deck to OOZE dragons! Do you see a card that can be replaced with something more draconic? Please, let us know! We've come a long way, but we're not done! We want dragons in pictures, or dragons in the flavor text, or the card geared towards helping dragons or negatively against everything BUT dragons, or at least have a sense of dragons in the card name or art.
So, that's where we're at. We have most of this deck nailed down. It's super stompy, and it's quick to get into that stompy mode. Try it out for yourself, it's very fun to play, and if love dragons then it's INSANELY FUN to play!
Glad you asked!
Our original Commander was Thrakkus the Butcher. He is actually the original inspiration for the deck and our choice of colors. But his 5 mana CMC with at least 1 of red and green feels a bit high ... and what we really wanted was something to help push this deck to be faster, yet just as brutal.
We considered several other commanders, too, but the typical big boys that scream "commander" are, honestly, just too expensive to use effectively or to cast multiple times after they've been targeted for removal several times.
After some thought we leaned more towards Ganax, Astral Hunter with Acolyte of Bahamut as the Background so we can not only play with the new mechanic but also get some mana relief earlier and repeatedly into the game. This plays perfectly into a deck with many high-cost fatties, even though he's not quite as stompy as we'd like.
Unfortunately, though we can get Acolyte into play sooner than our commander, we cannot use Acolyte to help pay for our commander since it transfers the ability TO the commander ... and he's not in play yet. Making matters worse, once we summon our commander, we STILL cannot use the ability from Acolyte because our commander would have been the first dragon cast that turn. Thus, to use Acolyte to save mana, we must wait until our next turn and hope that our commander is still alive to provide mana relief for our next "first" dragons. This is NOT ideal, as now our commander is a HUGE target even more than before, and we're taking up two cards to play our commander. He's sort of an exercise in futility. Great on paper, horrible in actual use. Ugh.
To tell the truth, the BEST commander for our dragon deck is actually going to be Karlach, Fury of Avernus, with the background Acolyte of Bahamut. Karlach has the awesome ability to give us 2 combat rounds each turn to really push our damage output to the max, AND we get the bonus of using Acolyte's mana reduction for a dragon every turn, even the first turn we put our commander into play. Even better is that she, herself, doesn't need to attack in order to trigger a 2nd attack phase, which most of creatures with similar abilities do, so we can keep her protected by not attacking if it is strategically sound to do so.
Having this combo of commanders gives us the best worlds of each of our previous attempts at finding a commander. Karlach allows us to be just brutal in combat as Thrakkus (in a different way), AND we still get to cast low-cost dragons with Acolyte! It's a win-win!!
Another great thing about Karlach? It seems many people forget or overlook the fact that gives all attacking creatures first strike, too! Yeah, that's right ... our dragons get TWO attack phases AND FIRST STRIKE! Frickin' beautiful, baby!
Brutal. Quick. This is about as good as it good for a straight-forward deck like this.
Yes, she's going to be an even larger target for removal, but justifiably so. This is okay, she's worth it. She's one of those creatures you want out early and often.
That all said, this doesn't exactly play into our "ultimate" dragon theme deck as well, as Karlach is NOT a dragon. But what she lacks in creature type she gains in a background, and in the spirit of D&D, being an "Acolyte of Bahamut" means she worships dragons near religiously, and so thematically we can play her as a devotee to one of the dragon gods, Bahamut's right hand, his herald.
So, if we want the MOST effective and dangerous dragon deck there is, Karlach, Fury of Avernus is our go-to commander, imho. She's pretty badass!
See further down below for some other commander options!
Acolyte is defined as "a person assisting the celebrant in a religious service or procession; an assistant or follower."
The following is from wikipedia, sourced from D&D:
"In the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) role-playing game, Bahamut (/bəˈhɑːmət/ bə-HAH-mət) is a powerful draconic deity, who has the same name as Bahamut from Arabic mythology.
Introduced in the 1st Edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) and continuing into 2004's release of Complete Divine, Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon, is the King of the Good Dragons. He is a deity of good dragonkind (usually, but not exclusively, referring to metallic dragons) and a member of the default pantheon of D&D gods. His counterpart in Dragonlance is Paladine (though many regard the two as separate beings). Bahamut is a child of the dragon god Io. He is also referred to as the God of Dragons or the Lord of the North Wind.
In many campaign settings, the draconic pantheon of gods consists of the leader Io, and his children Aasterinian, Bahamut, Chronepsis, Faluzure, Sardior, and Tiamat.
Bahamut is depicted as a massive, long and sinuous dragon with silver-white scales and blue, catlike eyes. According to Complete Divine and Races of the Dragon, the exact color is hard to specify and may depend on Bahamut's mood, ranging from sky-blue to frosty indigo.
About a quarter of the time, Bahamut wanders Oerth in the shape of a human or some other guise. He is said to have been encountered as a frail old hermit, with the seven great golden wyrms that accompany him disguised as seven canaries singing sweetly nearby."
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The description of Bahamut really fits the MtG card Grand Master of Flowers, and explains the birds flying around him in the art. I think that's fantastic. I'd really love to add that card to this deck, but being white we simply cannot. Perhaps in the future we'll look at a W/G/R deck!
By the way ...
Did you know ... that a grouping of Dragons is called a "Thunder"?
Neither did I, until I, uh ... did. Yeah, I googled it.
With the recent release of "Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate" comes an amazing array of Dragons and cards supporting Dragons, and we're going to see if we can bring the thunder with a bit of the new Gruul awesomesauce as well as some of our old Draconic favorites!
.........
This homemade deck focuses, of course, on big, bad, flying Dragons with a host of abilities, some of them quite cruel. We use our dragons not just to attack, but to inflict direct damage, remove blockers, reduce the cost of casting other dragons, and provide alternate win conditions other than attacking.
While not on the competitive level, thus far the deck is performing well 1v1 (think of it as a near Kaalia of the Vast-like deck), but still fun and thematic to play in multiplayer. And if you love the dragon theme as much as I do, then it's a win even if we lose! ;)
Please provide feedback and commentary!
As we already determined above, our commander is going to take a lot of heat and be a removal magnet. We need to protect her so she can keep giving us two attack phases every turn.
Mass removal is a problem, we can't really stop it. But what can do is keep Karlach, Fury of Avernus from being targeted via Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots, and Whispersilk Cloak. If you need to, adding Mask of Avacyn to the deck may be a good play, too. These artifacts should generally be reserved for Karlach's use alone, although using them with Terror of the Peaks can take you pretty far, too. YMMV.
We've already explained our chosen commander (
Karlach, Fury of Avernus, with the background
Acolyte of Bahamut, the combination of which gives us TWO attack phases, all attackers have First Strike, and the first dragon cast each turn is 2 mana cheaper!), but here is a list of other choices you can consider.
TLDR: We generally think most other viable dragons in the gruul colors to be too expensive or inefficient, but if you find something that works, let us know in the comments!
Thrakkus the Butcher: Doubling the output of every dragon's damage is pretty spicy! Unfortunately, he's a bit weak as a 3/4 dragon, and to activate his ability he, himself, must attack. That put's us at a disadvantage for protecting our commander when virtually every other dragon in this deck is stronger. Great on paper as a commander, but fits a bit better in the 99 instead. YMMV.
Dragonlord Atarka: Having access to trample is great, and dealing 5 damage to anything on ETB is super great. 7 mana to summon? Not great.
Atarka, World Render: Trample and Double strike, pretty darn nice. Still 7 mana though. Ouch.
Vrondiss, Rage of Ancients: is intriguing to me to build around, but may require a different direction of the deck to really lean into his abilities.
Skanos Dragonheart + Dragon Cultist or Guild Artisan: This would probably be our #1 choice behind Karlach! We get to play with the new "Background" mechanic, and have a choice on backgrounds. Cultist helps keep our battlefield full, and would help trigger some of our deck's other dragon abilities. Artisan helps with mana costs of our fat dragons and only costs 2 mana to drop onto the field. Both are great. Skanos may only be a 4/4 without flying, but when attacking he would often be at least a 9/9, and for only 5 mana that's pretty damn nice.
Ganax, Astral Hunter + Acolyte of Bahamut is an intriguing commander combo that could help our mana out, but with the problems we already went over earlier in this primer, we feel there is much to be desired here and are left disappointed after playtesting. That said, if playing in an environment with very little removal, this combo of a commander could be a sweet deal!
Livaan, Cultist of Tiamat + Acolyte of Bahamut looks alright. I've seen a lot of dragon decks testing this set of commanders recently. Obviously I'm a fan of Acolyte, but Livaan is a bit too situational for my liking. She wouldn't fit well into our deck because we don't use many instants; for non-creature spells we're mostly artifacts, sorceries, and enchantments. This means that we can't really take advantage of Livaan's ability during the attack phase to shift extra damage around, and instead must telegraph our added damage before the attack phase even starts. However, Livaan is cheap, and cheap commanders are nice for stompy decks that are mana hungry, but that's about where her advantage ends for us. We'd need to change a significant portion of our deck to accommodate Livaan, and it just wouldn't feel as "draconic" at that point.
Primary Win Condition:
Obliviously, we'll win most of our games by dropping fat dragons, turning sideways, and win via brute force.
We're stompy, after all. But, there are a couple other lines of play to be aware of if we get caught in an attack phase stalemate...
Secondary Win Condition:
Hellkite Tyrant with 20 artifacts in play. We have 17 artifacts in the deck, which is a bit above average, but not going to get us to 20. Tyrant will hopefully get us a few of our opponent's artifacts, but it's going to be an uphill battle on any given turn to get what we need. This is where Ancient Copper Dragon and Old Gnawbone come in to play, as they can each bring us a healthy number of treasure token artifacts to our board.
Of course, Hellkite Tyrant already being on the battlefield kind of projects (screams) our alternative win condition, so if at all possible we want to accumulate 20 artifacts FIRST, and then play Hellkite Tyrant. Unfortunately, you can only win during your upkeep, so having him in play makes him a target during all of our opponent's turns, so the best way to do this is to put Tyrant into play right before your upkeep (previous player's end turn) if possible! We can do this surprise win through the use of Monster Manual. The great thing about Monster Manual is that if we want to, we can use the sorcery part of the card (Zoological Study) earlier in the game which will then exile the card until we need it again. Then, on the turn we get 20 or more artifacts into play, we cast the Manual from exile (surprise!) and before our next upkeep we use it to drop our Tyrant. If our opponents do not respond with an instant kill card, we win the game. This can also be accomplished with other cards, such as Quicksilver Amulet, if needed, and you add it to the deck. Remember, when using an artifact such as these to put a creature onto the battlefield, they CANNOT BE COUNTERED! The only way for an opponent to stop us from winning at this specific point is to have an instant to remove Tyrant.
Tertiary Win Condition:
Terror of the Peaks presents us with the opportunity to create massive direct damage in the right conditions, particularly during the attack phase if we have Utvara Hellkite in play. Outside or inside of the attack phase, with Molten Echoes in play, Terror can help lay down extra damage as well ... use Molten Echoes to copy Terror of the Peaks to do double damage with incoming dragons!
So, basically, protect Terror of the Peaks and be aware that many of our dragons and other cards can combine for extra damage at the right time and don't forget to apply that damage when he's in play because it really adds up quick. He's a great creature to tutor for or bring back from the Graveyard.
Last but not least, do not forget about our commander, Karlach, Fury of Avernus and Thrakkus the Butcher combined.
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Let's say we have both of them in play, as well as Molten Echoes. If we drop Utvara Hellkite on the board, we'll get a 6/6 dragon token from Echoes that's a copy of Utvara and has haste. Upon attacking with Karlach, Thrakkus, and the Utvara token, each of the two Utvaras now generate two 6/6 dragon tokens for each attacker, so that's a total of six 6/6 tokens coming in to play (however, none of them can attack because we're past the declare attackers stage).
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Now, our 3 dragons are attacking (including Thrakkus), and the power of ALL dragons power is doubled and have first strike. Karlach is a 10/4, Thrakkus is a 6/4, the Utvara token is a 12/6, and the regular dragon tokens are all 12/6 for the rest of the turn. Being that they have First strike, we hope all the dragons stay alive. Karlach also triggers to give us a second attack phase.
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In the next attack phase with all creatures untapped and assuming they're still alive, we do this all again. Another 6 dragon tokens are created and are 12/6 from Thrakkus, but Thrakkus also doubles the dragons we already have so now Karlach is a 20/4 flying first strike, Thrakkus is a 12/4 first strike, and our Utvara token is a 24/6 flying first strike badass.
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In an ideal scenario, hopefully we killed the weakest player in the first attack phase, we destroy the strongest player in this phase with 56 flying damage, and, with any luck, we have a Soul's Fire to take out our last multiplayer opponent with 24 direct damage after casting it targeting our Utvara token before it dies at end turn.
Morale of the story: do not miss all our dragon's triggers during each phase and remember a 2nd attack phase can re-trigger them all again!
Other game winners:
- Earthquake if you have the most life
Currently, our deck list includes only lands that I actually possess and am using. Down in the maybe board are more lands available to you for this deck, use what you have.
We began our deck with a ton of multi-purpose/mana cards to ensure we had the proper colors during testing. Many of those lands tapped. Testing has been going well, so we've begun to weed out the dual lands that ETB tapped and replacing them with some basics to speed up the deck. At the moment, only 5 of our lands come into play tapped.
If you don't have many "dual" lands and must use more basics to fill the gap, you should absolutely be using cards like Evolving Wilds and Myriad Landscape to help color correct when needed.
We have to admit we are NEVER going to get the entire deck to be 100% dragon-themed out. Not gonna happen. But, we're going to try and keep looking.
YOU CAN HELP!
Cards that do not mention the word "dragon" and do not have abilities that directly relate to dragons, dragon art, or dragon-themed flavor text that we need to, someday, replace with an alternative dragon art version or find a total replacement that is dragon-themed:
Most Land cards (we're using the "godzilla" lands for basics, lol), Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots, Whispersilk Cloak, Bramblecrush, Decimate, Harmonize, Hunter's Prowess, Overwhelming Encounter, Regrowth, Charge Through, Consign to Dust, Fling, Soul's Fire, Arcane Signet, Birds of Paradise, Cultivate, Drumhunter, Fervor, Raised by Giants, Rhythm of the Wild, Sylvan Library
Note 1: All artifacts in this deck are considered treasure and part of a dragon's hoard, thus we count all artifacts as dragon loot and basically on-theme.
Note 2: The following cards aren't strictly "Dragon-themed", but the art depicts "treasure", "fire" or simply has a "feeling" of it belonging in a dragon deck, and we aren't seeking alternatives for them: None at this time.
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