Beyond the archways of Baldur's Gate, a tireless Dragon scours the multiverse for lost and obscure treasures. They call him Ganax, Astral Hunter & Guild Artisan. Within the Dragon Guild, he is said to have descended from the stars as a gift to the Dragons. His ability to extract clues from the stories sung by Bards and hunt down hidden relics and artifacts is unmatched by anyone in the Forgotten Realms. Drifting from one plane to another with his company of ferocious Dragon brothers and sisters, he lays waste to anyone who stands in his way. Indeed he is a hunter - not for blood, but rather the treasures that go unearthed within far away lands. And so, with you by his side, his search continues...
Welcome to my mono-red Dragons EDH deck, featuring Ganax, Astral Hunter and his background Tavern Brawler as the Commanders! This is my premier deck of a mono-color Dragons. It aims to be a straight forward, mid-range, stompy Dragons deck, while making plenty of treasures and Dragon tokens along the way. Amongst the vast choices of mono-red Dragon cards, I chose the ones which primarily: a) make a treasure token, b) deal direct damage somehow, or c) create Dragon tokens. Since Dragon decks are often times difficult for opponents to deal with, in order to keep this on the more casual level of play you will not find any extreme control shenanigans or spell-weaving strategies involved.
This deck features the "Choose a Background" mechanic which was released exclusively with Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate. With this mechanic, you technically have two Commanders at your disposal - much like the Partner mechanic, and as such effects certain rules. The primary difference between Backgrounds and Partners, however, is the fact that they're enchantments and a little more difficult to remove. Additionally, the Backgrounds are essentially adding to the flavor of your Commander by giving it a "background story" which explains some of the life or personality of the creature. You can choose a different color Background than that of the creature Commander, thus making your deck a two-colored one. Additional backgrounds with different names can also be placed in the 98 other cards of your deck, but only 1 can be your additional Commander. For more information on how Backgrounds work, please check out: https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Background
Note: I'm using custom categories - and there's actually 22 Dragons (27 creatures in total) in the deck. Like most of my decks on Tapped Out, I put creatures into respective categories based on what they're intended to do (e.g. Nesting Dragon in the "Token Generators" category).
First, let's look at our Commanders' functions for the deck. Ganax, Astral Hunter is mainly a treasure token generator, because our deck contains many high-CMC Dragon spells, instants and enchantments that we want to get out quickly. He is, of course, also a Dragon which has him gain any benefits from Dragon synergies in the deck and vice versa. Tavern Brawler is a low CMC enchantment which buffs Ganax and gives us some exile card play. With all the treasures being generated, any cards with "Pay " to give a creature +1/+0, or our X spells such as Banefire will be much easier to use!
The land package in this brew is packed with utility lands since we'll be generating a lot of treasures and only have to to worry about . If our opponents are picking on either Ganax, Astral Hunter or Tavern Brawler, they may become somewhat expensive to cast later in the game. For that situation, we run Command Beacon and Haven of the Spirit Dragon, which is a great way to cheat one of them into your hand from the graveyard or Command zone (avoiding Commander tax). For buffs, we run Flamekin Village for haste and Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep for first strike. Taking advantage of our treasure on the board, one of my personal favorite lands Inventors' Fair can help us tutor Gauntlets of Might, Dragon's Hoard or Glaring Spotlight depending on what we aim to do next. The last utility land to talk about is Dwarven Hold. Not many EDH players know about the Fallen Empires "storage lands", and this one works particularly good for mono-red Dragons allowing us to ramp into a big spell in the mid to late game.
Speaking of ramp, because of the average CMC cost of 5 for most of our Dragons, I packed the build with tons of ramping effects. On top of a sub-theme of creating treasures, we also have cards which double the mana created from Mountains such as Extraplanar Lens and Gauntlet of Might. Now I know what you're thinking, the average player doesn't own Gauntlet of Might - and you're correct! You can replace this with the Time Spiral Remastered Gauntlet of Power for about $5. For 1 additional mana cost, it effectively does the same for any color, which means you could put it into your other mono-color deck builds. Moving on, cost-reduction spells are also in the deck, with Dragon classics such as Dragonlord's Servant and Nogi, Draco-Zealot. We also run Hazoret's Monument which is a phenomenal card draw generator in red decks, as well as the beautiful Ruby Medallion. Lastly, with the treasure sub-theme, don't discount our Commander, Ganax, Astral Hunter in the mix of ramping us with treasure tokens.
Card draw can be rather evasive in mono-red decks unless you're building around the exile synergy - which we are not. That being said, I've included some decent card draw spells which are dual-purposed. As this deck evolves, if card draw is one of the major weaknesses, this area will be improved upon. For now, we have the classic Mind Stone and Dragon's Hoard to help us with both ramp and card draw. Most of the time in red, card draw comes at a cost - a player will usually have to discard a card to draw a card, known as "looting". We have six cards which do just that, two of which also create treasure tokens. Of note, Faithless Looting has Flashback allowing you to cast it again later from your graveyard. Lastly, we have Valakut Awakening
- a strong and versatile card because its a Modal Dual-Faced Card (MDFC) allowing you to play it as either a land or instant. This instant side of this card allows you to essentially discard some dead weight in your hand in exchange for drawing off the top of your deck. It's a gamble, but that's part of the fun of playing in mono-red!
Last but not least, let's look at what protection we have for this deck. Of course playing Dragons by nature will have our opponents eyeballing our board state constantly. For that, we run a good amount of removal as well as redirection spells. One of the most versatile things a mono-red player can do is redirect potentially harmful spells (or beneficial if the spell targets something) towards someone else with cards such as Wyll's Reversal and Bolt Bend. This could add some great political interactions at the table! We also run Glaring Spotlight which is has an anthem effect of dispelling our opponents' hexproof abilities; and it can also grant our creatures hexproof and unblockable for the turn. This not only protects our board against most things, but could also help us win the game!
Alright, let's get to the win conditions! There is some intentional flexibility within the deck to allow for playing against different scenarios.
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Attack with a hoard of Dragons. This is a likely way to win, because after all its what Dragon tribal decks do best. To get to this win, however, you'll need to control the board somewhat by using spells and abilities that blow things up as you go. Use your Dragon token creating creatures to your advantage, and remember that if a Dragon can deal direct damage to any "target", your opponent's life total may be the best option in the long run. With enough dragons on board, Glaring Spotlight could grant you passage into a unblocked assault on your opponent(s). Lastly, Hellkite Charger can also be game ending if you have the mana to gain another combat step.
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Drakuseth, Maw of Flames or Terror of the Peaks direct damage. There's a good chance that you could have one of these two Dragons on the battle field and you reach a sweet spot in the game where you can play additional Dragons for cheap or generate a bunch of tokens. Target your opponent(s) with the direct damage and they'll soon be crispy bacon!
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Inferno of the Star Mounts. With enough treasure tokens and mana ramp, using Inferno's activated ability can easily win the game in a turn or two. Ramping 16 additional power should not be too difficult if you have Gauntlet of Might or Koth of the Hammer on the battlefield.
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Thundermaw Hellkite. When this guy comes in, he will tap down most everything that can block us this turn giving us a clear path to victory!
This deck can go many different directions, and I'm curious to hear from you any suggestions or feedback on making it better. Thanks for reading, please give this deck an upvote, and happy tapping!
