MTG Salvation

Spooky starts off a new article series building casual decks with the biggest and baddest of creature types: Dragons.

Introduction

I love dragons. When I first started playing Magic, my favorite card was the baddest dude to be printed in the mirage set, and every deck I put together used him, whether it was terrible or not. One of the first series I ever read was The Dragon Chronicles, and when the 2002 film Reign of Fire was released, I saw it on opening day. And don't even get me started on Dragonheart. Sean Connery as a dragon? Yes please!

Needless to say, dragons have long been one of my favorite Magic tribes. The mono-red Seething Song/Geosurge/Dragonspeaker Shaman decks are typical of the genre, but if you know me, you know how I like my Magic... obscure. This brings us to Day of the Dragons! While I wish such a holiday actually existed, it would seem our world is not so spectacular. Still, we can dream, and this card will help us live out that dream!

Long story short, dragons are awesome, blue mana is awesome, and dragons and blue mana together are ridiculously awesome. Welcome to my first Casual Castle article!

Construction

The triple-blue-mana situation brought on by Day of the Dragons is a little daunting, but then again, so are dragons. When I first starting brainstorming for the card, I figured its deck would have to be mono-blue. Without very many token-producing cards, it was difficult to make a list that could keep enough creatures in play to be relevant after Day of the Dragons hit. I tried playing a sort of wall deck, which included Omenspeaker, Kraken Hatchling, Steel Wall, and Wall of Tears, with the hopes that I could just stay alive and build up creatures until it was time to one-hit my opponent with Day of the Dragons. As I'm sure you can imagine, that version was a little lackluster.

All was not lost, however. In my great quest to hunt down the best dragon holiday deck, I discovered the Scornful Egotist + Homarid Spawning Bed combo. It was a promising breakthrough. Until then I had zero ways to ensure I had enough creatures to make Day of the Dragons relevant. With these guys I could pay three mana and make eight tokens, which is more than lethal once Day hits. I threw together this list, and tried it out.

Deck Name: Blue Day of the Dragons
Deck Type: Jank
Cost: Don't buy this deck

Yeah... it didn't take long to see how bad the deck was. I was playing a three-card combo with no hard searches for piece-finding, the combo took forever to set up, and I had almost no protection to my name. Derping around until turn seven was no way to play a game of Magic, let alone win one. It would seem that splashing a color was the only way to make this work.

Green was an obvious choice. Mana acceleration that can be fixed into blue, and a fresh slew of token-producing cards? Heck yea--wait, what's this? Dragonshift? Aw man, it just got real.

Dragonshift can be cast for three, or it can act as a pseudo-Day of the Dragons through Overload. An additional Day meant better consistency (something green doesn't give us). On top of all that, token-making red cards are easy finds. So, after some working and reworking, I came up with a new, totally awesome and holiday worthy list.

Deck Name: Dragonshift
Deck Type: Aggro/Combo
Cost: ~$46

Card Choices

There are a lot of interactions going on here, and honestly this all turned out much better than I'd hoped. As far as token-producers go, Dragon Fodder and Krenko's Command go without saying. You pay two mana, you get two Goblins. They have the perfect casting cost, and curve nicely with the rest of the deck. Mogg Alarm may seem strange, but I really like the alternate casting cost on it. Being able to get more dragons without having to wait another turn to play Day or Shift is convenient, and it has good synergy with other cards (more on that later). In the end, all these Goblin tokens mean Krenko, Mob Boss wasn't far behind. I had to add him; doubling the number of Goblins in play is just plain crazy. Even if you have to spend some tokens as blockers, you will almost always have enough fuel to make a Day or Shift a lethal play. Young Pyromancer is the only token-maker in the deck that doesn't make Goblins, but its not like this was a Goblin deck anyway, right? He is just way too strong to pass up; having him in play when you cast Dragon Fodder, Krenko's Command, or Mogg Alarm means you get even more tokens. Really, something great about this deck is that you don't even need your dragon-makers in order to win. Sometimes you just swarm your opponent out before they have time to react.

Goblin Electromancer is probably the coolest accelerator in the deck. Why? He's a Goblin. He goes with the theme and makes Goblin tokens out of Krenko activations. In fact, he interacts with all of the non-creature token-makers. (Hmm? Your Dragon Fodder and Krenko's Command cost one mana each, you say? Well, go ahead, then—play a few more!) Goblin Electromancer also allows for some cool turn-three plays. (Cast a Young Pyromancer and then directly follow up with a token-maker? Don't mind if I do!) Oh, and it goes without saying that Electromancer also makes Dragonshift cost less.

Battle Hymn is an interesting addition because it could easily be something else. I thought about Seething Song, but decided that the initial mana cost was probably too high, and there are situations where Hymn could easily produce more mana. Brightstone Ritual was another option, as nearly every token-maker in the deck makes goblins for us. Having a ritual that only costs one mana is nothing to be sorry about, and I could easily see Ritual used instead of Hymn. I chose against this because of Young Pyromancer, and the situations where he was your main source of tokens. In this case, Ritual would be a dead card, and Hymn would not. Either way though, both are strong and in the end it's all up to you.

Conclusion

That's it for this first of my Casual Castle articles! Comments? Questions? Ideas for decks? Visit the comments section or send me a question! I may use your deck in an article!

See you next time. Hopefully by then we will have succeeded in making Dragon Day a real holiday!

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