MTG Salvation

I've been playing Zirilan of the Claw near since I started playing Commander. Despite building and destroying dozens and dozens of other decks, only Zirilan has stayed together through thick and thin. As soon as I started playing him, I knew he was something special.

The biggest reason for this is that Zirilan is one of the very few toolbox commanders - that is, he can search your library for whatever card is useful at the exact moment, and even better, he can get that card into play immediately, giving him interaction and reliability normally absent from mono-red. He's great for playing against strangers, because he's powerful enough to put up a good fight in all but the harshest metas, and he wins in spectacular fashion that rarely disappoints. Being a toolbox that often has a lot more going on inside the deck than on the table, as well as mono-colored in one of the worst colors in the format, he also has a tendency to be ignored while he sets up awesome synergies and powerful engines. He's usually a relatively cheap deck, as are most mono-colored decks, which is a bonus, and part of why I keep him together while the rest of my collection is in constant flux. He's really a blast to play and a great deck to have around for meeting new people, which is why I wanted to put together this comprehensive guide to the variety of ways to build and play him.

A quick word to his weaknesses - Zirilan is not going to win against top-tier competitive decks, and he's going to have a hard time if he's getting hated out by the table. That should be pretty obvious looking at him.

This primer is designed to be a comprehensive look at Zirilan, not a simple decklist. There are several popular ways to build him, and endless variations between those builds. Rather than simply offer a single proscribed decklist, this guide aims to give you all the information you need to make a Zirilan deck that best suits you - how you like to play, tailored to your meta, and meeting your budget. If you just want a base decklist to start with, though, you'll find some tried and tested options in the decklist section.



The most defining aspect of how you build Zirilan is how you answer the question “How do you deal with Zirilan exiling the dragons at the end of turn?” There are 4 main answers to this question.

This solution is to find a way to get the dragon back into the deck, so that they can be reused by zirilan. This can usually be done either by putting it directly from play to the deck, or by sacrificing it and then moving it from the graveyard to the deck. There are relatively few tools for this in red (best ones being tel-jilad stylus and reito lantern, respecitively), so you rely heavily on hoarding dragon to find the relevant pieces, and a multitude of sac outlets to prevent exile and ensure that you get the artifact from hoarding dragon successfully. This version is the best for dragons with etb and death triggers.


This is the simplest solution to Zirilan exiling dragons - simply play more dragons. You can run dragons for a variety of functions, but you’re ultimately only using each one once. Redundancy is crucial in this version of the deck. Luckily it saves a lot of slots on engine pieces which it can replace with more dragons.


This solution relies on one of a number of cards that prevent zirilan from exiling your dragons permanently. This can be done by moving them (temporarily) to a different zone, usually exile, or preventing zirilan’s delayed exile trigger. Currently there’s only one way to prevent the trigger (sundial of the infinite), so mostly you’re using methods to blink your dragons so that they stick on the field and you can kill people over turns once you’ve built up a roost. This version is the best for dragons with persistent and reusable effects.


This solution is to play dragons to win the game immediately via synergy. The two main combos I’m aware of are hellkite charger + Sword of Feast and Famine (fetched via hoarding dragon if you have a sac outlet or a lethal block) and worldgorger dragon + jokulhaups/similar, though if you have recursion in place for hoarding dragon you can build any artifact combo your heart desires. Naturally, this is usually incorporated into another strategy, since it only requires a few deck slots, is very easy to disrupt, and very hard to protect. Against an unsuspecting meta, they can be powerful avenues to win, though.






This build of the deck is geared towards recursion. Hoarding dragon is the key piece here, used to get powerful engine cards and recursion cards to set up lethal alpha strikes. The curve is low to ensure that Zirilan stays available as quickly and as frequently as possible. If you're unlucky enough to not draw a sac outlet, try to throw hoarding dragon in front of an attacker.




This build replaces the recursion and sac pieces with more dragons and many powerful lategame cards to set up alpha strikes without the need for hoarding dragon. The main extra pieces in this build are big mana and damage doublers. Compared to recursion, this build has the advantage of being faster, but with higher variance and less toolboxiness with the loss of hoarding dragon. For a more balanced build, you could try running a few of the low-cost sac outlets (i.e. the 3 land ones), and use hoarding dragon once, if you draw a sac outlet or have a lethal block, to get a powerful artifact like rings of brighthearth or gauntlet of might.



Here's a list of every reasonable card to consider for Zirilan, and some less-reasonable cards that may have niche uses, or are listed to explain why they should not be used.

The grading system:
***** = Universally or near-universally played. Often well worth it even outside of their core strategies.
**** = Very strong cards, key parts of their core strategies.
*** = Filler cards that are usually replaceable.
** = Niche cards, or bad replacements for better cards.
* = Essentially unplayable cards, included as a warning.


Unsurprisingly, dragons are the lifeblood of the Zirilan deck. While different decks may want more of less dragons, most will want similar-ish packages to cover the same common utility functions. Having more dragons gives you more kinds of utility, finer-grained control over the specific implementation of that utility you prefer, and of course redundancy, but it also means you're more likely to draw expensive and often clunky cards (trust me, once you're using to getting dragons for 1RR with flash and haste, paying full price for neither feels like quite a rip off). The number of dragons you want is usually inverse to how many perm/recursion tools you want. Usually the bottom end is around 8, up to as many as 25. Past that, you're just wasting deck slots imo. I'll admit I'm mostly wasting time by rating every single dragon (I don't think many people have ever put tek into a Zirilan build), but I think it's worth taking a good look at all available options, given how crucial they are to the build.



If you've tried running Zirilan with nothing but dragons and mana, you've probably noticed that he's not actually that great. Getting a single dragon into play every turn is great for a bit, but throwing one 6/6 into combat each turn is a pretty slow way to kill a table. To really put the shine on him, you'll want to include some number of cards that allow you to put out more dragons at once, by untapping zirilan, copying his ability, or copying the dragons themselves. With a few double-powered activations, it's much easier to set up lethal alpha strikes.



If you're playing recursion, you need sac outlets, and badly. Unless you can convince someone to swing at your face, you'll need a sac outlet to pop hoarding dragon and start putting together your synergies. Some are also a good source of value, as the dragons were toast anyway, although most are just a way to keep your dragons from getting exiled.



The second piece of the puzzle for the recursion deck are the recursion pieces. Red isn't the best at recycling their graveyard, so you're relying on artifacts to get the job done, often at significant mana expense. I'd recommend either running quite a few, so that you're not always forced to use hoarding dragon's first tutor for recursion - even single-shot recursion like conjurer's bauble or vessel of endless rest (in mana rocks) can allow you to search for a more powerful card like gauntlet of might or illusionist's Bracers first, while still giving you the ability to recycle hoarding dragon for more value if necessary.



Though I'm loathe to recommend there, Zirilan has a few combos he can pull off. I don't hugely recommend them, as he has few ways to protect them from disruption, so once the cat's out of the bag, it'll be quite hard to pull off, but they are both pretty potent if you're playing against unsuspecting or unprepared enemies.



Zirilan, as a mono-red ramp deck with a lot of artifacts, can operate pretty well without lands after Zirilan is on the board, so there is some reason to go in for some land control spells. If you want to go this route, I recommend a much higher usage of mana rocks, though, as you don't want to get screwed out of being able to cast your commander if he's killed after the destruction.



Zirilan does frequently inspire tribal dragon decks. Typically these are bulk dragon decks. Personally I don't think Zirilan works well as a dragon tribal deck, but I've nevertheless included the commonly played cards here.



Protecting dragons from permanent exile by exiling them temporarily (or countering the ability, in exactly one case) is probably the clunkiest solution to the Zirilan exile problem, as most of the options are fairly expensive or have other setup required, but there are still a decent number of tools to do so and you can reasonably expect to get one of them most games if you pack them all in. Because of the inconsistency, and many of them being single-use, I wouldn't commit 100% to perming dragons - either run enough dragons that you can survive without one, or some sac outlets so you can use hoarding dragon to get the best one (it's sundial).



One common cross-synergy with Zirilan is red's frequently-printed steal-until-end-of-turn effects. While the effect is usually not worth it in commander (except insurrection and mob rule), Zirilan is commonly running either sac outlets or perming tools, which usually return the permanent to play under your control permanently. In builds without those tools, I'd avoid all except possibly those two powerful cards.



If the engine cards to generate more dragons aren't enough of an epic beatdown for you, red also has a host of damage-enhancing cards to push for lethal. Unlike the engine cards, these don't provide more utility, though, just more damage. In general I would run more engine cards than these, as these are more expensive and less flexible, but some decks will want both to ensure drawing one or more.



Red isn’t known for having a ton of generically great cards, but even in a heavily-synergy-based deck, it’s worth looking for strong cards that don’t directly contribute to the Zirilan plan. If you have extra slots, this is a good place to look to fill up those slots.



Zirilan can take a couple approaches to ramp. Because Zirilan often relies heavily on the commander and wants him out as soon as possible, besides the obvious top-tier mana rocks (mana crypt, sol ring, mana vault) most Zirilan decks will also want a decent number of 2-3 mana rocks to accelerate Zirilan out a turn early. Whether you prefer 2 or 3 depends on what other cards you're planning to play early - sac outlets? engine pieces? protection? But the other side is the access Zirilan has, as a mono-color deck, to some very powerful late-game mana ramp pieces that don't accelerate Zirilan out (unless you're paying taxes on him), but can enable bigger attacks, more utility from mana-sink dragons, and more utility out of your engine pieces - if the game goes that long. Whether you want to include those pieces is going to depend on how long you expect those games to go, and how you want your deck to win.



As a mono-colored deck, Zirilan has a lot of slots available for utility lands, and a lot of great options. That said, I do recommand reigning in your greed a bit - especially with so many good colorless rocks, it's easy to overdo it on colorless lands and stumble casting or activating Zirilan on occasion (especially if you want to activate multiple times in a turn), pump dragon tyrant for lethal etc. You'll also want to really minimize nonbasics if you're planning to run a lot of mana doublers.





First, a few very important notes about Zirilan's ability. The Oracle text reads: 1RR, T: Search your library for a Dragon permanent card and put that card onto the battlefield. Then shuffle your library. That Dragon gains haste until end of turn. Exile it at the beginning of the next end step. This means two key things:

• His ability can be activated during the end step, and the dragon won't be exiled until the NEXT turn's end step. Used during the end step of the turn immediately before yours, this enables you to set up two turns worth of dragons attacking in a single turn for big alpha strikes. It also enables you to keep Zirilan up until the end step, then get a dragon and attack with it, without leaving Zirilan tapped during your opponents' turns.
• His ability only exiles the dragons if they're still on the battlefield by the end step. If they're sacrificed or otherwise change zones (even if they return to the battlefield before the end step), they won't get exiled. This is, of course, they key to the recursion and the perm strategies.

As a general rule, you should try to activate Zirilan on the endstep unless it's very important to do something immediately (such as win the game, disrupt someone else's win, or block removal against Zirilan). You should also avoid searching for a dragon with no way to sac/perm it, unless it's worth the sacrifice. Do keep in mind that blocking is nature's sac outlet, though, and can be crucial if you're unable to find your own and need to trigger hoarding dragon.

As a toolbox commander, every dragon you include in your Zirilan deck is going to have a significant effect on how your deck plays. In general, you should be building with two questions in mind: "How do I plan to develop my board?" and "how am I going to win?" When you play the deck, you should be trying to follow the strategies you set out in construction.

When considering your starting hand, one important tripping hazard is the dragons in your hand. You'll often prefer to have dragons in your deck to Zirilan out, rather than your hand, and without scroll rack it's difficult to get them back into the deck without paying their exorbitant mana costs. Having one of your key dragons in hand can be a big deal breaker, especially expensive ones like dragon tyrant, utvara hellkite, and bogardan hellkite, although some dragons (scourge of valkas comes to mind) are often fine to have in hand, and if you're playing bulk dragons, any single dragon will be much less important.

Besides a lack of dragons, the biggest thing to look for is lands and mana rocks. The faster Zirilan hits the field, the better. A hand where he can't be cast until turn 5 is often not worth keeping. Having synergy pieces can also be a boon, and you'll want to favor hands with a sac outlet if you're running the recursion build. The general lack of blinking options means that you can't afford to be too picky with the perm build - if you have a good perm piece then so much the better, but don't dig too hard for it. For the bulk dragons build, all you want is mana and you're good to go.

Dealing with the early and midgame is usually going to be similar for all Zirilan decks. You want to ramp into Zirilan, you want to use him to respond to threats, you want to set up engine pieces to build towards a win condition. If you're focusing on recursion, this means knowing your hoarding dragon targets and choosing which pieces you need to put together a lethal attack, or just to recycle dragons to use as answers until you have more time to build up your own board. If you're focusing on the combo, you'll be digging for your combo pieces. If you're going bulk dragons, you'll be playing out whatever engine pieces you've drawn. Bulk dragons can afford to be a little more aggressive and spend less time assembling pieces, but don't use your best dragons until the end or you might run out of gas.

For recursion, the build I'm most familiar with, I tend to decide which pieces to go for based on the size of the table, how much resistance I expect to encounter, and how much I feel like showing off. For a 1v1 game, sometimes it's not even necessary to use hoarding dragon, because you can just play scourge of the throne into dragon tyrant and get an immediate win. If you expect to encounter a bit more resistance, or an additional player, tutoring for tel-jilad stylus or sundial of the infinite is more reasonable, as those can provide more value to win over multiple turns, or go with rings of brighthearth to just explode out a lot of damage. For big games, I like to go with Reito Lantern to recycle hoarding dragon, so I can build up more elaborate combos with illusionist's bracers and gauntlet of might for some big mana, big damage turns with many dragons on the field at once. Within the first few turns, you should know which pieces you intend to grab, although of course you should be flexible if you happen to draw something that pushes you in a different direction.

When you're ready to go for a big alpha strike, do the math and decide what your important targets are. Focus on the most dangerous players first. One of the recursion build's biggest strength is that it needs relatively few permanents on the board to surprise the table with a huge alpha strike. That can often make you a lower priority target in the eyes of less experienced players, especially as Zirilan is a relatively obscure commander. Once you've played your hand and delivered your big alpha strike, the game should either be over or functionally over. Try not to expose your power while leaving your opponents standing, since you'll usually have Zirilan tapped and thus vulnerable to removal or enemy combos or whatnot that you won't be able to remove with Zirilan. That's not to say you shouldn't kill one person if it's necessary - say if you know they're about to combo out - but it should be avoided if possible.



DirkGently has been playing Magic since 2001, Commander since 2009, and Zirilan since 2011. He plays commander and limited, and once top 8ed a limited PTQ back when PTQs were cool and you could go to the pro tour instead of just another PTQ. He plays magic 3-4 times a week. And sometimes he talks about himself in the third person.

Nice write up! *takes notes*

I'll add my list to the comprehendium.



My deck seems to be a bit of hybrid of keeping the dragons and recycling the dragons. I am focusing ETB effects and dragons with activated abilities that I can use a mana sinks for my powerful ramp. The game plan is double my mana then double my damage then double my attack steps. Hopefully I have highted a few cards you missed, in particular flameshadow conjurering. My meta is semi-casual with a differing power levels of decks, but people aren't funnelling in huge amounts of money into thier decks. Also mass land destruction is frowned upon, if you do it, expect to get targeted the next game.

+ glorybringer - stormbreath dragon but I am using them in my standard deck.

There is plenty of dragons (and ramp pieces) that either too expensive or I have never found available for trade, just buying an EDH deck is missing half the fun of building one...

Okay I had more time when I wasn't in a hurry to lend my opinions.
Lightning skrieker is a lava axe.. I mostly use it to kill planeswalkers or just to get when I have nothing set up and no reason to do anything specific just want to knock down some life totals. if they kill it they literially used removal on the worst creature in my deck.

I didn't originally have thunderbreak regent and scourge of valkas. Your resoning, you'll never have many dragons on board (also true for moonviel dragon) so they don't do anything, is the same reason I didn't have them in (they were just sitting in my rare folder). The issue is what happens if you don't ramp off, or your general gets removed too many times, they are just good castable dragons. Also I do a lot of removal that involves pinging a creature for 1 then hitting them for five with Brogdan hellkite. The little one damage pings really do matter. it is very similar for Dragon tempest just constantly pinging like that really adds up over the lenght of the game. Also giving hatse to scourge of the throne from hand is so brutal.

I am going to reconsider whether I want to return changling bezerker and crucible of fire to the deck. Bezerker just never seemed to save anything zirilan always dying when I was tapped out, I was just being too agressive to use it. I decided flameshadow conjuring was just so much better than crucible.. but crucible is the rare I own the most copies of perhaps I can find a space.

OP has been updated a lot, with formatting and deck tags. It's still an absolute ton of text to get through, though, so there's still more work to be done.

I already had flameshadow conjuring in the list, but you did have a few other pieces I forgot about (haven of the spirit dragon, trading post).

I don't see a ton of reason to use lightning shrieker. Bulk dragon decks should have enough dragons to not need it, and recursion decks should hopefully be able to keep reusing their dragons. If it was a 7/7 or something, maybe, but as a 5/5 it's also one of the smaller dragons available so it's really hard to justify imo.

Your build has more dragons so something like scourge of valkas makes more sense (I'm also trying it in my bulk dragon version). I don't think thunderbreak regent ever does enough just use it, though, and it's just awful off Zirilan. I'm most familiar with the recursion build where scourge of Valkas makes little sense, though, since there aren't even many dragons in the whole deck, so that's where most of my opinions come from. Moonveil is a bit different - if you go all-in double activations, assuming one is tyrant, moonveil gives you 5 extra power for just one red, 10 if you're triggering scourge of the throne, with a paltry RRRR that's enough extra damage to kill an entire additional player. That's a far cry from valkas dealing 10 damage total, or thunderbreak regent doing basically nothing.

changeling berserker is great for protecting Zirilan as long as you don't tap Zirilan on your own turn, which I basically never do unless I'm going for a win or I need to kill something urgently. You can also use him proactively to perm a powerful dragon, like balefire or utvara. I think he's one of the six dragons that should always be included, along with hellkite tyrant, utvara hellkite, dragon tyrant, bogardan hellkite, and Steel hellkite. He just provides such a unique and useful utility (technically WGD provides similar utility, but with way higher risk).

I have already started making changes after reading the post. Including adding more mountains in exchange for the cycle lands.

-thunderbreak regent + changeling bezereker.
- vedalken orrery + Junktroller I was just using it to give haste... but I have hanwier garrason now.

There is plenty of cards just don't have but I have these lying around.
I really really need a scroll rack... :/.

Oh the tags make it much easier to find things... like flameshadow conjurering.

I take it you don't rate them because I can't seem mention of Valakut, the molten pinnicale and Spine of Ish sha. These cards have won me games.

Whille i don't play worldgorger dragon any more (having it in hand was soooo bad) I have killed a table by using it in response to cyclonic rift whille valakut was in play. Other than that is is just nice on going removal and damage with barely any effort.

Spine is tutorable with hoarding dragon and recurable with a bunch of cards in my list above (but I removed most of them in the updating I am doing now :/). I have used it to win the game against Glacial Chasm.

Quote from Narvuntien »

I have already started making changes after reading the post. Including adding more mountains in exchange for the cycle lands.

-thunderbreak regent + changeling bezereker.
- vedalken orrery + Junktroller I was just using it to give haste... but I have hanwier garrason now.

There is plenty of cards just don't have but I have these lying around.
I really really need a scroll rack... :/.

Oh the tags make it much easier to find things... like flameshadow conjurering.

I take it you don't rate them because I can't seem mention of Valakut, the molten pinnicale and Spine of Ish sha. These cards have won me games.

Whille i don't play worldgorger dragon any more (having it in hand was soooo bad) I have killed a table by using it in response to cyclonic rift whille valakut was in play. Other than that is is just nice on going removal and damage with barely any effort.

Spine is tutorable with hoarding dragon and recurable with a bunch of cards in my list above (but I removed most of them in the updating I am doing now :/). I have used it to win the game against Glacial Chasm.

Valakut and spine probably deserve mentions, even though I'm not personally likely to run either. In my experience hitting mana rocks etc on curve is really important and I don't see a ton of value in Valakut, though the synergy with WGD is cute and I think it's probably fine.

Spine I used to run (years and years ago) but cut it in favor of o-stone as my slot for non-steel-hellkite removal. Between steel hellkite and o-stone I think most situations are covered, and spine is just such an unpleasant, clunky card in my experience. 7 mana is just a ton, sorcery speed removal sucks, etc. Still, it is nice to have for dealing with permanents that you can't beat (i.e. humility, damping matrix, etc) if you don't want to wipe the board. Got a humility played against me last night with the bulk dragons build (no hoarding dragon...), but luckily I'd been sitting on a chaos warp for most of the game.

The bulk list from the OP did quite well, won the first 2 games (4 and 3 players), and would have won the 3rd except I played like absolute crap and threw away a win trying to do something cute Got to try tawnos's coffin for the first time. Unfortunately it got stolen (in-game, not irl) immediately, and then the other player killed me after taking 2 extra turns, so impressions were not great. It's definitely mana-intensive, it seems best suited to a big mana deck. Maybe more a 3-star than 4-star card, although it's nice to have some powerful cards that aren't all in service to zirilan.

Excellent writeup. I've not played Zirilan, but if I tire of my current mono-R deck (Zada), he's top of my list of replacements (I'm one of those people who don't really like having multiple decks with the same colour combination), and this has further convinced me.

One thing I would recommend in general for mono red is adding in two of the most powerful spells available to us - Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast. The more I play with these two cards, the more I love them, and they're now pretty much my first additions to any deck with red in it, but mono red in particular really benefits from them. I've lost count of the number of times they've saved me (often against Cyclonic Rift...) and there's basically always a target for them in a multiplayer game - from commanders ranging from the obvious mono-blue ones like Azami, to stuff as vaired as Ruhan, Zur and Child of Alara, to blue's myriad suite of interaction, to extra turns spells, to major threats like DEN or C-Sphinx and so on.

I have used REB and pyroblast in the past but they were just the first cards on the chopping block for not always being relevent. I am very careful when I use this deck. I only take it out if there is plenty of control/answers in the pod. The truth is mono red really can't control it is at its best doing its own fairly agressive thing. Obviously this is in person when I know what decks I am up against rather than say online. They are nice in your flex slots but I have artifact destruction in that slot rather than blue hate.

Updates from your recommendations basically just from raiding my collection.
Getting off the ground with mana and getting dragons into my hand seems like an issue but it just seems like way-way too much money to fix it right now. *edit* After goldfishing it seems I just need to mulligan hard because the number of cards in hand doesn't matter much.

Any thoughts about our bane cards like Stranglehold and Aven Mindcensor?

Quote from AngelFang »

Any thoughts about our bane cards like Stranglehold and Aven Mindcensor?

Those cards can be solved in some versions. Hoarding dragon in response for o-stone, for example. Without hoarding dragon your options are pretty limited, short of just hoping you draw some of your rare removal. Given how inefficent enchantment removal is in mono-red, I don't think it's worth dedicating a bunch of slots to worrying about it. At the end of the day, Zirilan is not a highly durable deck - a lot of his strength comes from not appearing to be a huge threat. If people are hating on you aggressively, you're probably in trouble, whether it's a hard lockout card like strangehold, or just using a few removal spells on your commander. This just isn't a deck built to handle a 3v1 situation well.

Endless Sands seems playable. Obviously not as good High market but effects on lands are almost free.

Typically against hate I just have to wait for someone else to deal with it, it is almost certainly hating someone else out as well. Alternatively, just start casting dragons. Which is an advantage of more mass dragon versions of the deck.

I agree not being seen as a threat is definitely an advantage, I have actually won a lot of games where I got mana screwed and people forgot about me... until I just pull out huge amounts of damage out of nowhere. Players will learn that Zirilian the card is a threat but forget you can just start casting dragons.

So I am in favour of having a little less focus on your engine and just have a bunch of castable dragons and enough dragon buffs and other damage sources as a plan B. Only for metas that are a little slower and more grindy though, the stronger the meta the harder you will have to focus on pulling off Plan A.

I tend to prefer to focus on plan A since I don't think plan B is very good, but in a low-ish powered meta I could see it working ok.

Endless sands is super good for the "perm" strat, and is possibly good enough to get into other versions of the deck. being able to tap for mana makes it much better than safe haven, and while paying a cost to activate it is a bummer, I think I'd rather pay to sac it and get my dragons eot than sac on upkeep and have to sit around hoping no one kept a board wipe.

scavenger grounds also has some potential as a decent grave-hate artifact, though the recursion build doesn't really care about grave hate since so many of its recursion pieces double as grave hate.

So far no signs of dragons.

I've seen lists that include Mycosynth Lattice and Darksteel Forge (plus Hellkite Tyrant/Vandalblast FTW). Have you tried these too as your wincon? Looks promising through Hoarding Dragon shenanigans..

Updates for Ixalan:

angrath's marauders is enough worse than gratuitous violence that I feel fine excluding it.

All the flip cards seem too slow and clunky for this deck.

sunbird's invocation is pretty anti-synergistic with the whole "don't cast spells except the commander" thing this deck tends to do post 5 mana.

vanquisher's banner only triggers on cast, so it also sucks.

So...nada. See you next set!

Quote from AngelFang »

I've seen lists that include Mycosynth Lattice and Darksteel Forge (plus Hellkite Tyrant/Vandalblast FTW). Have you tried these too as your wincon? Looks promising through Hoarding Dragon shenanigans..

It's an amusing combo, but especially with a tutor in the command zone it seems like a good way to make the game pretty linear pretty fast. And I doubt it's as consistent as the SoFaF combo or the WGD + jokulhaups combo.

I am playing Thaumatic Compass, I already played Journeyer's kite. The seven land restriction sucks and I really don't want to give my opponetns a maze of ith (via vesuva) when it flips.. but since I don't own the broken mana ramp just getting lands in the early game is really useful for getting off the ground, I cut my beloved durdle post.. durdle in durdle out.

Updates for rivals:

the immortal sun: Bit clunky since the dudes are already big, we don't really want draw THAT badly, and we're more concerned with activating abilities than casting spells. So on second thought, forget it.

Arch of Orazca: a little more promising, gives us some late-game reach if we need it. I think it's planning for failure a bit, though, if we're actually activating it we're probably pretty screwed already.

....and that's the end of the set. Ixalan: not big on dragons.

Ouch, not a single card from DOM I'd consider for zirilan. Red sagas are awful, no sac outlets, and the one dragon we get is absolute trash for us. I wish wotc would print fewer efficient, potentially-standard-playable dragons and more big dumb nonsense. We demand more utvara hellkites!

well, that's not quite fair, helm of the host provides a semi-infinite combo with scourge of the throne, although moltensteel dragon is almost required to pull it off, and those two together was almost already an insta-win sans helm. It does provide reliability if you're getting through blockers, though, and it also works to get extra zirilans for big (expensive) late-game turns, or it can clone dragons before they take the zirilan-mandated dirt nap. I still think it's in too niche of a position to be particularly exciting here, though. It's almost always going to do nothing until like turn 6-8, that does not sound like a winner to me, although of course it has some fun value even if it's not particularly powerful.

Man, 2 red dragons and both are trash from BBD. Bummer.

Stolen strategy is a powerful card, for less-focused decks the power is definitely there, although I personally probably wouldn't. I play zirilan to play zirilan.

Only other card I see that could have any interest for zirilan is victory chimes. 3 mana rocks are the sweet spot, and it makes it easier to play mana rocks and such on the turns after zirilan while keeping up that crucial 1RR. If it were colored mana it'd be an easy inclusion, but as colorless I think it's playable but not amazing.

I made one change to my deck recently I have just forgotten what it was, I cut skullclamp because I don't need cards, oh! Mirror of the Forebears basically another but cheaper flameshadow conjurering... its really good.

Eh I don't really like 3 mana manarocks other than the one that gives 2 mana but etbs tapped. Remembering card names is hard :(. Because I really need that 2 -4 jump just to get going, I then use my Journeyer's kite effects to keep hitting land drops. Mass artifact destruction is really common but mass land destruction is soft banned in the groups I play with.

The deck is quite the glass cannon, you typically get one chance and you have to try to kill or incapacitate everyone then everyone knows what you are capable of....

Looks like we're finally getting a playable dragon in M2019 with Lathliss, dragon queen.

I think she's significantly behind utvara in terms of token production. Her tokens are 5/5 instead of 6/6, and she doesn't count herself, not to mention utvara works great with extra combat steps and, should you perm it, it can double your dragons each of your turns. The only advantage I see on that front is being able to make a non-summoning sick token by double-dragoning lathliss + something else eot, which is more useful than utvara's tokens if you're trying to kill this turn. But then, if you're going for the kill right now, dragon tyrant, moltensteel, and scourge are all way more effective in most scenarios.

Her pump ability is decent but far behind moonveil dragon, which itself is just OK.

But between the ability to get down multiple bodies eot, potentially make a decent number of tokens if she's permed, and her global pump ability, I think she's at least strong enough to be in consideration for most lists, even if she doesn't excel at any particular thing. Not the next hellkite tyrant by any stretch, but a decent role-player.

Also the first dragon that could realistically sub in as commander. Though she looks way, way less powerful and interesting than zirilan imo.

I'll be finding room for her.
She doesn't do the killing your opponent job as well as other other dragons but she makes a board impact and pumps dragons and is a 6/6.

If you for example follow her with Scourge of Valkas you hit for 6. (utrava hellkite is better but you need some amount of redundancy)

hmm I just realised I never used glorybringer in my deck now I took them out of my standard deck... sometimes you need to kill a flying blocker.

Quote from Narvuntien »

I'll be finding room for her.
She doesn't do the killing your opponent job as well as other other dragons but she makes a board impact and pumps dragons and is a 6/6.

If you for example follow her with Scourge of Valkas you hit for 6. (utvara hellkite is better but you need some amount of redundancy)

hmm I just realised I never used glorybringer in my deck now I took them out of my standard deck... sometimes you need to kill a flying blocker.

glorybringer is pretty bad, almost always better to use thundermaw hellkite since it dodges hexproof and hits everything. Or bogardan hellkite to clear 5 toughness worth of blockers instead of just 1 with 4 or less toughness.

glorybringer is a better draw than those dragons in most cases, but it doesn't stack up well as a zirilan target since you get no benefit from the low cmc or the haste.

ooh, 3 more mono-red dragon cards!

sarkhan, fireblood looks subpar to me. This deck is not amazing at defending planeswalkers, and his rummage is pretty meh. Adding 2 for dragons is neat, but we're not running other ramp for dragons that would be at least as effective (dragonspeaker shaman for instance). His ult is fine, but it's not really a game-winner. More likely a board-wipe puller.

demanding dragon is just bad. If you could force the sacrifice at least it'd have some utility, but a 5/5 that comes with a maybe-lava-axe is not at all exciting as a finisher compared to the other options.

finally, spit flame. This is maybe the most interesting new card. It gives us great removal that hits a lot of the nastier commanders (does a great job against the most recent crops of precon commanders) and is easy to buyback. I think I'll be trying this out in my zirilan decks when I get the chance.

I actually have sarkhan, the dragonspeaker (he was also my desktop background for a year) and he is basically a spit flame, I really do like spit flame if I am going to use spot removal its good. Well if people are attacking my walkers they aren't attack me and that's more time for me to set up.

The new one is kind of like worn powerstone you can only use for dragons and I was using Darretti at some point for that looting ability. If I open one I'll try it but I don't think I am going to preorder him or anything.

Too many better dragons than demanding dragon but I think if you are just going to exile your dragons and not try to recur or perm them maybe you'll consider it.. but I just feel like basically everyone has some disposable creature lying around in commander.

I don't think demanding dragon has any place in Zirilan. There are a lot of mono-red dragons, and demanding is very weak. Even if you're not recurring dragons there's no chance it'll be in your top ~20...or even 30 or 40.

dragon's hoard on the other hand...might be the best card from this set for zirilan. It ramps zirilan out t4, it draws cards, it gives us red for lategame when we want to pump our dragon tyrant or whatever.

Been a solid set for zirilan. Between lathliss, hoard, and spit I think this is probably the biggest shake-up to the deck since RTR block.