MTG Salvation

"I speak the dragons' language of flame and rage. They speak my language of fury and honor. Together we shall weave a tale of destruction without equal."

Thanks for putting up you list!

-spawn of thraxes - do you think he's worth it when you've already bogardan hellkite? BK just seems lot more reliable and flexible to me, and there's already so many dragons dedicated to damage, like thunder dragon, drakuseth, balefire, etc.

-I've never run servant/shaman, but how often are you actually casting multiple dragons in a turn? That's really the only advantage they provide, otherwise a mana rock would be more durable and - more important - could help you cast zirilan.

-How has curse of opulence performed for you? I'm considering it, but don't have much experience with the card.

-All the discard-draw stuff - what's the reasoning there?

-maybe this is a budget thing, but you're missing a lot of power mana rocks - pricey stuff like crypt and mana vault are obviously insane, but arcane signet is pretty reasonable at this point, thought vessel is ok...there's the one that lets you reroll the planar die lol...

-molten echoes is an infinite combo with WGD, just so you're aware (infinite mana and etb triggers).

As a prelude, I haven't done much testing with the deck due to the virus going around. So I can't really give you much feedback how the deck is running. Sorry, should've said that in the op.

Spawn can deal more damage than Bogardan when the game goes late.

Unsure how Shaman and Servant will perform. May just replace Servant with Ruby Medallion down the road.

Curse seems good because it dissuades attacks against you, which is critical for setting up early.

Running the discard and draw because it's the best card draw in red aside from impulse draw and I don't like the idea of exiling a dragon off the top. Also because this deck was a Feldon deck before and I just carried the card draw package over.

Looking to replace Prismatic Lens with Arcane Signet as soon as the 2020 precons drop.

And I am aware of the infinite combo. Still running both because they're great on their own and I can choose to not grab Worldgorger if I have Echoes out.

Quote from ZillaSmasher »

Spawn can deal more damage than Bogardan when the game goes late.

Well sure, but is that important-enough functionality to dedicate a card to? When you're also running familiar? There are a lot of dragons with pretty similar functionalities, I think for my money spawn isn't better often enough to justify another slots for such similar utility.

Unsure how Shaman and Servant will perform. May just replace Servant with Ruby Medallion down the road.

Honestly I'm not that excited about ruby medallion either - although it's a lot better since it discounts Zirilan. However none of those cards discounts the artifacts that make up most of your nonlands, or help provide mana for activated abilities. The only time you create more mana off a 1-mana discount effect than a colorless mana rock is if you're casting multiple spells (with that discount) per turn, which just doesn't seem that likely to me in this deck. I'm running a lot more 2-mana rocks, and no discount cards. We're not really looking to cast a ton of things, generally, in my experience. We're either casting Zirilan and riding him to a game win, or playing dragons which are expensive and are difficult to cast in multiples.

Curse seems good because it dissuades attacks against you, which is critical for setting up early.

Is it? It's not like we need to keep planeswalkers protected or anything. All we need to do is get Zirilan out, which is doable by 3 with a decent hand or 4 with a slow one. Besides moltensteel dragon (which you aren't running? It's really powerful) our life total isn't super important. If anything we want to take a couple hits so SotT works (another reason to run moltensteel). Really the bigger risk is having Zirilan killed, imo. Imo, WE'RE the aggro deck. Our life total is of little consequence so long as we kill our enemies.

That said, curse is probably a totally fine, I'm just a lot more interested in the ramp part of it than the attack-dissuading part of it.

Running the discard and draw because it's the best card draw in red aside from impulse draw and I don't like the idea of exiling a dragon off the top. Also because this deck was a Feldon deck before and I just carried the card draw package over.

Hmm, they all make perfect sense in Feldon but I'm not sure I see the justification for Zirilan. You're not really excited about discarding anything particularly. Filtering cards is still fine, but I wouldn't pay 2 mana for it, especially early when you really want to be spending your mana towards getting Zirilan out ASAP. Seems like a good way to end up casting Zirilan a turn later than you'd prefer.

I've really never ran much draw in Zirilan and haven't really missed it, since Zirilan is enough value to win the game on his own. But it does depend how durable he is in your meta, you might be more inclined towards draw if he keeps getting removed.

Looking to replace Prismatic Lens with Arcane Signet as soon as the 2020 precons drop.

Prismatic lens is good imo - as is pretty much any 2-mana rock. I'd replace something else instead.

And I am aware of the infinite combo. Still running both because they're great on their own and I can choose to not grab Worldgorger if I have Echoes out.

This is just my personal philosophy, but if I knew you had a win, and didn't play it on purpose even though you also knew about it, I wouldn't want to play with you anymore. If your group doesn't mind, though, then my opinion doesn't really matter.

I’ll probably replace Shaman and Servant with mana rocks. What would you replace all the discard and draw with?

If you're having trouble keeping zirilan on-board and need more value, some sort of value engines - if you don't want to risk it with outpost siege-type stuff, then maybe something like chaos wand or mirage mirror.

If you're not, then probably I'd lean towards more cheap control tools like lightning bolt so you can exert influence over the game before Zirilan comes down, or in between activations.

Or just more mana rocks. Can never have too many mana rocks.

I am going to recommend as many 2 cmc mana rocks as you can get your hands on (they don't even have to be good ones) you need to get the dragon engine off the ground as fast as you can. I have forgotten its name, the 3 mana gives 2 mana but ETBS tapped mana rock.

I actually found I don't actually want to draw cards I just want mountains and ramp and just keep casting Zirilian. They are a bit clunky but I use Journeyer's Kite and the Ixalan version just because the only card I want to draw is a mountain.

As Dirk said there isn't much point in making the dragons cheaper to cast... because you don't intend to cast them.

Flameshadow conjuring to go with the Molten Echos?