Yet another deck for casual play with my friends, this time focusing on a bit of buildup before attacking with a ton of dragons!
Looking at what we are running and why . . .
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As usual with me, this part is pretty simple -- 24 Mountains will do us just fine, although there is room to argue for more land in the deck with our average creature CMC being as high as it is. We have a solution for that, however.
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Thunderbreak Regent
A 4/4 with flying for four mana is pretty respectable on its own, but dealing 3 damage to our enemy whenever they wing a spell at most of our core is fantastic, especially since the effect stacks as we get more out. It is sadly vulnerable to AoE removal spells like Languish, but that's fine -- there has to be a downside somewhere, and that will hit most of their board as well.
Mirrorwing Dragon
Much like the Regent above, the Mirrorwing is competitively priced, and its unique ability makes it an even less ideal target for removal, as it will bounce everything back against our opponent's board. It ALSO bounces things across our own board, which is something we will be using to our advantage later, and is one of the main reasons we will be running it over many of the other dragons available to us.
Hellkite Tyrant
You know what has a ton of flavor? This card. It's a dragon. That wants to build a horde. And wants to steal other people's treasure to do it. I love it. It's also a flying trampler at 6 mana, which is perfect for us, because that trample should get at least some damage through large fliers on the opponent's board. We aren't building around its alternate win condition, fun though that may be, but we are still running 3 of these.
Semblance Anvil
The last core card in our deck, the reason we are running so many creatures, ladies and gentle notladies, I give you our effective mana ramp. Now, there are a lot of downsides to running this card -- we need to exile a creature when we cast it for our discount, we can't do much with two of them in our hand at any point, if someone destroys it we can't just bring it back (as it won't have the exiled card anymore), and we have almost NO means of protecting it. Still, it does what we need, it does it damn well, and, most importantly, it fits perfectly into our mana curve at 3 where we don't have anything else we really care about playing. We are only running 3 copies due to the downsides, though.
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Steel Wall
As a general rule I am not especially fond of walls, especially ones with 0 power, as they stall things more than they really stifle enemy momentum, but our mana curve is quite high in this deck, as it turns out, and this wall provides us some extra utility beyond its defense as a one drop artifact: It allows
Shunt
, a card we will be looking at a bit later, to redirect single target artifact removal away from our anvil towards it. This isn't a play we will be able to make that often, but it is a possibility in the event we properly predict our opponent's actions. It also provides an additional artifact towards our Hellkite Tyrant's 20 win condition, in the off hand chance we can capitalize on that.
Dragonlord's Servant
A 3 defense body that lowers our dragon spell cost and fits nicely into a curve at 2 mana -- not a whole lot to dislike, especially since it survives both Shock spells and a
Steam Blast
from our sideboard. We also have the option of running a few Dragonspeaker Shaman in the servant's place for a more potent dragon discount, but they are more susceptible to general removal, die to our
Steam Blast
, have a higher CMC, and cost a fair bit more.
Moonveil Dragon
You know what is a nifty ability? Pumping our entire board for 1 mana. Know what is even better? Pumping it for 1 mana more than once a turn. Provided nothing gets in our way, we should win quite quickly after this hits the board, especially since we can activate its ability the turn we drop it even if it can't attack. That said, we don't really need to hit more than one of these, since we'd only really be getting a 5/5 flier out of it with no further utility, so we are only running two, but that should be more than enough. Finding it is quite nice, but not absolutely critical.
Draconic Roar
At some point we are likely going to need creature removal, and Roar is probably our best option for it -- free damage against our opponent when we remove one of their creatures sounds pretty win-win to me, and, if we are running the Nivmagus Elemental from our sideboard, we can bounce it off of our Mirrorwing and consume the spells to pump it up even if we don't need the removal.
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Dragon Tempest
The reasons for this one are pretty obvious, as we can always make use of the Haste and free damage, especially at two mana, buuuut this card works far better when paired with things like the Dragon Broodmother and other token producers we are not running. That said, unless we are in serious trouble, we will never be sad to have this in our hand, so three copies for us!
Renegade Tactics /
Expedite
We need to pick between these two and, as their primary purpose in our deck is the same -- bouncing off our Mirrorwing for card advantage --, it is a simple matter of personal preference which we run. I have selected
Expedite
for its instant speed activation, which works better in case our Elemental is swapped in from the sideboard, and speeding up a dragon drop without Dragon Tempest on the board, but Tactics's ability to shut down an enemy blocker can be more useful overall.
Shunt
Sometimes single target removal or effects are going to come our way, just not at our Mirrorwing -- especially if we are running either of our sideboard creatures -- and this card fixes that for us. It also provides our only means of protecting our anvil in conjunction with a
Steel Wall
, as Shunt requires a valid target for the spell we are redirecting and we can't guarantee they will have artifacts on the board. We are only running two copies though, as big plays from this card are highly situational at best.
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Steam Blast
/
Slagstorm
As a general rule, our only answer to token decks is to outrace them with fliers -- something not always possible when large amounts of them hit the board at once or they are ramping in an Eldrazi deck -- and these two cards take card of that for us, though, like Tactics / Expedite above, we only need to run one of the two and which is up to personal preference.
Steam Blast
damages our opponent, takes care of all common (unboosted) tokens, and fails to kill our Dragonlord's Servant, but it also damages us as well, which we might not want (though we generally won't care), and any form of anthem can get some tokens out of kill range.
Slagstorm
, on the other hand, will kill our Servant and doesn't hit the enemy player unless we specifically tell it to, but it also kills tokens through most weak anthems and doesn't damage us, not to mention deals with 3 toughness drops in general. Apples to oranges here, but I prefer Blast at the moment.
Red Elemental Blast
You know what our deck hates? Counterspells. Every deck hates counterspells. Know what our deck hates even more? Counterspells eating our dragons and/or anvils. Know what is outright unacceptable? Blue spells bouncing our entire board / anvil. Fortunately for us, we have a solution to all of these problems in
Red Elemental Blast
, and it even functions as general purpose blue removal for us in a pinch if we need it to. Obviously only useful against heavy blue decks, but when it shines, it shines. :D
Burn from Within
Burn is here to provide a means to exile a target and / or remove indestructible creatures if / when they become a problem for us, though we are only running one due to the relatively rarity of the status.
Stormbreath Dragon
Like the Elemental Blast above, the Stormbreath Dragon is an extremely situational pick that we only want to run against white decks, but it works great where it works.
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- Alternate Strategy Sideboard Cards
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As a general rule, the above build is what we run into most matchups, as artifact removal is far less common than creature removal and the Anvil cost reduction is both significant and reliable with the number of creatures we are running. That said, in the event that large amounts of artifact removal do end up being tossed about, or you happen to prefer a strategy without the anvil that still functions well and has some nasty tricks to it, we do have a backup strategy in these two cards:
Generator Servant
Replacing the Semblance Anvil, the Servant is a cheaper single use replacement that provides both an additional Mirrorwing bounce target and a haste source when we don't have Dragon Tempest on the battlefield. Actually, where we won't be playing as many dragons with this out, it might be worth swapping out Tempest overall, possibly dropping in Temur Battle Rage to close out the game? Hard to say.
Nivmagus Elemental
An odd choice to replace our
Steel Wall
at first glance, the Elemental is actually quite the useful card for us. First off, without the Anvil we don't need the Wall as a potential shunt target, so we free up the slot for a creature that can trade with our opponent's early drops rather than just delay them. Second, we can consume copied spells we bounce off our Mirrorwing to keep the creature relevant for the whole game, something no other creature we are running can boast. Third, we can consume spells at instant speed, meaning an unblocked Nivmagus can suddenly go from a 1/2 to a 5/6 or more without warning when unblocked.
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Still tweaking this and up for any suggestions, but I think I am nearing something I am happy with. :D
