Gadrak, the Crown-Scourge

psionictemplar on Sarkhan's Dragons of the Sun

2 weeks ago

Ultimately, both Blood Moon and Blood Sun would do the same thing for your deck in letting your lands come in untapped. The ability removal blood sun gives will likely only be relevant in niche situations whereas the Blood Moon can slow your opponents down more often and is probably more useful overall though. But given the number of tapped lands you have, getting either one into play is fairly important to keep up tempo-wise with other strategies, hence my suggestion of including both and additional rituals to get there faster.

If I were to make additional changes here is what I try and why.

-1 Bitter Reunion: Going for the multi-dragon haste kill will be hard because you will need to cast several spells in a turn to make this go from a 2 turn kill to a 1 turn kill combo. Without having a large amount of mana production to fuel this, it will be very difficult.

-1 Indomitable Creativity: The more creatures and artifacts you run, the greater the chances that you will end up a result that isn't what you want. Decks that are built around creativity usually only run 1 or 2 different creatures/artifacts to always ensure that they hit the things they want. As it stands right now, that is not a guarantee with 18 possible cards you could change into.

-2 Xorn: Your only treasure producers are Strike it Rich and There and Back Again which won't give you many chances to make additional treasures. Ask yourself this question, if I get an additional treasure from There and Back Again what is that 1 additional treasure really going to do for me that the other 14 couldn't do already? If the answer is nothing really, do you need There and Back Again? If not, that would only leave Strike it Rich, and that isn't enough to justify running Xorn for.

-1 Bloodthirsty Conqueror: I really don't understand why you've included this. It doesn't really do much that another dragon such as Hoarding Dragon or Gadrak, the Crown-Scourge couldn't do. It doesn't find any other win condition and the psuedo-lifelink effect doesn't really line up with either of your plans to hit with huge amounts of damage in a single turn. Not to mention that casting it depends on having either multiple treasures or a Manamorphose for the black mana portion of it. I really feel like this is a card that will either get stuck in your hand or would be equally effective as any other big red creature which makes it replaceable from my viewpoint.

-1 There and Back Again: By the time you get to 5 mana to cast this you should probably have already presented a way to win the game with. Having to wait an additional turn to get the single mountain out of your deck can be done both cheaper and faster and that's IF! you need the mountain in your deck at all. I don't blame you for having it if you see a lot of Ghost Quarter type effects and it isn't likely to prevent a Goblin Charbelcher activation from winning the game outright. Then you finally have to look at chapter 3's ability which I touched on a bit in the Xorn section.

-1 Irencrag Feat: I've run 4 of these and they get stuck in hand way too often between the inability to cast multiple in a turn (for future spells) and the 4 mana cost itself. Going down to 3 copies will help prevent having redundant copies in hand and freeing up space for other things.

Additions: +4 Desperate Ritual: Probably the best 2 mana ramp spell you could have especially if you can manage to splice additional copies onto it. (Just a piece of rules advice for understanding: Ruby Medallion will only reduce the cost of the original copy but not any of the copies that are spliced on to it.)

+3 Blood Moon: Primarily here as an additional way to help your lands come in untapped without you needing to pay life.

I think that once you try these suggestions out, you'll like them. However, this is your deck and you do whatever you want with it. Good luck and if you have any more questions or want me to try and explain my reasonings a little bit more I'll try to help you the best I can.