Knollspine Dragon
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Penny Dreadful Legal
Vintage Legal

Knollspine Dragon

Creature — Dragon

Flying

When Knollspine Dragon enters the battlefield, you may discard your hand and draw cards equal to the damage dealt to target opponent this turn.

Saljen on Treasure, Dwarves, and Dragons; OH MY!

5 months ago

Rhadamanthus on 32 Sustainable Spells to Burn Body Fat

7 months ago

I think leaning even more into the "utility" side of searching up dragons would be a good idea. I see you already have Knollspine Dragon in the Maybeboard, which I definitely agree with. I would also recommend Thunder Dragon and Bogardan Hellkite for removal (maybe even Lava-Field Overlord if you need more), as well as Hoarding Dragon to dig up your Thrumming Stone or Spellweaver Helix. Astral Dragon could also do some funny stuff in the right circumstances.

I feel like Dragon Tempest and Anger are only actually good with Ancient Copper Dragon and Ancient Silver Dragon. If you ever take those dragons out, then I think those haste enablers can also come out to make way for more useful cards.

Decidares on Ur-gonomics

7 months ago

Hey Eldmoi, thanks for the info. There's a quite a bit I would recommend optimizing. The long story short is that most of the dragons I'd recommend are already on my budget primer that you've seen and my super budget deck list that was part of the primer but is also available here if you're interested here.

First of all, you need to make sure your deck has a decent amount of ramp to cast your awesome dragons within a reasonable amount of time. If you are on a budget then I'd recommend Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, and Sakura-Tribe Elder at the very least. Other options for cheap ramp are Farseek, Wild Growth, and Fertile Ground. If you want to further optimize ramp, then adding in Nature's Lore and Three Visits on top of some forest based shock lands (e.g. Stomping Ground or triomes (e.g. Ziatora's Proving Ground would be ideal.

Second, you want to optimize your mana base by minimizing the number of taplands and ensuring you have the colors you need. Any tap lands that tap for only 2 colors (e.g. guild gates) could safely be dropped for basic lands. Tri-lands like you mentioned are decent enough to start off, because they can tap for 3 colors, but even those are suboptimal in the face of options like Dragonskull Summit and Blood Crypt. Furthermore, almost 50% of your deck requires red mana, so I'd ensure your lands reflects that.

Regarding the planeswalkers you have, I'd say Sarkhan, Fireblood is the most useful (distantly followed by Sarkhan Unbroken and Kiora, Master of the Depths). I'd consider cutting the others.

Some things off the top of my head for instants and sorceries: I would consider Crucible of Fire to be a win more card. Lozhan, Dragons' Legacy is almost a strictly better Sarkhan's Unsealing. Damn and Farewell are really good board wipes that aren't as mana intensive as some you're running. Garruk's Uprising is a very potent form of card draw. Monster Manual is probably better than Thran Temporal Gateway in most cases.

Finally the dragons. There are so many good dragons to consider, many of which I've mentioned in my deck primer, and many of which are available on most dragon lists online, that I'll focus on highlighting dragons I would recommend removing:

  • Acid-Spewer Dragon - Overcosted and doesn't do much. Deathtouch isn't as useful on a dragon that should be big enough to kill most thing it hits in the first place.

  • Backdraft Hellkite - Most instant and sorceries you have are too expensive or are simply aren't as immediately useful (e.g. don't want to board wipe your own dragons). The most useful ones you run are removal, but at that point you can just play dragons that can inherently remove things like Steel Hellkite.

  • Crosis, the Purger - Hard to save mana to take advantage of its effect. It'll feel bad to take advantage of its effect in casual metas anyways. If you really want to run a dragon like this then Teneb, the Harvester might be more fitting but even then I wouldn't really recommend it, because of the mana investment needed to make it work.

  • Dragonmaster Outcast - Not a good early game play and easy to kill later on.

  • Dream Pillager - This dragon is overcosted and is mostly a means of pseudo card draw. I'd just play an actual card draw card instead like Ancient Craving or Sign in Blood or Rishkar's Expertise.

  • Kargan Dragonlord - Costs too much to do too little. We have so many dragon options, even in budget decks, that vanilla dragons simply aren't worth it.

  • Malfegor - Discarding our hand isn't good to do unless it involves redrawing more cards (e.g. Knollspine Dragon).

  • Necromaster Dragon - Summoning vanilla 2/2 zombie tokens for 2 mana isn't good value in a dragon deck, and you have to go through combat to get it off. In a world where Ancient Gold Dragon exists, it's hard to justify an effect like this. Dragon Broodmother and Lathliss, Dragon Queen and Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm would be far more effective token generators.

There's always more we could do to optimize any deck, including mine for sure, so I'd be happy to comment more later if you'd like. But I also want to emphasize that as long as you and your playgroup are having fun, you really can't go wrong :)

achi11es on Dragons Approach

7 months ago

Correct, you can exile both and then when you cast a Dragon's Approach you get to cast Jeska's Will for free with the spellweaver. Then this is where the luck comes in a bit, if you exile a Dragons Approach with the Jeskas Will exile 3 option you can cast that Dragons Approach with the Mana from the first line of Jeskas Will and repeat the process.

Yes, I believe I have gotten that combo off before. More commonly I will get a few pieces that add up to the same effect. The most common lately has been Locket of Yesterdays + Spellweaver Helix with Seize the Spoils and Dragon's Approach. The locket reduces the cost to 1 red which you spend the treasure from spoils on to keep the chain going, its potentially infinite depending on how unlucky you get with the draws. You can also use the dragons approach castings to cycle your hand with Knollspine Dragon to improve your odds by getting a new hand full of dragons approaches.

Basshunter on Feldon of the Third Path - Loran's Smile (v1.4)

9 months ago

Hi, have you thought about Knollspine Dragon? It's a nice card-draw-engine (even got discard), specially since you can use its ETB any turn you want with Feldon of the Third Path...

Polaris on When to cast Knollspine Dragon? …

10 months ago

Knollspine Dragon is a creature card, which means it can be cast at sorcery speed (same with sorceries, artifacts, enchantments, and planeswalkers). That is, it can be cast only during your main phase and not in response to anything else.

However, you get two main phases. I'll summarize the turn here:

  • Beginning phase (untap, upkeep, draw)
  • Main phase, aka precombat main phase
  • Combat phase (beginning, declare attack, declare block, combat damage, end combat)
  • Main phase, aka postcombat main phase
  • End phase (end, cleanup)

As you can see, you can wait to cast creature and other sorcery speed spells until after combat during your second main phase, and this will usually be the best time to cast Knollspine Dragon.

Necrosis24 on When to cast Knollspine Dragon? …

10 months ago

Knollspine Dragon's trigger goes on the stack when it enters the battlefield and will proceed to resolve unless there is another response. Thus it will check damage that has currently been dealt to target opponent up until this point (current game state). Any damage dealt after the trigger resolves will not draw you cards.

Let's say it is your first main phase and none of your opponents have been dealt damage this turn. When you cast Knollspine Dragon and it's ETB trigger resolves you will draw zero cards. Dealing any damage after this point will not draw you cards either. So even if you move to combat and deal 6 damage to the same target opponent you will not draw any cards from Knollspine Dragon.

Thus in most cases it would be best to cast Knollspine Dragon after combat during your second main phase when your opponents have already been dealt damage.

Fervor and Conjurer's Closet could let you get some good use out of Knollspine Dragon if it is your only creature in hand. In which case casting it before combat wouldn't be so bad.

NTakamura on When to cast Knollspine Dragon? …

10 months ago

When would I cast Knollspine Dragon get his Tigger? So if I cast it before combat then attack do I still get to draw cards? Or do I want to wait until after combat so Knollspine Dragon has something to check?

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