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.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	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
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (46)

king-saproling on Abaddon's Approach

1 month ago

Personally I would make these swaps:

Exalted Flamer of Tzeentch -> Ruby Medallion
Necropotence -> Syr Carah, the Bold
Rhystic Study -> Spellweaver Helix
Jeweled Lotus -> Reckless Barbarian
Mox Amber -> Cheering Fanatic
Firebrand Archer -> Chart a Course
Dimir Signet -> Sign in Blood
Chromatic Lantern -> Ancestral Vision
Talisman of Dominance -> Knollspine Dragon
Vampiric Tutor -> Niv-Mizzet, Parun
Thought Vessel -> Thrumming Stone
Faithless Looting, Toxic Deluge, Wheel of Misfortune, An Offer You Can't Refuse, Negate, Mana Drain, Chaos Warp, Deadly Rollick, Deflecting Swat, Pongify, Teminate, Stubborn Denial, Lightning Greaves -> 13x Dragon's Approach

AWebb on Solphim, Approach of the Dominus

3 months ago

Looks pretty good, but I would suggest replacing Red Dragon and/or Knollspine Dragon with more powerful cards like Drakuseth, Maw of Flames or Balefire Dragon.

king-saproling on Dragon blink

3 months ago

You might consider these: Worldgorger Dragon, Changeling Hero, Changeling Berserker, Kindred Charge, Knollspine Dragon, Goldspan Dragon, Xorn, Academy Manufactor

eliakimras on miirym , need recommendations

5 months ago

Hello! I saw your deck help tag and wanted to give some insight.

I don't run Miirym as commander, but I do have her in the 99 in Smashing Faces with the Ur-Dragon, and she always pushes me to victory whenever she's allowed to stick on the battlefield.

Some areas you might want to change to improve your consistency:

1 - Ramp

• Farseek and Fellwar Stone are great for fixing for multiple colors of mana. You might take out Birds of Paradise (dies so easily), Sakura-Tribe Elder (fixes for only one color) and Sword of Once and Future (no synergy with dragons) for them.
• Skyshroud Claim is great for the same reasons above. Frontier Siege never impressed me in a multicolor deck, because I often need colors outside of {G}.
• If you run the suggestions above, you probably need more fetchable dual lands: Ketria Triome, Breeding Pool, Steam Vents, Stomping Ground, Sheltered Thicket, Wooded Ridgeline.
• If you run Into the North, you can also use Highland Forest, Rimewood Falls, Volatile Fjord and some snow basics (Snow-Covered Forest, Snow-Covered Island, Snow-Covered Mountain) to fetch.

2 - Draw/Haste

• It is tough to cast Tribute to the World Tree in a 3-color deck without Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth or Chromatic Lantern on the battlefield. Maybe you want Temur Ascendancy instead.

3 - Removal/Boardwipes

• Chain Reaction cleans your own dragons. Curse of the Swine should get rid of your opponents' most problematic creatures. If you face a lot of token decks, Surtland Frostpyre is a boardwipe on a land that leaves most of your dragons alive.
• Green Sun's Twilight could be Chaos Warp as a second Beast Within.

4 - Protection

• In my dragons deck, I often want protection and haste for more than one creature. Swiftfoot Boots got swapped out for Asceticism.
• Slip Out the Back could instead be Heroic Intervention (it has good synergy with Blasphemous Act).
• If you don't want to be attacked, Propaganda might deter more attackers than Fog.
• Can you cast Counterspell and Bane's Contingency reliably? Swan Song or Arcane Denial might be easier to cast considering your manabase.

5 - Card draw

• Rishkar's Expertise, Garruk, Primal Hunter and Return of the Wildspeaker are the cream of the crop of green card draw. You might want to remove Blur, Essence Flux and Ghostly Flicker for them. (Instead of running flicker effects to save your creatures, it might be better to just run more threats in case they are dealt with - and card draw helps with that.)

6 - Better threats

• Dragon Broodmother creates tokens at a much faster pace than Dragonmaster Outcast.
• Korlessa, Scale Singer never impressed me. Knollspine Dragon is way better at drawing cards.
• Overwhelming Stampede wins games harder than Thundermaw Hellkite.
• I would take out Flameblast Dragon for Utvara Hellkite.

7 - Some utility lands you might want to run

• Exotic Orchard, Unclaimed Territory and Secluded Courtyard fix your colors.
• Haven of the Spirit Dragon fixes your colors and bring Dragons back from the dead.
• Littjara Mirrorlake clones one of your Dragons.
• Blighted Woodland and Myriad Landscape ramp you into Miirym.

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

1 year ago

• Drakuseth, Maw of Flames + Ancient Copper Dragon

• Knollspine Dragon + Reckless Fireweaver

Rhadamanthus on 32 Sustainable Spells to Burn Body Fat

1 year 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

1 year 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

1 year 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.