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Xenagos, God of Dragons *Primer*

Commander / EDH* Aggro Competitive Dragons Flying Primer Ramp RG (Gruul) Stompy Trample

Jack-Frost

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Creature (29)

Land (34)

Instant (8)

Sorcery (7)

Commander (1)

Commander: Xenagos, God of Revels

Artifact (13)

Enchantment (7)

Maybeboard

Creature (4)

Sorcery (1)

Land (2)

Artifact (1)

Enchantment (1)

Instant (1)

Greetings! Welcome to my Xenagos, God of Revels dragon tribal deck. I've been working on and tweaking this deck for many years now and I’m honestly really happy with how it has turned out. I've tried to keep the power level from being too high, or the dragons too oppressive as I want this to be a deck that people are willing to actually play against and have fun with. As such, this deck has become extremely fast and efficient, but has thankfully kept from becoming oppressive.

The key to this deck is acceleration. Rather than filling our deck with lots of targeted removal, disruption, or other such slower protections, we focus on pure, unbridled, speed. We're a dragon deck with a commander who can effectively double our power and toughness and give us haste, not to mention is extraordinarily frustrating to remove. As such, we're always going to be one of the targets and threats on the board. There's no getting around that. So, rather than try and be a nice midrange deck, we're going to put the pressure on them early. We just need to get to 5 or 6 mana, and can reliably do that by turn 3 - 4. Our game plan is to put the pressure on our opponents from the beginning and force them to react to us rather than the reverse.

Remember, our commander is very difficult to remove and even harder to remove multiple times. Drop Xenagos, God of Revels out and then your first dragon the following turn. I try and keep a spare dragon in hand if possible in case of a board wipe or removal, but feel free to keep dropping them and attacking. That's our game plan. A tiny bit of removal and disruption to clear what we need out of the way, and lots of dragons that synergize with each other and obliterate our opponents.

Cards like Birds of Paradise, Goblin Anarchomancer, Nature's Lore, and Exploration are some of the many forms of acceleration we use to get to 6 mana faster than our opponents, putting them on the backfoot from the start and never letting up. This is a deck that doesn’t want to initially take its time setting up. We can, and the more time we have the stronger we get, but if we let our opponents have too much time to get set up, they’ll level the playing field and then we’re in it for the long haul.

When our opponents get set up, we bring out the limited removal we carry to disrupt the board just enough that we can start pressuring them once more. It’s the reason we run cards such as Beast Within, Krosan Grip, Pyroblast, and Chaos Warp. The smallest chink in their armor is enough to fly an entire thunder of dragons through it. One hit from a Balefire Dragon that’s been doubled by Xenagos, God of Revels blows their board wide open. A hit from an Ancient Copper Dragon or Old Gnawbone can set us up with mana for the rest of the game, and even attacking with Klauth, Unrivaled Ancient or Tyrant's Familiar can pave the way forward.

Overall, after the better part of a decade piloting this deck, I’ve found it to be fast, dynamic, and a lot of fun to play. We’ve really focused on speed and efficiency over protection and disruption. It projects power and becomes the focus of the game sometimes, but paces things right and has enough vulnerabilities that it’s still fun to play against. A Couple of Points on Some of the Card Choices:

Creatures:

Ignoring the fact that we are purposely a dragon tribal deck, I generally prefer my offensive creatures to have flying as it allows us to bypass almost all chump blockers and things that would get in our way and keep us from pressuring our opponents. Speed is the key to this deck.

Hellkite Tyrant has been removed as it's honestly not a very fun card to play against. I ran it for many years, but in all that time I think I won with its ability only a handful of times and upset my friends many many more. It's just not worth it.

Instants and Sorceries:

Pyroblast: The one problem we run into is when people counter and stop our commander from being cast. Losing the doubled power and toughness is frustrating, but losing the haste is the main problem. Without being able to play our dragons and immediately attack we lose the surprise and initiative and give our opponents a full round to plan around and deal with us and our dragons. We lose the ability to pressure them effectively, something integral to our deck. As such we 4 separate cards to stop that, the only real deviation from the high efficiency plan we are following. Between Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast preventing the blue counterspells and removal, Deflecting Swat to redirect the point removal, and Heroic Intervention to deal with all the rest, we’re pretty well covered.

Last March of the Ents: We do have a few major ways to drop a lot of dragons at once and really end the game. Assuming the game goes on long enough, we’ll usually have a ton of spare mana, a spare dragon or two in hand to replay after board wipes and removal, and are at the point where we need to drop a gigantic board and close out the game. That’s where cards like Genesis Wave, Last March of the Ents, See the Unwritten, and Selvala's Stampede come in. They’ll rapidly fill our board with powerful dragons that will cause one of two things to happen. Either we’ll be able to attack with our dragons and close out the game, or they will draw out the board wipes our opponents are holding. We’re happy either way, as most board wipes will not remove our commander (though we’ll have enough mana to recast him anyway), leaving us free to drop our spare dragons and attack our opponents now empty boards.

Nature's Lore, Three Visits: These cards are generally superior to ones such as Rampant Growth, Kodama's Reach, and Cultivate as they allow you to search for ANY forest, including dual lands that have the forest subtype, and in addition they come in untapped. However, this is only true if you run multiple lands that can come in untapped and have that subtype (such as Stomping Ground, Cinder Glade, Taiga, etc.) If you do not run such lands, and/or prefer a more budget friendly deck, feel free to replace these.

Multi-combat/multi-turn: In an effort to keep the power level down I have removed all of the multi-combat and multi-turn cards in this deck.

Thank you for taking a look at my Primer for Xenagos, God of Dragons *Primer*. Please feel free to post any thoughts or suggestions in the comments as I love working with people on decks and every opportunity to improve them is appreciated. In addition, I’m happy to explain any other card choices and you’re welcome to use this deck list as Xenagos always loves new homes to cause chaos.

Feedback and +1’s are always appreciated!

Thanks all! Enjoy!

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Casual

96% Competitive

Revision 48 See all

(3 days ago)

+1 Rogue's Passage maybe
+1 The Fire Crystal main
+1 Tibalt's Trickery maybe