I am trapped, trapped in a pattern of death and rebirth, just like the creatures in my decks. Whether in a Golgari deck, Boros deck, Mardu deck, or now a Rakdos deck my creatures can never stay dead, never stay in the graveyard for long and just like them I also am compelled by forces outside of my control to return. I return to recursion, I return to value. It is a circle of life, a circle of death, it’s the #circus of #VALUE
In this deck I will be taking my experience in graveyard recursion strategies and attempt to branch out into more friendly and fun ways of playing the game. Big dumb dragons and tribal synergies. First, I will lay out the vegetables, the ramp and card draw that is necessary for the deck to work. Then, I will go over the meat of tribal synergies and dragons, then we will have some spicy sides with the reanimation. Finally, I will share some sweet interactions for dessert.
It’s good for you
When a major goal of a deck is to throw out big red bois it important to ramp, this is also true when you are playing such an expensive commander. Land ramp is often seen as safer than artifact ramp so ill cover that first, but we aren’t playing green so we have significantly fewer and less efficient options.
Wayfarer's Bauble
,
Burnished Hart
,
Solemn Simulacrum
, and
Thaumatic Compass
to an extent all allow us to increase the amount of lands hitting the battlefield on of the key factors in victory according to the CZ’s research. Following this is the standard assortment of signet, ring, and stones with
Dragon's Hoard
being the only notable (if obvious) inclusion. The next section of ramp overlaps with the tribal synergies, as such these don’t help us cast every spell in the deck, just the dragons. These include a mix of creatures and artifacts:
Urza's Incubator
,
Herald's Horn
,
Hazoret's Monument
,
Dragonlord's Servant
, and
Dragonspeaker Shaman
getting a few of these out will make building a boardstate and recovering from my opponents’ nefarious plans much easier. A final source of “ramp” is cheating creatures into play
Quicksilver Amulet
and
Spinerock Knoll
achieve this.
Next is card draw due to the fact that our deck contains more bombs than the average deck each individual card should be worth more than our opponents’ cards, as such I included less card draw than I normally would.
Outpost Siege
is a betrayal because we basically have to pick Khans, but close your eyes and think of the queen it will all be over soon.
Read the Bones
,
Night's Whisper
, and
Theater of Horrors
all provide some traditional card advantage while
Faithless Looting
,
Cathartic Reunion
, and some wheel effects let us dump reanimation targets in the yard.
Big and Meaty
So what are we doing? We are casting things like
Utvara Hellkite
,
Steel Hellkite
,
Imperial Hellkite
,
Hellkite Charger
, and even some non-hellkite dragons. This deck is very much a collection of big dumb dragons that hit people in the face, but there are some attempts to get clever. First
Urabrask the Hidden
and
Dragon Tempest
give our dragons haste to allow them to hit things before inevitably soaking up removal and
Kokusho, the Evening Star
and
Ryusei, the Falling Star
have some nifty dies triggers that allow us to alleviate some “dies to removal” worries. Also if we create some token copies of them using
Flameshadow Conjuring
or
Feldon of the Third Path
we will get those death triggers at end of turn, these two effects also allow us to double dip on ETB triggers, something very common with dragons
Skyline Despot
,
Scourge of Valkas
, and
Boltwing Marauder
being the premier examples. So now we have all of these dragons ETBing, fighting, hitting people and planeswalkers, and dying what’s next? Undeath
Never Gone for Long
Between looting, wheels, and dying on the battle field we can reasonably expect a few dragons to end up in our graveyard, but as our commander proves, death is not the end.
Grave Upheaval
is a pretty good card, it can find lands if you need them early in the game and can reanimate a dragon in the late game, and that kind of flexibility is important.
Torrent of Souls
,
Feldon of the Third Path
, and
Whip of Erebos
are other reanimators, with the latter two being repeatable, which is nice. Speaking of repeatable, Palace Siege picking Khans is another betrayal but a necessary one.
Spicy Combos
This list is meant to be more casual than competitive, and as such there are no infinite combos, but
Flameshadow Conjuring
allows for some crazy plays. If you copy
Bladewing the Risen
you get two dragons from your yard to the battlefield, copy
Ryusei, the Falling Star
or
Kokusho, the Evening Star
for an instant trigger of their death abilities.
Dragonspeaker Shaman
will discount dragons for 4 that turn allowing for an effectively free spell.
