Dwarves, Dragons, and Mana Rocks!
Introduction & Inspiration:
I started to brew this deck the moment I saw Roxanne, Starfall Savant - it seemed very fun to me to create a ton of little mana rocks that would also ping the opponent or their creatures. I expected this deck to be a janky mid-tier deck, but at least in my playgroup, Roxanne has become an absolute monster. Before Outlaws of Thunder Junction I was already looking at trying to make a Gruul treasure deck, a way for me to recapture one of my favorite decks from the Adventures in the Forgotten Realms standard cycle: it was a Gruul deck that used pieces like Magda, Brazen Outlaw in conjunction with Xorn and Goldspan Dragon to generate enough treasures to tutor out threats such as Old Gnawbone and Inferno of the Star Mounts to quickly overrun the board and I absolutely loved it. I wasn't sure the same kind of idea, dwarves and dragons, would work the same in EDH. I looked at other commanders such as Jaheira, Ganax, and Baeloth Barrityl, but something about Roxanne called out to me - she offered a way to play these expensive dragons that worked agnostic of treasure, but still worked with treasure synergies such as Doubling Season and Parallel Lives, and from there the deck was born out of scrolling EDHREC and looking at other people's decks on TappedOut to get an idea of what worked and what didn't.
Dwarves:
The only reason we run dwarf synergies is because both Magdas are good for us. We want to fish either out with Dwarven Recruiter to kick everything into high gear, ideally, but the dwarves aren't bad for us overall - they offer treasure generation, artifact removal, and even board interaction on some interesting cards that don't see much play. Pillardrop Warden seems like the odd dwarf out in this deck, but it's included almost solely for its synergy with Second Harvest, making it a terrifying win condition. Alternatively, it can be used as a means to recur tutors, draw, protection, or interaction.
Dragons:
Many of our dragons combo together quite nicely - one serves as the mana generator (Ancient Copper Dragon, Old Gnawbone) and the other serves as the tactical nuke (Hellkite Igniter, Inferno of the Star Mounts). The latter can use mana to effective OTK opponents, while the other generates large amounts of mana that can then be taken advantage of via extra token generation, Jaheira, and Roxanne.
Mana Rocks:
The primary purpose of this deck is to use Roxanne, Starfall Savant's ETB and combat effects to generate as many meteorites as possible, both for the purpose of ramp, but also for dealing damage. To this end we include things such as token doublers, Red enchantments that make the opponents take more damage, creatures that deal damage on artifacts entering board, and a variety of either extra combat effects or copy effects. Specifically regarding ramp, Roxanne's effect doesn't only apply to meteorites! Treasures and icy manaliths (from Svella, Ice Shaper) tap for an additional land as well, which can be used in combination with creatures like Jaheira and our variety of treasure generators to either slingshot past other players at the table, or to pump one of our mana dump dragons to end the game.
Other Tools & Tips:
Like any responsible deck does, we run a decent number of both interactive elements and protection. That said, if Roxanne dies, that's not always a bad thing - that's another chance to activate her ETB effect. We're most vulnerable to artifact removal, and the only tool we have to stop that is Darksteel Forge - 9-mana seems expensive, but Roxanne's doubling of token mana means that we can realistically get it out between turns 5 and 7, depending on how many ramp spells we hit.
Sideboard:
The sideboard mostly consists of additional forms of interaction. Many are a bit specific to run normally, but do well into specific matches.
Maybeboard:
The maybeboard is primarily composed of an additional mana dump dragon and Red's counterspell options. These can be good, and could easily be switched out to the sideboard, but I'm not quite sure it's worth it to do quite yet. Having counters is nice, but 2/3 of our counter options only effect single-target spells, which isn't what they would be most useful for (we want them primarily to stop things like Vandalblast, not to protect Roxanne). Tibalt's Trickery is the standout exception to his, and it might just move to the sideboard because of it. The other thing to note in the maybeboard are two artifact tutors in Kuldotha Forgemaster and Skyship Weatherlight - these would likely be extremely helpful solely to make Darksteel Forge a more consistent part of our gameplan since one of our biggest weaknesses is artifact removal. The only reason they're maybeboard cards and not sideboard or mainboard cards is that they're currently untested in this deck.
Future Goals:
The goals for this deck are simple; I want to make the core gameplay loop of -
- Ramp into a token doubling effect
- Play Roxanne
- Generate meteorites via ETB, combat, and copies
- End game
More consistent and oppressive. That goal caused Tibalt's Trickery and the artifact tutors to be added to the maybeboard for testing, and could inspire much change in the deck moving forward. As mentioned previously, our greatest weakness at the moment is artifact removal: having the board wiped clean of meteorites and treasures makes it both infinitely harder to replay Roxanne after she's removed, but also nigh impossible to win through our mana dump dragons. The goal would be to either make the deck more resilient to this through the addition of ways to tutor Darksteel Forge, adding more protection that effects our artifacts, or adding counters that can stop a Vandalblast. Many of these tools exist in the maybeboard, but I'm certain there are more tools out there that I haven't considered running yet, and they'll likely be seen and added over time.
