Sarkhan sees a Snake

Commander / EDH Clone Dragons Flying Tokens Treasure UR (Izzet)

ShamiShini

Land (38)

• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Ferrous Lake
• 1x Haven of the Spirit Dragon
• 7x Island
• 1x Mines of Moria
• 8x Mountain
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 1x Prismatic Vista
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Rivendell
• 1x Riverglide Pathway  ^Flip
• 1x Rogue's Passage
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Secluded Courtyard
• 1x Shivan Reef
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Stormcarved Coast
• 1x Sulfur Falls
• 1x Temple of the Dragon Queen
• 1x Temple of the False God
• 1x Thundering Falls
• 1x Training Center
• 1x Unclaimed Territory
• 1x Volcanic Island

Sorcery (8)

• 1x Anzrag's Rampage
• 1x Irenicus's Vile Duplication
• 1x Jeska's Will
• 1x Raise the Palisade
• 1x Seize the Spoils
• 1x Vandalblast
• 1x Windfall
• 1x Winged Words

Creature (23)

• 1x Ancient Copper Dragon
• 1x Ancient Silver Dragon
• 1x Astral Dragon
• 1x Balefire Dragon
• 1x Cavern-Hoard Dragon
• 1x Dragonlord's Servant
• 1x Dragonspeaker Shaman
• 1x Firkraag, Cunning Instigator
• 1x Ganax, Astral Hunter
• 1x Goldspan Dragon
• 1x Hellkite Tyrant
• 1x Iymrith, Desert Doom
• 1x Kolaghan Warmonger
• 1x Lathliss, Dragon Queen
• 1x Minion of the Mighty
• 1x Nogi, Draco-Zealot
• 1x Renari, Merchant of Marvels
• 1x Roaming Throne
• 1x Scourge of the Throne
• 1x Swashbuckler Extraordinaire
• 1x Terror of the Peaks
• 1x Utvara Hellkite
• 1x Wrathful Red Dragon

Instant (10)

• 1x Bolt Bend
• 1x Deflecting Swat
• 1x Draconic Lore
• 1x Dragon's Fire
• 1x Fierce Guardianship
• 1x Filter Out
• 1x Great Train Heist
• 1x Sarkhan's Triumph
• 1x Silumgar's Scorn
• 1x Valakut Awakening  ^Flip

Commander (1)

Artifact (17)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Carnelian Orb of Dragonkind
• 1x Cursed Mirror
• 1x Dragon's Hoard
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Fire Diamond
• 1x Herald's Horn
• 1x Izzet Signet
• 1x Lapis Orb of Dragonkind
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Orb of Dragonkind
• 1x Ruby Medallion
• 1x Sky Diamond
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Creativity
• 1x Urza's Incubator

Enchantment (2)

• 1x Dragon Tempest
• 1x Rhystic Study

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Sarkhan, Fireblood

---

Maybeboard

Instant (6)

• 1x An Offer You Can't Refuse
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Negate
• 1x Stubborn Denial
• 1x Stubborn Denial
• 1x Three Steps Ahead

Artifact (2)

• 1x Machine God's Effigy
• 1x Mana Crypt

Enchantment (5)

• 1x Crucible of Fire
• 1x Kindred Discovery
• 1x Reflections of Littjara
• 1x Rising of the Day
• 1x There and Back Again

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Sarkhan the Masterless

Creature (4)

• 1x Dragonmaster Outcast
• 1x Drakuseth, Maw of Flames
• 1x Lozhan, Dragons' Legacy
• 1x Scourge of Valkas

Land (1)

• 1x Ancient Tomb

---

This is my attempt at a pretty fast Izzet Dragon Deck with Clone and Treasure Subthemes.

Any comments and tips to improve the deck are always appreciated!

General Strategy

The deck relies on getting the commander out early and having access to multiple pieces of cost reduction and or mana rocks to play big value dragons ahead of curve. Using the commanders ability to copy any dragon you play, once you can drop a good one on turn 4-5, you should be able to skyrocket ahead using the value provided by duplicating your winged lizards.

Subthemes

Treasure Subtheme:

• The first Thing that any dragon of course must do, is to create a proper treasure hoard! (No, not that Dragon's Hoard). What is a dragon without his treasures but a oversized lizard??

• On a more mechanical level, the treasures serve the primary purpose of providing the nescessary gas to continue playing threats. Since Dragons are big beefy boys, they usually also have big beefy costs. Generating treasures should help being able to cast them consistently and just when we need them.

• The third and final use of treasures is as a Wincon. This is not the primary way to close games but it can provide a bit of resilience and variance to the usual Gameplan of hitting face until you win. Hellkite Tyrant can easily win outright if you have previously dropped a few mana rocks and generated a decent amount of treasure. Just with Ancient Copper Dragon and Hellkite Tyrant alone you could win in a dream scenario! Swashbuckler Extraordinaire also provides a secondary use for treasures, allowing you to give your dragons double strike, which can often be the difference between a stalemate board and a outright victory.

The Treasure Subtheme consists of the following cards and synergies:

• Mines of Moria: treasure generation on a land, sweet!

• Seize the Spoils: nice cheap card replacement and treasure generation.

• Ancient Copper Dragon: Huge Hitter that can easily snowball if it gets to connect even once. With Sarkhan in play, getting the payoff is usually easy.

• Cavern-Hoard Dragon: Nice synergistic Treasure generator, not only does it discount itself but its generation scales with the overall board well and the keywords on this puppy make for a mean board presence even without the additional benefits.

• Ganax, Astral Hunter: Another synergistic generator that effectively makes all your dragons cost one mana less, but lets you store this discount. Perfect for starting a new treasure hoard.

• Goldspan Dragon: Both generator and payoff in that it doubles the effectiveness of out treasures. Its well known how powerful this Chonker is so expect removal.

• Hellkite Tyrant: Main Payoff for the subtheme and a alternate Wincon. Even without the treasure subtheme, stealing all your opponents artifacts is just insanely powerful.

• Swashbuckler Extraordinaire: One-of treasure generator and provides a very powerful alternative use for your treasures. Also, Swashbuckler Dragon?!?!? Yes Please!

Clone Subtheme:

Since our Commander, Sarkhan, Soul Aflame already natually has a copy ability, it only makes sense to include some further cards that can amplify our draconic power! This is the smaller and less fleshed out of the two subthemes and does not really include its own payoffs and wincons. The main goal of this subtheme is to get additional value of either strong dragons on the board, or the fact that we can clone game pieces to create extra dragons for effects like Utvara Hellkite or Dragon Tempest.

Cards:

• Irenicus's Vile Duplication: Just a straight up Clone that also gives flying and avoids the legendary rule. Amazing either to copy Sarkhan, Soul Aflame himself, or really any Dragon you got.

• Astral Dragon: Can copy noncreature permanents and also makes them dragons! This also works on enemy permanents so feel free to create two 3/3 Dragon Zendikar Resurgent, or just copy your own card: Dragon Temptest for complete lunacy.

• Cursed Mirror: Not only a temporary clone, but also a mana rock, this cards power is well known. But with so many dragons around, being able to copy one so cheap, even for just a turn, is extra strong.

• Honorable Mention: Roaming Throne: Its not technically a Clone, but it does just what we want from a clone card anyways, by doubling our relevant triggers like Utvara Hellkite, Ancient Silver Dragon or Balefire Dragon.

Cards and Categories

Ramp

• Dragonlord's Servant: Cheap Dragon Cost Reduction #1.

• Dragonspeaker Shaman Cheap Dragon Cost Reduction #2.

• Nogi, Draco-Zealot Cheap Dragon Cost Reduction #3.

• Arcane Signet, Fellwar Stone, Fire Diamond, Izzet Signet, Mana Crypt, Mind Stone, Ruby Medallion, Sky Diamond, Sol Ring, Talisman of Creativity: Generic Mana Rocks.

• Carnelian Orb of Dragonkind: Dragon Flavored Mana Rock #1

• Cursed Mirror: Super Powerful Manarock with huge value stapled on, read more in the clone subtheme chapter.

• Dragon's Hoard: Dragon Flavored Mana Rock #2.

• Herald's Horn: Cheap Dragon Cost Reduction #4.

• Lapis Orb of Dragonkind: Dragon Flavored Mana Rock #3.

• Orb of Dragonkind: Dragon Flavored Mana Rock #4.

• Urza's Incubator: Cheap Dragon Cost Reduction #5.

Draw

• Haven of the Spirit Dragon: Dragon Recursion on a land, sweet.

• Jeska's Will: No introduction needed here, its just a insane Impulse Draw + Ritual Spell that works in any red deck.

• Seize the Spoils: Small Card replacement plus treasure generation. read more in the treasure subtheme chapter.

• Windfall: A wheel to both get rid of dead hands, dig for dragons and disrupt our opponents game plans.

• Winged Words: Small flier-syngeristic plus one draw spell.

• Ancient Silver Dragon: The Money Piece of Card Draw.

• Iymrith, Desert Doom: A good midgame Dragon to refill your hand.

• Kolaghan Warmonger: Nice digging for dragons in Early to Midgame.

• Draconic Lore: Another draw spell that synergizes with the dragon theme.

• Sarkhan's Triumph: Dragon Tutor on Instant Speed, yes please!

• Valakut Awakening  : Another tool to get rid of dead hands and dig for answers or gas. Also doubles as a land of course.

• Sarkhan, Fireblood: Small little Looting mechanic on a flavorful planeswalker.

• Dragon's Hoard: The most flavorful manarock and carddraw in the list.

• Herald's Horn: Both cost reduction and helps find some more dragons. Since it cant reshuffle the card if you cant draw it off the trigger, its not that great value.

• Orb of Dragonkind: A Manarock that can be popped to dig for a dragon in a pinch.

• Rhystic Study: Do I need to say anything here? Maybe that you can remove this to make space for more proactive cards if you want.

• Firkraag, Cunning Instigator: Pretty decent to create a bit of chaos on the board and break stale boardstates. It also provides some carddraw and pontentially grows over time, but it seems a bit slow. It does work great with Sarkhan though.

Other Value Engines

The Treasure and Clone based Value Engines are described in the Subthemes Chapter.

• Hellkite Tyrant: Even though its described in the treasure theme section, i want to highlight how insanely powerful this chonker is. Even if you ignore that it can straight up win the game, stealing opponents artifacts is one of the strongest parity breaking effects you can have in a tribal creature decks.

• Lathliss, Dragon Queen: Get a 5/5 Dragon Token whenever you play a non-token Dragon. Simple but effective, and can boost your dragon count easily.

• Lozhan, Dragons' Legacy: Converts Casting Dragons into targetable damage similar to Dragon Tempest, but works on cast.

• Minion of the Mighty: If you manage to make this little kobold stick and get to attack with at least one dragon in play, you can cheat out biig lizards from your hand. Seems pretty decent.

• Nogi, Draco-Zealot: Apart from making your dragons cheaper, this Kobold also provides an extra 5/5 body during attacks later on.

• Roaming Throne: Yeah... Trigger doubling... so original and not bland at all...

• Utvara Hellkite: Creates an obscene amount of Dragon Tokens obscenely quickly. This is even worse together with Sarkhan, Soul Aflame.

Removal and Protection

• Cavern of Souls: makes Dragons oncounterable.

• Vandalblast: Either targeted or asymmetrical boardwipe artifact removal.

• Balefire Dragon: can remove creatures on dealing combat damage to their controller, provided that they arent too big and he can connect to face first. Works very well with Sarkhan, Soul Aflame.

• Hellkite Tyrant: Stealing Artifacts counts as removal right? Man I just keep mentioning this chonker in every chapter..

• Terror of the Peaks: Removes enemy creatures or lifetotals whenever you play one.

• Wrathful Red Dragon:Somehow protects your dragons by disincentivising opponents from dealing damage to them.

• Bolt Bend and Deflecting Swat: Are both straight up protection pieces to ensure no targeted removal or other targeted shenanigans occur. These are both pretty flexible in stealing opponents value plays if you have the nescessary imagination.

• Dragon's Fire: A small flavorful damage based removal spell, that can deal with pretty huge creatures early on if you have some large dragons in hand.

• Fierce Guardianship and Silumgar's Scorn: Counterspells with conditions to make them cheaper. These are mainly included as protection from boardwipes and other nasty things but can of course be used as disruption pieces aswell.

• Lightning Greaves: Good Ole'

• Great Train Heist: Gives us Protection in being able to untap our board, a wincon in the double combat phase, a combat trick with the first strike AND also synergy with the treasure subtheme, that seems pretty bonkers overall, even if we likely never cast all modes at once.

• Renari, Merchant of Marvels: Giving all your dragons flash seems pretty decent especially together with the treasure generation we have going on. Kinda Protection Kinda value.

Boardwipes

• Raise the Palisade: Symmetry Breaking Board Wipe that doesnt hit dragons. It does hit Sarkhan though unless you can have him copy a dragon beforehand.

• Balefire Dragon: Effectively clears single opponent's boards.

• Filter Out: Get rid of all the pesky enchantments and artifacts (and battles, LOL) that stop you from displaying draconic surperiority.

• Anzrag's Rampage: syngergizes very well with our treasure subtheme.

Wincons

• Hellkite Tyrant: hello again, apart from the obvious hitting face with huge dragons, hellkite provides the clearest wincon in the deck with the treasure subtheme.

• Scourge of the Throne: Gives you extra combat steps which is absolutely lethal in dragon decks.

• Swashbuckler Extraordinaire: Transforms your leftover treasures into double strike for your dragons which can easily close out games with a stalled boardstate.

• Utvara Hellkite: Especially together with Sarkhan, Soul Aflame but also alone, this generates so many huge flier tokens that it becomes challenging not to win.

Changes

After first Playtesting and some 1v1 Games, these are some initial observations for deck updates:

Some candidates for cards to cut are:

• Even though having Sarkhan Planeswalkers like Sarkhan, Fireblood and Sarkhan the Masterless is sweet, and getting extra dragon bodies syngerizes well, they dont seem to provide enough value on their own. They are probably among the first cards to get cut for other tech pieces.

• Jeska's Will is incredibly strong, still, or maybe especially because of this, its a candidate to cut.

• Minion of the Mighty: Even though a one-drop in a dragon deck is a rare sight and its ability packs a punch, firstly having 6+ power attacking means that you are ahead anyways in most cases, and the fast that minion drops in the additional dragon after combat when sarkhan cant make good use of it anymore means that this card can be cut if wanted. It remains a good inclusion powerlevel wise tough.

Some candidates for cards to include are:

• Three Steps Ahead: A great utility piece that provides three useful modes and interacts with the clone subtheme.

• Drakuseth, Maw of Flames: a good alternative dragon to swap for any of the currently included onces. It seems like a worse version of Balefire Dragon, but its effect triggers on attack instead of on damage so it might be worth to consider.

• Scourge of Valkas: another Dragon that can either clear the board of threaten life totals without swinging. This works especially well with sarkhan and tokens.

• Dragonmaster Outcast: Creates huge dragon tokens and is a good target to create clones of.

• Counterspell, Negate, An Offer You Can't Refuse, Stubborn Denial: running just Fierce Guardianship and Silumgar's Scorn alone might be too little, and it can make sense to run a couple more counterspells for protection.

• Kindred Discovery and Reflections of Littjara: Probably the best generic type-matters enchantment.

• There and Back Again: Probably not super powerful but its so cool though!

Date added	2 months
Last updated	3 weeks
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	14 - 0 Mythic Rares 33 - 0 Rares 26 - 0 Uncommons 12 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.61
Tokens	Copy Clone, Dragon 5/5 R, Dragon 6/6 R, Treasure