A little bit about me.

For the last two and a half years, I've been in graduate school getting my Master's Degree in Choral Conducting. (I'm the dude who waves his arms around in front of a choir.) It's been wonderful - incredibly busy, with a ton of work involved, but I've loved being in school. I graduated in December.

Since then, one of the biggest changes in my life is I've been able to read books I actually want to read again. In grad school, I read what my professors asked me to read or I read things I was researching. Fascinating? Absolutely. But not my choice, and not for the sheer purpose of reading for pleasure.

Since finishing, I've been reading again, and I feel like I have some catching up to do! I asked a good friend of mine if I should just suck it up and read Fourth Wing, and she offered to loan it to me.

It didn't take long. I was hooked. I've now read all three books in what is going to be a five-book series.

For those of you who don't know, Fourth Wing is set in a fictional world where two warring nations battle using magic. Our heroine, Violet Sorrengail, is destined to become a dragon rider, the elite warriors in a war. The dragons have their own society, and the way a human becomes a rider is brutal, harsh, and terrifying, with a huge percentage of cadets dying in the process.

Awesome, magic-wielding warriors? Dragons? Warring nations? This seems like something we can port to Magic. If you're a Fourth Wing fan, I hope you find my approach interesting and at least partially correct. If you're not, I hope you'll still see an approach to deck-building which creates a functional deck with a clear theme. I decided to start with the main character.

A note: there will be light spoilers, because many of the card choices are based on events that happen in the book, including Violet's abilities and decisions she makes throughout the series. If you intend to read Fourth Wing and don't like the amount of information you'd get in the average modern movie trailer, consider bookmarking this for after you finish Onyx Storm, the third book. I'll wait.

Violet Sorrengail | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Eris, Roar of the Storm

• Instants (24)
• 1 Aethersnatch
• 1 Archmage's Charm
• 1 Behold the Multiverse
• 1 Brainstorm
• 1 Burst Lightning
• 1 Comet Storm
• 1 Command the Storm
• 1 Contact Other Plane
• 1 Delightful Discovery
• 1 Dominate
• 1 Draconic Lore
• 1 Fury Storm
• 1 Homing Lightning
• 1 Invert Polarity
• 1 Lightning Axe
• 1 Lightning Bolt
• 1 Lightning Storm
• 1 Lightning Strike
• 1 Quick Study
• 1 Radiating Lightning
• 1 Rhystic Lightning
• 1 Riddle of Lightning
• 1 Starstorm
• 1 Storm Strike

• Sorceries (23)
• 1 Acquire
• 1 Arc Lightning
• 1 Blatant Thievery
• 1 Blue Sun's Twilight
• 1 Bribery
• 1 Call for Aid
• 1 Careful Study
• 1 Chain Lightning
• 1 Entrancing Melody
• 1 Environmental Sciences
• 1 Expanded Anatomy
• 1 Illuminate History
• 1 Inevitable Betrayal
• 1 Introduction to Annihilation
• 1 Introduction to Prophecy
• 1 Jagged Lightning
• 1 Knowledge Exploitation
• 1 Mascot Exhibition
• 1 Mercurial Transformation
• 1 Power of Persuasion
• 1 Start from Scratch
• 1 Storm's Wrath
• 1 Teachings of the Archaics

• Enchantments (1)
• 1 Quicksilver Dagger

• Artifacts (11)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Izzet Signet
• 1 Decanter of Endless Water
• 1 Dragon's Hoard
• 1 Izzet Locket
• 1 Leather Armor
• 1 Magnifying Glass
• 1 Quick-Draw Dagger
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Spare Dagger
• 1 Thought Vessel

• Lands (40)
• 10 Island
• 9 Mountain
• 1 Cascade Bluffs
• 1 Castle Vantress
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Fabled Passage
• 1 Ferrous Lake
• 1 Fiery Islet
• 1 Frostboil Snarl
• 1 Molten Tributary
• 1 Mystic Sanctuary
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Riverglide Pathway // Lavaglide Pathway
• 1 Riverpyre Verge
• 1 Shivan Reef
• 1 Stormcarved Coast
• 1 Sulfur Falls
• 1 Temple of Epiphany
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Thundering Falls
• 1 Training Center

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When deciding how to build a deck like this, a few factors are important to consider. Because we don't have the exact card (there's no Fourth Wing Universes Beyond set, at least yet), we necessarily have to make some concessions. Additionally, we have to decide the purpose: are we telling a story, or defining a character? In this case, we're doing the latter. This deck will not act out any of the novels like a play. Instead, it's my attempt to build Violet as a Commander deck.

Violet is many things. She is a dragon rider, bonded (for the first time in history) to two dragons. One of them is a leader among dragon-kind: Tairn, the second-largest dragon on the continent and almost always the one in charge on a battlefield. The other was a rarity, the only golden dragon to ever bond: Andarna, a mystery. (We'll explore decks based on them in the next few articles.) Dragon riders wear black leather uniforms.

Bonding grants riders access to magical power most people lack, because the dragons are profoundly magical. Doing so provides each rider with a powerful ability, known as a signet. "Common" ones (in quotes because none of this is common) are things like wielding ice and fire. Less common are precognition, ability to change or control weather, or the ability to stop other magic. Two factors control what your signet is: need (often times, a particular signet will appear at the time it is needed most) and your personality. Your dragon provides the fuel but not the effect.

Violet, having two dragons, has two signets. The first is lightning, which she can use (by the end of the third book) in a number of powerful and controlled ways. The second, which only appears at the end of Onyx Storm, is dreamwalking - she can experience others' dreams as an observer, granting insight into people's deepest thoughts.

She is a fierce friend and her squad is everything. She regularly puts herself in harm's way to help her friends, but she's not afraid to ask for help when she needs it.

Before she was forced to become a dragon rider, she was going to be a librarian. She had been training to be one, and because of it she is well-read, intelligent, and an excellent researcher.

She is also incredibly emotional, driven by the love she feels for her partner, her friends, and her dragons, and she can sometimes rather blindly drive toward what she feels is the right thing.

She's also an excellent dagger fighter, particularly when thrown. Her precision with thrown blades is quite impressive.

(Three quick notes. Because the dragons are getting decks of their own, I will not be including Tairn and Andarna in this deck. Second, Violet is given dragon-scale armor before she starts, which is incredibly important, but I couldn't find a good way to represent that. Third, Rebecca Yarros, the author, has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. She opted to give these same or similar syndromes to Violet, which makes the physical challenge of dragon riding even harder for her main character. Having the disabilities affects Violet, and is an important part of Violet's experience and journey. However, I felt attempting to demonstrate these aspects of Violet in a trading-card game would be in poor taste, so I'm choosing not to represent that very important - and empowering - aspect of Violet.)

I sat down with my friend and worked through the color combinations of the characters, and Violet was, in many ways, the easiest: Izzet (). She combines intellectual curiosity (research, learning, classes) with passionate abandon (figuring out how to ride a dragon when her muscles don't work particularly well, throwing herself untrained into battles far above her ability because she thinks she should). And while there may be better art or type matching with some other cards, I think Eris, Roar of the Storm should serve us well here.

First, storms cause Lightning, so on-theme. Plus, the more magic she wields, the stronger she gets, and ultimately she calls Dragons to aid her in her battles. Seems pretty good. It also nods to her two dragons (and the rest of her squad) by calling a riot (the name for a group of dragons) to help her in battle.

From there, I added 40 Lands and some ramp. While Eris is expensive, I expect we'll rarely ever pay full price, but we still want to keep up with mana for our more expensive spells. It was nice we got Lands like Training Center (which would be the Flight Field in the novels) and Mystic Sanctuary (Riorson House in Aretia?). We also got some great rocks, like Magnifying Glass (a research tool), Thought Vessel and Decanter of Endless Water (both demonstrations of intelligence), and a pair of signets, which are titled too well to not get inclusion.

After that, I started with her first signet: Lightning. Lightning Bolt is the obvious, but I added a number of others with Lightning and Storm in the name. Even Storm Strike is here. We know we want a bunch of Instants and Sorceries anyway, so this worked well.

Her second signet was trickier, but I decided dreamwalking could be represented by searching through an opponent's Library. Bribery and Acquire both do exactly that. Inevitable Betrayal and Knowledge Exploitation (almost always cast for full price) do too. Blatant Thievery, Blue Sun's Twilight, and Entrancing Melody don't let us search Libraries, just steal stuff, so they're less exact, but I think of it as Violet using the information she has against an opponent.

I love Call for Aid here as an example of her connection to her squad. Violet will call for help when it's needed, and the name of this (despite the effect being different) is a great way to show that bond.

Her studious nature was super easy to represent, because we have great card-draw spells like Careful Study, Illuminate History, Teachings of the Archaics, and Draconic Lore. In Magic, your Library represents all the power you can draw on, and your Hand represents those which you have access to right now. Drawing Cards adds to your abilities in the moment, something Violet does all the time.

And, because she's in college and actively taking classes, we have a series of Lesson cards. Too easy to add those, and they're fun. Introduction to Annihilation sounds like a class she would actually be required to take.

In terms of Violet's equipment, there is, of course, Leather Armor, and the Equipment Quick-Draw Dagger and the Aura Quicksilver Dagger, which don't come close to representing the 20-or-so daggers Violet carries all the time but at least nod to them.

A fun thing about this is the deck works! If I were trying to make this something I actually wanted to play and win with regularly, I'd probably drop a few of the Lightning spells (many of which are designed as removal spells in Limited formats and are tough to swallow with such better removal) and get some better and less-restricted removal spells, but otherwise, it works pretty great. You draw cards to make Dragons, then cast Lightning Bolts to get rid of small threats and buff up those Dragons, then attack with the riot in the air. The lines are interesting, fun, and while the deck should work most of the time, it will feel different because of the various card choices.

I hope you enjoyed this look at a different way to inspire a Commander deck, whether or not you're a Fourth Wing fan.

Thanks for reading.