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Tarkir: Dragonstorm will be the long-awaited return to the plane of Tarkir. A savage landscape that's ruled by 5 factions of powerful Dragons. As we move closer and closer to the release we'll get a deeper view into the world and what these monstrosities have in store for us! Let's take a look at the principal creature type of Tarkir and sort out some staple cards we can use to build our Commander deck.
There are two relatively simple decks to start a new player with when playing Commander. The first is Kindred, creatures of the same type that synergize with each other. The second is Battlecruiser. Battlecruiser, also called Stompy, is a deck archetype that overwhelms our opponents with big creatures. Some common Battlecruiser creature types are dinosaurs, beasts and, in the case of today's article, Dragons. Today, we'll combine Kindred synergies and Battlecruiser beats to bring you some staples that everyone should be including in their Dragon decks.
The Leader of the Pack
A large group of Dragons is called a "thunder," and every thunder of Dragons needs a leader. Selecting our Commander is the first part of deck construction and will be important for determining the colors we play. Most Dragons in MTG are Red but with the advent of Adventures in the Forgotten Realms and Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate there have been more Dragons of varying colors for us to build around. Here are the top 5 most popular Dragon commanders:
Two of the five Dragons here represent every color in Magic, giving us access to almost any card we want! Once you've scoped out your Commander of choice, you can feel free to start brewing!
Taking Off
The epic downfall of Dragons is the fact that most of them have incredibly high mana costs. This high cost necessitates a very reasonable ramp package in our deck to get us to the cards we want as efficiently as possible. Cards like Dragonlord's Servant and Dragonspeaker Shaman will reduce the cost of our Dragon spells while the Orbs of Dragonkind will give us mana and extra benefits towards Dragons. The Carnelian Orb of Dragonkind provides Red mana, but if we use that mana on a Dragon, that Dragon gets haste until the end of turn. Also check out Lapis Orb of Dragonkind and Jade Orb of Dragonkind for additional benefits. While we've included the Dragon specific ramp artifacts and creatures there are several generic options as well. Urza's Incubator and Herald's Horn are easy cards to include to bring out our Dragons even faster!
Bring the Thunder
Believe it or not, it's best to play Dragons in our Dragon theme deck. There are a handful of staple Dragons that are almost always auto included. Lathliss, Dragon Queen and Utvara Hellkite create additional Dragon tokes for us to smash our opponents with. Balefire Dragon, Scourge of Valkas and Terror of the Peaks all do direct damage on behalf of our Dragons. We can even offset the cost of our other Dragons by playing cards like Savage Ventmaw and Klauth, Unrivaled Ancient. There are so many Dragons in all different variations that it should be easy for you to find something to suit any deck.
The Dragon's Hoard
As of late, Dragons in MTG have become synonymous with Treasure Tokens. What's a Dragon without its hoard? Dragons like Old Gnawbone, Ancient Copper Dragon and Cavern-Hoard Dragon create us tons of treasures when we deal combat damage. Ganax, Astral Hunter, Goldspan Dragon and Rapacious Dragon give us treasures as they enter. These treasures have the potential to put us at parody or ahead of the board. Given that the average cost of a Dragon is 6 mana, creating treasure tokens is a dynamite way to fill the skies with the winged beasts.
Finishers
Dragons have awesome game ending potential. Besides being giant creatures with high stat values, some of them hold unique abilities that boost our damage or even flat out win the game. Hellkite Tyrant checks to see if we have twenty or more artifacts at the beginning of our upkeep. If we meet that requirement we win the game. She works super well with all of our treasure producers. Dragons like Twinflame Tyrant increase the damage we deal while Atarka, World Render would give all of our Dragons double strike. We also have potential combo pieces like Hellkite Charger and Scourge of the Throne to give us extra combat steps.
There are a metric ton of cards that we could include in the Dragon archetype. With few exceptions we've only looked at cards that actually are Dragons. Depending on the commander you pick you have the potential to open up into the entire color pie. Commanders like The Ur-Dragon and Tiamat will give you maximum potential while a single color commander like Lathliss, Dragon Queen will still have more options than you could shake a stick at. Hopefully this mini-primer gives you a few ideas for when Tarkir: Dragonstorm drops.
