Upgrading Draconic Dissent

Posted on July 8, 2022

There's truly been no shortage of Commander precons lately. In the span of just a few months, I've now reached my ninth precon upgrade since the beginning of May. That's not a long time at all to get so many decks in! But now we're at the final one until the release of Dominaria United comes along and this one's an absolute doozy of a deck. Goad's gotten a lot more attention over the last couple of years and boy does this deck have it in spades. Let's talk about Draconic Dissent.

Draconic Dissent is a crazy deck. It's genuinely the most chaotic sort of precon I've seen since maybe the old Political Puppets deck from Commander 2011. Where that deck wreaked havoc on game states by making political moves against your opponents, Draconic Dissent simply throws its hands up and goes wild. Using politics to make friends? That's so last decade Commander. This deck - and in turn its commander, Firkraag - are just here to make things as volatile and hostile as it can possibly get.

Let's have a look at the precon list and you'll see exactly what I mean:

Draconic Dissent Precon | Commander | Wizards of the Coast

Commander (1)
1 Firkraag, Cunning Instigator

Planeswalkers (2)
1 Rowan Kenrith
1 Will Kenrith

This deck is actually really awesome. There's definitely been a lot more of a focus on goading strategies lately, but where, say, Kitt Kanto in New Capenna was a goad commander was sort of chaotic and all over the place, Firkraag is far more honed in. Kitt Kanto was about making tokens and maybe goading one or two creatures here and there. Firkraag, on the other hand, ends up getting built in a way that's a lot more in the vein of the old saying, "EVERYONE, GET IN HERE!"

The deck not only features several dragons to set off Firkraag's goad trigger, but there's also tons of other ways here to get your goad on. This is in no small part thanks to several new goad cards coming out of such a heavily dedicated Commander set. What's more, there are tons of other ways to make your opponents attack. Angler Turtle, Goblin Spymaster, Avatar of Slaughter, Pursued Whale, and so on - none of which have appeared in other goad-oriented decks and certainly not in this capacity. It makes games crazy and downright chaotic, but hey, sometimes if you're going to go in on a wild strategy, you might as well go all the way, right?

It's a deck meant to sow chaos, and boy does it ever do it well. But as well as it does things, I also have a lot of issues with the deck as well. Before diving into those, let's check out my updated list:

Draconic Dissent Revamped | Commander | Paige Smith

Commander (1)
1 Firkraag, Cunning Instigator

Planeswalkers (2)
1 Rowan Kenrith
1 Sarkhan, Fireblood

Lands (37)
7 Island
10 Mountain
1 Arch of Orazca
1 Ash Barrens
1 Cascade Bluffs
1 Castle Vantress
1 Command Tower
1 Desolate Lighthouse
1 Flamekin Village
1 Kher Keep
1 Myriad Landscape
1 Path of Ancestry
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Riverglide Pathway // Lavaglide Pathway
1 Shivan Reef
1 Steam Vents
1 Stormcarved Coast
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Surtland Frostpyre
1 Terrain Generator
1 Training Center
1 Wandering Fumarole

Frankly, of all the precons this time around, this was far and away the most challenging as far as upgrades go. That's saying a lot when one relied on an under supported mechanic and another focused on an underutilized tribe. I actually held off on this one initially because I'd so recently covered two goading decks almost back-to-back, but when I sat down to work on it, it proved actually a bit tough to really improve and upgrade at first. In truth, this is because - like I said above - it actually does what the deck is trying to do so well already, but in those things it does well there are also flaws.

The goad aspect required one of the simplest solutions. The precon list has almost all the best goad cards already here. In fact, as I went through the card pool on Magic Online - which I normally use to make my lists - I only pulled up three goad cards that weren't already in the initial precon. Those were Popular Entertainer, Komainu Battle Armor, and Grenzo, Havoc Raiser. I found out a couple goad cards weren't on MTGO due to Conspiracy: Take the Crown never fully releasing on the program, but a lot of those are uninspiring by comparison. As a result, the core theme of goading is extremely well represented here.

When it comes to aspects like the dragons themselves, that's where I'm not so thrilled. Most of the choices are quite good and playable, but less so than they might look at first. It largely comes down to things like personal preference and how much money you are willing to spend. For example, I really don't care for cards like Thunder Dragon or Ryusei, the Falling Star, but others might as they can be a good way to wipe the board in a pinch. I also feel like a deck like this is better suited for a card like Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius rather than Niv-Mizzet, Parun given how few instants and sorceries are in your deck. If anything, it almost feels like there's too little dragons and that the deck relies on a hodgepodge of other ideas instead.

Fikraag only really cares about opponents' creatures attacking one another by force, so he doesn't necessarily need you to be playing dragons. Still, it feels like there's almost too much reliance on non-dragon ways to attack. All of the cards I mentioned previously that cause mass attacks feel in line with the theme of forced attack but simultaneously don't feel like they're quite in flavor with the draconic aspect of the deck. There's also a lot of risk in playing cards like these as there aren't many pillow fort effects that dissuade opposing attacks in these colors, like Propaganda. Cards like Curse of Opulence, Curse of Verbosity, Brash Taunter, Stuffy Doll, and Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs make these forced attacks dangerous and they can very easily backfire. One of the cards meant to get your opponents to not attack - Dissipation Field - can even backfire thanks to the many potent ETB effects in Commander.

The other strategy that baffled me was the couple cards that involve artifacts. I'm mainly referring to Artificer Class and Clan Crafter specifically. They're so out of place it just boggles my mind. Clan Crafter at least makes some sense if you swap it as the deck's alternate commander with Baeloth Barrityl, Entertainer since that has you making lots of treasure tokens. Without that explicit interaction, though, your supply of artifacts you'll want to sacrifice is going to end up extremely sparse. Artificer Class is similar. The cost reduction isn't great and there isn't a density of artifacts to reliably get value off the second part. I'd love it for something like my Sharuum deck, but definitely not here.

The result of all of this was either leave it largely as is and barely upgrade it or give it less of an upgrade and more of a major overhaul. Well, a minor upgrade would be boring, so naturally I sought to give it much more of an overhaul. A lot of the cards I took out were cards I simply don't care for myself. Most of the dragons added in are personal preferences or ones to help push the goad aspect by being cheaper even if they're not quite as good as some higher end options. Crawlspace and Collective Restraint felt like absolutely essential additions to stop opponents attacking you specifically and it's almost criminal that they weren't included here. Since the deck focuses so much on buffing the Commander, I also added in a few cards to stop opponents from picking him off too easily - things like Lightning Greaves and Whispersilk Cloak.

A few other individual cards came up as well. Bident of Thassa makes for an excellent alternative to the forced attack strategy. Instead of making everything always attack all the time and risking getting bowled over yourself, you can take more control over how those attacks happen. Illusionist's Gambit also provides you with a really cool way to stop creatures attacking you and instead forcing them to go at your opponents instead. I also swapped in Sarkhan, Fireblood in place of Will Kenrith. While Rowan Kenrith is quite good and very fitting, there really isn't a lot to work with on the Will side of things, and in fact it feels like he's here to mostly keep them as a pair more than anything. Sarkhan on the other hand gets your dragons down faster and filters through your hand a bit to find what you need.

Going through this list left me somewhat baffled at some of the choices here. In spite of that, you can still have a wild time right out of the box. I feel there are some really simple ways you can better the deck tremendously right away. At the very least remove the artifacts matter cards, because they're pretty worthless in a deck like this. Regardless of what you do with it, it's no doubt to turn your next Commander night on its head. Elect chaos and watch the world burn at the hands of Firkraag.

Paige Smith

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