A Tale of Two Temur Decks from Tarkir: Dragonstorm

Posted on April 28, 2025

I often share decks with you here that are starting points. They are the first looks at what I insist are constantly evolving stacks of cardboard that have no "best" or "final" versions. Today I'm going to share the story of a reworked precon deck that got a few games in, and then got turned into a very, very different build. The reasons for taking that left turn at Albuquerque will be laid bare in what I'm calling a Tale of Two Temur Decks.

It all started where many of my tales start, with a precon deck. I nearly always take them apart, and this time was no exception. The Tarkir: Dragonstorm Temur deck was a particularly interesting one because it was calling for me to build yet another seven mana Dragon commander. Dragonstorm is a dragon-focused set, and I very much like playing Dragons in EDH but it was worth looking at both of the options the precon deck gave me.

Ureni of the Unwritten is a 7/7 Spirit Dragon with Flying and Trample who costs 7 mana in Temur colors. What I like about Ureni is that he has an ability that begs to have a Dragon deck built around it. Whenever Ureni enters or attacks I'll look at the top eight cards of my library. I may put a Dragon creature card from among them onto the battlefield. The rest go on the bottom of the library in a random order.

The face commander of the precon deck is much cheaper and has the words "draw a card" in her text box. Eshki, Temur's Roar is a Human Warrior who costs three mana and has a really neat ability. Whenever I cast a creature spell, I'll put a +1/+1 counter on her. If that spell's power (spell, not creature) is 4 or greater, I'll draw a card and if it's 6 or greater, she'll deal damage equal to her power to each opponent. This ability notably cares about the power of the creature card on the stack, so a 0/0 that gets +1/+1 counters on it when it enters play would be a 0/0 on the stack.

Eshki has an awful lot going for her, but she doesn't beg to be the leader of a Dragons deck. I both enjoyed and occasionally suffered through games playing 7 mana Dragon decks led by Velomachus Lorehold and by Beledros Witherbloom last year. The good games were good, if not great. The bad games were over before I was able to get my commander into play. I don't love when that happens, but it happens.

Despite the inherent risks of playing a commander who might not even make an appearance in games where my mana isn't flowing, I decided to build the 7 mana Ureni. Being in Green lets me ramp, and being in Blue opens up a whole lot of fun around playing flicker spells and effects. I even ordered another copy of Displacer Kitten because I really wanted to see how much nonsense I could get up to by trying to get as many Ureni ETBs as possible.

Casual Flicker Ureni

Building Ureni of the Unwritten was going to be a challenge. I'd have to have a critical mass of Dragon cards in order to have as many "hits" as possible with Ureni triggers. I also didn't want to load up on too many Dragons and make the deck top heavy and nearly unplayable if things don't go perfectly. It's a fun balancing act, but there are definitely ways to make it work.

One of those ways only really became possible with the introduction of the many new Omen cards in Tarkir: Dragonstorm. These Dragons have a card frame reminiscent of Adventure cards, but with an important difference. Both can be cast as an instant or sorcery spell, but while Adventures get exiled and can be cast later on, Omens get shuffled back into the deck. That's perfect if one of my goals is to maintain a high number of Dragons in my library in preparation for an Ureni trigger.

I'm running more Omen Dragons than might be wise, alongside flicker effects and some additional tricks.

While I like the Omen Dragons, I don't love them. They're generally smaller than I'd like them to be, and the spells attached to them are rarely amazing. I don't need them to be amazing, but it would be nice to have at least one that I was really, really excited about. Bloomvine Regent has Claim Territory, a Cultivate that only gets Forests, and comes attached to a four-power Flying Dragon with a lifegain ability. Six other Omen Dragons complement this part of the deck, each coming with an extra spell I can use in the early game before Ureni even hits the field.

The aforementioned Displacer Kitten is a fantastic way to get extra Ureni ETBs, as it will let me flicker my commander every time I cast a spell. I'm also running Blur, Essence Flux, and Planar Incision as instant speed spells that will exile a creature and return it to the battlefield. Mirror Mockery is a two-mana aura that will let enchanted creature create a token copy of itself when it attacks. That token will die, but it will still let me dig another 8 cards into my library in my quest for more Dragons. These flicker options are good, but Blade of Selves might be better. When equipped creature attacks I'll get a token copy for each of my opponents not being attacked by the original Ureni. If I'm stuck at a five player table, that could mean three additional triggers and a dig through a full quarter of my library.

I'm not leaning into Clone effects, but I am running Spark Double. That creature is an Illusion that will enter as a copy of a creature I control, and if that creature was legendary it will be nonlegendary. I am also running Mirror Box, a three mana artifact that lets me ignore the legend rule. Add in Panharmonicon and Strionic Resonator and I'm loaded up on ways to get extra triggers. After a few times goldfishing the deck, I did cut a few five and six mana options like Conjurer's Closet, and doing so let me load in a few more Dragons.

I then loaded up on ways to reduce the costs of Dragons, including Sarkhan, Soul Aflame, Dragonlord's Servant, and Nogi, Draco-Zealot from the precon, along with both Temur Battlecrier and Krosan Drover. Temur Battlecrier has the potential to be spectacular, reducing the cost of my spells I cast on my turn by 1 mana for each creature I control with power 4 or greater.

From there, I added a few good dragons along with my usual suite of ramp and removal. Voracious Bibliophile will reward me with card draw for casting a spell that targets, whether that spell is removal like Chaos Warp, or a flicker spell like Blur. Canopy Gargantuan is a great way to make my smaller dragons relevant and my larger dragons lethal threats. This seven mana Green Dragon has flying, ward 2, and an amazing party trick. At the beginning of my upkeep I'll put +1/+1 counters on each of my creatures equal to that creature's toughness. That's simply fantastic, and I expect to see a lot of this Dragon in Green stompy decks in the coming years.

Early Results

I got this list into a few games and the results were mixed.

In games where I might have been up against a faster, higher powered table, my commander never even saw the table. Sometimes you just get stomped, and I don't even mean to suggest a tablemate was pubstomping. EDH is a complicated game, 100 card casual decks have high variance, and a fair deck will sometimes play games that feel pretty unfair to the other players at the table. I had at least one of those games with this deck, and my deck's high mana curve didn't help matters.

I also had some pretty good games, including one that was spectacular. Even in the deck's best game, I had a "whiff" on an Ureni trigger, but once Displacer Kitten was in the list it felt like I was going to have a decent shot in a mid powered game if things went long enough. The deck's best game saw me play out a Dracogenesis and drop a series of Dragons into play with Eshki, Temur's Roar in play.

Much of that last game was not a lot of fun, as I felt like I was behind everyone else and struggled to find anything resembling a path I could follow to become a threat. I had a Homeward Path on board when the player across from me had resolved a Living Death, but I was faced with a quandary. The player after them had a Palinchron in play, but their Deadeye Navigator was under the control of the player who had cast Living Death. I could get my creatures back, but if I did it at the wrong time I'd hand the game to someone else.

I ended up doing it on the end step not of the player before me but of the player before them. They asked (nicely) and I didn't think they had what they needed to kill me. What I needed was to have some flying blockers removed, and I was able to get the table to help only to see the Living Death player remove my Atarka, World Render, removing my ability to swing lethal on them with double-striking dragons. It was only bounced to hand, but it definitely messed up my plans.

Eshki wasn't particularly big and at the end, I was dead twice over if I passed the turn, but the combination of her card draw and damage output was enough to get there. I was able to kill the player after me, who had cast a second Living Death to present a second lethal threat to everyone. That Eshki damage let me focus my combat on the next threat, a player who also had a lethal number of creature tokens on board and ready to attack. I think they were Druid Zombies, but the key part is that they didn't fly. After remembering one of my Dragons, Runescale Stormbrood, had a +2/+0 for each noncreature or Dragon spell I cast, it was clear I was able to swing lethal on them. That left the third player, who took a moment to explore all of their options before conceding the game as I had lethal on my next turn.

I think my biggest takeaway from playing that Ureni deck is that I really, really don't like games where my commander doesn't even hit the battlefield. That can happen for any number of reasons even if you have a low mana value commander, but when you have to get all the way up to seven mana, there isn't a lot of room for bad luck.

Flicker Ureni

I really do like this list. I think it's still not as powerful as Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm, which feels very much like playing Temur Dragons on easy mode. Flicker is fun and can be played defensively as a way to dodge removal and get extra triggers. You will still have times when you whiff or you don't get a very useful Dragon, but I like decks that lean into the set that was just released, and this deck does that a lot.

Ureni of the Unwritten | Commander | Stephen Johnson

Commander (1)
1 Ureni of the Unwritten

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It's worth noting that you can tune this list up very easily by leaning into combo. Both Deadeye Navigator combo and Food Chain combo can be used to put every Dragon in your library into play. Both of those combo lines let you flicker your commander an arbitrary number of times, and with a properly built Ureni combo deck you just win the game outright with ETB damage from a Terror of the Peaks, Scourge of Valkas or the enchantment Dragon Tempest.

A lower powered approach would have you drop out Displacer Kitten, Ancient Tomb, and maybe a few of the other more powerful Dragons. This is generally a very fair list, with a slow early game and the potential to really blow up in the late game once Ureni is in play and you have the mana available for shenanigans.

The Plot Twist

Seeing Eshki play such a big role in a game wasn't the only thing that got me to pivot my Temur deck away from Ureni. I still have Beledros Witherbloom sleeved up, and I'm not above having a seven mana commander in my arsenal. The moment that probably sealed Ureni's fate was when I spotted a copy of Call the Spirit Dragons at an LGS I play at, and before I could pull the trigger and buy it, a buddy pointed out that there was also a foil "fancy" framed version available. I couldn't resist, though it was only twenty dollars more expensive than the regular version. Those variant frames look great in foil, and a five-mana enchantment that makes my Dragons indestructible could slot into... well, into any five color Dragon deck!

I've had five color Dragon decks in the past, but when I made that purchase I had exactly zero of them sleeved up and ready to play. The obvious solution to that problem is to build another five color Dragon deck. That was a great excuse to pull apart my Ureni deck, pivot that list over to Eshki, Temur's Roar, and move my Dragons over to some new deck that will scratch my itch to play 5/c Dragons.

If I'm pulling most, if not all of my Dragons out of Ureni to build that 5/c Dragons deck, what will I be doing with Eshki?

The answer is simple. Build a weird deck with as many cheap 6 power creatures as possible!

Leaning Into the Bit

Eshki wants me to cast creature spells. For my first draft I figured I would build a deck that played a simply irresponsible number of creatures. Not thirty. Not forty. Not fifty. I initially built and played a list with fifty-five creatures including the commander! Is this a good plan? No, it is not a good plan. Is it a fun way to experiment with how Eshki, Temur's Roar will play with an insane focus on creature spells? I hope so!

I often find myself tearing apart perfectly good, fun decks to build new decks and in this case I decided to pull apart my Maelstrom Wanderer list. It had a bunch of cards that would lend themselves to building a deck that wants to get as many extra cast triggers as possible. Maelstrom Wanderer, Etherium-Horn Sorcerer, Apex Devastator, and Imoti, Celebrant of Bounty are all in the list and should work to give me extra cast triggers. With over 50 creatures out of 63 non-lands in the 99, I should have over an 75% chance of hitting a creature, depending upon the mana value of the creature I'm using to cascade.

Another easy way to get extra castings is to play the enchantment Possibility Storm. Any spell cast from hand gets replaced by the first card I reveal that matches the card type of that initial spell. I might play a two mana Sakura-Tribe Elder and get a one mana Neverwinter Dryad, but I might get something fantastic. The chance to get extra castings, draw extra cards and push out extra damage is too good to pass up, even if Possibility Storm is a bit of a weird and chaotic enchantment to run in an EDH deck.

Temur Sabertooth is another great card in this list, made a little less great with the banning of Dockside Extortionist. In this deck I'll be happy to occasionally pay two mana to bounce a creature and then play it again to get another Eshki trigger.

Another focus of this deck is to try to reduce the cost of the creatures I'm casting. Herigast, Erupting Nullkite will give my creature spells emerge, letting me sacrifice a creature to cut the cost of another creature spell by the sacrificed creature's mana cost. Other creatures in the list, like Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma, and Temur Battlecrier, can also help reduce those casting costs.

This deck isn't going to do much damage if I'm relying only on cast triggers to make Eshki a bigger threat. Forgotten Ancient will get +1/+1 counters as players cast spells, and at the beginning of my upkeep I can move those counters onto another creature I control. I threw in The Ozolith after some early games to help me rebound from removal, which I expect will be a problem if the deck works well. I'm also running Ashroot Animist, Guardian Augmenter, and Vorel of the Hull Clade as additional ways to pump up my commander. I'm particularly excited to see if I can get some work out of Vorel, as I used to have a Vorel of the Hull Clade deck over a decade ago.

Raised by Giants is a legendary background enchantment that will make Eshki a base 10/10 creature. Add a bunch of counters onto that and it won't take many cast triggers off of 6 power creatures to threaten a win. I may want to drop out a creature or two and load in some equipment to help increase my damage output, but I'll have to see how the deck plays first.

Another way to win games at more casual tables is to gain a ton of life. Because Eshki deals damage, equipment like Basilisk Collar or Loxodon Warhammer is worth running to give her lifelink. Now if she pushes out a mere 5 damage to your tablemates, at a four-player game you'll be gaining 15 life. If you manage to keep at it for several turns, you should be able to get to the point where you're only really worried about combo, infect, commander damage or a really big alpha strike. If you're seriously interested in lifelink equipment, you might even want to pick up an old Butcher's Cleaver from Innistrad. It gives +3/+0 and lifelink if the equipped creature is a human.

This deck's backup plan is simply to attack with creatures. It's not a very complicated plan, but with this much of a focus on playing six mana creatures I think it's a viable plan B in lower powered games.

Let's Get Weird

I promised you a bunch of weird 6 power creatures and I'm not sure I'm really going to deliver, but I did include a creatures I wouldn't normally run but chose for Eshki because of their low, low mana values.

Six power creatures with low mana costs tend to have some sort of drawback that makes them less good. For Pugnacious Hammerskull, that drawback is obvious - unless I've got another Dinosaur I probably don't want to attack with him. Reservoir Kraken also has an Achilles' heel. Anyone can tap an untapped creature they control at the beginning of each combat to tap my 6/6 Kraken and give me a 1/1 Blue Fish token that can't even block. Anzrag, the Quake Mole is an 8/4 Mole God that can give me extra combat steps and is so cool I even had an Anzrag deck sleeved up for a few years.

I'm also running the three mana Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, an Elder Giant with emerge who will gain me life, and draw me a card. I like the value Uro gives me, and I love the idea of getting another Eshki trigger for only three mana. I didn't lean into emerge, as most of those creatures are well under 6 power.

Territorial Hellkite is a 6/5 Red Dragon that will attack somewhat randomly and costs a mere four mana in red. If six power for four mana sounds great, Hunted Troll will give me an 8/4 Troll Warrior for four mana in Green, at the cost of giving an opponent four 1/1 Blue Faerie tokens with flying. I don't love giving my tablemates anything, but with enough of these big creatures I might be able to get two Eshki triggers per turn in the mid-to-late game.

Experiment Eshki

This initial list is what I'm playing in paper as of this writing, but I can guarantee it will change as I play it. You can tell it's very much of an experiment because as you'll see when you scroll down, it runs zero instants. I could name a dozen instants that would fit in great with this list, from Heroic Intervention and spot removal to counterspells and even a game changer like Cyclonic Rift, but I'm not aiming for a high-powered list. I'm trying an experiment, as stated earlier, in finding out how Eshki will run with way too many creatures.

Glass cannon decks can be a lot of fun, but often lead to some bad games and just as often get retooled into something a bit more... responsible. The problem is that I need to get through those games to see how I feel about a deck before I make those changes and I simply haven't had the chance to play this list much. I'll get there, but it will take some time.

Eshki, Temur's Roar | Commander | Stephen Johnson

Commander (1)
1 Eshki, Temur's Roar

Sorcery (1)
1 Visions of Dominance

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To tune this list up, you'd do exactly what I was describing. You would drop out some of the less deserving creatures, add in more interaction, and consider some combo lines as ways to close out games. This deck could win games on the back of a Food Chain combo with Squee, the Immortal, Misthollow Griffin, or Eternal Scourge. You'd cast any of those to make infinite mana and put an arbitrary number of +1/+1 counters on Eshki. Then you just need to play one 6 power creature to kill the table.

I have grown to think of both combo and even game changers as playing on "easy mode" lately, so I've been focusing on lower powered decks more in recent years. I'm not sure what you'd pull out of this list if you wanted to lower the power level, but you might pull out some of the notably "good" cards like Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, and some of the cards that give you multiple cascade triggers, like Maelstrom Wanderer and Apex Predator. Even with those cards, I think this list is something you could play in low power and probably not worry too much about pubstomping.

It's worth noting that the land base of this list and many of my lists are just what I had available in paper at the time I built the deck. It's not tuned up and in this case, it's simply the lands I had in my Maelstrom Wanderer deck when I took it apart. This brew leans more towards Green and it might be worth bumping up the number of forests and dropping out a few creatures. Its first game saw me stuck on 2 lands for a really long time, but with card draw in the command zone and 37 lands in the 99, I don't think it's a lot off from where it should be.

Final Thoughts

This has been a whopper of a column, and I usually tend to write a lot, so I'll be brief. I hope you enjoyed this walk through my process of taking the Tarkir: Dragonstorm Temur Precon deck, rebuilding it around Ureni, and then pivoting over to Eshki. I think both of those lists are absolutely playable in low-to-mid power games, but that both should also be taken as starting points if you wanted to build your own list. Load in your own pet cards, or tune it up with your favorite game changers if you feel like pushing up the power level a bit.

I don't really think anyone should be running a deck with over 50 creatures, except in rare circumstances. I like trying different things and this creature-heavy Eshki list is no exception. Different doesn't necessarily mean good, and my test games have already shown me that the list needs work. That's expected, and if you decide to build something like either of today's lists I hope you find some things in here that you can use in your own brew.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!

TAGS articles, magic, casual, dragonstorm, commander, mtg, temur, tarkir, stephen johnson, eshki, 04282025, ureni

A Tale of Two Temur Decks from Tarkir: Dragonstorm

Casual Flicker Ureni

Early Results

Flicker Ureni

Ureni of the Unwritten | Commander | Stephen Johnson

The Plot Twist

Leaning Into the Bit

Let's Get Weird

Experiment Eshki

Eshki, Temur's Roar | Commander | Stephen Johnson

Final Thoughts

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