Hello, folks! Have you decided which Dragon you want to build around from Fate Reforged? Which has been wagging its tail at you? Which wants to lead your next Commander deck?

I built a deck around Atarka, World Render a few weeks ago here, but now I’m feeling a little different—a little sneakier, a little cagier. I’m looking for something that can offer a different deck-building challenge.

Enter Silumgar

The Death of the Dream ? Commander | Abe Sargent

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (24)
• 1 Aeon Chronicler
• 1 Bladewing's Thrall
• 1 Catacomb Dragon
• 1 Chasm Skulker
• 1 Clever Impersonator
• 1 Draining Whelk
• 1 Ebon Dragon
• 1 Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1 Grave Titan
• 1 Guul Draz Assassin
• 1 Puppeteer Clique
• 1 Shriekmaw
• 1 Spike Cannibal
• 1 Vedalken Anatomist
• 1 Adaptive Automaton
• 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1 Steel Hellkite
• 1 Keiga, the Tide Star
• 1 Kokusho, the Evening Star
• 1 Lazav, Dimir Mastermind
• 1 Oona, Queen of the Fae
• 1 Sakashima the Impostor
• 1 Sygg, River Cutthroat
• 1 Vela the Night-Clad

• Planeswalkers (4)
• 1 Jace, Memory Adept
• 1 Karn Liberated
• 1 Liliana Vess
• 1 Sorin Markov

• Spells (33)
• 1 Capsize
• 1 Desertion
• 1 Dismiss
• 1 Fuel for the Cause
• 1 Ovinize
• 1 Polymorphist's Jest
• 1 Supplant Form
• 1 Undermine
• 1 Crux of Fate
• 1 Demonic Tutor
• 1 Extract from Darkness
• 1 Fearsome Awakening
• 1 Peer Pressure
• 1 Spread the Sickness
• 1 Tezzeret's Gambit
• 1 Conspiracy
• 1 Day of the Dragons
• 1 Dragon Shadow
• 1 Phyrexian Arena
• 1 Treachery
• 1 Unnatural Selection
• 1 Xenograft
• 1 Contagion Engine
• 1 Door of Destinies
• 1 Everflowing Chalice
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Nihil Spellbomb
• 1 Obelisk of Urd
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Staff of Nin
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 Bident of Thassa
• 1 Tatsumasa, the Dragon's Fang

• Lands (38)
• 14 Island
• 14 Swamp
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Creeping Tar Pit
• 1 Dimir Aqueduct
• 1 Jwar Isle Refuge
• 1 Mutavault
• 1 Polluted Mire
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Underground River
• 1 Volrath's Stronghold

Buy This Deck

I didn’t care what ability out good Dimir Dragon was rocking—I knew I wanted to run it so I could rock both Conspiracy and Xenograft in order to increase my trigger yield. Knowing that it was adding a removal shell around the attacking trigger simply meant that I didn't have to worry about pushing creature removal in many of my cards. (Plus, Silumgar has flexproof, which is nice to boot. Flexproof is flying plus hexproof.)

Another benefit is that you reduce the chance of someone hitting you in a counterattack. For example, imagine that you played something like the Chaos half of Order // Chaos. Your opponent can't block this turn, so you swing in without any hassle and dole out the goods. But nothing in Chaos says the opponent can't just turn around and hit you back for a lot of damage on his or her turn. And if he or she has stuff like Lightning Greaves, he or she can give something haste out of nowhere and add to the ills you'll receive for daring to attack. Because Silumgar can eliminate someone’s creatures entirely, it's a lot safer to attack than other methods of creating alpha-strike opportunities. The only major issue is that there simply aren't a lot of black or blue Dragons.

Therefore, the goal is to make a few extra Dragons for your side of the table and then simply begin the swinging. This is where those Conspiracy and Xenograft cards come in handy! You can force your creatures to do things that Mother Nature never intended. And they aren't the only cards of their ilk either!

I also threw in Day of the Dragons. When you play it, your entire team is replaced by an equal number of 5/5 Dragon tokens. And if you destroy the Day, your tokens go away (if any remained), and your old team pops right back onto the battlefield hardly the worse for wear. If you Day your Silumgar, just replay it from the command zone so your whole team will trigger and kill most (or all) of your defending foes to enable you to avoid potential blocks. (See also: Unnatural Selection.)

Obviously, there'll be some good Dragons in your colors to play alongside Silumgar. Bodies like Kokusho, the Evening Star and Keiga, the Tide Star have long-established lineages in Commander. You can also run Ebon Dragon from Portal (or the very first From the Vault set). Since it forces a discard upon arrival, it's never card disadvantage as long as one of your enemies has a card in hand. Another old card from the way-back machine is the highly flavorful Catacomb Dragon. It halves the power of non-Dragons that mess with it.

Speaking of that, isn't it about time we updated this Dragon-fear? We've been discussed resonant fantasy concepts in Magic ever since Magic 2010. Dragons are just powerful creatures that tend to instill fear (either magically or because they’re big, scary dragons). From The Hobbit to Dungeons & Dragons, this is a common metric of dragons. If all we did was add intimidate to a Dragon or two, wouldn't that really resonate? But what if we pushed some more?

Creaturefear — A creature with creaturefear can only be blocked by a creature that shares a type with it. Obviously, we'd need to come up with a better name for it. (Any ideas?) But the basic concept is that some creatures can't be blocked by others. You could flavor this for several different types. For examples, Dragons are super-scary, so you need to be a Dragon to not be scared. Maybe a creature type is insubstantial and can only be blocked by an enemy that shares the same space (such as Spirits). Perhaps they are just sneaky (Rogues) and only fellow sneaks can block them. But the basic idea seems to convey Dragonfear as well.

Anyway, now that we have exhausted a lot of our draconic stuff, what else appears interesting? I like the idea of getting in one or more hits with our team, so I tossed in Vela the Night-Clad, who can give your folks intimidate. If we don't have Conspiracy and friends, we can still get in some attacks to whittle down the size of our foes. Another way to abuse it is to make an opposing creature an X/1. If you can cast Ovinize or Polymorphist's Jest on someone, Silumgar can do a great impression of a one-sided Wrath of God.

In fact, let's push that theme a bit more. We can reduce the size of opposing critters with something like -1/-1 counters. Contagion Engine is a great example. You drop it and bring everything a little closer to death by Silumgar's withering effect. And you can rock that proliferate to increase the -1/-1 counters to great effect. In fact, I like the -1/-1 counter concept enough to make it a minor subtheme of the deck. You’ll notice things like Vedalken Anatomist and Fuel for the Cause mucking about.

In other news, check out how well Guul Draz Assassin works with the hotness engaged. (Proliferate for the level counters and its ability works on theme quite nicely, too.) We also have some nice Clone effects to copy Dragons or other thematic cards in order to deepen the various strategies without specifically running cards for it—whatever works at the time for the given situation and game state.

Now that we’ve added some various themes, it’s easy to finish the deck. In leap Grave Titan and Oona, Queen of the Fae to give me some token creatures to Dragon up. We have Steel Hellkite and Adaptive Automaton to increase my Silumgar love. We needed some anti-graveyard options, so in headed a few, and a few recursion tricks were added as well. Fearsome Awakening had to be one of those tricks (and check out Crux of Fate).

I knew we’d want a way to find the key Xenograft/Conspiracy cards, so I tossed in Demonic Tutor and Liliana Vess. After consideration, I liked Jace, Memory Adept for card-draw and bounce, Sorin Markov for creature-cleansing and life-chewing, and Karn Liberated for taking care of anything that got in our way.

The deck was essentially done, and a few final tricks were all I had left. My last one was Tatsumasa, the Dragon's Fang. Because it turns into a Dragon token, it fits the theme. The best thing is that every time our Dragon token bites it, the sword comes back, ready to be used again. I think Silumgar might want to wield it!

And that’s a deck! I hope you enjoyed my take on Silumgar and all-things-Dragon in the Dimir world.

I hope this gives you a springboard for building your own Silumgar decks specifically—and Fate Reforged decks generally. After all, cards like Tatsumasa can fit in every deck, and you can add Xenograft to an Ojutai, Soul of Winter deck (as one example).

Was there something in here that resonated with you? Anything you wanted to add or directions you wanted to head?

See you next week,

Abe Sargent