Last year, I mentioned briefly a deck I used to run in Standard where I would try to dredge a copy of Eternal Dominion into the 'yard to cast with Sins of the Past as early as turn four. It was a silly, frivolous deck and I miss its energy. A completely unrelated article about a Zur deck made me remember how good it felt to reanimate a 10 mana spell and how it felt better than Reanimating just about any creature I had ever Reanimated. Since last September, I have thought about that deck quite a bit and I wanted to make sure if I got the chance to do something like that again, I'd take it. Lo and Behold, a deck came along that made me want to Reanimate some spells.

I am getting big Ghen vibes from this card and, no, that isn't a compliment. In fact, if Quintorius does not have haste and isn't prepared to be activated after the turn he's played, the deck is unlikely to be very good. However, if you do manage to pull it off, the deck will be an awful lot of fun. You can combo off on your main phase without Quintorius, try to play a big spell on their turn or play something that doesn't require a large turn if you manage to make it a turn cycle with Quintorius alive. With that many potential backup plans, it almost doesn't make sense not to have a primary plan that's fairly bonkers. My bonkers plan? Dragons. I want the absolute best-case scenario for this deck to be casting Dragonstorm for all the mana in the world. Spirits and Dragons and huge spells, and the obligatory boring cards that make a deck run - it's getting pretty cramped! In fact, I might ease back on Spirits as much as I can. Here's what I am thinking.

Right off the bat, we can easily find room for 4 Spirits named Ao, Atsushi, Ryusei, and Yosei. These Dragons are Spirits which means you can sac them to activate Quintorius. It's nontrivially good to sac these creatures and you are doing it to pay an important cost. I believe this is what people with MBAs call "synergy." Eternal Dragon isn't thrilling to sac, but it's good whether you deploy it as a Dragon or as a White Farseek and we need Spirit Dragons. Hopefully we won't have to resort to playing Scion of Ugin, but there is one more creature in this unique and helpful group we should discuss.

This isn't really THAT synergistic with the rest of the deck, but it's a good card all on its own and if you have Anger, Need for Speed, and a bunch of other haste enablers in the deck, and you will, you can Goad 2 creatures right off the bat which is pretty huge. We are playing Spirit Dragons because we have to, true, but I actually like all of the ones we are "forced" to play. This gives us enough of a buffer that I think between these and cards like Maskwood Nexus, we'll be unlikely to be unable to activate Quintorius when we need to.

If we are to be a Dragonstorm deck, we will want Red fast mana spells. It doesn't suck to just have them to be able to get off to a fast start, and playing them early isn't a waste because we will be using Quintorius and Past in Flames effects to snag those spells back, anyway. A huge Dragonstorm and we should be able to fill the board with enough fire and Destruction to kill everyone. However, even a medium-sized one gives us an impressive board, a ton of card advantage, and makes us the archenemy.

This sounds like a wacky pile, but once you start building it, it's a lot of fun.

Quin-Quin-Quintorius | Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (1)
• 1 Quintorius, Loremaster

• Creatures (25)
• 1 Ancient Copper Dragon
• 1 Ancient Gold Dragon
• 1 Anger
• 1 Ao, the Dawn Sky
• 1 Atsushi, the Blazing Sky
• 1 Backdraft Hellkite
• 1 Blast-Furnace Hellkite
• 1 Eternal Dragon
• 1 Ganax, Astral Hunter
• 1 Goldspan Dragon
• 1 Hellkite Courser
• 1 Hellkite Tyrant
• 1 Lathliss, Dragon Queen
• 1 Leyline Tyrant
• 1 Ryusei, the Falling Star
• 1 Scalelord Reckoner
• 1 Scourge of the Throne
• 1 Scourge of Valkas
• 1 Smoldering Egg // Ashmouth Dragon
• 1 Sunscorch Regent
• 1 Terror of the Peaks
• 1 Timeless Dragon
• 1 Utvara Hellkite
• 1 Velomachus Lorehold
• 1 Yosei, the Morning Star

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Sarkhan, Fireblood

• Instants (10)
• 1 Big Score
• 1 Boros Charm
• 1 Cathartic Pyre
• 1 Chaos Warp
• 1 Faithless Salvaging
• 1 Lorehold Command
• 1 Seething Song
• 1 Teferi's Protection
• 1 Thrill of Possibility
• 1 Unexpected Windfall

• Sorceries (17)
• 1 Brass's Bounty
• 1 Cathartic Reunion
• 1 Disrupt Decorum
• 1 Draconic Intervention
• 1 Dragonstorm
• 1 Faithless Looting
• 1 Gamble
• 1 Insurrection
• 1 Jeska's Will
• 1 Mana Geyser
• 1 Mizzix's Mastery
• 1 Past In Flames
• 1 Reconstruct History
• 1 Rip Apart
• 1 Storm Herd
• 1 Surge to Victory
• 1 Thrilling Discovery

• Enchantments (4)
• 1 Arcane Bombardment
• 1 Dragon Tempest
• 1 Land Tax
• 1 Smothering Tithe

• Artifacts (8)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Battlemage's Bracers
• 1 Boros Signet
• 1 Carnelian Orb of Dragonkind
• 1 Dragon's Hoard
• 1 Maskwood Nexus
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Talisman of Conviction

• Lands (34)
• 10 Plains
• 12 Mountain
• 1 Battlefield Forge
• 1 Boros Garrison
• 1 Clifftop Retreat
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Furycalm Snarl
• 1 Needleverge Pathway
• 1 Rugged Prairie
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance
• 1 Spectator Seating
• 1 Sundown Pass
• 1 Temple of Triumph

Buy This Deck Export text format

Remember kids? Like in the 1986 Duran Duran song Notorious? Remember that song? From 1986? What about 2001's Donnie Darko? Remember that movie? From 2001? Does that mean 15 years elapsed between that song coming out and that movie coming out and that much time plus 7 years has passed since that movie? Can that possibly be right? Nothing makes sense anymore, but that's fine.

It ended up not mattering that we don't have a ton of spirits here, in my opinion. The thing about this deck is that in all likelihood you won't be activating Quintorius often for a lot of value. You'll more likely be using Quintorius to re-buy an important spell. Everything else is in the graveyard waiting for a Past in Flames, which is fine. A lot of our mana spells are slowly becoming treasure generators rather than mana generators. Seething Song is good, but only the turn you play it. Unexpected Windfall can be played as soon as it's drawn, and it gives you the discards you need to boot. Making Treasure makes your Dragonstorm turn worse, but that treasure, if banked properly, could let you just hard cast enough spells to make sure you Dragonstorm off. If you never draw Dragonstorm, which is likely, who cares? You have a sweet Dragon deck with a ton of synergy.

What do you think? Too 75%? Not 75% enough? Let me know on Twitter. Thanks for reading, everyone, and for spreading the good word about 75% out in the wild. I see you, and I appreciate it. Until next time!