I basically refuse to say Commander, preferring to say EDH. That’s fine in conversations. In practical terms, it means the editorial team on Gathering Magic has to go through every article I write and, in addition to scrubbing up my grammar and punctuation (I use, like, a lot of commas), they have to change every reference to EDH I make to Commander. I really hope they didn’t do that in this article because the finished product on the website saying, “I refuse to say Commander; instead, I say Commander,” is going to be confusing. I understand why Wizards of the Coast can’t acknowledge the concept of Elder Dragon Highlander; if they start using a copyrighted term, the copyright holder is going to dispatch Adrian Paul to Seattle with a katana, and that’s not going to be a good day for anyone. “I was People Magazine’s sexiest man, you know.” Yeah, in like 1996. Maybe it was cool for men to have ponytails twenty years ago, but you’re embarrassing both of us right now.

I worry. Has the linguistic shift from saying EDH to saying Commander made us lose touch with our roots? I maintain that it has—a bit. I started this series in February of last year, and since I don’t often skip a week because I am the consummate professional, I have written over fifty installments in this series. A few were philosophical or dealt with card choices rather than dealing with decklists, so I would say I have tackled over forty different commanders in the last year or more. Why is this relevant? Well, it’s relevant because I call the format Elder Dragon Highlander and I have never once done an article in which the commander was an Elder Dragon Legend.

It’s true! I just checked! No Nicol Bolas with a Fire Whip and Hermetic Study. No Chromium Voltron. No new Silumgar despite Dragonlord Silumgar stealing stuff and being a very good 75% candidate. I could list all of the Elder Dragon Legends I haven’t written articles about, but you get the idea. Even other writers on this site have done a 75% Elder Dragon Legends deck, and I haven’t—yet. That ends today. I am going to tackle this.

But which one? There are so many I’d love to look into. Frankly, I could do one a week for months. I’ll admit some of them would be kind of weak. “My opponents kept killing Palladia-Mors after I paid the upkeep cost, so I stopped paying it,” one tournament report might read. Some of them would be pretty nutty. “Once I put grappling hook on Numot, the Devastator and started Wildfire’ing him every attack phase, he threw his empty deck box at me and went outside to key my car.” One of them has to be just right, hasn’t it? Let’s look at what we have to choose from.

• Arcades Sabboth
• Chromium Rhuell (Seriously, apparently he has a last name)
• Nicol Bolas
• Palladia-Mors
• Vaevictis Asmadi
• Atarka, World Render
• Dragonlord Atarka
• Dromoka, the Eternal
• Dragonlord Dromoka
• Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury
• Dragonlord Kolaghan
• Ojutai, Soul of Winter
• Dragonlord Ojutai
• Silumgar, the Drifting Death
• Dragonlord Silumgar

Do we count the other ones—the ones that don’t say they’re Elder Dragons? I do!

• Crosis, the Purger
• Darigaaz, the Igniter
• Dromar, the Banisher
• Rith, the Awakener
• Treva, the Renewer
• Intet, the Dreamer
• Numot, the Devastator
• Oros, the Avenger
• Teneb, the Harvester
• Vorosh, the Hunter

Technically, I am cheating a bit, but I don’t care. We have twenty-five to choose from if we don’t count Dragons like Rorix Bladewing. I want to just stick to the “official” Elder Dragons and the ones from Invasion and Planar Chaos because people call them Elder Dragons and they counted in the early stages of the game. A few leap out at me.

Dragonlord Kolaghan didn’t have to be designed with an ability that was useless in Commander, but the brave folks at Wizards R&D came through for us. If you really hate that guy at your local game store who plays with Shadowborn Apostle, there you go, but if not, do what I plan to do and don’t build around Dragonlord Kolaghan.

Dragonlord Dromoka was the Dragon I looked at that made me say, “Yep, this is why I’m a Magic player.” Silumgar and Ojutai are wreaking havoc in Standard and threatening to show their scaly faces in other formats, but I’m still all about that Dromoka action. Sure, they can play their kill spells on everyone else’s turns, making that can’t-play-spells-on-your-turn clause a little weaker, but making your stuff uncounterable is useful, and it makes me want to play a lot more cards that stymie my opponents’ plans. Gaddock Teeg? Nevermore? Torpor Orb? Norn's Annex? Let’s be a pain! What would the deck look like?

Dragonlord Dromoka ? Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (31)
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Aegis of the Gods
• 1 Angel of Jubilation
• 1 Angelic Arbiter
• 1 Archangel of Thune
• 1 Archetype of Endurance
• 1 Aven Mindcensor
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Blazing Archon
• 1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
• 1 Garruk's Horde
• 1 Grand Abolisher
• 1 Hushwing Gryff
• 1 Primordial Sage
• 1 Seedborn Muse
• 1 Soul of the Harvest
• 1 Spirit of the Labyrinth
• 1 Silent Arbiter
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Avacyn, Angel of Hope
• 1 Crovax, Ascendant Hero
• 1 Dosan the Falling Leaf
• 1 Eight-and-a-Half-Tails
• 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
• 1 Hokori, Dust Drinker
• 1 Karametra, God of Harvests
• 1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
• 1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
• 1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
• 1 Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger
• 1 Yosei, the Morning Star

• Spells (30)
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Day of Judgment
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Wrath of God
• 1 Aura Shards
• 1 City of Solitude
• 1 Dense Foliage
• 1 Elephant Grass
• 1 Ghostly Prison
• 1 Hunting Grounds
• 1 Land Tax
• 1 Oblivion Ring
• 1 Rule of Law
• 1 Sterling Grove
• 1 Stony Silence
• 1 Crawlspace
• 1 Cursed Totem
• 1 Damping Matrix
• 1 Defense Grid
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Norn's Annex
• 1 Null Rod
• 1 Pithing Needle
• 1 Selesnya Signet
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Static Orb
• 1 Thorn of Amethyst
• 1 Veilstone Amulet
• 1 Ward of Bones

• Lands (38)
• 10 Forest
• 15 Plains
• 1 Brushland
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Krosan Verge
• 1 Maze of Ith
• 1 Selesnya Guildgate
• 1 Sunpetal Grove
• 1 Temple of Plenty
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Windswept Heath
• 1 Eiganjo Castle
• 1 Kor Haven
• 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx

Buy This Deck

Is this deck great? Probably not! It looks like it’s fun (for one person at the table).

Is this 75%, though? Isn’t one of our founding principles that we want to punish our opponents for doing things rather than prevent them from doing them? Crawlspace preventing them from swarming you is one thing, but what about using Static Orb to prevent them from untapping lands? Is that any better than running mass land destruction? None of this is rhetorical—I’m really asking. The problem is that this deck feels like an okay 75% deck to me, and I’m having a hard time reconciling that with the fact that it breaks what I consider the most important rule of 75% deck-building, and it breaks it over and over. We don’t force our opponents to tap anything, and yet, we’re stifling a lot of their plays. What started as a hate-bears deck quickly developed into a Stax deck, and we’re not about that here at 75%. Which direction does this need to go? Is it fine to you?

[poll id="529"]

I could really use some feedback on this deck because I’m looking at it, and I feel pretty good about taking this into battle, but the part of my brain that wrote the rules I’m breaking here is screaming at me that I’ve created an abomination. What do you think?

Next week, I will take a look at your poll results, comments, and tweets, and we’ll see where we end up with this pile. Do we let it slide? Do we craft it into a deck everyone can enjoy playing with or against? Do we need to add a new guideline or modify an existing one? This is a crazy time for the 75% project, but a little controversy never hurt anyone. Until next week!