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Main » Articles » How to Train Your Dragons

How to Train Your Dragons

Michael Flores
Posted on July 4, 2018
 Reddit

Here are two questions every aspiring deck designer should have forefront in their minds:

  1. How Do We Know What a Deck Can Do?

  2. Should We Even Make a New Deck?

Prologue

I started playing Magic the summer of 1994, so twenty-four years ago now.

Over that time, I have been fortunate enough to travel to Hawaii with my family to call the $16,000 Lightning Helix, play on several Pro Tours myself (even win a couple of bucks), and design decks that have won at every level, up to and including both National and World Championships.

But one of my favorite moments, for myself, was qualifying for PT Vancouver a few years ago via Regional Pro Tour Qualifier.

I brewed a ub Control deck with my friend Patrick Chapin on our podcast, won every die roll on the day, and took down the local store's PPTQ. Excited about potentially playing on Tour for the first time since the birth of my son in 2006, I worked very hard with Patrick, Brian David-Marshall, and an ascendant SCG dynamo name of Bryan Raymer to make one of the most creative decks in a long line of creative decks. WotC R&D named it the most interesting deck of the whole RPTQ weekend!

Mono-Blue Dragon Control -- Dragons of Tarkir Standard | Mike Flores

As with many creative decks, this one had many fathers. Part Zvi Mowshowitz, part Erick Lauer, part earlier versions of me . . .  Much of the sideboard's punch against Red Decks -- Omenspeaker and Encase in Ice feeding Master of Waves -- came from Facebook chats with Gerry Thompson.

But it was Patrick, pushing the limit of what we could do with not one, not two, but eight Dragon-tailored multi-lands, that distinguished the deck from the more popular Esper Dragons. This brings us to our first question:

1. How Do We Know What a Deck Can Do?

In Magic, all competitive decks share a single fundamental constraint. Their capabilities emanate from their mana bases. Today's Red Decks play 24 unadorned basic Mountains. Unlike the Medium Red deck of last summer, these decks don't muck around with Scavenger Grounds or Sunscorched Desert.

Desert (Medium) Red -- Ixalan Standard | Ben Stark, 2nd Place GP Atlanta 2017

Don't get me wrong . . .  Those cards can be cute, especially when you've still got Ramunap Ruins to get paid off by Dunes of the Dead. But even though they all enter the battlefield untapped . . .  You can't afford to play 1/3 colorless-producing lands and this guy:

Goblin Chainwhirler

Goblin Chainwhirler is one of the most format-defining creatures of recent years. And it costs rrr! In fact, it costs rrr in a strategy that has little mana fixing or card drawing. What little it does have -- some kind of Chandra activation or a bulk upload from Bomat Courier -- is likely to come after turn four, let alone turn three.

If you want to get the most out of your Goblin Chainwhirler, you usually want to cast it on demand. And in Standard? That largely means Mountain. You will see the occasional br version with two Swamps. Before your eyes bug out, look at one of those decks:

B/R Midrange -- Dominaria Standard | Kazuyuki Takimura, Pro Tour Dominaria Top 8

Takimura played twenty-five lands! So even though he has twice as many lands that don't make r as the average br deck, his second Swamp is above and beyond the typical total number of lands a Red Deck would play at all.

This constraint is true of everybody. ur and ub decks have to make choices to accommodate Teferi, Hero of Dominaria. More than one Green mage has had to gamble his only Energy on a first-turn Aether Hub, desperately reaching for a Forest with an Adventurous Impulse.

The 2015 "Mono-Blue" Dragons deck was facilitated by the redundancy of Haven of the Spirit Dragon and Crucible of the Spirit Dragon. My "Mono-Blue" deck could run a card as gaudy as Dragonlord Atarka at 5gr . . .  But all the non-Blue cards were Dragons. There was not a single utility spell in the other colors. Wouldn't some kind of Infest or Wrath of God have made a more straightforward solution to wide creature beatdown? Sure . . .  But I couldn't be sure I could cast one of those with so few Temples for Black or White. That's why I had to settle for Blue pips and Master of Waves.

The upcoming Standard is opening up the mana horizons in a similar way to those specialty lands in 2015. There are two cards that can make lots of colors, at least when it comes to casting Dragons.

Before we go much further it's important to note that these are spells. Not only are they spells, they are three-mana spells. Three mana is kind of a ton! Haven of the Spirit Dragon and Crucible of the Spirit Dragon were lands, and took up land slots (defining the kinds of spells we might play) rather than spells, which take up spell slots. Put another way, in 2015 I got to play these great fixers and in 2018 I can start thinking about fixing once I commit to an eight-pack of 3-drops.

Just something to keep in mind.

Sarkhan is a powerful Planeswalker. His first ability is like a Tormenting Voice on a stick. In the context of a Dragons-heavy deck, he is also a great setup man for Spit Flame.

Sarkhan specializes in jumping three to six. That is a big jump. What that means is you can play Sarkhan on turn three, play your fourth land, and then cast any number of Dragons that cost six or less the next turn. I would almost certainly play multiple copies of both Palladia-Mors, the Ruiner and Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire in my seventy-five because of this.

From a mana-making perspective, Sarkhan can make two colors, theoretically incremental to Red (you need Red to cast him). That is one of the reasons I think Palladia-Mors and Vaevictis Asmadi are good jump candidates. I would be hesitant to try Arcades, because three colors of fixing past Red is past the point of reliability for a four. Chromium? Chromium seems like one of the best possible Dragons, and at seven I'd be willing to roll the dice a little more, especially when tucking in for a long, long game.

Dragon's Hoard looks to be as useful as it is tricky.

First of all, isn't this card just cool? It's strictly better than another card (Manalith) printed in the same set!

Two things to think about with Dragon's Hoard:

  1. You get a freebie on turn three (or whenever you cast it). One mana removal spells become hugely more valuable because of this. On turn three you can cast Dragon's Hoard and leave up Shock mana, for instance.

  2. Dragon's Hoard fixes exactly one color incremental to Red. One of the reasons I might consider Chromium -- which is three colors none of which are Red -- is that you might have more time to acquire multiple fixers in order to cast it.

  3. While it "only" fixes one color and "only" makes one total . . .  Fourth turn Glorybringer is going to be big problems for some opponents.

2. Should We Even Make a New Deck?

For me as a deck designer, this value comes from a conversation I had with Erik Lauer back in 1997 or 1998. I made a br beatdown deck with Black creatures and mostly Red removal. Erick asked me why I thought this was a better deck than just a Red Deck.

I pointed out the Black creatures were generally better than Red ones, given abilities like Protection from White, Shadow, or First Strike. They weren't better than Jackal Pup, he pointed out, and they weren't that much better at killing opponents . . .  Especially if I could remove blockers. All I was doing was punishing myself on mana base while gaining very little incremental impact.

For a new deck to be worth building, it generally has to pass a basic sniff test. "Is this just a bad something else?" The last time I worked with Dragons, I got asked why I didn't just play Esper Dragons (one of the two most popular decks in Standard at the time). My responses then included:

  1. The Five-color Deck is much more powerful than Esper Dragons. Its top end, including Atarka and Ugin went over the top of other control decks without compromising its effective mana very much.

  2. I had an almost unbreakable advantage in that heads up anyway. Esper was one of the two most popular decks, and because I had Crucible of the Spirit Dragon, I would almost always win.

  3. Speaking of Crucible of the Spirit Dragon, I got to play with some cards that were very good that other people weren't really playing. That is a great advantage in Magic (as long as you're not compromising on card power). Many Blue opponents on the day misplayed against Dragonlord Dromoka, for instance; Dromoka also pulled me out of a match against Red (which is one of its main jobs).

There is already a Red deck with control elements in Standard. What makes us think exploring Dragons is worth the effort?

  1. As long as we can weather the early turns, we want to be the most powerful deck in the room. Ramp decks usually have to draw their cards in the right order; if we get Sarkhan first, the goal should be to rule the sky.

  2. We have card advantage engines that no one else does. I wouldn't consider playing Manalith, but Dragon's Hoard might draw an extra three cards a game. Spit Flame is just excellent.

  3. Vaevictis Asmadi, in particular, is a get out of jail free card. If Vaevictis comes online, unlike other Red Decks, we can handle anything from a Cast Out to a nigh-ultimate Planeswalker.

Here's my first swing:

Here There Be Dragons -- Magic 2019 Standard| Mike Flores

I'm not really happy with the total casting cost of this deck's main (124), either.

But for reference, Five-color Mono-Blue Dragons had an average cost of xxx, and total main deck cost of 138. For comparison, Martin Deng's Atarka Red deck (which won the PT just weeks before my then-RPTQ) had a total cost of 81 . . .  counting Stoke the Flames as 4 and Become Immense as 6. Yet, I managed to handle multiple fast Red Decks on the way to the Blue Envelope. Managing casting costs is a lot, but it's not everything.

How might we answer the pressing questions?

How about some of these?

  1. Nicol Bolas is the truth. I'm kind of fine trading with, say, a Steel Leaf Champion since he already got a little money. Because if I flip him...

  2. Once you're at the point that you're casting Chromium... Isn't it kind of hard to lose to control?

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TAGS articles, constructed, dragons, standard, decklist, michael flores, #mtgm19, magic 2019, magic 2019 standard, 07042018

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