Four-Colour Dragons – Deck Review

So, Battle for Zendikar has been around long enough now for the format to become stable and we are all now aware of what the good cards in the set are as well as those that are simply less impressive.

Initially, I began to brew an Esper Dragons/Control list with cards like Scatter to the Winds, Ruinous Path, Dragonlord Ojutai and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon. However, in testing I was not happy with how the deck performed against some match ups that the deck should’ve had an easier time against. I wracked my brains for ages and was constantly switching the numbers of each card I was playing and trying to include other cards to make up the gap but nothing seemed to solve it. Personally, I did not like Gideon, Ally of Zendikar very much and I still have a hard time liking the card now, so when I was brewing a few weeks ago, he was completely out of the question. The main problem I found with the deck was the lack of instant speed removal, especially for Planeswalkers. With the lack of Hero’s Downfall and with worse hand disruption now that Thoughtseize is no longer in the format I started to wonder if Esper was the way to go at all.

In testing the deck really under-performed in a lot of match-ups that I should have the advantage over, especially the Abzan lists. The problem I found was that Dragonlord Ojutai and Dragonlord Silumgar were instantly killed off as soon as I either declared them as attackers or if they wanted the card back that Dragonlord Silumgar had stolen. Ojutai himself is an extremely strong card but I have found that him being hexproof when he is untapped isn’t a huge benefit at all, he becomes unprotected when it really matters and that is when you are trying to punch some damage through.

The problem with Dragonlord Silumgar is the simple fact that there is no protection whatsoever and unless you have a counter spell or two in hand then you’ve pretty much wasted your turn casting him. Overall, the Esper list for me felt almost too slow to get going and it felt vulnerable to the Abzan decks in particular as they have access to some really strong removal such as Abzan Charm which is a nightmare against the Esper strategy if you have no way of answering it.

I first stumbled across this Four-Colour Dragons idea from a list that had recently got a Top 8 finish at a SCG event. I was cautious at first about adding the fourth colour but I decided to go for it as I was so unhappy with the Esper list that I was using at the time. I liked what the fourth colour brought to the table and it was exactly what I had been looking for. More instant speed removal, more potent threats and most importantly it looked a lot more fun to play. The list I decided to base my build around is no longer available online as it was a few weeks ago and it seems to have been removed to make room for newer event reports on the site I found it on.

Moving on to cards I wanted to cut from my list, I was extremely unimpressed with Ruinous Path and that also got cut immediately, the card is simply to slow so I scrapped it to make room for Utter End. Yes, Utter End may cost one more mana than Ruinous Path but it has much greater versatility. It allows me to also deal with Enchantments and Artifacts as well as Creatures and Planeswalkers. I also found Utter End to be very good against Hangarback Walker so they could not get a few flying blockers from it to get in the way of my dragons.

Scatter to the Winds saw a reduce in numbers from four copies down to two as I just thought that Silumgar’s Scorn would be a more effective option, even more so now because the number of dragons in the list had increased. I started with a playset of Silumgar’s Scorn but in the end went down to three copies as I needed to make room for Anticipate. Anticipate was also an extremely good card for me, when I didn’t have a Dig Through Time in hand or didn’t have the means of casting one, Anticipate would allow me to usually find the land I needed to get my Thunderbreak Regent’s online by turn four whilst also fueling the delve on my Dig Through Time. It was a late addition to the list but it has definitely earn’t its place.

I increased the number of dragons I was playing from five in the Esper version up to nine to give the deck more consistency and threats my opponent’s would have to deal with. I scrapped Dragonlord Ojutai and Dragonlord Silumgar completely and instead put in four copies of Thunderbreak Regent, three copies of Icefall Regent and went down to a single copy of Silumgar, the Drifting Death to make room for a single copy of Kolaghan, the Storm’s Fury. At first I wasn’t sure on how the deck would perform against the deck I feared the most which was Atarka Red but through testing I usually won the match up which was amazing news for me. I had increased the number of removal cards both in my main and sideboard by quite a substantial amount to help take on this match up and ended up with a nice selection of cards such as Crackling Doom, Draconic Roar, Utter End and Foul-tongue Invocation in the mainboard.

Going over the spells that playing red as my fourth colour gave me, all were fine choices but Crackling Doom was by far the best card for me in most match ups. It’s instant speed, deals damage to my opponent and I can take care of things like the ever annoying Siege Rhino with ease. It did so much more than Foul-Tongue Invocation could ever do and that was deal with their biggest threats every single time I cast it. Draconic Roar is another extremely potent removal spell and it was almost too good against the Atarka Red and Aristocrat decks I played against, it deals with almost every card that features in both lists and being able to burn your opponent for 3 points of damage while you’re at it just adds to the sting of taking what could have been a key card for them.

Another card that is in my sideboard but I instantly brought in against any Aristocrat or Atarka Red lists was two copies of Radiant Flames. The card was basically made for taking down a team of tiny creatures and it was almost always a board wipe in those match ups and definitely played a huge part in winning my games against those strategies.

Thunderbreak Regent did so much more than I initially expected it to and it really gave my opponents a hard time in choosing how to deal with it, especially when you have more than one copy on the board at one time, then things get really ugly for whoever it is sitting across the table from you. There are not a lot of lists running a lot of flyers at the moment and the fact that he is going to deal 3 damage to you if you try and remove him anyway, he pretty much forces you to answer him and take the damage otherwise things are going to get out of hand quickly.

Icefall Regent was mainly put in the list for the Abzan match ups to enable me to tap down their Siege Rhino’s and any early Anafenza, the Foremost’s I may come across. It also can force your opponent to take up their entire turn to remove him thanks to his built in ability to make them pay 2 more colourless mana to target him with any spells or abilities, combine this with Thunderbreak Regent also being on board and things just get even more miserable for your opponent. My personal favourite card in the deck is Kolaghan, the Storm’s Fury, the look on your opponent’s face when you slam him down after paying his dash cost whilst having one or two other dragons in play is priceless.

Your opponent could be sitting at 17 life for example and looking at a Thunderbreak Regent and an Icefall Regent feeling pretty confident that there is no way they are going to the lose the game on your next turn and then Kolaghan hits the table and you go from dealing 8 damage up to an incredible 21. If they do not have an answer to this, which in most cases my opponent’s did not, then it is game over.

The finished product of what I have now is very different to the one I set out with and I am happier with this particular list over any of the others I had tried previously. Most importantly the deck is great fun to play and the amount of options for customization available to you thanks to the fourth colour really enables you to add your own personal spin on the deck to make it unique.

My current deck list is as follows;

Creatures: 9 Sideboard: 15

4x Thunderbreak Regent 2x Silkwrap

3x Icefall Regent 3x Surge of Righteousness

1x Kolaghan, the Storm’s Fury 2x Radiant Flames

1x Silumgar, the Drifting Death 2x Ultimate Price

Instants/Sorceries: 25 2x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

3x Kolaghan’s Command 2x Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker

4x Crackling Doom 2x Crux of Fate

3x Silumgar’s Scorn

2x Anticipate

3x Foul-Tongue Invocation