Something weird is going on in Standard, and I don’t just mean the deck I’m writing about today. At long last, the format seems… good?!
There was a brief scare after the bans where Izzet Control featuring zero cards from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty won back-to-back Standard Challenges on Magic Online (MTGO), and it looked like we were trapped in a Stormcarved Coast again. Thankfully, the metagame has opened up considerably since then. Mono-White Aggro took MTGO by storm this weekend; meanwhile, the same Orzhov Midrange deck won both Set Championship Qualifiers on MTG Arena. The Naya Runes deck dominating Alchemy is just part of a varied Standard format where you can do basically whatever you want – including stuff like this!
Creatures (7)
Lands (17)
Spells (36)
If you aren’t familiar with Rei Zhang, aka cftsoc3, you’re missing out on some truly delightful decks. You might have come across their creations without knowing it. The Goldspan Dragon / Unleash Fury / Kazuul’s Fury build of Naya Adventures that took off a year ago was their brainchild and opened many people’s eyes to Goldspan Dragon’s combo potential.
The Jeskai Mutate deck that broke out at the Strixhaven Championship and emerged again to conquer the MPL Gauntlet was Goldspan Dragon’s most iconic performance yet and a template for how to break the card wide open. It just took a mad scientist to figure out how to train their Dragon!
Show of Confidence looks like a finisher for aggressive Magecraft decks hoping to chain a flurry of spells to pile up counters on their cheap creatures, but Goldspan Dragon turns it into the best Dark Ritual imaginable. Dragon ‘becomes the target’ of each copy individually, creating that many Treasure tokens (which then have their mana output doubled by Dragon) and letting you unload the rest of your hand to build towards a big finish. Even if you have nothing left, the permanent power bump to Goldspan Dragon gives you a gigantic threat with haste that is now a one- or two-turn clock.
This deck has many ways to build the ‘storm’ count for Show of Confidence. A Spikefield Hazard or Fading Hope that targets your Dragon nets a mana, while Valorous Stance or Sejiri Shelter breaks even. Prismari Command can create a Treasure and Shock your Dragon to create another, leaving you up one mana total.
Note that, as with the actual storm mechanic, Show of Confidence will only give you the ‘original’ and not a full new set of copies if combined with Galvanic Iteration. That said, if you have enough other spells to care about this as well as both Show and Iteration, you can figure out something impressive to do instead.
Alchemist’s Gambit is, thankfully, no Alrund’s Epiphany, but it is sometimes even scarier here. Untapping with Goldspan Dragon often lets you win that turn with this shell. Gambit lets you effectively untap with Dragon the turn you cast it. Turn 4 Unexpected Windfall into Turn 5 Goldspan Dragon lets you Gambit with enough spare Treasure to go berserk on your extra turn. Dragon’s rapid mana production lets you cast a Gambit with Cleave without much trouble if you do need more time.
These elements turn another staple of control decks into a surprising combo piece:
It’s flippant but fair to say that Lier, Disciple of the Drowned and spells are a combo, and specific spells like Fading Hope and Divide by Zero prompted an additional restriction in Alchemy because they made Lier too flexible and easy to protect on the opponent’s turn. Lier still shines here as a generic finisher, but this is the first successful deck to really harness Lier as a combo card. Show of Confidence on Goldspan Dragon can give you the mana to cast Lier, which then lets you recast the build-your-own-Rituals and then Show a second time, which will leave you with boundless mana and a Marit Lage-sized Goldspan Dragon. Alternatively, a Cleaved Alchemist’s Gambit curves perfectly into Lier recasting a three-mana Gambit, giving you yet another turn to finish the job.
With these two creatures powering all sorts of shenanigans, protecting them is important. Sejiri Shelter pairs perfectly with Dragon, as it’s castable with the Treasure created from the removal spell that would have killed it, and one copy of Shelter can protect your Lier several times. A card that did this alone would only be playable in small numbers, if at all, but attaching this effect to a DFC lets you fold this into your manabase at low cost.
Valorous Stance is as good at protecting your own Dragon as it is at slaying theirs. It hits many of the format’s scariest creatures, from Hullbreaker Horror and Hinata, Sun-Crowned to Concealing Curtains and Adeline, Resplendent Cathar. This fills a gap for the Izzet decks which lack permanent answers for creatures that go above your burn spells; Dragon’s Fire or Abrade can light up a Runeforge Champion on Turn 3 but will struggle to kill it later.
All this is powered by the Galvanic Iteration + Unexpected Windfall engine that took Izzet Epiphany to the next level. It’s even stronger here in a dedicated Goldspan Dragon deck, where Unexpected Windfall can pay for itself on a combo turn or let you chain Dragon into another big play right away as early as the fifth turn. If and when you minimize the combo in post-sideboard games to make room for relevant interaction, the other Iteration helps the deck to fight fair.
Smoldering Egg shows up as expected as a proven pivot card against creature decks. It is less likely to catch opponents off-guard here than in the mostly creatureless Izzet Control decks, as Dragon and Lier already have them reaching for their removal, but the protection spells give you a way to keep Egg around in lieu of actual counters. Both modes on Alchemist’s Gambit set up Egg well. A Cleaved Gambit transforms Egg by itself, while the threat of Ashmouth Dragon makes it easier to fire off Alchemist’s Gambit as Final Fortune to end the game out of nowhere.
What About Alchemy?
If you’re excited to see this deck in action at the upcoming Set Championship, don’t hold your breath.
The two centerpiece creatures of this deck both had their wings clipped in the transition to Alchemy. For Lier, this nerf made it just one of several options for blue decks rather than an automatic choice. Goldspan Dragon saw its entire career ended in its prime; now it’s barely appealing even in a dedicated Dragon deck.
It makes some sense to play it safe. Goldspan Dragon was one of the best cards in Standard before the bans, and it’s a disaster if, after all the effort of creating a new format, the same Izzet shell with the same headline act overshadows the new cards from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty.
The play patterns of Goldspan Dragon were also highly dangerous. Nissa, Who Shakes the World showed that hard-hitting threats that also offer an immediate rebate on mana and extra mana on future turns are very difficult to compete with unless you are doing something equally ridiculous. It’s hard to appreciate the cool things Goldspan Dragon unlocks when its average use case is so strong and straightforward.
The cool things matter, though. Decks like Jeskai Mutate or this Show of Confidence combo add flavour to a format (when they aren’t hopelessly broken, at least) and are what stick in your memory years later. It’s easy to imagine someone looking back at one of these decks as an all-time favourite for them, or at Goldspan Dragon as one of their favourite cards. Can you say the same about the Alchemy version of Goldspan Dragon?
This ties into a larger question about the scope of these changes. If someone falls in love with this Standard deck and wants to try it in Historic, or relive their Jeskai Mutate glory days there, or try a whole new twist on Goldspan Dragon with some obscure card from the Historic card pool, why should they be limited by a change meant to bring Dragon back down to earth in a format at Standard or Alchemy’s power level?
I’m glad that cards can be patched in this way. Lier is a great example of a card that could be interesting but was over the line initially and would be better off fixed than banned. Rebalancing is a powerful tool that brings Magic onto equal footing with other digital card games, but without a clear sense of direction for its use, I worry that it just becomes the immediate response to any problem that also allows for complacency in design.
These concerns aside, Standard looks to have escaped the rut it has been in since rotation. This latest twist on Goldspan Dragon combo is the most dazzling part of that.
