Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate is bring the serious heat for Dragon fans! There are several cycles of Dragons that span all five colors, Dragons on the lower end of the mana curve, and a handful of cards that care about your Dragons too. There is even a three-color Dragon legend that makes for a great Dragon tribal deck, and that’s what I want to discuss today: Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm!
Miirym is just the second legendary Dragon in the Temur colors, behind Intet, the Dreamer.
No offense to Intet, but the Planar Chaos Dragon couldn’t care less whether or not you have other Dragons in your deck. While you could build a Temur Dragon deck before, we now have a true Dragon deck leader for this color combination.
Another cool thing about Miirym is how different it is from other Dragon tribal options, so let’s dig in.
The Breakdown
Like Intet, Miirym is a 6/6 flyer for six mana, which is a respectable body with evasion but not necessarily dominating the battlefield. Seven power is the magic number that divides evenly into 21 for commander damage, so you’re not necessarily going to rely on Miirym to win the game that way. But that’s okay, because the rest of Miirym’s text box helps to fill the skies with lots of win conditions.
The triggered ability is quite good and is worded in such a way to really maximize its power. It triggers off a Dragon entering the battlefield under your control, so it plays great with any blink effects or reanimation strategies in addition to just casting it the old-fashioned way. Even better, it lets you copy legendary Dragons too by making the copies non-legendary! So many awesome Dragons these days are legendary, so getting to put them in your deck and possibly make copies is amazing.
Token Time?
Now, one thing that might be tempting with Miirym is to lean hard into token synergies, since the Temur color combination has lots of cool options for that sort of thing.
But honestly, why not just play more cool Dragons to copy? In my opinion, Miirym’s ability to copy amazing Dragons that enter your battlefield is synergy enough for a fun and effective Commander deck.
Release Notes
Before we start diving into the cards, let’s take a look at the release notes on Miirym:
If the Dragon that entered the battlefield is copying something else as the triggered ability resolves, the token will be a copy of whatever that creature is a copy of.
So, what Dragons should we look to put in a Miirym deck? Between Adventures in the Forgotten Realms and Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate, I think we could fill out a large chunk of the deck with Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) cards to really rep that flavor.
Ancient Elder Dragons
The cycle of mythic rare, non-legendary Elder Dragons nicely captures the thrill of rolling a d20 in D&D, hoping for a high number. I would definitely put all three I can into this deck if I had them available, and really look forward to that mini-game of rolling that die to see what Dragon loot spills out! And while I probably would put Garruk’s Uprising in any Dragon tribal deck I could, it will definitely be a big help giving these Dragons trample to help get that trigger.
Adventure Crystal Dragons
The cycle of uncommon crystal Dragons with an Adventure spell side are almost all quite good for Dragon tribal decks to keep the Dragon count high while also having some cheaper interaction for earlier in the game. I’ll probably slot some of these in non-Dragon decks too; getting two spells in one is often just that good!
We all know how good “counter target noncreature spell” is in Commander, so Sapphire Dragon is a must-play, and the creature side is solid too. The Dissonant Wave side of Emerald Dragon counters target activated or triggered ability from a noncreature source, and this will be quite effective a surprising number of times in games. You can counter a Rogue’s Passage activation; an Aetherflux Reservoir activation (ouch!); a planeswalker ultimate activation like Jace, Wielder of Mysteries; or a trigger like landfall on Felidar Retreat.
Amethyst Dragon’s Explosive Crystal Adventure spell isn’t really priced well for most Commander games, but I might consider it anyway in a Dragon tribal deck as a way to clean up a few small creatures in one fell swoop.
Adventure Common Dragons
At common, there are five Adventure Dragons, but it’s not a five-color cycle; instead, we get two blue, two red, and one green, which works out perfectly if you’re playing a Temur Dragon deck like I’m digging into here!
The Adventure sides of the red and blue ones are all cheap mana values with decent effects attached, and I would definitely consider them for this deck. Scale Deflection from Dread Linnorm is a nice effect, but likely a little expensive to be used as a way to protect one of your creatures in a deck that wants to be casting Dragons. However, if your deck has a +1/+1 counters theme or a creature that taps for some powerful effect, you might consider Dread Linnorm.
Dragons-Matter Dragons
This set also has Dragons that care about Dragons that I’d strongly consider for the deck. Draconic Muralists reminds me of a Dragon-sized Wirewood Herald, and seems like the perfect earlier-game bridge card that will come in quite handy for finding the right Dragon for the battlefield state when it dies. Goad is a powerful mechanic in Commander, and Firkraag, Cunning Instigator really harnesses it quite effectively for a Dragon tribal deck. It’s especially nice with Miirym, since copying Firkraag will be more than doubly good!
Ganax, Astral Hunter pays you back a mana in Treasure for each Dragon that enters the battlefield, and since the trigger is worded that way, you’ll get a Treasure from Miirym’s copy as well. Lozhan, Dragons’ Legacy is perfect for a Dragon tribal deck, turning Dragon spells – and Adventure spells! – into direct damage to just about any target, including directly at opponents’ life totals.
Renari, Merchant of Marvels is another decent earlier-game bridge card; once it’s on the battlefield, you can hold off casting your Dragon spells (and artifact spells) until the optimal time, since they have flash. It’s great to outmaneuver sorcery-speed removal to ensure that your big, expensive Dragon can at least get one hit in before a Wrath of God comes down. Blue decks might already be tempted to play something like Vedalken Orrery or Leyline of Anticipation; Renari covers most of what you’d want in those cards, while also playing into Dragon synergies.
Lastly, there are Skanos, Dragonheart and Thrakkus the Butcher, which can fill out the middle of your mana curve while also hitting quite hard a lot of the time. Thrakkus in particular is a fantastic card to copy with Miirym, since double twice can add up to eye-popping high numbers!
Cheap Dragons
One huge innovation that Baldur’s Gate brings to Dragon tribal decks is a suite of cheap Dragons. Scaled Nurturer in particular is fantastic, a two-mana Dragon that taps for mana! It’s a little awkward that it only provides green mana, but what do you expect for a common? I also love Reckless Barbarian as a 2/2 for two mana that you can cash in later for two red mana to help you cast a more expensive Dragon, and Patron of the Arts isn’t bad either as an early blocker that can provide color-fixing mana in Treasures.
Dragonborn Looter is another good one, letting you dig for lands in the early-game while pitching away expensive Dragon spells, and then later in the game it can help you draw action. I would probably reach for Realmwalker for any Dragon tribal deck with green, but Korlessa, Scale Singer does the same thing for you for one total mana cheaper!
Combo Dragons #1
Baldur’s Gate provides us with some Dragon combo pieces we could add to a Miirym deck to help conclude games in a timely fashion. The incredible new Astral Dragon is a fantastic Commander card on its own, and if you happen to have a Cursed Mirror on the battlefield when you cast or otherwise bring Astral Dragon to the battlefield, you create two tokens that are copies of Cursed Mirror, and have those Cursed Mirror copies enter the battlefield as copies of Astral Dragon, which will enter the battlefield and can create two copies of Cursed Mirror, which then… you get the idea. The beauty of this combo is that all those Cursed Mirror copies have haste so they can immediately attack the table with a swarm of combat damage.
Combo Dragons #2
Reiterate and Mana Geyser have been combining to provide an arbitrarily large amount of red mana in Commander for a long, long time. If you’re not familiar with it, here’s how it works.
First, have eleven mana available to you, including lots of red mana, and ensure that your opponents have at least seven tapped lands between them. Cast Mana Geyser, and while it’s on the stack, cast Reiterate with buyback to copy Mana Geyser. When Reiterate resolves, you get seven or more red mana, and then you can cast Reiterate with buyback targeting Mana Geyser still on the stack, netting you at least one red mana. Do it a million or so times, then you can dump all that extra mana into the activated ability of Bhaal’s Invoker to deal lethal damage to all your opponents.
What’s nice about the combo is that all three pieces are going to be at least decent on their own in a Temur Dragon tribal deck. If you use one early, you can reassemble the combo with something like Underworld Breach for a late-game finish.
Combo Dragons #3
While not necessarily a game-ending combo, Wrathful Red Dragon and red damage-based mass creature removal can potentially generate enough damage you can fling at your opponents’ life totals to end games with, or at least take down the archenemy. Fiery Emancipation might be overkill in a Dragon deck, since Dragons are already scary, but you’re playing red, so why not make damage three times as deadly?
Dragon Support
Baldur’s Gate provides even more non-Dragon Dragon support cards we might consider for this deck. I really love the common Orbs of Dragonkind, which nicely help ramp us towards our more expensive Dragons while providing a nice bonus effect for Dragon spells particularly—red provides haste, blue lets you scry, and the green one makes your Dragon a bit bigger and gives it hexproof until your next turn, making it more likely to avoid pinpoint removal for a while. I would definitely put the Background cards Acolyte of Bahamut and Dragon Cultist in the 99 of my Miirym deck,
Adventures in the Forgotten Realms
Keeping with the D&D theme, we can dip back to Adventures in the Forgotten Realms for a nice selection of good Dragons. Many of them are legendary, so again, Miirym’s ability to copy legends is much appreciated—just imagine getting two Old Gnawbones for the price of one!
Other Good Dragons
If we’re willing to step outside of the D&D theme, Magic provides a near endless-supply of good creatures to put in a Dragon tribal deck. In particular, copying Terror of the Peaks or Savage Ventmaw with Miirym sounds amazing!
Other Good Dragon Support
There are a ton of non-Dragon cards from Magic’s history to support Dragon tribal and we might consider rounding out our decklist with a fair number of them. In particular I really like Dragon’s Hoard as a source of card draw that might otherwise be lacking. I also might try Minion of the Mighty as a way to cheat in an expensive Dragon on its attack trigger, especially since Miirym can make a copy of it.
Changelings
To help round out lower down the mana curve, since we’ve got green and blue in our color identity, we can take advantage of shapeshifters with changeling like Taurean Mauler and Masked Vandal. Maskwood Nexus is a consideration if we’re playing some non-Dragon creatures that otherwise play nicely with Dragons like Dragonspeaker Shaman or Dragonlord’s Servant. Maybe even Magda, Brazen Outlaw.
So, what do you think of Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm, our newest Dragon tribal commander? Are there any other cards you’d like to put in the deck? Let me know!
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