MTG Commander Deck Of The Week: The Ur-Dragon

When my partner Wendy first started playing Commander, one of the first decks she wanted to build was The Ur-Dragon. She loves it, and it was a regular part of her deck rotation when we went to the various Magic conventions. In 2019, I snagged one of the first Secret Lair sets, Kaleidoscope Killers, which featured amazing art by Justine Jones on three five-color legends, including The Ur-Dragon.  For a wizened mage like me, the art looked like the cover of a Journey album from the 70s, and eventually I decided to also build a Commander deck around The Ur-Dragon too.  I mean, can you have too many Dragon decks in Magic?  I don’t think so.

Shifting Shapes

At first, my spin on it was having a bunch of Shapeshifters with changeling as my early drops, so when I played one of the Tarkir Dragons like Silumgar, the Drifting Death that had “Whenever a Dragon you control attacks” in its text box, I could immediately get triggers right away. It was fun, but it felt less “Dragony” than I’d want with the progenitor of all Dragons as your Commander.

Then Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate came out, one of my all-time favorite sets for Commander goodies, and it had a huge Dragon element that marked a great time to overhaul my The Ur-Dragon deck and just jam a bunch of Dragons. There were low-cost Dragons to round out my lower mana curve, and even Adventure Dragons that could provide me with interactive spells early on and yet keep my density of Dragons high.

I’ve wanted to share my list with you all for a while, but The Ur-Dragon had gotten so expensive since it was printed in Commander 2017 that I’d held off. This year, however, it was reprinted in Commander Masters and you can pick up a copy now for twenty bucks, so if you’ve been hankering to build a five-color Dragon deck, now’s a good time to do it.  And here’s my list to get your deckbuilding juices going!

Let’s swoop in and see what’s going on.

Dragons Matter

Path of Ancestry is awesome in any typal deck, but it’s incredibly powerful in a five-color deck like this one to fix your mana with no restrictions other than entering the battlefield tapped.  Realmwalker is a holdover from the Kaldheim changeling approach earlier; shaving a mana from it with The Ur-Dragon’s eminence makes it quite powerful when it comes to casting discounted Dragons from the top of your library. I had the various Orbs of Dragonkind in the deck, but eventually cut them for more Dragons, except for Jade Orb, since it gives hexproof to whatever Dragon you cast with its mana, helping to ensure its survival until your next turn.

I did have a Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm Commander deck briefly, but I didn’t like how overpowered it was to have a card that powerful sitting in the command zone. In the 99, though?  Heck yeah! It will surely die to removal when someone gets past the ward cost, but hopefully I can copy a sweet Dragon at least once before then.

Adventure Dragons

The Adventure Dragons are really what made me super-excited about this deck, letting me shave slots I’d otherwise dedicate to noncreature interaction for the Adventure spells, and then have the Dragon side to cast later. The Dragon side tended to be a little overcosted for the body you’re getting, but thanks to The Ur-Dragon’s discount, they’re even better. I especially like Young Blue Dragon for that early scry 1 and draw a card.

I’ll eventually pick up a Decadent Dragon when I’m back to playing in-person Commander, since exiling cards from an opponent’s library face-down is super-awkward on Spelltable.

Other Dragons

Here are other Dragons that shine beyond typal decks but certainly feel more comfortable around others in their scaly family. Hellkite Courser is particularly bonkers with The Ur-Dragon since its “whenever one or more Dragons you control attack” trigger is amazingly powerful, as befitting a nine-mana Dragon Avatar.

Since the commander is so expensive to cast, I made sure to include the Treasure twins Old Gnawbone and Ancient Copper Dragon. I also hope to roll the d20 for Ancient Gold Dragon and generate a bunch of 1/1 Faerie Dragons that can also benefit from all the Dragon synergies.

Guardian Scalelord is one of my favorite new Dragons—staple Sun Titan’s ability to a Dragon?  Yes please!

Card Draw

Even though the opportunity to double-spell in a Dragon deck will be rare, I still want a good amount of card draw to ensure I hit my land drops each turn as I march towards nine mana and The Ur-Dragon time. It’s nice that we have some card draw attached to Dragons with Dragonlord Ojutai; Zurgo and Ojutai; Iymrith, Desert Doom; and the awesome Two-Headed Hellkite!

Removal

Silumgar, the Drifting Death and Balefire Dragon count as removal spells in my book!  Breath Weapon and Crux of Fate make for nice Dragon-themed sweepers. I’ve got Swords to Plowshares, the super-fun Contraband Livestock, and Reality Shift for pinpoint removal. 

Deafening Clarion is an excellent modal spell when you need to sweep away a bunch of little critters while giving your large flying Dragons lifelink until the end of the turn.

Interaction

A few counterspells help keep people honest when you have blue mana up to potentially stop their game-winning combo, or a pesky battlefield sweeper that will otherwise send your glorious Dragons to the graveyard. Rhythm of the Wild and Dragonlord Dromoka are awesome for helping to ensure your Dragon spells resolve through opposing counterspells.

Mana Ramp

I love having Reckless Barbarian and Patron of the Arts as Dragon cards that you can cast early to provide some temporary mana to power out a big Dragon, or maybe even The Ur-Dragon itself.

The Deck

Okay, here’s the full deck list!

Here are the deck stats from our friends at Archidekt:

Sharp-eyed observers may be looking at this and realizing it’s not the sort of disciplined mana curve that I usually show in my deckbuilding.  But between the Adventure Dragon spells and The Ur-Dragon’s eminence ability, my mana curve looks much better.  Here’s what it looks like when I put the Adventure Dragon on the curve based on the Adventure mana, and each Dragon on the curve based on the eminence mana discount:

Ah, that’s much more like it, don’t you think?

So, what must-have cards might I have missed including here?  What is your favorite Dragon in Magic?

Talk to Me

Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter!  I run polls and start conversations about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun!  You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content.

I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl, and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can.  If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel.  You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews.  

And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.