Two weeks ago, after scrubbing out of a Modern PPTQ, my friends and I sat around in a bar named “Drafts” in Concord, New Hampshire. After discussing Modern and half-watching the disturbing spectacle that is horse racing on the bar TV screens, someone asks, “So what is everyone playing at GP Providence?”
I had no real answer to this. I hadn’t really played much Standard at all. I was on UB Control for awhile but hadn’t put in the time to play the deck efficiently, especially over nine rounds. I had Mono Blue Collected Company built but didn’t think the deck was any good especially in an open GP field.
“What I really want to play is something with Sarkhan Unbroken.” The words slipped from my mouth without so much as a conscious thought.
I started to search for a list I liked later that night but didn’t really find one. MTGTop8 had a few decks with Sarkhan but all of them looked liked piles, some sported Temur Ascendancy while others had Shaman of the Great Hunt and Yasova Dragonclaw. I wanted to play something a little less fringe so I instead decided to try shoehorning Sarkhan and some blue mana into RG Dragons. Here is the list I came up with and played at GP Providence.
Temur Dragons
| Lands (24) 4 Wooded Foothills 4 Temple of Abandon 2 Temple of Mystery 4 Frontier Bivoac 3 Mountain 3 Forest 2 Haven of the Spirit Dragon 2 Shivan Reef Creatures (24) 4 Elvish Mystic 4 Sylvan Caryatid 2 Rattleclaw Mystic 4 Courser of Kruphix 4 Thunderbreak Regent 4 Stormbreath Dragon 2 Dragonlord Atarka Spells (12) 3 Crater’s Claws 4 Draconic Roar 2 Xenagos the Reveler 3 Sarkhan Unbroken | Sideboard (15) 2 Hornet’s Nest 3 Boon Satyr 1 Destructive Revelry 1 Surrak Dragonclaw 1 Chandra Pyromaster 3 Wild Slash 2 Roast 1 Seismic Rupture 1 Mistcutter Hydra |
The most important question this deck needs to be answer is whether Sarkhan warrants the splash. After playing with the card for nine rounds, honestly, I’m not sure if I can give you an answer. The card is certainly cool; it interacts well with Courser of Kruphix, it makes dragons to protect itself or take to the sky, it draws cards, and helps ramp into Dragonlord Atarka. While I was able to win the game on the back of Sarkhan more than once, there were other games where Sarkhan sat in my hand and did nothing while my opponent beat me down with a Goblin Rabblemaster and its tokens. I liked the card against Mardu Dragons and Abzan Midrange but didn’t care for it against RG Devotion or Atarka Red. All in all it seemed like kind of a wash.
While I think the discussion over Sarkhan can be tabled until a later point, my sideboard for this event was undeniably a mess. Seismic Rupture, Destructive Revelry, and the Chandra should really be three Anger of the Gods. Anger is fantastic against the red aggro decks, the devotion strategies, and the megamorph decks with the Deathmist Raptor/Den Protector package. Seismic Rupture just feels worse in every way except that it doesn’t kill my own Caryatids I guess. I had a lot of cards to board in against control and never ended up playing Esper or UB in the tournament. I suppose this doesn’t mean I made a mistake sideboarding, but I wish I had cards that were a bit more flexible against multiple strategies. I never once brought in Boon Satyr for example, it probably should have just been Den Protector as the card is passable against control and good in the grindier matches against Abzan/Sultai.
As for my games:
ROUND ONE— BYE (2-0)
ROUND TWO—Temur Ascendancy (2-1)
ROUND THREE—Abzan Megamorph (1-2)
ROUND FOUR—Abzan Midrange (1-2)
ROUND FIVE—Mardu Dragons (2-0)
ROUND SIX— Mardu Dragons (2-1)
ROUND SEVEN—Abzan Aggro (2-1)
ROUND EIGHT—RG Devotion (0-2)
ROUND NINE—Mardu Midrange (1-2)
My 5-4 record certainly was nothing spectacular, especially given that I had a bye for the first round. Though I don’t think the deck was anywhere near optimal, I found that my unfamiliarity with the format cost me a lot of games. For example, against Abzan Midrange this situation went down.
T1—My opponent played a scry land. I played an Elvish Mystic.
T2—My opponent played a Fleecemane Lion. I had two options here. I could play Draconic Roar, revealing a dragon, to kill the lion and hit my opponent or I could play a Courser of Kruphix. I end up playing the Courser as it’s the more mana efficient play and presumably sets me up to play the long game.
T3—My opponent played Dromoka’s Command choosing to fight my mana dork and make me sacrifice Courser. This brutal two for one put my opponent way ahead on the board and prevented me from ever hitting the fifth mana required to play Stormbreath Dragon.
While I knew that Dromoka’s Command was in the format and generally played in Abzan Midrange, I hadn’t internalized the fact that I needed to play around it.
Later in the day against a Mardu Dragons opponent, it was turn three with me on the play. I had enough mana, thanks to Sylvan Caryatid, to play either Xenagos the Reveler or a Thunderbreak Regent. My opponent had two mana up. I played Xenagos, made a creature, and attacked. He played Draconic Roar, killing my token and my Xenagos. While it was just a 1-for-1 in the scheme of things, had I played the Regent, he presumably could not answer it on my turn and would need to either spend removal on his turn or just play out creatures and try to race.
So I missed day two thanks to some punts and a far from optimal decklist. If I could go back and do it again, I would try out Andy Ferguson’s Temur Dragon’s list which eschews Sarkhan, Atarka, and six of the mana dorks for additional disruption in the form of Stubborn Denial and Wild Slash and additional threats in Savage Knuckleblade and Whisperwood Elemental. His deck looks like this:
Temur Dragons
| Creatures (23) 4 Savage Knuckleblade 4 Stormbreath Dragon 4 Sylvan Caryatid 4 Thunderbreak Regent 3 Whisperwood Elemental 4 Courser of Kruphix Planeswalkers (2) 2 Xenagos, the Reveler | Lands (24) 2 Forest 2 Mountain 4 Frontier Bivouac 2 Haven of the Spirit Dragon 2 Shivan Reef 1 Temple of Abandon 4 Temple of Mystery 4 Wooded Foothills 3 Yavimaya Coast Spells (11) 3 Draconic Roar 3 Stubborn Denial 2 Wild Slash 3 Crater’s Claws Sideboard (15) 2 Den Protector 2 Encase in Ice 3 Disdainful Stroke 2 Wild Slash 3 Anger of the Gods 3 Roast |
Despite my bad beats, I enjoyed the format quite a bit and will try to jam a few more events until Origins comes out and mixes everything up again.
At age 15, while standing in a record store with his high school bandmates, Shawn Massak made the uncool decision to spend the last of his money on a 7th edition starter deck (the one with foil Thorn Elemental). Since that fateful day 11 years ago, Shawn has decorated rooms of his apartment with MTG posters, cosplayed as Jace, the Mindsculptor, and competes with LSV for the record of most islands played (lifetime). When he’s not playing Magic, Shawn works as a job coach for people with disabilities and plays guitar in an indie-pop band.