We’ve gotten a lot of the set spoiled, including the five big Dragons, and these Elder Dragons are all focused on instants and sorceries, doing different amazing things along the way.
Last week was Witherbloom, and the other four are today, with the greatest hits and things worth thinking about speculating on.
First of all, since all of these Dragons need to get on the field and stay there, we might see a bump in the generically good cards for this: Mithril Coat, Lightning Greaves, any protection spell in the right colors. It’s more mana, and you might need to wait to get it into play, but when you need your Commander, that’s how it is.
Let’s lead off with what I think is the most unique, Lorehold:
This is the most self-contained, as it both gives your spells the Miracle ability and gives you a draw trigger on each of your opponents’ turns. It’s also reasonably costed at five mana, so you might well wait till seven mana and get the first miracle trigger. With Lorehold, you want big, splashy spells that you’re reducing all the way to a mere two mana.
Scroll Rack – One of the best ways to make sure you miracle, and lacking the constant Sensei’s Divining Top checks.
Rise of the Eldrazi – Want get bonkers? Let’s do it. We’d never pay 12 mana, but we’re all for paying two mana.
Storm Herd – Ten mana is a boatload, but it’s pretty nice to get 20+ tokens!
Call Forth the Tempest – What I love about this is that you’re going to get two more spells AND an unfair wrath effect, a theme of many of the cards I’m highlighting today.
Invincible Hymn – Lifegain by itself isn’t great, but you should get to 70-80 life with this, and that’s pretty fun.
Approach of the Second Sun – Win the game, baby!
Mass Calcify – Uneven wraths are glorious, and while this may spare some things, it’ll take care of most problems.
Volcanic Vision – If you did it once, you’ll love to do the thing again, and with the bonus of an uneven wrath effect!
Everything with cascade will be popular with Quandrix. Might not be all the way up to Apex Devastator, but that’s always super fun. Got to be careful when using cascade with X spells, but Doppelgang is worth the risk among those.
Imoti, Celebrant of Bounty – While Quandrix requires spells from your hand, this is just all the free stuff if you start high enough.
Rishkar’s Expertise – Giving this cascade is such value that it ought to be illegal. If you happen to end up with a bigger creature after all the cascading, all the better!
Cost-reduced cards (mostly uncommon and bulk) – I like Into the Story most, but there’s a wide range of spells that cost a few mana less but cascade at the greater value. None of them are expensive, but in this deck, they will all be quite strong.
You want instants and sorceries, you want creatures. Smells like token generation to me! The other thing you want, if you’re casting a spell twice, is a set of spells that get half the life, rounded up. Rounded down gets them to 25%, but rounded up gets them dead.
Devout Invocation – The definition of ‘win more’ as you need a few cheap creatures around worth tapping, this will take you from 5 creatures to 13 all at once. You can’t both tap for the effect and sacrifice for Casualty, but you can tap the first set of Angels to make the second set.
Perch Protection – It’s a way to protect your board, give yourself eight Birds, and put your opponents on two extra turns of beating the snot out of each other.
Army of the Damned – Yes, you can copy the spell if you flash it back.
Token Doublers like Anointed Procession, Mondrak, etc. should go up too, and there’s a lot of great choices here. Ojer Taq is also top-tier for stuff like this.
Vona’s Hunger – As previously mentioned, I do love some uneven board wipes, and this will do the job for three mana and one creature.
Blood Tribute and Peer into the Abyss – A lot of mana, but how much would you pay to end the game?
Rush of Dread – What’s really great here is that one player dies, one loses their board, and one loses their hand if you have the mana to make all three happen.
Revival // Revenge – You get to 4x your life while killing someone else. You’re already the archenemy, might as well lean into it.
No shortage of good spells to storm, but mana is premium. We can add mana, or we can storm spells that untap lands! Ral, Storm Conduit should be high on the list of cards to include, but keep in mind that copying a spell with storm doesn’t get you a storm trigger.
Seething Song, Rite of Flame, Pyretic Ritual, Desperate Ritual – SL versions of all these cards exist and might spike.
High Tide – As any Legacy player will tell you, yes, these stack.
Jeska’s Will – Always been a good card, now a terrifyingly disgusting one.
Path of the Pyromancer – Doing this with Storm means lots of mana but also a lot of discarding. Best done till you hit the Past in Flames in your deck.
Inner Fire and Mana Geyser – Just a great way to be an intermediate Storm card. Fuels everything you want if it’s copied even once.
Snap – Ruby Storm players can tell you how good life is with cost reductions, but Snap is either free to be the first spell you cast, costing a net of zero mana, or get you ahead on mana if your count is higher.
Frantic Search – Find a combo piece and get way ahead on mana! What’s not to love?
Turnabout – Remember that if this is copies, you have a chance to re-tap everything for mana, netting you all the mana you’ll ever need.
Intellectual Offering – Cast with caution, but you can target the same players over and over, while you get a reset on your mana rocks and tons of cards.
Solve the Equation – SLD versions are clearly the play here, it’s just a question of which art/style you like more. Copying this is glorious, whereas something like Mystical Tutor to the top of the deck and then shuffle is no good in multiples.
Extra Turns spells – Something everyone loves to do, and if you get +2 turns, I feel the table should just concede on the spot.
Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the co-host of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at an event and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.
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