by Johnny Cycles, February 20th, 2024

Dragons In Modern

Hello! It’s Johnny Cycles with another edition of Dragons in Modern! This week, I’m running my budget Gruul Dragons deck through a second league. The deck was so much fun and so competitive, I wanted to give it another chance to show what it can do. You can read about the deck here. For a more in-depth article on the deck’s gameplan and synergies, click here. The second article features a non-budget version of the deck, but, most of the money cards are in the sideboard and our gameplan of turn 1 mana dork, turn 2 Planeswalker, turn 3 dragon remains the same.

Here’s the decklist for your reference:

Decklist – Budget Gruul Dragons

by Johnny Cycles
Format: Modern

Creatures (21)

2 Arbor Elf
4 Delighted Halfling
3 Bonecrusher Giant
3 Questing Beast
4 Glorybringer
4 Stormbreath Dragon
1 Thundermaw Hellkite

Planeswalkers (8)

4 Domri, Anarch of Bolas
4 Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner

Spells (4)

4 Lightning Bolt

Enchantments (4)

4 Utopia Sprawl

Lands (23)

1 Bloodstained Mire
4 Field of Ruin
5 Forest
4 Mountain
4 Stomping Ground
1 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard (15)

4 Tormod’s Crypt
3 Veil of Summer
3 Blood Moon
2 Brotherhood’s End
3 Pulse of Murasa

League 2 – Friendly

Match 1 – Rakdos Scam

Match 2 – Amulet Titan

Match 3 – 4-Color Control

Match 4 – Living End

Match 5 – Merfolk

League Record: 3-2

Overall Record: 5-5

Conclusion

Overall, the deck was again very competitive and super fun to play. Rakdos Scam was our worst match by far, but we’ve beaten the deck before and so know it’s not unwinnable. Amulet Titan, meanwhile, is a deck I don’t think I’ve ever won a match against with Gruul Dragons. Having played it twice in our two leagues, however, I can see where a different draw here or there would’ve made the difference. Those were our two losses. We beat 4-Color Control and Living End and definitely got lucky along the way. Living End is a tough match-up for any deck, but our graveyard hate plan got us game 2, while our opponent never found their cascade spell in game 3. The Merfolk deck we played was a super cool brew that requires a bit of set-up before exploding. Luckily, we were able to race in game 1, while in game 2 we were the beneficiary of a mistake by our opponent. It’s never ideal to win a game or match due to a misplay, but it’s better than losing a match due to a misplay! Viewers know I’ve done that my fair share of times.

I think our record is pretty indicative of how this deck will perform in leagues. A 50% win rate is more than acceptable for a budget deck and doubly so for a budget dragons deck. We are playing a largely fair strategy of ramping into dragons and beating face, while many of our opponents are up to no good with their free spells and Modern Horizons 2 cards. I highly recommend playing this deck if you enjoy raining dragon fire down on your opponent! And, if you’re on a budget, this deck is under $100 and will get you a treasure chest some of the time to help build your collection.

As always, thanks for reading and watching! Let me know in the comments what you think of the deck or if I missed a better line!