by Johnny Cycles, April 19th, 2024

Welcome to another edition of Dragons in Modern! This week I’m running back my Dimir Dragons deck that I played several months ago before I started making videos. The deck plays some extremely janky creatures alongside some of Modern’s best cards. We have Magic’s best Dragon in Murktide Regent swinging in with never-before-played-in-Modern Dragon Turtle! Rounding out our Dragon package is another never-played-in-Modern creature, Ebondeath, Dracolich! Both Dragons have flash, which allows us to hold up our counter magic and play on our opponent’s turn. Will that make them good enough to compete in today’s Modern? Let’s find out!

 

Decklist – Dimir Dragons

by Johnny Cycles
Format: Modern

Creatures (14)

4 Stitcher’s Supplier
2 Dragon Turtle
4 Ebondeath, Dracolich
4 Murktide Regent

Spells (24)

4 Fatal Push
4 Preordain
2 Stern Scolding
4 Thought Scour
4 Thoughtseize
4 Counterspell
2 Force of Negation

Lands (22)

1 Bloodstained Mire

2 Flooded Strand

5 Island

1 Misty Rainforest

1 Otawara, Soaring City

4 Polluted Delta

2 Swamp

1 Takenuma, Abandoned Mire

1 Undercity Sewers

4 Watery Grave

Sideboard (15)

2 Spell Snare
3 Boomerang
3 Ashiok, Dream Render
2 Damnation
3 Leyline of the Void
2 Subtlety

Deck Tech

Primary Game Plan

We want to fill our graveyard as fast as possible in order to cast a big Murktide Regent as early as turn 2. In support of this plan, we’re playing some of Modern’s best interaction (Thoughtseize, Counterspell, Fatal Push, Force of Negation) to manage the game, continue filling our graveyard for more Murktide Regents, and hopefully grind out some wins. Dragon Turtle helps us on this front, as it can lock down an opponent’s best threat to buy us time to close out the game. Our backup plan is to cast Ebondeath, Dracolich again and again at our opponent’s end step and beat face.

You can read a more in-depth article about the deck here, where you can see how it evolved over the course of several leagues. I wasn’t making videos at that time, but there are pictures and narrative about the different games. One more thing before we get to the practice games and league. I recorded the league games the day after Outlaws of Thunder Junction hit MTGO.

This is an exciting time and there are some cool, new cards already impacting Modern. It also makes for some situations where our sideboard doesn’t quite line up with the evolving meta. I discuss where to go with this deck in the wrap-up, but things like Ashiok, Dream Render, which is one of our hate pieces against Amulet Titan, which we played twice in our practice games, was very low impact in the league, where we didn’t see Prime Time once. Would it have made a difference? You can be the judge!

Practice Match 1 vs. Amulet Titan

Practice Match 2 vs. Burn

Practice Match 3 vs. Amulet Titan

Practice Games Record: 1-2

Double Amulet Titan for a warm-up? Yay…. Our Burn opponent scooped, so I’ll give us the W. It seems like they’re favored, however. I played one other game against an Affinity style deck, but my opponent scooped after beating us in game 1.

League 1

Match 1 vs. Domain Zoo

Match 2 vs. Gruul Slickshot

Match 3 – Dimir Scam

My computer must have been running low on memory, as I was recording the whole time, but the video was nowhere to be found.

Match 4 – Dimir Affinity

Match 5 – Cabal Coffers

League Record: 1-4

Wrap-Up

Overall, our deck did much of what we set out to do. We filled our graveyard quickly. We played early and large Murktide Regents. We took our opponents’ best cards with Thoughtseize and countered a bunch of their threats with Counterspell. We even got to flash in Ebondeath, Dracolich and pressure our opponent’s life total in ways they never expected.

Alas, it wasn’t enough. An early Murktide Regent rarely, if ever, went the distance. Our opponent either answered it or raced us or both. Our cheap interaction frequently didn’t line up with what our opponent was doing. And even when it did, Modern is so full of 2-for-1s that it’s hard to win that kind of battle consistently. Our Dragon package was more of a liability, outside of Murktide, of course. Ebondeath, Dracolich had a couple of moments, but we weren’t able to show off the power of the Zombie Dragon. I don’t think we ever cast it from our graveyard and we only won with it once…in the match that didn’t record.

Dragon Turtle…sigh. Expectations were never high for this strange-in-more-than-one-way card, but I’ve played the deck enough to know it’s better than what you see in this league. I’ve won games with Dragon Turtle by tapping down a Tron player’s Wurmcoil Engine they were counting on gaining life with before dying to The One Ring. I’ve also beaten Izzet Murktide with it by tapping down their only blocker. Unfortunately, for this article, Dragon Turtle was only good for pitching to Force of Negation.

There are a couple of problems with our strategy here that will probably see this deck go 1-4 more often than not. First, Control decks need to pull ahead on cards to ensure they have a variety of answers at all times. When Control loses the card advantage battle, they usually lose the game. Preordain and Thought Scour are our only ways to draw extra cards. Thus, we were often out of answers or hoping our one answer in hand would deal with what our opponent was doing.

Second, we need a way to turn the corner quickly and close out a game once we’ve dealt with our opponent’s threats and before they can rebuild. Murktide Regent is good at this, but we only have four copies. Furthermore, if we exhausted our answers managing the board, then we often were left with no way to protect our Murktide once it resolved. Not playing cheap, efficient threats that do more than attack like Izzet Murktide decks have in Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and Dragon’s Rage Channeler puts too much of a burden on the big threats we play.

Is there a Dimir Dragons deck that can address these issues and win more games? Possibly. Dimir Control is a tier 2 (maybe 3) strategy, while Izzet Murktide is a tier 2 (or 1) one. Perhaps we combine the two concepts and build a Dimir Dragon Control deck that is more competitive, but it wouldn’t be heavy on the Dragons and it probably wouldn’t be Dimir.

As always, thanks for reading and watching! My biggest regret, other than not having video of our one match win, is not showing off the power of Dragon Turtle!