by Johnny Cycles, June 6th, 2025
Hello! Welcome to another edition of Dragons in Modern! This month I’m showcasing another mythic from Tarkir: Dragonstorm – Dragonback Assault. At 6-mana, we’re paying full value for it, plus it’s likely we’ll have to untap with it before we start making Dragons, but the power and the flavor is too appealing for me to pass up!
Before I continue, I’ll just say that I’ve played a lot of janky Dragon decks in Modern over the years (looking at you, Dragon Turtle). Of them all, this may be the guiltiest of guilty pleasure decks, simply because it takes so much mana to execute. But that landfall trigger!
First Direction – Amulet Titan Shell
For those of you who’ve been watching my videos for a while know that I’ve played various Dinosaur tribal decks in Modern on the back of an Amulet Titan shell. So when I looked at Dragonback Assault, I immediately thought to follow a similar pattern. After all, Primeval Titan is 6 mana, and those decks get there on turn 2 on the regular. Surely we’ll live that dream, too, right?
Match 1 vs. Esper Control
Match 2 vs. Food Combo
Match 3 vs. Hammertime
Overall Record: 1-2
Three matches in and something didn’t feel right. Sure, we went up against Control and Combo, but it wasn’t just that the match-ups felt bad. No, people are too prepared for Amulet Titan.
Or, we were just on the extreme short-end of the variance stick. In our two losses, I managed to get mana screwed in a 28-land deck each time…
Of course, I borrowed more heavily from the Amulet Titan’s mana base than I did for my Amulet Dinos deck, so perhaps that was a factor.
Nevertheless, I wasn’t impressed with the build. Reflecting back on it, I think the Amulet Titan shell works well with Dinosaurs because of the sheer power level of our creatures. We have overpowered, undercosted threats up the mana curve that can both keep us alive and win us games without us having to make six (or more) mana. When we have our combo, it’s a thing of beauty, but we don’t need it to win.
With Dragonback Assault, we are all-in on this enchantment in the same way Amulet Titan players are all-in on Primeval Titan. The big difference between the two decks, though, is that our 6-mana permanent doesn’t win us the game the turn it resolves…
Second Direction – Ramp
I’ve also spent a lot of time trying to make Flare of Cultivation work. A turn 1 Arboreal Grazer plus the new free spell from MH3 means we have 4 mana on turn 2. Other than in my 4-Drop Demon Tribal brew, the combo hasn’t been overly impressive. Even with that deck, I’m not sure we won many games, but the power and fun were there, at least! Alas, Flare of Cultivation and Arboreal Grazer are too often dead cards in the late game, as the above match shows.
But with our finisher also having a landfall trigger, both of these cards suddenly become some of our best draws once we’ve untapped with Dragonback Assault. And, even better, if we’ve resolved a Grazer on our way to ramping into a Dragonback Assault, we can cast Flare for free the turn we resolve our 6-mana enchantment (before resolving, of course) and make sure we have a land in hand to play to get our first 4/4 Dragon!
As I considered this ramp plan, I could feel my hope rising for the deck!
Further increasing my excitement are two cards that have enabled another big mana deck to succeed – Malevolent Rumble and Sowing Mycospawn. I’ve shown off the power of this inconspicuous 2-mana sorcery from MH3 in my Dragons build – turns out digging for what you need while ramping is a pretty good combination – as have any number of top decks in Modern…
Meanwhile, Sowing Mycospawn is another unassuming enabler from MH3 that is the rug that ties our deck together. It ramps us, gives us some hate against the big mana Eldrazi decks out there, and, more importantly, gives us a landfall trigger for Dragonback Assault!
In explaining the evolution of the deck, I’m beginning to get ahead of myself! It’s just that much fun!
So before I go any further, here’s the decklist:
Decklist – Temur Landfall with Dragonback Assault
by Johnny Cycles
Format: Modern
Creatures (8)
| 4 Arboreal Grazer | |
| 4 Sowing Mycospawn |
Planeswalkers (3)
| 3 Ugin, Eye of the Storms |
Enchantments (12)
| 4 Utopia Sprawl | |
| 4 Breaching Dragonstorm | |
| 4 Dragonback Assault |
Spells (12)
| 4 Lightning Bolt | |
| 4 Malevolent Rumble | |
| 4 Flare of Cultivation |
Lands (25)
1 Breeding Pool
1 Commercial District
4 Forest
1 Hedge Maze
1 Island
4 Karplusan Forest
1 Mistrise Village
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Steam Vents
2 Stomping Ground
4 Wooded Foothills
Sideboard (15)
| 3 Meltdown | |
| 3 Force of Vigor | |
| 3 Magmatic Hellkite | |
| 3 Questing Beast | |
| 3 Bloomvine Regent |
Deck Tech
Primary Game Plan
If you’ve read this far, then you know our main game plan is to ramp into Dragonback Assault as early as turn 3 and start making 4/4 Dragons with every subsequent land drop. I’ve already highlighted the ramp package, so I’ll get right to the payoff cards!
Yes, 6 mana is an awful lot, but we’re hoping to resolve this enchantment by turn 4 (we can get it down as early as turn 3) and reset the board with its enters effect. Then, as our opponent begins rebuilding, we get to untap and start making 4/4 flying Dragons.
Our ramp package detailed above does double duty in this regard. It both gets us to our finisher(s) quickly and generates Dragons for us once we’ve resolved Dragonback Assault.
I said finishers above because we also play the new Ugin from Tarkir: Dragonstorm! This 7-mana Planeswalker will often be enough to win us the game without any help, but it also does a great job of insulating our life total while digging for our namesake enchantment. And even without us being all in on Eldrazi and colorless spells, we can trigger its static ability with Sowing Mycospawn that we can cast with kicker off of the 0. The synergy!
Breaching Dragonstorm isn’t quite a finisher, but it sure is powerful in our deck! No wonder, when we can reliably make a Dragon every turn with no further mana investment. Thus, not only can we spin into Dragonback Assault or Ugin, Eye of the Storms, but once we get the former online, each subsequent land drop returns this enchantment to our hand. And since we haven’t spent any of our mana to trigger this, we can recast Breaching Dragonstorm and spin in to more land drops via Flare of Cultivation or Sowing Mycospawn or into more finishers!
So what looks like a janky, guilty pleasure card (and it is!) is actually one of our most powerful enablers, generating enough card advantage once we’re online that our opponents will often scoop once they realize what we’re able to do.
Alternative Sideboard Plan
Given how high our curve is, there is a good chance we won’t be able to keep up with the super efficient, low-to-the-ground decks so prevalent in Modern. When we run into one of these decks, we can lower our curve by bringing in the three above creatures. But these three cards don’t just alter our deck’s strategy, they shore up our game against several top decks.
Magmatic Hellkite gives us land destruction to fight Amulet Titan and Eldrazi. Questing Beast can hold down the fort against many creature strategies, while giving us a hasty threat that can pressure our opponent’s life total at the same time. Bloomvine Regent, meanwhile, can ramp us with its Omen side, but is most important as a source of lifegain attached to a flier.
Both Magmatic Hellkite and Bloomvine Regent are Dragons and can bounce Breaching Dragonstorm to our hand. Bloomvine Regent, meanwhile, combos beautifully with Dragonback Assault, gaining us 3 life for every land drop we make!
Of course, having an alternative sideboard plan means we are weak to some other strategies. We have no graveyard hate (Endurance), for instance, nor do we play any sweepers (Pyroclasm or Anger of the Gods) or ways to protect our hand (Veil of Summer). Furthermore, being in means we could have some counter magic in the board. These are all legitimate directions to take our sideboard and, honestly, are probably more effective against the field than our current board.
But I do love my Dragons and Questing Beast!
Match 1 vs. Burn
Match 2 vs. Jund
Match 3 vs. Omniscience
Match 4 vs. Mono Green
Match 5 vs. Mono Black
Match 6 vs. Yawgmoth
Match 7 vs. Scapeshift
Match 8 vs. Slivers
Match 9 vs. Abzan Birthing Ritual
Overall Record: 5-4
Impressions from Game Play
Well, that was a blast! Our record is not going to blow anyone away or anything, but we were competitive in almost all of our matches. In many of our losses, we were a card or two short of executing our game plan and winning.
More importantly, the deck was just a ton of fun to play! Whether it was resolving a Breaching Dragonstorm and rolling the dice to see what we found on top, or resolving an early Ugin, Eye of the Storms and drawing cards, playing this deck made me happy. And I haven’t even mentioned our namesake card!
Resolving a Dragonback Assault was amazing! In many of our losses, the problem wasn’t that the 6-mana enchantment was too slow, but rather, that we couldn’t find one or resolve it before our opponent cast Thoughtseize or countered it. In some games, we were able to reset the board and turn the corner, as the card was designed to do. In others, we cast it on an empty board and began making Dragons on our way to victory.
The value engine it gave us was amazing! Even through multiple removal spells and boardwipes, Dragonback Assault caught us back up quickly and easily.
Furthermore, the deck felt consistent. We rarely stumbled on lands or action (though this did happen, of course). Looking at our decklist, you can see why. We play ramp spells up the curve from 1 to 4, allowing us to reliably get to 6 mana by turn 4. And we play three finishers from the 5 drop spot to the 7 drop spot. Crunch the numbers and we’re playing nearly twice as much ramp as finisher (20 to 11 respectively). These numbers, plus having 8 ways to tutor lands from our deck, resulted in our deck running smoothly and consistently for the most part.
It’s worth noting that we didn’t play a ton of top tier decks, and many of the decks that resemble them beat us. Jund, for instance, is full of Modern Horizon staples and is super efficient and powerful. We struggled to fight against their graveyard synergies and hand disruption.
Yawgmoth, meanwhile, continues its dominance of me and my Midrange decks. The Abzan Birthing Ritual deck didn’t feel as rough (we got a game against them), but the card advantage and disruption the deck plays made it a tough match-up.
What’s Next for Dragonback Assault?
First, this deck was so much fun that I can’t wait to keep playing it! And I can’t say that about many of the decks I write about (looking at you Rakdos Dragons, Affinity Hellkite, and Glimmers).
Second, I like our maindeck and think it’s pretty well stream-lined, as I detail above. The two main flex spots where I could see us trying out something are Lightning Bolt and Breaching Dragonstorm. The first is such efficient removal and reach that it’s hard to imagine cutting it, but perhaps we’d improve our game 1 chances against Aggro (in whatever form) by having Brotherhood’s End in our 60.
Breaching Dragonstorm, meanwhile, is so much fun to play and so synergistic with our strategy that it pains me to even think of cutting it, but it IS a 5-mana enchantment that has more of a chance of finding us an Arboreal Grazer than an Ugin, Eye of the Storms. Saying that, however, there were games that saw us spin into Dragonback Assault, so…cut it at your own risk!
Seriously, though, replacing Breaching Dragonstorm with a sweeper would allow us to keep Lightning Bolt. We could also play the more control game and include some counter magic instead of it.
Third, the sideboard is where I really see us shoring up our bad match-ups. I explain above why I chose the alternative sideboard that I did. It isn’t really that crazy of a change, since both Magmatic Hellkite and Bloomvine Regent serve dual purposes. Questing Beast is the card that truly stands out as not doing a whole lot in the match-ups that we struggle against. The aggressive decks out there play answers to it, after all.
I should say here, as well, that having an alternative sideboard plan from a big mana deck to a Midrange deck isn’t really a recipe for too many wins. After all, the kind of Midrange deck we’re transforming into isn’t all that great against the meta either… There’s a reason I describe the sideboard as full of guilty pleasure cards.
I like the land hate and the lifegain the two Dragons give us, but we could perhaps find cheaper ways of achieving these same goals.
Conclusion
Dragonback Assault is a super powerful and fun new enchantment to build a deck around. It is also more competitive in Modern than I imagined it would be when I conceived of the deck. If you like big mana ramp decks, but don’t want to play Eldrazi, Tron, or Amulet Titan, give this deck a shot! Making 4/4 flying Dragons with each land drop is as fun as it sounds!
As always, thanks for reading and watching!
