by Johnny Cycles, January 17th, 2025
Hello! Welcome to another edition of Dragons in Modern! This month, I’m finally playing two cards I’ve had on my short list for months: Sarkhan, Soul Aflame and Dragonhawk, Fate’s Tempest.
There’s a lot to like about both of these cards. And they’re both pushed in a way rarely seen among Dragons and their support cards. But will it be good enough to make the combo competitive in Modern? We’re going to find out!
Deck List – Temur Sarkhan-Dragonhawk
by Johnny Cycles
Format: Modern
Creatures (23)
| 4 Delighted Halfling | |
| 2 Bonecrusher Giant | |
| 4 Sarkhan, Soul Aflame | |
| 3 Atsushi, the Blazing Sky | |
| 4 Dragonhawk, Fate’s Tempest | |
| 4 Glorybringer | |
| 2 Goldspan Dragon |
Planeswalkers (4)
| 4 Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner |
Spells (6)
| 4 Lightning Bolt | |
| 2 Brotherhood’s End |
Enchantments (4)
| 4 Utopia Sprawl |
Lands (23)
Sideboard (15)
| 2 Rending Volley | |
| 3 Witness Protection | |
| 4 Soulless Jailer | |
| 3 Blood Moon | |
| 3 Rampaging Ferocidon |
Deck Tech – Temur Sarkhan-Dragonhawk
This deck has been a long time in the making, and not just because it took me awhile to get around to testing Sarkhan, Soul Aflame. Rather, I built the first draft of the deck pre-ban, excited at the combo potential between Sarkhan and Dragonhawk, Fate’s Tempest (more on that later, unless you just watched the deck tech). Then the bans and, more importantly, unbannings happened and I played a few more games. Then, Winter Break started and I found no time to play Magic with my kids home. And THEN, snow and some water processing issues gave my kids the entire first week of post-Winter break off.
Long story short, the meta has wildly changed since the conception, building, and first testing of this deck. You’ll notice this in the various matches I’m highlighting. And you’ll also notice small changes to the deck as I’ve tried to adjust to what I was anticipating out of the meta each time I was able to start playing again. All that said, the core of the deck has stayed the same.
Primary Game Plan
Much like my Gruul Dragons deck, we want to play a mana dork on turn 1, a 3-mana ramp spell on turn 2 (Sarkhan or Kiora), and a 5-drop Dragon on turn 3. The addition of Sarkhan, Soul Aflame, however, has increased the deck’s potential for extremely explosive starts. Unfortunately, he is a double-edged sword and just as often (more so, if I’m being honest), this version of Dragons plays slower and less aggressive without our 3-drop namesake card on the battlefield.
But first, let’s talk about our hopes and dreams for the deck.
I’ve long said that for Dragons to be competitive in Modern, they have to have haste. Well, Sarkhan, Soul Aflame has the potential to give our non-hasty Dragons a kind of pseudo-haste. With him on the battlefield, the turn we cast Atsushi, the Blazing Sky or Dragonhawk, Fate’s Tempest, we can attack with a copy of that non-hasty Dragon that Sarkhan becomes.
But there’s more! With Sarkhan, Soul Aflame on turn 2, we can cast Dragonhawk, Fate’s Tempest on turn 3, stack our triggers so that Sarkhan becomes a copy of the 5/5 and then Dragonhawk’s ETB trigger resolves, giving us two cards exiled. Then, when we attack with our Sarkhan, which is now a Dragonhawk, we get two more cards exiled. That’s 5 damage via combat, plus 8 more damage at the end step, meaning we can hit for 13 as early as turn 3. I had originally, and mistakenly, thought both Dragonhawks would see all the cards exiled, allowing us to hit for 21 on turn 3. Alas, they only see their own cards they exile, so it’s just a measly 13 instead…
Beyond this sweet combo, we’re playing Glorybringer (as the best Red Dragon in Modern) and Goldspan Dragon. The former gives us a shot at some truly explosive and powerful starts if we can resolve it on turn 3 with Sarkhan out. The latter gives us some extra mana to use to cast the spells we find off of Dragonhawk, if that’s where we’re at in the game. Atsushi, the Blazing Sky fills in our 4-drop slot. It replaces itself (in theory), while also comboing with Sarkhan.
The rest of the deck is removal. Lightning Bolt needs no explanation, but maybe the Brotherhood’s End does. Affinity is back is the short answer. The long answer is that we’re a Midrange deck in a field of hyper-aggressive, go-wide strategies. I think having a way to reset the board on our way to our 5-drop Dragons is important.
In the sideboard, I’m trying out Witness Protection as an answer to Psychic Frog (and whatever big creature ails us). I’m also testing Soulless Jailer as dual hate against both graveyard strategies (Vengevine and Goryo’s Vengeance) and Storm. I’m hoping to punish all those Energy decks, as well as have a silver bullet against Splinter Twin, with Rampaging Ferocidon.
Concerns
Unfortunately, since Sarkhan is a creature, he dies to more removal than our Domri, Anarch of Bolas, meaning we will probably be less likely to untap with him on turn 3. Furthermore, since we’re eschewing our traditional hasty threats for the added value Atsushi, the Blazing Sky and Dragonhawk, Fate’s Tempest bring in conjunction with Sarkhan, when we don’t have him out, we are playing a slower, fairer Midrange game. I’m not sure we have the power and interaction to keep up with today’s Modern if that’s how our deck plays.
But, there’s only one way to find out!
Before I get to the videos, I’ve taken the time to edit the first group of 3 matches. I’m including them all in a single video below. I originally had five matches, but I lost the other two in the editing process.
First Three Matches
Impressions from Matches
We went 2-1 in our practice matches, though, honestly, that number is very deceiving. I edited and uploaded two more matches to make a total of 5, but then lost them. Overall, our record was 2-3 in those practice matches.
But even that number is pretty misleading. I think I played close to 15 matches with versions of this deck. We did not win very many of them. The final version I ran through a friendly league and, well, it did horribly, even after making changes I felt sure would improve the consistency of the deck.
What changes? you ask.
I swapped in Arboreal Grazer for Delighted Halfling, thinking it’d help with our flooding this way. And I cut Atsushi, the Blazing Sky for Bitter Reunion, with the goal that the 2-drop enchantment would help dig us for what we need in case of mana screw or flood. And there could be a world where its haste clause would be relevant.
Alas, the deck continued its ride on the struggle bus. Along the way, it also felt like I was being mocked by the Magic gods. In our first game, we had Grazers but only 2 lands. We also had the Bitter Reunion, but our digging didn’t find us a third land. This kind of luck continued.
There were a few games where we managed to draw well enough to execute our game plan. More often than not, though, our opponent either had the interaction they needed to stifle that game plan, or they just didn’t care about what we were doing. Or both.
At this point, it feels like I’ve been working on this deck for two months with subpar results. I’m just going to cut my losses and post the three matches I have without trying to replace the ones I lost. The deck felt that bad.
Conclusion
What I feared came to fruition. Sarkhan, Soul Aflame was too susceptible to removal to allow us to reliably cast a Dragon on turn 3, while our non-hasty Dragons either never resolved or were too slow. Modern is simply too fast, too efficient, full of too many answers, and too full of broken strategies for this Midrange Dragon deck to compete. Luck was certainly not on our side, as evidenced by this video…
However, even when we ran decently well, our deck’s strategy is just too slow and underpowered for today’s Modern. Oh well. There’s always Pioneer!
Thanks for reading and watching! I’ll catch y’all on the next one!
