by Johnny Cycles, May 22nd, 2026

Hello and welcome to another edition of Dragons in Modern! Last week, I played a Naya Lorehold deck built around my traditional Gruul Dragons deck but with the addition of two powerful MDFCs. This week, I’m trying out another new mythic Dragon, Silverquill, the Disputant. I built a budget Commander deck with this 4-drop and it was super fun to play. Can a token-based strategy looking to gain value from sacrificing creatures to double up instants and sorceries compete in Modern? I have my doubts, but I’m going to find out!

Decklist – Orzhov Silverquill

by Johnny Cycles
Format: Modern

Creatures (20)

4 Doomed Traveler
4 Nethergoyf
4 Shambling Ghast
4 Orcish Bowmasters
4 Silverquill, the Disputant

Spells (15)

4 Fatal Push
3 Village Rites
2 Entreat the Angels
4 Lingering Souls
2 Remorseless Punishment

Artifacts (2)

2 Phoenix Fleet Airship

Lands (23)

2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Flooded Strand
2 Godless Shrine
4 Marsh Flats
4 Phyrexian Tower
4 Plains
2 Shadowy Backstreet
3 Swamp

Sideboard (15)

3 Thoughtseize
2 Sheoldred’s Edict
3 White Orchid Phantom
3 Leyline of the Void
2 Phoenix Fleet Airship
2 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse

Deck Tech

Primary Game Plan

Much like my Budget Commander deck with Silverquill, the Disputant, we’re hoping to flood the board with 1/1 tokens, untap with our namesake card, then copy a big sorcery…or any of our smaller instants and sorceries. Thus, our deck can be divided up into token generators, cheap spells to help us manage the board and find action, and a handful of big sorceries to finish our opponents off.

Since we’re in the business of sacrificing permanents, I made room for this powerful and synergistic artifact as an alternate win condition. Sure, an army of 1/1s can win games, while Silverquill, the Disputant is a decent threat, but neither is reliable enough. The former strategy is pretty slow, while the latter is fragile. Phoenix Fleet Airship gives us another route to victory. Of course, it is also a bit on the slow side.

Our token generation comes in a variety of forms. Shambling Ghast is largely here as ramp. In conjunction with Phyrexian Tower, we can get out a turn 2 Silverquill or Phoenix Fleet Airship and put our opponent to the test.

Orcish Bowmasters quickly took the place of Raise the Alarm. The thought was to copy Raise the Alarm with Silverquill, but the reality is that the format is just too fast for this to be likely or meaningful, should we get to do it.

Lingering Souls, meanwhile, is a very powerful card, albeit slow and largely outclassed by Modern Horizons cards. Still, 4 1/1 fliers can do a lot by way of keeping us alive and killing our opponent.

Our big payoffs are two guilty pleasure sorceries heretofore unplayed in Modern. If I can double up one of these for the win, then I’ll consider the deck a success!

But seriously… Will all of this be good enough for Modern? I honestly think we’re playing a too fair Midrange deck to compete with some of the more efficient Modern Horizons decks that rule the format, but I guess we’ll find out!

A quick note: we could easily fill our deck with more powerful 1- and 2-drop creatures, such as Ocelot Pride, Guide of Souls, and Ajani, Nacatl Pariah alongside Nethergoyf and Orcish Bowmasters. If time permits, I may give this a shot, but I was reluctant to go this route since it would probably lead to more wins thanks to the individual power of these cards and less thanks to Silverquill, the Disputant. Of course, if we don’t win at all with our namesake card, well, it may be worth trying out a more powerful build.

Game Play

Overall Record: 2-3

It’s a small sample size, of course, but the deck was overall disappointing. We never got to do the thing, though we were sooooo close once. Otherwise, we won or lost without every getting to copy a single spell with Silverquill, the Disputant. We beat Zombies and Neoform and lost to Eldrazi Tron, Eldrazi Aggro, and Goryo’s Vengeance.

Honestly, losing to Tron was not a surprise, as I think we’re not built to really even compete there. And since we aren’t a very fast deck, they will go over the top of us more often than not. Eldrazi Aggro is a different story. We are more competitive against this deck, but got a little unlucky with our opponent finding their limited interaction against us alongside their best card.

Goryo’s Vengeance feels like one of those decks we have to find our sideboard cards to have a chance against. We did not. Meanwhile, against the other unfair combo deck, Neoform, we did find them and got the win. Zombies is not indicative of the format, but certainly has the power, synergy, and fast starts to test us. Luckily, we were able to manage their board and win with fliers.

Overall, though, the deck felt slow and too easily disrupted. Silverquill, the Disputant and Phoenix Fleet Airship are both powerful cards, but neither will win us a game on turn 3. Meanwhile, both are killed by commonly played removal. Which gets me to the big issue with this deck. We just don’t have a lot of good targets for our opponent’s removal, coupled with our slower, Midrange gameplan full of early game creatures that don’t individually pressure our opponent. So when we finally get to play our big threats, our opponent has plenty of answers and a pretty high life total.

Thus, even if we lived until turns 5+, we never got to untap with Silverquill. How do we fix this?

Well, as I mentioned above, we could go the Modern Horizons route and hope that by the time we can cast Silverquill, the Disputant, our opponent will be out of removal and we’ll actually get to copy a spell with the mythic Dragon.

Of course, we may win games with all of these powerful 1- and 2-drops, but hey, even if we get to copy one spell with Silverquill out, it’ll be one more than the first draft.

Decklist – Modern Horizons Silverquill

by Johnny Cycles
Format: Modern

Creatures (23)

4 Guide of Souls
4 Ocelot Pride
4 Ajani, Nacatl Pariah
4 Orcish Bowmasters
3 Voice of Victory
4 Silverquill, the Disputant

Spells (15)

4 Fatal Push
3 Village Rites
2 Entreat the Angels
4 Lingering Souls
2 Remorseless Punishment

Lands (22)

2 Bloodstained Mire
3 Field of Ruin
2 Flooded Strand
2 Godless Shrine
4 Marsh Flats
4 Plains
2 Shadowy Backstreet
3 Swamp

Sideboard (15)

3 Thoughtseize
2 Damping Sphere
3 Sheoldred’s Edict
3 White Orchid Phantom
4 Leyline of the Void

As you can see, we haven’t totally abandoned our core idea. We’re still hoping to double up on one of our finishers, but we’re a much more powerful and aggressive creature deck now. I’ve replaced creatures that synergize with our sacrifice plan with creatures that are inherently powerful, but can still be sacrificed. And, better yet, they can still make tokens for us to sacrifice.

Deck Tech

Game Play

Overall Record: 2-3

That. Is. Crazy!!! I can’t believe we only managed to win two games with this deck. It felt competitive. We won some games. We even got to do the thing in copying Remorseless Punishment! And yet, our record is the same.

So what happened?

Well, variance was a part of it, for sure. We managed to miss enough land drops to slow us down or make too many for us to cobble together a boardstate.

Meanwhile, some of our opponents ran extremely hot. The Mono Green Eldrazi deck that AspiringSpike built essentially played the exact same both games, despite us casting Thoughtseize game 2 and them not having any part of their combo in hand. You can’t Thoughtseize the top of the deck!

Against Jund, our opponent played Urza’s Saga six times in the first game before finally winning. Game 2 saw them with every answer to everything we did…as well as multiple copies of Urza’s Saga again.

Against Rakdos Midrange, our opponent just outvalued us again with Overlords and Vein Rippers. We got a game against them, at least.

We beat Izzet Murktide and Azorius taxes.

My big take away from our Midrange match-ups (and they basically all were) is that we can compete with them, but we need better luck. Rather than drawing lands four turns in a row when we are in desperate need of action, we need to find action. We need our draw spells to find what we need…not more lands. We need our opponents not to have every answer at every turn. The two matches we won were largely thanks to variance running about the same for both players.

In the Jund match, it was back and forth for awhile, but they simply drew better. Mono Green Eldrazi top-decked their combo that let them draw up to 10 cards, at which point they are too far ahead on resources. Rakdos Midrange also so us play a back-and-forth set of games, but we came out on the short end of the top-deck wars. That, and their top-end was better than ours.

Where Do We Go From Here?

I’m not sure, to be honest. I think the deck is powerful enough to compete, but I was definitely frustrated at how often Silverquill, the Disputant died. Yes, we managed to use his static ability to copy two spells (oh boy!), but more often than not, we either couldn’t cast him, didn’t draw him (got lands instead), or our opponent had yet another answer.

So part of me wants to try this build again and assume our opponents won’t run as hot. But part of me thinks it’ll probably play out similarly. Perhaps the secret will be to include some protection spells in the form of Malakir Rebirth.

Mardu Stead ‘n Sac!

But wait! What if I take my Rakdos Steal ‘n Sac deck and splash White for Silverquill, the Disputant? I have it built, but I won’t get to play it before this article comes out. Stay tuned!

Conclusion

I can’t yet recommend trying this deck. It was just too frustrating to play. And while I certainly enjoyed playing more powerful Modern Horizons creatures in my second version, I was still very annoyed at not being able to execute the core strategy of this deck. And without doing that, I just don’t think it’s fun enough or good enough. There are better Orzhov Modern Horizons decks out there that you can play.

But stay tuned for my Mardu iteration. Perhaps that is the build that will see us live our copying dream!