by Johnny Cycles, November 14th, 2025
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Dragonback Assault is one of my favorite cards from a set full of favorite cards! You can read about my Modern build here. Can a format with janky fetchlands support a deck looking to abuse landfall triggers? Is Pioneer slow enough for a 6-mana enchantment to compete? Let’s find out!
Decklist – Temur Landfall with Dragonback Assault
by Johnny Cycles
Format: Pioneer
Creatures (10)
| 3 Dryad of the Ilysian Grove | |
| 3 Icetill Explorer | |
| 4 Bloomvine Regent |
Planeswalkers (3)
| 3 Ugin, Eye of the Storms |
Enchantments (12)
| 4 Roiling Dragonstorm | |
| 4 Breaching Dragonstorm | |
| 4 Dragonback Assault |
Spells (8)
| 4 Growth Spiral | |
| 4 Cultivate |
Lands (27)
1 Breeding Pool
2 Brokers Hideout
2 Cabaretti Courtyard
2 Commercial District
4 Fabled Passage
6 Forest
1 Hedge Maze
3 Island
2 Maestros Theater
2 Mountain
1 Steam Vents
1 Stomping Ground
Sideboard (15)
| 4 Torch the Tower | |
| 3 Pyroclasm | |
| 2 Brotherhood’s End | |
| 2 Mossborn Hydra | |
| 4 Leyline of the Void |
Deck Tech
Primary Game Plan
Our primary game plan is to ramp into a Dragonback Assault, make multiple land drops in a turn, and win via 4/4 flying Dragon tokens. The beauty of this deck lies in the synergy between our ramp and our finisher. In traditional ramp decks, whether they be Mono Green or Eldrazi, your lands and ramp spells get you to your finishers, but are largely dead draws once you’ve hit a certain amount of mana.
Not so our deck. Since our finisher relies on triggering landfall as much as possible, our ramp spells do double duty. In the early game, they ramp us. In the late game, they get us 4/4 flying Dragons. It’s not the normal ramp deck that gets to turn 6 or 7 and thinks that it’s best draw is Cultivate.
Our deck can be broken down into three parts: ramp, enablers, finishers.
Ramp
Growth Spiral allows us to ramp, while also digging for our combo pieces. Much like all of our ramp, it is good both early and late, assuming we have a Dragonback Assault out. That it has instant speed is amazing, as it allows us to get up to two landfall triggers on our opponent’s end step, or in response to targeted removal on our Dragonback Assault.
Cultivate allows us to make an additional land drop, while ensuring we have a land in hand to play, as well. With no turn 1 mana dorks, it can be a little awkward, but I’ll talk more about that below. In the late game, it’s a great draw with Dragonback Assault out. Finally, it lets us fetch up any two basics, which is important, because our next ramp spell only lets us get basic Forests.
Bloomvine Regent epitomizes our deck. Early, it ramps us. Late it triggers landfall. And if we need an alternate win condition, extra life, or a way to return our various Dragonstorm enchantments to our hand, we can play it as a creature.
If we have Bloomvine Regent and Dragonback Assault on the battlefield, each land drop nets us a 4/4 flying Dragon and 3 life. Pretty sweet.
Enablers
Our enablers are the cards we’re playing that allow us to make extra land drops each turn in order to fully abuse Dragonback Assault. Sure, they can be considered ramp, as well, but they’re primarily in the deck to help us go from no 4/4 Dragons to a whole bunch… I think my record so far is 12 in a turn.
Dryad of the Ilysian Grove is well-known from it time enabling Amulet Titan decks in Modern.
Icetill Explorer is our real all-star and by far the best of the two creatures. Getting to play an additional land each turn from our graveyard is super powerful in our deck. Watch out, though. It’s landfall trigger can get you dangerously low on cards.
Growth Spiral belongs in this category, as well, even if it’s only a 1-time extra land drop.
I’m including Roiling Dragonstorm here as one of our best enablers…just not in the land-drop sense. Seeing as we only have 4 copies of Dragonback Assault, we want ways to find them. Roiling Dragonstorm is perfect at this. Early, it digs us for lands, enablers, or finishers, depending on what we need. Late, it ensures we don’t run out of gas. Untapping with a Dragonback Assault and this card out means each of our land drops gets us a 4/4 flying Dragon, and a 2-mana draw 2, discard 1 spell.
It’s amazing.
And don’t overlook the discard part of the enchantment. Not only can we pitch lands to get back with Icetill Explorer, but after sideboard against graveyard decks, we can pitch any copies of Leyline of the Void that we happen to draw. Of course, with Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, we can simply hard cast it.
Finishers
Yes, Dragonback Assault is our real finisher, but that card is pictured enough at this point, right?
Ugin, Eye of the Storms is great at answering problematic permanents, as well as gaining us life and keeping our hand full of action. Our deck is not great, however, at casting colorless spells…
Why not Ugin, the Spirit Dragon? I haven’t tested the OG Ugin, but I’m not sure it’s as good as the new one. Sure, as a boardwipe, it’s amazing, but we’ll often be hurting ourselves. Of course, when you’re desperate to reset the board, maybe we won’t care if we exile an Icetill Explorer and a Roiling Dragonstorm. I’ll give it a shot if I have the time.
I love this card, but it should be noted that it is only a pseudo-finisher. We will more often hit a ramp spell or enabler, than a Dragonback Assault. Still, with a Dragonback Assault on the battlefield, getting a Growth Spiral off of this 5-mana enchantment is actually pretty good. And, the land we put into play from Growth Spiral will make us a Dragon, which will bounce this enchantment back to our hand.
The Lands
There is an inherent tension in our deck between fetchlands, basic lands, and dual lands. Since neither our janky fetchlands, nor our other ramp spells can get non-basics, we have to play a high number of basics, in particular Forests. We run 11.
The fetchland cycle from Streets of New Capenna are some of my favorite budget lands and I’ve chosen them over something like Evolving Wilds. And honestly, I can’t really say why, other than I like them and I like that they gain us some life. In one of my matches, I was able to replay enough of these lands to survive an extra turn…until my Mono White opponent untapped and played Thalia’s Lieutenant.
No 1-Drop Mana Dorks?
Before I get to the sideboard, let me address a glaring absence. We aren’t playing any 1-mana ramp spells. Why? Well, the traditional Elf package doesn’t help us make extra land drops, while Arboreal Grazer should be considered for the deck. I play the card in my Modern version. I think it’s worth testing out, but I haven’t had the time yet.
Sideboard
Our maindeck features no interaction, short of Ugin, Eye of the Storms. So our sideboard addresses this issue with Torch the Tower, Pyroclasm, and Brotherhood’s End. Against aggressive strategies, we need a way to manage their early threats until we can get our big finishers online. It’s certainly reasonable to include something like Pyroclasm in the main.
Leyline of the Void is a necessary evil in my opinion. Graveyard decks are super popular from what I’ve seen, and spot removal for graveyards (Agatha’s Soul Cauldron or Unlicensed Hearse) just doesn’t cut it. We need to shut them down. Of course, if we can’t find a Leyline of the Void in our opening hand, then it’s highly likely we’ll never get to cast it.
Finally, there’s Mossborn Hydra. Yes, you may be thinking that I have an unhealthy obsession with this card and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong, However, in our deck, it functions as an alternate win condition after our opponent brings in a bunch of enchantment hate. Unanswered, we can grow it to massive proportions. So far, the biggest I’ve gotten it is 256/256, and that was after a misplay where I made two land drops before casting it.
You’ll notice a slightly different board in some of my early matches. I tested out Courser of Kruphix and Pulse of Murasa. The former seems good against Mono Red, as does the latter. However, I’d much rather answer threats than block (or really, chump block). And we don’t play enough creatures for Pulse of Murasa to do enough.
You’ll also notice that we’re not playing any counter magic in the sideboard. Being in certainly means we can make room for this kind of interaction. However, being a Gruul mage at heart, I’d rather play kill spells to manage the board.
Match 1 vs. Izzet Phoenix
Match 2 vs. Niv to Light
Match 3 vs. Mono Greenish
Overall Record: 2-1
League Match 1 vs. G/W Angels
League Match 2 vs. Mono Black
League Match 3 vs. Mono Red Goblins
League Match 4 vs. U/W Control
League Match 5 vs. U/W Control
League Record: 4-1
Impressions from Game Play
Wow! What a fun deck! I’m a little surprised at how well we did in our league, to be honest. We were one land away from going 5-0 with the deck. And we took down a Mono Red Aggro deck along the way. Beating U/W Control twice, as painful as it is to play the match-ups, was super sweet, as well. We also took down Izzet Phoenix and Niv to Light, two of the best decks in the format.
The TL;DR of this deck is that we will struggle against aggro decks that can grow their creatures out of range of Dragonback Assault‘s 3 damage. Mono White Humans, which I didn’t post because my opponent had selected no watchers, is a good example of this. Even with our signature card on turn 4 or 5, we’ll often not reset the board against a good start from that deck. And, furthermore, our 4/4 Dragons will frequently lose in combat against their massive board.
Ditto Mono Green. They ramp as well as we do, and their finishers are bigger and better than ours.
Still, we should be able to compete against both decks, but I expect our win percentage to be at its lowest.
We never played the tier 1 Mono Red deck, but I imagine that match-up would go similarly to the Goblin one. If we are able to ramp fast enough and stick a timely Dragonback Assault, then we’ll have a good chance. Throw in our lifegain, and I think we aren’t as unfavored as it may seem on paper.
Of course, we saw how a fast start from Mono Black can steamroll us before we do anything if we don’t have ramp in the early game, or interaction from the board. This is variance, of course, but beware keeping a decent looking hand with no ramp or removal.
Our Midrange match-ups is where our deck really shines. What an epic comeback against G/W Lifegain/Angels! Despite several misplays on my part regarding sequencing, we managed to make 12 Dragons in a single turn, grow our Mossborn Hydra to 256/256, and kill our opponent, who had more than 100 life! Wow.
Our Mono Black match similarly saw the power and grind-ability of our deck when our opponent must of thought they had the inevitability with two copies of Unholy Annex down alongside a 6/6 Demon. But we won that game after going from 3 life to almost 20 and making a ton of Dragons.
Control was the big surprise. They have so many maindeck tools to deal with our threats (Get Lost, Farewell, March of Otherworldly Light, not to mention counter magic) that I thought for sure we’d lose a painful game. But it turns out we have an engine that can grind them down with enough time.
About Sequencing
I’ll be honest…I think I made more misplays with this deck than any before it. I frequently made my land drops before resolving either Roiling Dragonstorm or Breaching Dragonstorm, thereby missing a chance to bounce it back to my hand once the land triggered Dragonback Assault.
Why? Well, it may be a holdover from my experience playing big mana decks. You want to know what you’re working with as far as total mana is concerned before deploying your threats. Obviously with a deck like ours, we’d rather play our enchantments before making Dragons.
Or it may be that I got too distracted by making all those Dragons! Frequently, it felt like we couldn’t lose once we went off, but that’s no reason not to play your hand to its best potential.
What’s so interesting is that we didn’t get punished for these mistakes, at least not that I can tell. And, in fact, in one game, had we cast Breaching Dragonstorm before our land drops, then we may not have hit the Growth Spiral that helped win us the game.
My advice is to remember when you have a Dragonstorm enchantment in hand and not to get too caught up in the excitement of making multiple land drops with Dragonback Assault out.
Sneaky Good All-Stars
Roiling Dragonstorm and both halves of Bloomvine Regent are the MVPs of the deck…after Dragonback Assault, of course. The card advantage we get from this 2-mana enchantment is insane, while the lifegain we get from Bloomvine Regent in conjunction with our namesake enchantment will often be critical to our success. Claim Territory early and late is one of our best plays, as well.
And once we have Dragonback Assault back, these two cards produce a game-winning engine that is so much fun to see in action.
Moving Forward
Well, the deck was great, but I could see making a few changes. First, we can try out Arboreal Grazer over Growth Spiral. Second, we could cut Breaching Dragonstorm for maindeck removal. It’s true that we sometimes got lucky and hit an Ugin or a timely Growth Spiral with this card, and the value engine made at least one opponent scoop, but given that we have so many cards that won’t win us the game if we spin into them, it may be worth considering cutting this 5-mana enchantment.
Finally, we could tweak the mana base a little to make room for more basic lands.
Conclusion
This deck was a ton of fun to play! And it may be our most competitive. It got us our first 4-1 in a Pioneer league, at the very least! Pioneer isn’t too fast for this 6-mana enchantment, nor are the janky fetchlands we have access to too slow. In fact, I’d say they all came together beautifully.
I think the best part about playing a landfall deck is that drawing lands suddenly becomes exciting! So many times we hoped to find a fetchland or ramp spell to close out a game. Thankfully, we more often than not did.
If you’re looking for a fun, Midrange deck that can grind out victories with a super resilient and powerful value engine, then this is the deck for you! Thanks for reading and watching!
