by Johnny Cycles, January 31st, 2025
Hello! Welcome to another edition of Dragons in Pioneer! This month I’m playing a deck I spent a long time trying to make work in Modern to poor results. I’m hoping Pioneer will be a kinder and slower format to my Dragons. Here’s the deck list!
Deck List – Temur Sarkhan-Dragonhawk
by Johnny Cycles
Format: Pioneer
Creatures (27)
| 4 Llanowar Elves | |
| 4 Elvish Mystic | |
| 3 Questing Druid | |
| 4 Sarkhan, Soul Aflame | |
| 4 Dragonhawk, Fate’s Tempest | |
| 4 Glorybringer | |
| 4 Goldspan Dragon |
Planeswalkers (6)
| 3 Domri, Anarch of Bolas | |
| 3 Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner |
Spells (4)
| 4 Torch the Tower |
Lands (23)
| 1 Boseiju, Who Endures | |
| 4 Breeding Pool | |
| 1 Cavern of Souls | |
| 3 Forest | |
| 1 Island | |
| 3 Mountain | |
| 4 Steam Vents | |
| 4 Stomping Ground | |
| 1 Thornspire Verge |
Sideboard (15)
| 2 Pick Your Poison | |
| 2 Redcap Melee | |
| 2 Rending Volley | |
| 2 Collision/Colossus | |
| 3 Magebane Lizard | |
| 2 Negate | |
| 2 Brotherhood’s End |
Deck Tech
Primary Game Plan
Much like my Gruul Dragons deck, we’re looking to ramp into a 5-mana Dragon as early as turn 3. But rather than use our normal package of mana dorks and 3-mana Planeswalkers into hasty threats, we’ve made room for 4 copies of Sarkhan, Soul Aflame and 4 copies of a non-hasty Dragon, Dragonhawk, Fate’s Tempest.
Why reduce our consistency for a non-hasty Dragon? you ask.
Sarkhan, Soul Aflame gives the deck the potential for some truly explosive starts. If we untap with Sarkhan on turn 3 and cast Glorybringer, that’s two 4/4 fliers that can kill two creatures. If we have Goldspan Dragon, that’s two Treasure tokens that tap for 4 mana, giving us the potential to flood the board or hold up removal.
But the real spice and inspiration for this deck is Dragonhawk, Fate’s Tempest. This mythic from Bloomburrow gives us some reach, allowing us to do damage outside of combat, as well as conditional card advantage. However, it’s specifically in conjunction with Sarkhan that this Bird Dragon reaches its full potential!
In the above mentioned scenario of untapping on turn 3 with Sarkhan on the battlefield, when we cast Dragonhawk, we can stack our triggers so that Sarkhan, Soul Aflame becomes a copy of Dragonhawk first, which the original Dragonhawk will then see, exiling two cards on ETB. Then, when we attack with Sarkhan, which is now a Dragonhawk, we get to exile two more cards. All said, if our opponent can’t stop it, we’re hitting for 13 on turn 3.
Seems pretty good…if we can pull it off.
Sarkhan, Soul Aflame‘s ability to become whatever Dragon we cast means our non-hasty Dragons have a kind of pseudo haste. Sure, Dragonhawk, Fate’s Tempest will never attack the turn it comes into play, but Sarkhan can…as a copy of it. There’s a lot of room for exploration here among a variety of Dragons I’ve deemed otherwise unplayable if we have Sarkhan on the battlefield.
I’ve tested Atsushi, the Blazing Sky and it’s a powerful option and a nice curve filler. However, I cut it in favor of Domri, Anarch of Bolas. The other Dragons are just the beginning, though I do think they are some of the best 5-drop Dragons available. I’m particularly interested in trying out Iymrith, Desert Doom.
The rest of the deck is ramp and removal, short of Questing Druid. This is a flex spot that could be filled with a variety of different cards, as long as they function as card advantage. The deck needs ways to smooth out its clunkiness. Sometimes we only have ramp and no finishers. Sometimes we have finishers and no ramp. And, more often than not, we just have too few or too many lands. Questing Druid, more specifically, Seek the Beast, solves some of these issues.
Other cards that would be fine substitutes are Bitter Reunion and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker. I like the 2-mana options over Fable, but it’s hard to argue with the power of the Saga. Be warned, though: Fable is not at its best in a deck like ours. We often don’t want to discard the Dragons in our hand if we’re in need of land OR the lands in our hand if we’re in need of Dragons. Ours is a mana hungry deck. Pitching what appear to be extra lands is a siren’s song. Sure, we can get rid of an extra copy of Sarkhan, but often the first gets killed, so we won’t want to do that either.
A card like Bitter Reunion, which only requires us to discard a single card, means we’re less likely to get punished for pitching a land to dig two cards deeper into our deck.
Sideboard
Our sideboard is based on equal parts experience and what I’ve found online. Pioneer is still somewhat of an unknown format for me, so I’m letting some of the meta decks guide me in my choices. We’ll see if I’m happy with their answers after a league or two.
We play a bunch of targeted removal to deal with aggressive decks, as well as two copies of Brotherhood’s End as a conditional sweeper. Pick Your Poison is mostly for Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, but can snag various other problem enchantments or artifacts floating around out there, or big fliers in the form of Demons or Niv-Mizzet Reborn.
Negate, because, well, we’re in Blue. We may as well take advantage of being able to cast counter magic. Furthermore, unfair decks tend to be favored against Midrange, so having some way to interact with them feels right.
The spice/hate I’m most excited about is Collision/Colossus! It gives us flexibility to answer any big Demons or Niv-Mizzet or surprise hit for 8 or 9. I’m fully expecting this card to win us at least one game/match using both halves of it.
On to the games!
League Play
Overall Record: 2-3
Reactions from League Play
You can check out the wrap-up at the end of the above video if you haven’t already, but the TL;DR is that the deck was fun and competitive, but the mana needs some tweaking. More often than not, we lost to mana screw, while occasionally mana flood hurt us. More specifically, though, is that color screw was the chief culprit. Too often we couldn’t find a source. I definitely need to make some changes on that front and I’ll give you an updated list below.
As to our game plan of turn 2 Sarkhan into turn 3 Dragon…well, we never got to live that dream either. However, the deck was able to compete despite this. And, we were able to assemble the Sarkhan-Dragon combo a couple of times, just never as early as turn 3. We even won at least one game on the back of this combo.
Overall, though, this version of Dragons in Pioneer is just weaker and less consistent than its Gruul cousin. It doesn’t mean it’s not fun or that it can’t win matches. We were competitive in all of our games. What it does mean, though, is that Sarkhan rarely won us a game. The cost-benefit of splashing for came out slightly against. Negates in our sideboard did win us a couple of games, while we lost at least 3 games total due specifically to mana color issues (rather than simple flooding or mana screw).
One other change I’m going to make is cutting Goldspan Dragon for another Dragon. I think Stormbreath Dragon is just strictly better, while something like Bonehoard Dracosaur brings additional value that doesn’t combo with Sarkhan, Soul Aflame. For this reason, I didn’t seriously consider playing it, but it may be worth a shot. Sarkhan would still become a 5/5 flier with first strike, after all, on its ETB.
Alternatively, we could move the deck more towards in both the choice of our Dragons and our early plays. Would Consider be a better play than Elvish Mystic? My instincts tell me no, but there’s probably a Dragons deck where we could make this work. Let me know what you think in the comments!
Here’s an updated list with our mana base tweaked and no Goldspan Dragon.
Updated Deck List – Temur Sarkhan-Dragonhawk
by Johnny Cycles
Format: Pioneer
Creatures (27)
| 4 Llanowar Elves | |
| 4 Elvish Mystic | |
| 3 Questing Druid | |
| 3 Sarkhan, Soul Aflame | |
| 4 Dragonhawk, Fate’s Tempest | |
| 4 Glorybringer | |
| 4 Bonehoard Dracosaur |
Planeswalkers (6)
| 3 Domri, Anarch of Bolas | |
| 3 Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner |
Spells (4)
| 3 Torch the Tower |
Lands (25)
Sideboard (15)
| 2 Pick Your Poison | |
| 2 Redcap Melee | |
| 2 Rending Volley | |
| 2 Collision/Colossus | |
| 3 Magebane Lizard | |
| 2 Negate | |
| 2 Brotherhood’s End |
Note: I’ll post whatever games I can get in with the above build as I manage to play them, but the game play will be unedited.
Match 1 vs. Mono Blue Spirits
Conclusion
The dream continues! One day I’ll assemble the turn-3, hit-for-13 combo. I’m also excited to explore some different directions with Sarkhan and Blue Dragons. I think there’s potential for this 3-mana Dragon enabler, but I don’t think we’ve cracked the code just yet. However, the deck was fun and competitive and I’m excited to keep trying it! For now, though, I think it’s on to other janky decks! Thanks for reading and watching! I’ll catch y’all on the next one!
