by Johnny Cycles, February 28th, 2024

Hello! This is Johnny Cycles and welcome to another edition of Dragons in Modern! This week I’m making some radical changes to my Gruul Dragons deck. Gone are my 3-mana Planeswalkers that are so crucial to playing a dragon on turn 3. In their place we’re trying out some of Modern’s most powerful cards: Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker. I have major reservations about these changes, but I’ve been meaning to test out Fable of the Mirror-Breaker in the deck ever since its price dropped after its banning in Standard. And there’s only one way to do that!

Here’s the decklist:

Decklist – Gruul Dragons with Ragavan and Fable

by Johnny Cycles
Format: Modern

Creatures (30)

4 Ignoble Hierarch
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
3 Questing Druid
4 Bonecrusher Giant
3 Questing Beast
4 Glorybringer
4 Stormbreath Dragon

Spells (4)

4 Lightning Bolt

Enchantments (4)

4 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker

Lands (22)

1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Boseiju, Who Endures
4 Field of Ruin
3 Forest
3 Mountain
4 Stomping Ground
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard (15)

4 Tormod’s Crypt
4 Veil of Summer
3 Blood Moon
1 Brotherhood’s End
3 Pulse of Murasa

Deck Tech

Big Changes

 

Even as I write this, I’m wavering on my decision to cut Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner. She does so much in our deck and our best wins often came thanks to this wonderful Planeswalker. But, if we’re going to try out new cards, we have to make cuts somewhere. It makes logical sense to swap out a 3-mana Planeswalker for a 3-mana enchantment. We could, of course, cut Domri, Anarch of Bolas, but once one playset of our 3-mana ramp cards is gone, I’m not sure it makes sense to keep the other. Thus, both Planeswalkers get cut.

Taking out Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner has a domino effect on our card selection beyond just removing Domri, Anarch of Bolas. Without her, Utopia Sprawl is less impactful. Without both Planeswalkers, Delighted Halfling becomes even more of a liability, as we now only have two legendary permanents in our deck. I’ve frequently remarked on this drawback during various games. Not being able to cast a second mana dork or Lightning Bolt with the Halfling leads to inefficient and suboptimal game play as often as its 2 toughness spares it from the poisoned-tipped arrows of Orcish Bowmasters.

And, without a reliable way to ramp into a turn 3 dragon, we are less all-in on our ramp plan. We still want to cast a turn 2 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker or turn 3 Questing Beast, so we don’t want to cut our 1-mana ramp spells entirely (more on this later). Furthermore, we really want to be able to cast our big finishers ahead of curve. Keeping 8 mana dorks feels right for this. Plus, with the extra room, we can play Magic’s premier 1-drop, Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer. These decisions have resulted in the addition of 4 copies of Noble Hierarch and Ignoble Hierarch. For those of you familiar with my Lukka Surprise deck, you know this opens up an alternative and powerful opening set of turns that see us cast Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer on turn 1 and two Hierarchs on turn 2 for a 4/3 Ragavan attack. If we are able to follow this up with a turn 3 dragon or Questing Beast, many opposing decks won’t be able to keep up.

I’ve also found room for three copies of Questing Druid. With the addition of Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, as well as the playset of Bonecrusher Giant that I’ve been playing in the more recent iterations of my Gruul Dragons deck, we have more cheap ways to grow the Druid. The real plus, of course, is the card advantage off of Seek the Beast. This and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker do a good job making up for the loss of card draw that comes with taking out Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner.

Why Fable?

For those familiar with Modern (or recent Standard), I don’t need to sell you on the power of this 3-mana enchantment. The card got banned for a reason, after all. However, I will take a moment here to discuss my hope for it in our deck. We are mostly interested in the second chapter of the saga. One of the ways our deck struggles is by running out of gas. We’ve lost more than one game after executing our turns 1 and 2 gameplan of ramp but not drawing a finisher. Ideally, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker will help find us a dragon when we need one. Turning a late-game mana dork or land into a Glorybringer or Questing Beast seems good, right?

The first chapter of the saga can help ramp us, but a turn 2 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker won’t get us to a turn 3 dragon the way our Planeswalkers do. At least, not until after combat, which kind of nerfs one of the chief reasons to play a hasty threat. Once we flip the saga, we do have at least 12 legitimate targets to copy, first and foremost one of our eight dragons. This kind of late-game potential is the second reason I want to try this card out. Will it work out the way I hope? There’s only one way to find out!

League 1 – Friendly

Match 1 – Crashing Footfalls

Match 2 – Izzet Murktide

Match 3 – Crashing Footfalls

Match 4 – Jund Food Combo

Match 5 – Yawgmoth

League Record: 1-4

Wrap-up

Conclusion

We went a disappointing 1-4, with our losses coming against some of the top decks in the format. We played Crashing Footfalls twice and lost both matches. The first match didn’t feel particularly close, while I thought we might could’ve raced our opponent in the second one, but, alas, OP had all the answers. And, in general, it once again felt like our opponents had answers for days. Some of this is probably that the tier 1 decks play cheaper and/or free interaction, but turns like the one against our Izzet Murktide opponent felt both indicative of how many of our games went and extremely unlucky.

It went down like this. We waited to cast our Stormbreath Dragon after we had mana to force it through counter magic with Veil of Summer. Our opponent had the Counterspell, as expected, but also had Subtlety and a third Blue card to pitch to it to answer our Veil of Summer. All in their 4-card hand. They then preceded to kill the Stormbreath on our next turn with an Unholy Heat, after which they cast a Ledger Shredder, meaning both their hand and draws were all gas. Some of that, of course, is how Izzet Murktide can filter their draws with Dragon’s Rage Channeler, but not in this game. It was just extremely lucky running. In a similar fashion, our Cascade opponents never seem to have only one cascade spell in hand. We slogged through three copies of Crashing Footfalls only to see our OP refill their hand with more gas from multiple copies of Flame of Anor and their, I assume, 1-of Mutavault. Good on OP for having some sweet tech, but it was frustrating to go down that way.

Of course, when you’re playing dragons in Modern, thems are the breaks. We will never be as efficient and as multifaceted as the tier 1 decks. At least, not until Wizards prints some better dragons not name Murktide Regent.

Overall, I would say the deck with Fable of the Mirror-Breaker was worse. It ran clunkier in that we could only cast our big threats ahead of curve after combat if we were relying on the Treasure token from the Goblin Shaman attack. Furthermore, we rarely wanted to discard what was in our hand, particularly when we resolved the saga on turn 2. In this regard I think we misplayed. Fable is at its most powerful in the later turns. Going forward, I would not even try to stick a turn 2 Fable in this deck unless we had a hand full of lands. Rather, it would be better to cast other spells in our hand, assuming we have something, and hold on to the enchantment as a way to refill in the late game. Unfortunately, after the second match, we never even drew it, much less resolved it, so I didn’t get to test this theory out.

That’s all for now. Another league with Gruul Dragons in the books, another 1-4. Dragons are facing an uphill battle in Modern, and that’s assuming the deck is optimally built and the pilot makes all the right plays. This version of the deck definitely needs some work on both fronts. Thanks for reading and watching! I’ll catch you on the next one!