“You are a Planeswalker” the introduction to Magic: the Gathering exclaims. You’re a powerful, one-in-millions mage who has the whole multiverse at your fingertips. It would make sense there are a lot more walkers like Tamiyo, the Moon Sage, who use the whole worldhopping ability for little more than science and discovery. Yet, all this space doesn’t seem enough, and most Planeswalkers seem to be at each other’s throat the whole time. Sometimes, Planeswalkers team up to help each other out against particularly large threats, like the Eldrazi, or Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker. But who is crazy enough to team up with Garruk, Apex Predator, who’se whole raison d’etre seems to be killing all the other Planeswalkers?

Like Karn Liberated, he’s among the most expensive Planeswalkers you can hire. But once you get him into play, you do get a lot of options. It’s the second Planeswalker after Jace, the Mind Sculptor who has four abilities. Two of those are +1 abilities, even though one of them requires another Planeswalker on the table. And that ability just outright kills other planeswalkers, no questions asked. Unless those Planeswalkers are also players, but still.

Okay, technically four abilities is less than his previous incarnation, Garruk the Relentless, which had five, but it took two sides of the card and he only had 3 active at one time, max.

The new version is more comfortable using black mana than the just transformed Garruk the Veil-Cursed. Instead of 1/1 deaththouch Wolves, he now produces 3/3 deaththouch Beasts. This (and his relatively high starting loyalty) does help protect him against attacks.

Then there is the -3 ability. When Deathtouch animals don’t cut it, because of flying creatures, he can just kill those. And due to his altruism, you gain some life. At least Garruk can really defend himself.

At -8, the ultimate ability is killer. Someone is going to get hurt, when everything going their way gets +5/+5 and trample. Maybe even some Assassin tokens from that other ‘Walker?

Sure, is a lot of mana, but with the new Nissa to help the ramping, it’s going to be reasonably easy to get him out, and start defending you own Planeswalkers. Together they can all form a group of somewhat villainous Superfriends. Maybe even Kiora can help and show up with some Krakens, it’ll be fun!

The new Garruk is expensive, but a potentially powerful toolbox. His succes will largely depend on how often other Planeswalkers show up. Producing an endless stream of deatthouch creatures that are a relevant threat on their own, and the ability to kill creatures and planeswalkers makes him certainly worth a look.

Theros block has an interesting sideproduct with the Challenge decks. Face the Hydra, Battle the Horde and Defeat a God are the three decks you could battle, and the best thing is that they ran on artificial intelligence, so you could play them even when you’re alone.

It also opens the way to play a couple of games of Magic cooperatively, which is a nice change of pace. Being A.I. run, they wheren’t without problems though. The challenge deck completely relied on luck, because making a cardboard A.I. makes it difficult to be skilled. The decks had some very specific weaknesses. Furthermore, the decks seemed to be designed for being played against with only one player, and sometimes they don’t scale really well when more players team up to face the challenge.

The worst part is that Battle the Horde sometimes inexplicably blew up it’s own creatures, making a victory over the Horde not really feel earned. It’s easy to fix by replacing the card that does that with Felhide Petrifier, but it’s still weird.

M2015 finds a new way to introduce a challenge, but this time it’s not A.I. driven, or even a deck. It’s just one oversized Planeswalker card representing Garruk, on the hunt for other Planeswalkers. The player acting as Garruk only gets that card and has to win through the four abilities. Let’s take a look at that card:

• 0: Put a 2/2 green Wolf creature token onto the battlefield.

The first ability gives Garruk a Wolf token. This is impressive early on and allows Garruk to put on some pressure. Garruk really depends on these wolves, so getting out some in the early phase of the game is important. It’s a shame it really doesn’t scale when facing multiple opponents though. It would have been cool to get a wolf for each opponent, so you can use the challenge card in a multiplayer game.

• +4: Target Wolf creature gets +1/+0  and deathtouch until end of turn.

The second ability helps growing some life/loyalty points, but it only works when Garruk has wolves. The deathtouch is nice, getting some juice out of a wolf, even when they start to get outclassed later on. But is that enough? Just one wolf gets a bonus, and you don’t get to do anything else that turn. Why not a blanked buff for all your wolves? Threatening one extra damage isn’t worth it, when you can simply make another wolf to threaten for 2 damage. It also means that once you’re at 10 life, you really need to keep a wolf for a full turn to start healing up.

• -10: Destroy target creature. Put loyalty counters on Garruk the Slayer equal to that creature’s toughness.

This is a very interesting ability. I hope seeing this on a regular Planeswalker. While you have at least half your lifetotal you can start killing things, and the bigger they are, the less the total cost. I guess you’ll seldom recover the total of 10 life, or even get back on the investment, but things aren’t killing you any more, so that’s good. Since Planeswalkers only have one ability per turn, the opportunity cost is very high though. He often spends an entire turn actually getting into a worse position.

• -25: Destroy all creatures Garruk the Slayer doesn’t control.

This is a final haymaker, that can help you get through all those tiny wolves. 25 loyalty is a lot though; It means you have to use the +4 at least twice, and hope you didn’t get damaged in the meantime. Or maybe have eaten a couple of Eldrazi – which are probably indestructible so why bother?

Garruk the Slayer takes 5 turns to kill, when going completely unchallenged. Even a lone early flyer is going to give hime lots of problems though. The choice between killing it or building up an offense will be difficult. It seems easy to back Garruk in a corner, and he’ll have to spend multiple turns to get out of that situation. A Garruk without wolves, an less than 10 life isn’t really going anywhere. It would have been cool if Garruk had a way to get out of that situation and turn the tables on his opponent. But I don’t see  that happening with these abilities.

While the Challenge decks where flawed, it would have been cool to see Garruk run itself, and has his own deck, instead of being just one (oversized) card. From my experience with Planechase and Archenemy, oversized cards have an additional problem: logistics. A normal deck can be carried in a deckbox, which often can fit in a pocket, making it easilly portable. The larger cards usually don’t fit in most deckboxes, so I have the tendency to leave cards for formats that use oversized cards at home. It’s nice Wizards is looking outside the box to change things up and have new (casual) formats, and it does offer a nice distraction, but they haven’t quite succeeded yet.  But as far as a free extra goes, it’s nice to see something different.

So many commander ideas, so little time. The Conspiracy Five are very exciting -Except maybe Brago, King Eternal, even though he has some potential. Having played some Conspiracy, I found Parley to be very fun, so I can’t wait to make something around Selvala, Explorer Returned. Marchesa, The Black Rose will surely unleash some Grixis-flavored insanity, possibly leading some Innistrad vampires with Olivia Voldaren and zome other undead, like Grimgrin. Muzzio, Visionary Architect could create a large machine army, which is always cool.

It’s hard to pick what to make first. So, why not Grenzo, Dungeon Warden?

A Grenzo deck can go many directions. Focus on large creatures? Creatures with low power, who enter the battlefield with counters, like Ignition Team? Both? Or is there a cool way to combo out and get lots of cheap creatures, possibly all of the cheap creatures? Goblins: They generally don’t need much finetuning to work, since the plan is simple – attack with all of them. That’s all the planning they need.

That seems like an insane trick to pull off. Just stick to a Goblin theme, get those echoes out, and it shouldn’t take long to gain some critical mass and put the majority of your deck on the table, with mana to spare. Just Siege-Gang Commander alone should propel the mana production from Mana Echoes through the roof.

But what is all that mana going to be used for? It shouldn’t be hard to simply give all the Goblins haste and attack with ‘m. It doesn’t need more than a Goblin Chieftan, Goblin Warchief or  Hellraiser Goblin, right? You probably get all three of them anyway.

The only problem is finding Mana Echoes from your 99 cards. Just kidding, you have black, so there are Demonic Tutor, Diabolic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Diabolic Intent… All the tutors!

So many Goblins, so little time… At least the deck practically constructs itself.

After the previous three, the final (?) two legends from Conspiracy are revealed. Well, at least the last two who feature on the Conspiracy banner. And both have abilities to put cards from the deck into play.

Muzzio wants to see lots of artifacts. Possibly big artifacts. You don’t have to be a visionary architect to see that a deck around him practically builds itself. There will probably will be a Master Transmuter in there, who brings out a Blightsteel Collussus.  And then there is Memnarch.  All the usual suspects are there.

Aside from being a commander, he can be useful along other artificers. Sydri, Galvanic Genius might employ him, as does Arcum Dagsson, the later being very similar to Muzzio.

He needs at least an artifact with cost 1 or higher to work, although a Sensei’s Divining Top is enough to set up something spectacular. Sometimes. Illusionist’s Bracers digs four cards deep already, with the possibility to hit two artifacts on one activation.

At least it’s an excuse to run some expensive artifacts. Nullstone Gargoyle is a good choice to throw a wrench in some plans, while an early Possessed Portal can really stifle opponents while you can keep adding to your board position, especially when you include some artifacts that produce tokens.

All in all Muzzio isn’t the strongest artificer, although he has his own strengths. And he isn’t particularly interesting in the sense that many Muzzio decks will surprise you, even if it’s fun to assemble some great machine of interacting artifacts.

Grenzo is similar to Muzzio in that he fetches cards from your deck. The big difference is that he’s actually rather unique for his colors. He’s more like a Cellar Door since he uses the bottom of the deck, and he can be used multiple times during a turn.

The only legend in these colors that feels remotely similar to Grenzo is Wort, Boggart Auntie, and they do work well together. Grenzo can get Wort from your deck, and Wort can return Grenzo to your hand, bypassing Commander Tax, so you can bring him back bigger.

You can go all out goblin with him, and fill the dungeon with creatures like Murderous Redcap, or make something that feels more like what a Golgari deck would do and throw in Nighthowler and some other reanimation spells.

As a commander, it’s also interesting that he’s both cheap and scalable and the first time he comes down with power and toughness equal to what you paid for him. Sol Ring is good in Commander, but can be a particularly ridiculous opening move with Grenzo.

And who can resist the tricks he does with a Tel-Jilad Stylus or a Reito Lantern? These have some fun interactions to exploit.

The only complaint, design wise is that he doesn’t have Dethrone. It would have made sense to allow him to grow, and make his ability stronger. But as is, it’s still a good card. At least he gives  extra options with Scry cards when you send nice creatures to the bottom of your deck. Or as a backup for another commander, to get them back from tuck effects.

For a set about conspiracies, intrigue and scheming it’s surprising to see that only two of the five faces do something politically interesting in a multiplayer environment. Those that don’t focus on multiplayer are ‘built around me’ legends that should give rise to some new decks in Commander though.

A Song of Fire and Ice

After making a Kaalia deck and removing most of the Dragon cards from it, in favour of Angels, I still wanted something that focussed on dragons. The main reasib is that I liked Utvara Hellkite enough to try out some dragon tribal, hoping to fill the sky with numerous flying monsters.

As the deck developed more and more non- dragons got sidelined to make place for more dragons. Even though it makes the deck somewhat slow to start, one cannot argue with the fact that it makes it far more awesome! And being awesome is the goal of this deck more than anything. It should make Deanarys green with envy.

Another card that informed on how a portion of the deck would look was Rimescale Dragon. Unlike it’s firebreathing kin, it’s an ice-breathing dragon, and to make it work the basic lands in the deck are now snow-covered varieties, like Snow-Covered Mountain. And who knows what’s hiding up north. The ice dragon does add some political power to the deck, being able to lock down creatures as long as it’s in play.

As for the commander itself, I settled on Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund, even though there are some other options. For me he signals ‘this is a dragon deck’ the best, even if there are some downsides. But more on that later.

Mother of Dragons

Another notable dragon in this deck is Dragon Broodmother. There are a couple of dragons with the devour mechanic in excistence, but she is the only one who made the cut. Mostly because she births a dragon token during every players upkeep! That’s a lot of dragons, and they have the option of eating eachother, or whatever creature you have lying around, like a stray elf that outlived it’s usefulness or maybe even a yummie Dragon Egg!

Devouring is a risk, but with the rate the broodmother makes the tokens, it can really pay off, especially when there it’s Doubling Season. The dragons also have a father in there somewhere, as Scourge of Valkas celebrates every birth with an increasing amount of fire.

But we didn’t come here for the baby dragons. Jund is all about the food chain and at the very top there are Dragon Tyrant and Hellkite overlord, which are among the biggest things with flying you can find in the game. But depending on the situation, even they could be severly outclassed by a Kilnmouth Dragon. With 28 dragons in the deck right now, it should often come down as an 8/8 or 11/11.

Dragon Attack!

Having dragons is one thing, the point is ofcourse to attack with them. To do so as often as possible, there are some ways to get extra combat phases. Aggravated Assault is one way to accomplish this, but the effect also comes on a dragon: Hellkite Charger. Adding Sword of Feast and Famine or Nature’s Will, among other things, will free up some mana to attack many times over.

There are plenty of cool interactions to be found in the deck. Even dragons aren’t as straightforward as the seem at first glance. Let’s take a look at the list:

~ Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund Commander ~

Commander (1) 1 Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund Dragons (28) 1 Ancient Hellkite 1 Bladewing the Risen 1 Bogardan Hellkite 1 Broodmate Dragon 1 Changeling Titan 1 Dragon Broodmother 1 Dragon Egg 1 Dragon Tyrant 1 Forgestoker Dragon 1 Hellkite Charger 1 Hellkite Overlord 1 Hellkite Tyrant 1 Hoard-Smelter Dragon 1 Kilnmouth Dragon 1 Knollspine Dragon 1 Malfegor 1 Mana-Charged Dragon 1 Moonveil Dragon 1 Rimescale Dragon 1 Rorix Bladewing 1 Ryusei, the Falling Star 1 Scourge of Kher Ridges 1 Scourge of Valkas 1 Slumbering Dragon 1 Steel Hellkite 1 Stormbreath Dragon 1 Thundermaw Hellkite 1 Utvara Hellkite Other creatures (17) 1 Birds of Paradise 1 Burnished Hart 1 Courser of Kruphix 1 Dragonspeaker Shaman 1 Elvish Mystic 1 Elvish Piper 1 Fauna Shaman 1 Fertilid 1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker 1 Llanowar Elves 1 Oracle of Mul Daya 1 Radha, Heir to Keld 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder 1 Somberwald Sage 1 Xenagos, God of Revels 1 Yavimaya Elder 1 Zirilan of the Claw Artifacts (3) 1 Bow of Nylea 1 Sol Ring 1 Sword of Feast and Famine

Lands (36) 1 Blood Crypt 1 Cavern of Souls 1 Command Tower 1 Darigaaz’s Caldera 1 Dragonskull Summit 1 Fire-Lit Thicket 1 Golgari Rot Farm 1 Grove of the Burnwillows 1 Kher Keep 1 Kessig Wolf Run 1 Overgrown Tomb 1 Raging Ravine 1 Rakdos Carnarium 1 Reflecting Pool 1 Rootbound Crag 1 Savage Lands 5 Snow-Covered Forest 5 Snow-Covered Mountain 5 Snow-Covered Swamp 1 Stomping Ground 1 Temple of Abandon 1 Vivid Crag 1 Vivid Grove 1 Volrath’s Stronghold Enchantments (7) 1 Aggravated Assault 1 Bear Umbra 1 Crucible of Fire 1 Doubling Season 1 Nature’s Will 1 Parallel Lives 1 Survival of the Fittest Instants (1) 1 Worldly Tutor Planeswalkers (3) 1 Domri Rade 1 Sarkhan Vol 1 Sarkhan the Mad Sorceries (5) 1 cultivate 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Death by Dragons 1 Into the North 1 Kodama’s Reach

Walking With Dragons

There are a couple of non-dragon lieutenants to help out. Zirilan of the Claw can find any dragon in your deck. This could be a Bladewing the Risen, to bring back another dragon, Malfegor to wipe the board or Dragon Tyrant to make a big attack. If that wouldn’t solve the problem there and then, it’s even possible to do it on an opponent’s end step, so you can follow up by finding Changeling Titan and get around the exile clause.

Kiki-Jiki has a similar role, but makes temporary copies of dragons in play. While he doesn’t copy Legendary creatures, he does suplement Zirilan quite well, and can use Changeling Titan to get around all kinds of destruction effects. And if there is more doubling needed, there is Xenagos, God of Revels, making faster and stronger dragons.

Rivalling both gods and dragons in power are the planeswalkers. Domri Rade helps finding dragons in your deck and keeping your hand full, and sometimes allows them to get close and personal with opposing creatures. His ultimate is a sight to behold, as it makes your dragons even more frightening and difficult to get rid off. The first ability can be hit-and-miss, but Courser of Kruphix and Oracle of Mul Daya will show and set up the next card and maximize the advantage.

Sarkhan Vol is the planeswalker closest related to dragons (Well, aside from Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker who is a frigging dragon!) and he’s represented by two versions. The regular version makes your side slightly larger and occasionally brings others to your side, so they can join in the fight or serve as lunch for your dragons. Sarkhan the Mad , like Domri, helps finding more dragons to play, or creates a dragon token that Karrthus kan bring to your side.

The Others

There are plenty of other dragons that warrant inclusion in this deck, but space is limited and choices need to be make. There is always room for improvent though. The trick with Death By Dragons may get stale at some point, as players will find the best ways to get around it. There may be other cards that are cute, but simply don’t pull their weight. So here are some cards that didn’t make it yet, but are still strongly concidered:

– Hunted Dragon is cheap enough for a hasty 6/6 flyer. The fact that it puts some knight tokens under an opponent’s control may not always be a drawback in a multiplayer format. It could happen that you can ally yourself with another player and give him the tools to help fight a common enemy. With Scourge of Kher Ridges or Steel Hellkite on your side, the knights aren’t long lived anyway.

– Furyborn Hellkite is a tad expensive to play, but if you manage to trigger it’s bloodthirst it’s always very, very large. Then again, if you can get bloodthirst, it means you’re already on the road to victory. Furyborn Hellkite may just keep you in the saddle.

– Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon isn’t much of a team player. As the only source of poison counters, he makes previous damage irrelevant and he doesn’t contribute overall. Even with Crucible of Fire he’ll need two hits to kill someone. Then again, poison counters do make people very nervous.

– Kokusho, the Evening Star. To be fair, there reason Kokusho isn’t in the deck and his brother Ryusei, the Falling Star is, has more to do with availability than power level. Kokusho was banned in commander for quite some time for a reason. Even with changes to the legend rule, he still can get you quite some breathing room once he dies.

– Balefire Dragon also isn’t there for the want of a physical copy. Realistically, noone can afford being hit even once without getting into some real, serious trouble.

– Dragon Mage fills a role similar to Knollspine Dragon, in making sure you never run out of steam. I’m not sure Dragon Mage is better than Knollspine in this regard, as the effect is more symmetrical. It’s easier to refill your hand with the Mage, though, as he doesn’t need a secundary source of damage to work his magic.

– Hoarding Dragon searches the deck for an artifact. If it gets hit with a Path to Exile or things like that, that artifact is lost forever. The deck only has 3 artifacts, and they’re generally not worth it getting a dragon killed over.

– Imperial Hellkite could be quite interesting, especially as the deck doesn’t have a lot of early drops. Later on, he gets the best dragon out of the deck and there is plenty of choice for that. Since he’s the only morph, and the only reasonable morph in the deck, it’s often clear what it is, but morph mindgames are secundairy to a tutor effect anyway.

– Predator Dragon and Preyseizer dragon are similar enough to fall under the same catagory. It comes down to devour, which is not the best thing in this deck as most food is horribly expensive.

– Vampiric Dragon is cool, but too expensive. He does have som synergy with Bow of Nylea, but ultimately there are far better dragons available than this guy.

As far as commanders go, Karrthus wasn’t the only option. It’s nice to have a 7/7 that can jump into action immediatly, but there is a risk involved with playing him. If a blue mage Clones him, you lose all your dragons to to him. Sure, I might include a Homeward Path to cushion the blow, but if it happens too often, you might concider another legend to command your dragon army.

– Prossh, Skyraider of Kher is a good choice, and only a Food Chain  away from creating an arbitrary amount of Kobolds of Kher Keep, if you’re into that. He might cause to have the dragons with Devour rate higher on the list. He’s generally not as fast and large as Karrthus though. Unless you feed Prossh other creatures, he takes an extra turn in dealing lethal commander damage. With the combo, he’s far more deadly though.

– Darigaaz, the Igniter is decent, especially when players play mono-colored decks or generally keep large hand-sizes (or you did indeed recruit a Dragon Mage.) Too bad his ability doesn’t count towards commander damage, making it often pointless to use the ability unless it helps finishing the opponent through regular damage.

– Vaevictis Asmadi is there for the EDH purists, as he is indeed an Elder Dragon. He is horribly expensive to play though, and the upkeep cost doesn’t help with developing the board while he’s on the table.

– Scion of the Ur-Dragon is an interesting choice for a commander in a dragon deck. He opens up the option to choose from any dragon, regardless of it’s color. It also means you’ll have to diversify the mana-base even further in order to use him, but at least you’ll be channeling the force that is all dragonkind.

Jund has a couple of options for non-dragons as commander:

– Adun Oakenshield can bring back dragons (and some of their food) from the graveyard to your hand. The excitement never ends with him.

– Xira Arien draws you extra cards. Extra cards is good, but sadly she’s not very efficient.

– Kresh the Bloodbraided is left as a viable commander for your dragons, as your Khal Drogo expy. He grows when a large dragon dies, and he grows when your dragons feed. He’s also not that expensive to play, so while he doesn’t interact all that much with your dragons, he interacts with things dying left and right by growing to humongous size in no-time.

So, that’s a Jund EDH dragon deck. Keep watching the skies, as it may be the last you see.