While the first Dragon that comes to mind for mostMagic: The Gatheringplayers will be Alpha’s iconic Shivan Dragon, the first Dragon canonically is The Ur-Dragon. An ancient creature from the dawn of time, capable of creating storms that birth Dragons with every wingbeat, The Ur-Dragon is one of the key players in the Multiverse.
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Translating such power and history into a single card was no mean feat, but Magic’s designers pulled it off with aplomb in Commander 2017, when the much-heralded creature finally made its debut. The result is a creature that, naturally, makes a great commander for a Dragon deck, but one whose sheer power enables it to thrive across a range of other strategies as well.
The Ur-Dragon
Now that our Ur-paragraph is out of the way, let’s take a quick look at The Ur-Dragon itself before we explore its deck options. For nine mana, including one of each colour, The Ur-Dragon is a 10/10 flyer with two key abilities. The first is the highly-controversial eminence, an ability which affects the game from the command zone, in this case by reducing the cost of all your other Dragons by one.
The other is a ridiculous card draw effect that doubles as a one-sided Show and Tell, scaling up with every Dragon you have attacking at one time. This one thankfully requires The Ur-Dragon to be in play to take effect, but is still remarkably powerful, especially when you consider the extra Dragons the mana reduction ability will allow you to cast.
10Dragons
The most obvious deckbuilding route for The Ur-Dragon, and certainly one of the best,a simple Dragon deckcan work wonders with their progenitor leading the pack. The cost reduction effect is critical here, since it works throughout the game, giving you a significant advantage before you amass the nine mana required to cast your commander.
Dragons tend to be on the expensive side mana-wise, so this ability lets you bring them out much more aggressively. Then, later on, when you can afford The Ur-Dragon’s hefty price tag, you can swing in with an already-stacked board and gain a huge amount of card advantage, cheating another Dragon out in the process.
9Legends
Any five-colour commander can lead a great legendary creature theme deck, and The Ur-Dragon is no exception. Access to every colour in the game grants you access to all the best legendary creatures, and more importantly the wide suite of legendary support cards available.
From obvious picks like Jodah, the Unifier, to lesser-seen support options like Dihada, Binder of Wills, there’s no shortage of excellent cards for this strategy. You can even include a handful of legendary Dragons to get more value out of that second ability.
8Treasure
The Ur-Dragon demands a lot of mana, perfectly colour-fixed, before he can make an appearance. A great way to meet those conditions is witha dedicated Treasure deck: a build centred around the creation of Treasure tokens, simple artifacts that can be sacrificed for any colour of mana, and cards that synergise with them.
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Highlights in a Treasure deck include Xorn and Academy Manufactor for bonus Treasure, Goldspan Dragon to double their mana output, and Magda, Brazen Outlaw to convert excess Treasures into Dragons from your deck. The huge amounts of mana this strategy provides will allow you to assemble your winged armada with ease.
7Pod
A classic strategy that involves sacrificing creatures to bring out more expensive ones from your deck, a Pod build will allow you to turn your Whelps into Wyrms in no time flat. Naturally the deck centres around Birthing Pod and similar effects, including Eldritch Evolution and Neoform, but it also demands a smooth curve of creatures, so you always have a valid target at every point in the chain.
With over 300 Dragons available in Magic, running the full gamut in terms of mana cost, assembling a synergistic squad here should be no trouble at all. You can also branch out into other types to add specific effects to your toolbox, for when tricky situations arise.
6Primal Surge
A fairly rare deck type built around the sorcery of the same name, Primal Surge focuses on building a deck comprised purely of permanents, so that you’re able to drop the whole thing onto the battlefield when you cast Primal Surge for ten mana.
Outside of including a few tutor effects so you can have reliable access to the title card, it really is as simple as that. With so many cards hitting play at once it’ll be hard not to find some kind of game-winning combo amongst it all, but if you can’t, just grant your horde haste and swing for the win in one glorious turn.
5Ramp
One ofCommander’s evergreen archetypes, Ramp is all about increasing your available mana through land tutoring and mana rocks, then using your huge pool of resources to cast equally huge threats. It’s a simple plan, and one that benefits greatly from the five-colour identity The Ur-Dragon offers.
In addition, its second ability, even if only triggering off of itself, can cheat out one of your huge Ramp threats every turn, applying extra pressure your opponents will find it hard to withstand. If you want to play creatures that make even the Ur-Dragon itself look small, Ramp is the deck for you.
4Dragon’s Approach
Dragon’s Approach is a lesser-known member of the ‘you’re able to include any number of this card in your deck’ club, alongside favourites like Shadowborn Apostle and Relentless Rats. Like the Apostle, Approach is all about cheating big creatures into play, but it demands quite a bit more mana to do so.
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After casting five copies of Approach, for a total of 15 mana, you can exile them all to bring out a Dragon from your deck. You’ll also deal 15 damage to each of your opponents in the process, a not-insignificant amount, but you will want to include cost reduction effects like Goblin Electromancer to sweeten the deal a bit here, as well as around 35 copies of Approach itself.
3Domain
With access to all five colours available, a deck centred around the land-types-matter domain mechanic makes perfect sense for The Ut-Dragon. Featuring powerful payoffs like Scion of Draco, Drag to the Bottom, and Sphinx of Clear Skies, the deck can cover a number of angles, playing aggressively while also maintaining value later on.
To maximise the power of this deck, you’ll want to include plenty of basic land tutors, alongside multi-type lands such as shock lands and triomes.The ideal mana base heremay be expensive, but it’ll be worth it when you turn the Commander table into your personal domain.
2Shapeshifters
A bit of a sneaky one, Shapeshifters work well with The Ur-Dragon by virtue of their changeling ability, which makes them all creature types at all times, including Dragon. Because of this, they benefit from The Ur-Dragon’s always-active cost reduction effect, and perhaps more importantly its second ability.
Since Shapeshifters on the whole are much more aggressively-costed than Dragons, it’s easier to assemble a wide board of them, which you can then use to draw a full hand of cards once The Ur-Dragon is in play. Make sure you include Reliquary Tower to remove your maximum hand size to take full advantage of this.
1Jegantha Companion
While companions on the whole are certainly one of Magic’s biggest design mistakes, they feel surprisingly fair in Commander, where the format’s innate deckbuilding restrictions mesh with the companions’ own restrictions to really make you work for them.
Jegantha is a companion well worth working for in an Ur-Dragon deck. By sticking to single-pip mana costs, you may have easy access to a huge colour-fixing ramp source that can allow for a consistent turn six Ur-Dragon, possibly even earlierif you include mana rocksand Ramp spells as well.
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