Hello once again! This week I am going to pick up where I left off, talking about the various dragons that have appeared in the game of Magic over the years. I am going to finish up the red ones, and then go into the multi-colored ones, and the Legends.
I should mention that a multiplayer perspective forms the basis for what is said about the dragons in this article. A creature that works well in a serious tournament scene might not fare so well in multiplayer, and vice versa. Some of the dragons in particular will warrant mention of this.
One of the bonuses of writing an article like this is that in the process of your research, you encounter something that puts a new perspective or idea in your head... Or in the case of this article, I learn about a dragon that I should get my hands on myself because of how good it is. I am referring to the Rathi Dragon, which is a 5/5 flyer for the mana cost of two red and two colorless. I say"mana cost" because when it comes into play, you also have to sacrifice two mountains, or it in turn is sacrificed. So you lose two mountains, yes... But you are going to sacrifice two tapped mountains which you could not use again this turn anyway, and you can time it so that you have mountains to play for a quicker return to your initial level of resources. I remember seeing this critter when it initially came out... But like so many other cards, either something came along that was better, or newer stuff was added to a deck for a change of pace. Whenever I happen to get my hands on some of these, I will probably put these into a red deck of mine that I use when I am a general in one of our Emperor games.
The Covetous Dragon is one that I feel has differing values depending on the format. It certainly has its uses in tournament play, having been an important part of Kai Budde's winning deck, when it was used in conjunction with Wildfire. Use a Grim Monolith or two to get out the dragon early, then use Wildfire to destroy all of the lands in play, and kill your opponent with the dragon. However, in multiplayer games, I believe that this particular dragon's use goes down somewhat. It is a 6/5 flyer for one red and four colorless, which is fine by any standards. A problem arises with the fact that an artifact has to be in play, because with each additional player in the game, the odds go up that someone will disenchant or destroy the artifact, thereby causing two cards to leave play for the price of one.
To be safe in a multiplayer game, more than one artifact for insurance is good, and is in fact very easy, with our group and it's penchant for using Moxes and the like. One of the members of my group does have a deck that is a basic copy of Kai's. The deck's simplicity has allowed him to get the dragon out and the Wildfire cast in remarkably short order, again helped by the Moxes he owns. This decks fares less well than the dragon itself in this setting, however. Unlike tournaments and one opponent at a time, the person using this particular deck is now the focus of at least four people who really don't like having their land destroyed. The deck itself is too slow in its method of killing the other opponent when it has more than one person to contend with. While the guy in our group is killing off one or maybe two others, the remaining two are usually able to build up their resources to the point where they can deal harshly with the Wildfire-casting player. We generally hate the Wildfire far more than we do the dragon itself.
If there was some way for the player to get out several other creatures in addition to the dragon before playing the Wildfire, his odds of winning would go up. Unfortunately for him, the Blue and Black Mages in our group frequently can - and do - identify what deck people are playing by the second card to hit the table from them. It is very hard to accomplish anything when all other players know exactly which cards need to be take care of.
Okay, I was wrong. In my last article, I basically said that a Pearl Dragon was the worst of its species. I now have to rectify that mistake, and say that of all of the non-red dragons, it is the one that sucks the most. The dragon that is the new recipient of the "I'll never play this thing!" award goes to the Lightning Dragon, from Urza's Saga. This thing is a 4/4 flyer that flies and can be pumped, but costs two red and four colorless... And the thing has echo! So you are getting an inferior Shivan for the total casting cost of four red and eight colorless. My group loves it when other members play creatures that require echo, because we will always wait until the second payment is done, and then bounce or kill it. The end result is a very angry player who just tapped a decent amount of mana twice for no net end result.
On the other hand, the Lightning Dragon, like the Covetous, was one that was used in tournaments. I mentioned when I was at my tournament that I was at first surprised about how quickly I had four mana and was casting creatures with this casting cost. Given the size and capabilities of this dragon, its effectiveness is emphasized in this format - unlike multiplayer. People do not mind paying twice for something if the odds of winning the game just went through the roof.
On the other hand, the Shivan Hellkite, which also appears in this set, is a dragon that could be considered great for my format, while any tournament player would immediately pass it by completely. It costs two red and five colorless, for a 5/5 flyer. What makes it particularly interesting is the fact that for one red and one colorless, you can cause one point of damage to target creature or player. This ability is better than average, because it is applicable to creatures or players, and you do not have to tap the dragon to do this; you are limited by the amount of mana that you have (specifically red).
This dragon has made multiple appearances in the group over the years, and unfortunately is one of the beasts that I do not have, so I will not be able to join in any of the dragon games if they make a comeback. Tournament players would not touch this thing due to its high casting cost; there are multitudes of other ways to get your opponent down in life without having to resort to something this ponderous. While someone is trying to get enough mana to cast this thing, their opponent is putting out a creature every turn or so and causing damage now, not later.
From a technical standpoint, I have to give credit to R&D when it comes to the Two-Headed Dragon from Masques. Two red and four colorless gets you your "standard" of a 4/4 flyer... But where they really did a particularly good job was in giving this dragon abilities that fit so well with the idea and theme of a dragon that has two heads. First of all, it can be pumped like the Shivan - but this time, it is one red and one colorless so that it gets +2/+0 on it's attack; one point for each head, so to speak. It cannot be blocked except by two or more creatures - which makes sense, since if one of the heads was dealing with a creature, the other could still be doing something else that had nothing to do with the creature. The same goes for the reverse; just one creature should not be a problem for this dragon to deal with, so it will perform double duty and be able to block a second creature if it wants to.
There are three dual-colored dragons that I will be dealing with here, and I will start off with the least of them first. The Firestorm Hellkite from Visions costs one red, one blue, and four colorless, for a 6/6 flying trampler. While this is all well and good, it has a cumulative upkeep of one red and one blue. I can understand paying something extra for abilities (or for increasing the initial casting cost of a beast), but with the upkeep being both cumulative and requiring colors that are normally diametrically opposed, this creature probably has a very set life expectancy. In duels, I can certainly see where this is a game winner, and a time clock for both players in one form or another... In multiplayer, however, there is too much that is better for this to really be useful through conventional means.
The Viashivan Dragon is a creature that really should be in any red/green multiplayer deck. Two red, two green, and two colorless get you a 4/4 flyer that can have its power pumped up for one red, or its toughness increased for the cost of a green. Versatile, simple, and straightforward.
The Vampiric Dragon very quickly became popular with our little group when it came out with the Odyssey set. For one red, one black, and six colorless, you get a 5/5 flyer that can cause one point of damage to a target creature by paying one red and one colorless. In addition, anytime a creature hits the graveyard because of this thing, it gets a +1/+1 token put on it, just like a regular Sengir Vampire would. This is a great remover of weenie creatures, and has easily gotten to be much bigger than its already sizable starting point. I think the highest it has gotten to be in one of our games is a 16/16, but I am not sure.
Ah, the legends. There are two sets of them; from the Legends set (there's a shock), and the Invasion block. Both sets have their advantages; yes, even the Elder Dragons.
I once read somewhere that the Legends set served to inspire the imagination of the players more so than the other sets that had been released at that time - and it's easy to see why! I have always enjoyed the Elder Dragon Legends since I first encountered them lo these many years ago now. Unfortunately, it has taken until now, with the various alternative means of getting creatures onto the table these days, that they have really begun to be used by me. Between Dragon Arch, Defense of the Heart, and others, I have been able to avoid having to pay the normal casting cost of these creatures most of the time. I have actually cast them the slow way... But this was only when I had generated an enormous amount of mana, as you can well imagine. This has also only occurred when I have been left alone for a considerable amount of time during the course of the game; usually, I will admit it, when I have been accomplishing absolutely nothing and am completely harmless and open to everyone else on the table. Ergo, they have been wisely pounding the daylights out of each other, since everyone else is much more of a threat than I am...
Until, of course, something of mine finally hits the table.
Nicol Bolas, even if it is the only thing sitting in front of you and you can pay his upkeep only by not casting a single other thing that turn, will still generate concern amongst the local gentry. Must be something about that whole discarding thing...but I digress.
As has been mentioned by Magic's historian, Ben Bleiweiss, the creators of Magic back when Legends came out really were not following the rules, as can clearly be seen by the initial casting costs of these creatures. The five Elder Dragon legends all require two mana of three separate colors and two colorless in order to hit the table, eight mana all told. For a time when the only way that you could get something onto the table was by using mana, this was certainly not inspiring people to go right out and build decks with these things. (Although I suppose the classic Animate Dead came in real handy.)
Despite the cost, however, I don't think the creators of Magic were all that far off from what these elder dragons should have required anyway. The overall casting amount, in fact, I have no problems with. The problem really exists in needing two specific colored mana spread out over three of the five colors. This presents such a problem even today, that if none of my alternative casting methods show up in the deck that I have these monstrosities in, I still have to add several cards to improve my odds of being able to cast these creatures in the normal fashion: Harrows, Land Taxes, Mox Diamonds, and the aforementioned Animate Dead are just some of the methods that I have come up with in one particular deck.
One of the things that R&D did do correctly with the Elder Dragon Legends is their respective power and toughness. Since I have always associated dragons as massive engines of destruction, it seems fitting that their power and toughness should be on a scale appropriate to that effect. I think that dragons in general should typically be bigger than your average creature. I think dragons that are 4/4 are too small; the absolute minimum that they should be is a 5/5, regardless of the ability to be pumped or not.
As one other note with regards to the Elder Dragons, with the exception of Vaevictus Asmadi, the artwork for the dragons is well done, compared to some of the artwork that existed back then. Which leads to another topic that I shall cover briefly later, that of artwork with regards to depicting the creature.
The more recent dragon legends have been appearing in our group games ever since they were first released, and show no sign of leaving anytime soon. While from an imaginative point of view, I prefer the Elder Legends, from a practical point of view I have to say that R&D did a very good job with these creatures. The casting cost is well within the realms of possibility, and the power and toughness amounts are right where I think they should be. It is their other abilities that solidly places them on the endangered species list every time they hit the table, as if a 6/6 flyer was not enough.
The most hated one of the bunch seems to be Crosis, with his card removal ability, although I myself have always hated Rith the most, with his token-making ability. A disadvantage that we have discovered with Dromar is that all too often, the color chosen to have people return cards to their hand also includes one of his, so that he has to get picked up as well. Cromat, while laden down with interesting abilities, makes for too much work to really use effectively, and has yet to make an appearance in our games. Draco, on the other hand, shows up more often than you would think, although it is chiefly through the use of Sneak Attacks and Pyromancy. There is one member of our group who uses this particular combination of cards in one of his decks; you can imagine how long those enchantments stay on the table if the others have anything to say about it, assuming that they are not countered outright. That deck is high on my personal list of most hated.
I mentioned artwork a little earlier; I wanted to use it in conjunction with a gripe that I had with the people at Wizards who are in charge of determining the artwork for the cards themselves, as well as the people who come up with the card names. I am not complaining about the various artists and their work themselves; even the least skilled is better than anything I will ever achieve.
No; what I have a problem with is that over the course of time, the aforementioned departments were not what I would call consistent with names and depictions. For example, on cards, there appears the word DRAGON and WURM. If I looked long enough, I might also find one that says WYRM. Now, I know that dragons have been referred to in literature as Wyrms, but I am at a loss to come up with any references where they are called Wurms, with that particular spelling. This rant is just a personal preference, really, and it seems to have corrected recently anyway, with the cards that say WURM on them having pictures that show creatures that more closely resemble the great worms shown in the movie Dune than something that looked draconian. And some of the really early pictures of Wurms, like the Scaled Wurm, look to me more dragonish than wormlike. Literature does have references, however, that dragons who could not fly - but rather slithered like gigantic snakes - were the ones that seemed to be referred to as Wyrms or Wurms, pick your own preference of spelling. I have always preferred the WYRM version myself.
That about covers it for this time around. Next time I will be talking about my group's forays into Emperor games, how we set up our own rules for this format, and experiments we have done. Until next time, take care.
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