In case it wasn't obvious by now, I have an enduring love for the EDH format. One of my favorite things to do is to build a deck. So, I'm going to do that once a week. There are plenty of people out there showing how to build EDH on a budget, so I'm going to do the opposite and assume that budget isn't a concern for the deck. If budget is a concern for you, just swap out the pieces that are too expensive for something of similar function and you'll likely be fine.
We have a new set coming out with 10 new legends. There's some good room to explore them, but I was immediately drawn to Atarka, World Render. The art of this card is so cool. She looks like a Kaiju ready to rumble. While she doesn't do anything to defend herself, she ends the game really fast. Atarka screams to be played as a giant monster deck. That gives us some pretty clear direction off the bat, tons of ramp, lots of big dragons. Red has the highest concentration of dragons so we have plenty to choose
from. We certainly will have some subtlety to the deck by the end, but R/G are really good mana colors as green loves land and red loves artifact mana. My initial brush of mana ramp always includes:
-Ancient Tomb
-Sol Ring
-Mana Crypt
-Grim Monolith
-Gilded Lotus
-Thran Dynamo
-Mana Vault
-Worn Powerstone
Those are good all rounded accelerators. We might want to change things up depending on how the deck shapes up. On to the land based ramp:
-Kodama's Reach
-Cultivate
-Explosive Vegetation
-Skyshroud Claim
-Hunting Wilds
-Nature's Lore
-Sakura-Tribe Elder
That gives us a solid base of acceleration and we can alter it later as we flush out the deck. Its certainly telling us that green is going to be more important early than red mana. I also want bulk land fetch, hence the three four mana doubles that jump from 4 to 6.
An important principle in deck building is that you never want to be a worse version of something else. Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund is basically the same deck as what we are talking about here. How do we differentiate ourselves from the Tyrant? Well the answer lies in the mana. Since we are only two colors, that means that we can focus on colorless ramp, which makes us likely to cast our general a turn or maybe two turns before a Karrthus player would be able to cast theirs. Combine this with the fact that Atarka naturally kills in two hits instead of three and our advantage over Karrthus becomes clear. Atarka is both faster and more consistent, but we lose out on some of the powerful black cards.
What dragons mesh with the plan of lots of mana?
At a glance:
-Balefire Dragon 8
-Bogardan Hellkite 7
-Flameblast Dragon 6
-Hellkite Charger 7
-Hellkite Igniter 7
-Hellkite Tyrant 6
-Hoardsmelter Dragon 6
-Dragon Mage 7
-Knollspine Dragon 7
-Mana Charged Dragon 6
-Moltensteel Dragon 6/4
-Mordant Dragon 6
-Preyseizer Dragon 6
-Ryusei, the Falling Star 6
-Scourge of Kher Ridges 8
-Scourge of the Throne 6
-Scourge of Valkas 5
-Spawn of Thraxes 7
-Thundermaw Hellkite 5
-Tyrant's Familiar 7
- Utvara Hellkite 8
That's quite a list! We should be weighing the 6 mana dragons higher than the 7+ mana dragons since our 7 mana play is already decided, and assuming a linear mana progression, a six mana play is going to attack the turn we play Atarka. Of specific notice are Mana-Charged Dragon and Scourge of the Throne, who don't need you to pay more mana into them, but who get crazy gains from Double Strike.
Ok, so now we have a selection of crazy beaters, lots of acceleration but nothing to do between one and six mana. Well, the first thing that comes to mind is making our Dragons better since we plan on investing so much mana into them. Haste is such a good keyword for large mana creatures. As are hexproof and shroud. In goes both Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots. Baking haste into our mana base sounds great so in go Hall of the Bandit Lord and Flamekin Village. Tapped lands slow us down a bit, but we should have the time to play these, and they speed us up by a turn, particularly Hall which is one of the best lands in the format. Fires of Yavimaya is old but gold, and its new counterpart Hammer of Purphorous gives us some amazing longevity. Generator Servant can give us some hasty beats much earlier than expected. Xenagos, God of Revels fits perfectly into the 5 slot before we cast one of our marquee dragons, and its not impossible for him to turn into a creature with the number of mana symbols that tend to be in a dragon's mana cost.
A word about planeswalkers. This seems like a deck that would want some of the walkers available to it, but really you have to judge walkers by the 1 activation rule. You have to assume that your walker only gets to activate one time. Not a lot of the walkers mesh with the deck's purpose and are useful in one activation. The ones that might be viable are Garrurk Wildspeaker, Garruk Caller of Beasts, Garruk Primal Hunter, and Domri Rade. The Garruks all have various uses from ramp to card draw and Domri functions as removal as well as potentially drawing cards. Primal Hunter is triple green, which could be annoying and one use puts him as a five mana sorcery that probably over-draws your hand. Caller of Beasts basically exists purely for his first ability, which while great isn't worth six mana. I like Domri and Wildspeaker though, so in they go. I'd be ready to cut both of them based on performance though.
We have several ways to accelerate out our dragons, but what about ways that cheat dragons into play? Especially if they get haste out of the deal. So, Sneak Attack goes in. Quicksilver Amulet is a close cousin to Sneak Attack and gets a slot as well.
Dragons don't need a lot of help to be lethal, but they also won't object to it. One of my favorite equipment for this sort of thing is Mage Slayer. You get to skip the whole blocking thing altogether! Other powerful buffs include Loxodon Warhammer, Berzerk, Fatal Frenzy, Surge of Strength, Stonewood Invocation, Seize the Day, Grafted Exoskeleton, Basilisk Collar, and Kessig Wolf Run. Each of these range from huge damage buffs to gaining useful abilities. Lifelink in particular is crazy when attached to Balefire Dragon or the like.
Lets take stock so far:
Ancient Tomb
Sol Ring
Mana Crypt
Grim Monolith
Gilded Lotus
Thran Dynamo
Mana Vault
Worn Powerstone
Kodama's Reach
Cultivate
Explosive Vegetation
Skyshroud Claim
Hunting Wilds
Nature's Lore
Sakura-Tribe Elder
Balefire Dragon
Bogardan Hellkite
Flameblast Dragon
Hellkite Charger
Hellkite Igniter
Hellkite Tyrant
Hoardsmelter Dragon
Dragon Mage
Knollspine Dragon
Mana Charged Dragon
Moltensteel Dragon
Mordant Dragon
Preyseizer Dragon
Ryusei, the Falling Star
Scourge of Kher Ridges
Scourge of the Throne
Scourge of Valkas
Spawn of Thraxes
Thundermaw Hellkite
Tyrant's Familiar
Utvara Hellkite
Lightning Greaves
Swiftfoot Boots
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Flamekin Village
Fires of Yavimaya
Hammer of Purphorous
Generator Servant
Xenagos
Domri Rade
Garrurk Wildspeaker
Sneak Attack
Quicksilver Amulet
Mage Slayer
Loxodon Warhammer
Berzerk
Fatal Frenzy
Surge of Strength
Stonewood Invocation
Seize the Day
Grafted Exoskeleton
Basilisk Collar
Kessig Wolf Run
That's 58 cards, of which 4 are lands. We are going to want more than the average number of lands for this deck. Normal land count is 37. Given that our general costs seven and our average threat costs about the same, and we are going to want significantly more land than usual. I want to try 41. That gives us 54 plus 41 = 95 out of our 99. EDH decks fill up quickly. To make room for some utility, removal, and draw effects we are going to have to make some cuts. That's a lot of dragons and they are responsible for making our curve so high. Scourge of Valkas is really color dense in the wrong color at the wrong time. I also don't anticipate having that many dragons at any given time. Preyseizer Dragon is cool, but I don't expect to have that much food for him. Dragon Mage, wheeling isn't great when you have so many high cost cards since you can likely only play 1-2 of them in a turn. Spawn of Thraxes isn't likely to get the job done as I am not a base red deck. Hellkite Igniter can be a nasty surprise, but we likely would rather be investing mana elsewhere by the time we get to that point in the game. I could be wrong and another dragon can under-perform, and Igniter is first in line as a back up. That frees up five slots. I think removing some redundancy from the pump spells also does us some good, so out come Fatal Frenzy and Basilisk Collar. That gives us 95-7=88 cards, or 11 free slots.
This number of lands wants some support in and of itself. So we go to the landfall cards to make use of the bulk of lands. While looking through the landfall cards, it strikes me that Khalni Heart Expedition is just better than Nature's Lore for us. We don't particularly care about fixing, we really just need bulk. The other landfall cards we can use are Lotus Cobra and Seer's Sundial. Other cards that support our minor lands theme are Titania, Protector of Argoth, Crucible of Worlds, and Scapeshift. Scapeshift works well in conjunction with Titania, Crucible, and the landfall cards, as does Life From The Loam. Aggressive Mining is scary since we do want our mana to stay in play, but it does offer more potential cards. I'd like to start with it but its pretty specific, so we'll wait. That's 88 + 6 = 94. The other five slots are swings, but for me I never run this sort of deck without Sylvan Library and Greater Good, 96. I want to include Chromatic Lantern for the late game since Firebreathing is so potent with double strike, 97. We haven't included really anyway to deal with permanents since removing players does such a good job of that already, but including two of the best answers will do us some good. In go Beast Within and Chaos Warp, 99.
Our lands are going to be a big weird since we need green early, and then transition into basically all red mana. I ripped the ratio straight out of R/G Titan decks of the past. So of our 41 lands, 20 should produce green, 25 should produce red and whatever is left over can be utility.
So the duels make easy includes
Wooded Foothills
Taiga
Stomping Ground
Rootbound Crag
Grove of the Burn Willows
City of Brass
Command Tower
Copperline Gorge
Fire-lit Thicket
Gruul Turf
Karplusion Forest
Mana Confluence
Mossfire Valley
Raging Ravine
Reflecting Pool
Temple of Abandon
This gives us 16 red and 16 green sources. Some of the mana is slow, but it gives us some great consisency. We are going to want a significant number of fetches given our Cradle, Loam, and Titania.
In go:
Teramorphic Expanse
Evolving Wilds
Windswept Heath
Bloodstained Mire
Going to leave it at that for now, but I can see more off-color fetches in the future.
So that's 20 of our 41. Next go in colored utility lands and basics to fill out our color requirements.
Green:
Tranquil Thicket
Mosswort Bridge
Centaur Garden
Okina
2 Forest
Red:
Flamekin Village
Spinerock Knoll
Forgotten Cave
Shinka
3 Mountains
That's 33/41
Now we put in our colorless lands
Ancient Tomb
Crystal Vein
Kessig Wolf Run
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Homeward Path
Inkmoth Nexus
Rogue's Passage
Petrified Field
That gives us an initial decklist of :
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/10-03-15-bHS-atarka/
This list isn't perfect but I think its a decent first draft. There's probably too many dragons and I think too many of the lands enter tapped to be as fast as I really want to be. We also don't have any tutors for consistency. That is helped by how often we want to cast our general. There are plenty of directions to go from here. If you want to go for more of a R/G Tron feel, you could add in Eldrazi, Karn, Ugin, and more colorless mana. If you wanted to shift more into a 1v1 mode you could cut a bunch of dragons, add in more haste and planeswalkers and tighten up the lands. If you like the lands theme you could switch to Borborygmos Enraged. Kidding, Atarka likely does fine in that shell since she kills so fast. My first revision would probably be to cut some dragons for answers and tutors. I don't know which dragons aren't going to work, and I don't know what answers I'll need or what cards I want to tutor for. I always start more threat dense and peel back as I find out the things that really need to be stopped.
I hope you enjoyed it and I'll be back next week with another build!
Edit:
After some conversing, there are some pretty easy switches that don't alter the direction of the deck that we can make. Even though we want to play lots of dragons, 16 dragons is a lot. So we can shave three without too much of an issue.
OUT:
Hoardsmelter Dragon, Mordant Dragon, Utvara Hellkite.
Hoardsmelter is a good man, and I debated between him and Moltensteel Dragon, but ultimately Moltensteel can swing for more damage with his Phyrexian mana firebreathing. Mordant is redundant with other dragons effects, and Utvara Hellkite just feels so win more.
What else might not work out the way we want to?
Well even with the land subtheme, 41 is quite a lot of land. I agreeded that Copperline Gorge isn't worth the trouble at this point so
OUT:
Copperline Gorge
That gives us four slots.
IN:
Urabrask, Blazing Shoal, Outpost Siege, and Gamble
Urabrask is a great haste enabler that removes a lot of tricks people can use to make blockers.
Blazing Shoal is a free spell that can instantly kill people with a 6+ pitch.
Outpost Siege gives us a free card every turn. We won't often choose the ping ability so maybe Chandra would be a better option, but Siege is harder to get rid of.
Gamble is great when in a deck with Life from the Loam. It gives us a decent tutor.
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