"Red EDH:Zirilan of the Claw"

"Red EDH:Zirilan of the Claw"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

     One of the first things I liked about Magic is that it had dragons in it and when I was starting out I wanted to have a Zirilan of the Claw so I could power out Massive Dragons to Vanquish my enemies. It never happened. Becasuse 1) I didnt have enough contacts to know where to get one and 2) because during those times Zirilan seemed very expensive.

     So when I saw a post in the MTG Tambayan Group about a 150 peso Zirilan I just had to get him and build an EDH deck around him. It was obvious with him around that you actually need Dragons in your deck so I sought out the baddest Red Dragons that magic has to offer and put them all in there (mostly they were already just lying around in my room because I was already collecting them and most of them were already a part of several Modern Decks that I had before I went into my EDH Craze).

    The next thing that would be added would be protection. For an EDH deck who's strategy really revolves around the commander being alive ( as opposed to other EDH decks that only use the commanders color Identity and not really involve it in any combination at all.) then we would need lots and lots of it. The logically choice is to have a Lightning Greaves and a Swiftfoot boot. They not only add protection from spells and abilities but they also add Haste into the mix which allows you to use your Commander right off the bat. You could add a Darksteel plating and Whispersilk Cloak to toughen Zirilan even further making sure that he gets to serve you for a long time.(Or at least more turns than he could with out the armor)

   Now for 2 Red Mana and 3 Colorless Mana Zirilan can be cast in an EDH setting pretty easily because everyone is still setting up in the early turns and your opponents will be counting your mana thinking that you won't be able to summon anything up with just 5 mana. Of course they would be wrong in that assumption because red has a lot of ways of creating mana in a hurry. Seething Song , Extra Planar Lens and Koth of the Hammer  are all there to give that extra boost of mana to power out a dragon. With 7 mountains in play your opponents won't suspect that you could use Zirilan to summon a dragon just yet.  Playing Koth and using his second skill allows you to cast Zirilan and with Lightning Greaves preferably in play , you could attach it to Zirilan and then use this ability with the extra mana and attack with a Dragon! All Dragons that are summoned this way have haste or can attack the moment they hit the battlefield.(Or as I like to say , hit the ground running...only they fly...)

This deck is actually a utility deck and there is a dragon that is included in the deck for a lot of possible scenarios.These are some of the dragons that you could include:

Hellkite Tyrant -" All your artifacts are mine"  Almost all EDH decks use a healthy amount of Keyrunes and Signets and Talismans for mana fixing and these are just the small things that are ripe for the picking on your opponents side of the battlefield.

Dragonmage -  "Sorry to spoil your plans" - Discarding your hand and pulling in a fresh 7 cards is sometimes not bad but not when you have been mulling on what to do for about 3 turns now. The guy is a double edged sword

Utvara Hellkite - "Doubling Dragon" - Whats better than having 1 dragon in play? Why having 2 dragons of course !!!and with this guy attacking you can double what you have each attack phase that passes. Its not uncommon to have 4 6/6 Flying Dragons with this dragon around.

Bogardan Hellkite - "Damage all , Damage one" - Among the important things to have is spot removal in an EDH deck. This guy takes care of 5 pesky 1/1 creatures of 1 5/5 creature or if your opponent has no creatures or near critical then you could just spend that damage burning him away.

Kilnmouth Dragon - " Strength from your hand" - In the scenario that you have a lot of dragons in your hand but can't cast all of them but can have Zirilan summon a dragon then its this guy that you should be looking for. I once played a game where I had 5 Dragon cards in my hand and Kilnmouth dropped into play. With the amplify 3 mechanic( it gets 3 +1/+1 counters for each dragon in your hand as it comes into play) and 5 dragon cards...It quickly became a 20/20 Flying Monster that reduced my EDH opponents life total by half!

There are a lot more Dragons in the deck but these by far are my favorites. As an added note these dragons when summoned this way has to be sacrificed by the end of your turn however there are ways to bypass this and there are even combos involved.

Sundial of the Infinite -  "End the turn" - Ending the turn at your 2nd main phase means that the dragon will not be sacrificed since there would be no "End Turn".

Tel-Jilad Stylus - " Down to the bottom"  - It allows you to put a dragon to the bottom of your library to be searched and used by Zirilan again and again.

Carnage Altar + Mimic Vat - "Death Draw Combo" - You could sacrifice a Dragon , Draw a card , and Imprint it on the Mimic Vat .This way you could cast an Utvara Hellkite until end of turn via the vat , use the vat again on your turn and voila! you have 2 6/6 Dragon tokens left on the field even if you have to exile the dragons created by the vat at the end of the turn. Or you could just end the turn with the Sundial again and have 4 6/6 Flying dragons on your next turn where they can turn into 8 .hahahahha (this is my best maniacal laugh). 

Safe haven and Synod Sanctum - "Keeping them away for a rainy day" These 2  follow the same principle , Keep the dragons that were about to be exiled , return them at the end of your opponents turn and smack them with the creatures that were exiled there on the next turn.

So here we have it. One of my dream EDH decks and I got to play with it. The strategy is a bit risky but then again there is much to be gained by risking much. When the strategy works expect a lot of Fire and Brimstone to rain on your enemies.