Fate Reforged: The Dragon Legends

Heya. Landdrops here, and so is the second half of the Legendary Creature review for Fate Reforged.

If you missed my chit chat about the Khans, you can find it here.
Fate Reforged Legendary Creature Part I: Khans

If you haven't seen Grandpa Growth's Threats and Answers review, they are here.
Fate Reforged Set Review: Threats
Fate Reforged Set Review: Answers

Now it's time to indulge our big, splashy, inner-Timmys because Zoners, we got a Legendary Dragon cycle in Standard for the first time since Planar Chaos. 

With the ascendance of Xenagos in Born of the Gods, I think we can all agree that Gruul colors got a significant addition to their perennially lackluster color pie contributions.

At minimum, Atarka extends the trend, and feels very exciting. With access to ramp and Haste, I like her chances. Sure, we have Karrthus, Rith, and Prossh sharing colors, but with less options comes more consistency, allowing this deck to make Dragonstorm dreams a little more realistic. 

With a huge target on Atarka, we can probably pave the way for the plethora of Dragons in the other 99. Overall, I like the design. 4 toughness gives you little incentive to sit back and play defense, economically reinforcing what these colors do best: face-smashing.

Dromoka is a tough card to justify. With very few actual Dragons, let alone playable ones, triggering the Bolster ability is going to be a tough one. I mean, I guess you can 'Shrek and Donkey' this little combo with Mirror Entity, but I don't know anyone who doesn't just point the first Doom Blade they can at that nutty Changeling.

That said, I don't hate this card, but it's probably not going to be Commanding any powerful decks. I could see it supporting Sigarda and Captain Sisay in Selesnya's 'most powerful beat-stick decks' though. 5/5's for five with the ability to get bigger should help. 

Also, is Bolster so strong that Dromoka should get robbed of a third ability? I'd love to know what happened in development that got its third ability nerfed. For me, this is a nice ripe place to show us the humble beginnings of some of these +1/+1 counter "lords" we saw in the Abzan clan. I don't know what ability she would feature, but it would've been cool to see a little more going on here. 

Of all the new Generals, of all the Dragons, Kolaghan is by far my pick of the Legendary litter from Fate Reforged. I absolutely love this card. 

Archwing Dragon was one of my favorite cards from Avacyn Restored, and a fun aggressive feature in the early days of my Animar deck. I look forward to using the developed version, Dash, on some of the creatures that come out next Friday.

Dash as a mechanic is the primary source of my fondness for Kolaghan, but I also like its chances with this attack trigger. Not only does it increase the momentum of aggressive red decks, it's also in a Dragon-friendly set of colors, which gives us opportunity for aggressive expansion. Combine this with the opportunity to protect our General, and I think we've got ourselves a stew going. 

I know it says, "Oh-Jew-Tie" on the top of this card, but I really, really want to call this guy "Sky Lapras."

For me, the mana cost is the hardest part to digest. Still, I think it's a mountain worth climbing. Dragons are few, but there's a handful of clones and relevant Changelings that can be played early on to help set up the big Blizzard beats that 'Sky Lapras' swings with. It's a solid threat with clear control support in its colors. You're gonna want to let a few Wrath effects get played before you start slamming people with our Flying Frost Titan friend here, but I can see a nice niche control deck built around this.

As a support card, Scion combo decks are probably going to give Ojutai the biggest immediate return on investment. I also like its chances in the Narset/Dragonstorm deck I see in my metagame, but I'm not seeing this is as a good support card in general. If you like the long game, I think this is a better card to build around than it is in a deck. I think I can sell people on the nice artwork, the pseudo Frost Titan ability, and the potential for the late-late.

Our last card is probably the weakest card in the cycle, in both terms of design and power. 

It's pretty terrible, but Hexproof and Flying, these are things I like and we've seen worse in the last couple years (COUGH it's not Emmara Tandris), so I'm not going to complain, but just ponder on where I think this could've been improved. 

The power and toughness is weird, but not totally unusable. It makes sense to me that a card named "Drifting Death" would be a little more "combat weak" and "defensively reinforced."

7 toughness provides some serious blocking power against a lot of big creatures. This is where I think the design went wrong: not necessarily in the size of Silumgar's butt, but how it interacts with an attack trigger.

Imagine how cool this card would be if the triggered ability read, "Whenever a creature you control blocks or is blocked by a Dragon, that creature gets -1/-1 for each Dragon you control." 

GG and I have long talked about how we like and appreciate it in those few moments when Wizards demonstrates the confidence to break cycle theme. Embracing card inequality seems counterintuitive, but it is the best way to ensure card design quality. Aesthetic symmetry makes cards easier to develop, and keeping design restraints does provide for easier development, but that shouldn't prevent the team from knowing when rules are meant to be broken. I would've really liked to have seen a little more power here, something that gave this creature a little more momentum to swing around like the other dragons in the cycle. 

Well that's all I got. Be sure to check GG's last installment on Tuesday in anticipation of the big release this week. Fate Reforged looks super-sweet and I can't wait to start playing all this new stuff.

-UL