Cat Dragons!

Hey everybody,
It’s Tuesday, so that must mean it’s time for another game day blog here at spalanz.com! Today I’m going to talk about a silly deck that I’ve put together almost on a whim, building around the fantastic legendary creature, Wasitora, Nekoru Queen!

Wasitora is one of the new Commanders from last year’s set, coming in Jund. You may remember that I bought the Vampire deck, but only went for singles from the others, including this delightful beast! She’s a 5/4 Legendary Cat Dragon, so already we’re on to a winner here. With Flying and Trample, she’s quite decent I feel, although does have a CMC of 5 (2+Jund), making her fairly expensive to cast if she’s ever sent back to the Command Zone.

However, we’re not talking about Commander today, because this deck is decidedly silly. I mean, it’s built around a Cat Dragon, for goodness sake! I keep having these thoughts of building just a normal 60-card deck with Commanders in them, which end up being only viable in Legacy or casual formats, and I’m pretty sure in Legacy this build would be utterly thrashed! But, it’s pretty fun to play, and so I thought I’d show it off here.

With flying and trample, you should be able to trigger her effect – when she deals combat damage to a player, they must sacrifice a creature; if they can’t we create 3/3 cat dragon creature tokens! Adorable!

5/4 is a respectable amount of damage, for sure, but the deck is mainly looking at ways to make that even more impressive. So I’ve got a few cards in there to help buff her up. For me, top of that list is Crucible of Fire, which gives Dragon creatures +3/+3. Very nice! Sight of the Scalelords can give an additional +2/+2 before combat, as well as Ambuscade Shaman giving another +2/+2. With Thunderstaff tapping for an additional +1/+0, Wasitora can potentially swing in the air for 13 trample damage, which is very nice!

I think I may have mentioned this before, although it’s probably abundantly clear anyway – I do like to have Enchantments out. I know people tend to avoid Auras, but I quite like all types of these things. This isn’t an Enchantments-matter style deck, but there are some fairly useful and powerful cards in here to help the strategy. Dragons are a big theme of the deck, of course, and so there are an abundance of cards from Tarkir block (still my personal favourite) that lean heavily into this theme. Dragon Tempest gives flying creatures haste, and allows dragons to deal damage to either target creature or player when they enter the battlefield, based on the number of other dragons in play. Here’s where Wasitora’s token buddies will certainly help, of course!

Wasitora isn’t alone in the deck, she’s one of seven dragons in total, including Atarka World Render, and Kolaghan the Storm’s Fury, the latter being another personal favourite card. Indeed, I think I disassembled a B/R deck specifically to put him in this one. There are other creatures in here to help with mana fixing and the like, but the plan is to build up to the big dudes as quickly as possible and dominate the skies!

The deck is designed to be a bit silly, so isn’t fully-optimised for greatness. I was building it using what cards I had to hand, and apart from Kolaghan, I wasn’t particularly wanting to disassemble other decks to build this one. It’s the sort of deck that I like to play for a laugh – it’s not bad, but it’s good for the end of a night, when you just want some casual games and nothing too fancy.

Let’s take a look at it in all its glory, then!

Creatures
Wasitora, Nekoru Queen
Atarka, World Render
Kolaghan, the Storm’s Fury
Broodmate Dragon
Dragonlord’s Servant
Shockmaw Dragon
Savage Ventmaw
Lathliss, Dragon Queen
Ambuscade Shaman (2)
Burning-Tree Emissary (2)
Bladewing’s Thrall (2)
Whisperer of the Wilds

Enchantment
Flameshadow Conjuring
Dragon Tempest (2)
Sight of the Scalelords
Crucible of Fire
Infernal Scarring (2)
Frontier Siege

Instant
Shivan Fire (2)
Dragonrage (2)

Sorcery
Seismic Rupture
Fearsome Awakening (2)
Explore

Artifact
Thunderstaff
Kolaghan Monument
Atarka Monument

Land
Shimmering Grotto (2)
Savage Lands (4)
Crucible of the Spirit Dragon
Timber Gorge
Cinder Barrens
Bloodfell Caves (2)
Jungle Hollow (2)
Rugged Highlands (2)
Forest (3)
Swamp (3)
Mountain (5)

What a deck, right?! I’ve had some pretty decent success with this deck in the past where my opponent doesn’t have any way to deal with flyers, so after a fairly slow set up I’ve managed to get a few Enchantment cards out that allow me to cause utter carnage when I have just one big dragon on the board – using Flameshadow Conjuring to produce two Kolaghans and swing in the air unopposed for 10 damage was pretty nice, I have to say! Of course, games like that do leave me vulnerable in the early game when I can’t bring any defensive creatures out, though that’s another reason to enjoy the Tarkir dual lands, which grant you 1 life when played. I do enjoy the annoyance factor that you can achieve when your opponent does one damage to you, and you then play a land and regain that life, so they do it again and you play another land and keep undoing their turns!

I’m not really a horrible player, though.

Anyway, that’s my Cat Dragon deck. I might take some time to tinker a bit with it, and maybe tune it up in terms of some direct damage spells as well, who knows – I’ve got a fairly decent collection of Magic cards now, after all, though I can’t say that I have been keeping entirely up to date as I used to. But there may be some new things that I could fit in there for fun, as well…