Eshki, Temur's RoarEshki, Temur's Roar | art by Billy Christian 

We're rounding out of quintet of Tarkir: Dragonstorm decks with Temur Roar; will we be charmed by Dragons, all the way down?

Package Contents

We know there'll be Dragons in the Temur Roar box, but what else is contained within the packaging?

• 1 Ready-to-play 100-card Commander deck with:
• 1 Traditional foil face commander with borderless art
• 1 Traditional foil featured commander with borderless art
• 10 Double-sided tokens
• 1 Collector Booster Sample Pack
• 1 Deck box

As for tokens, there are a variety of Dragon and Dragon-adjacent options:

• 2x Dragon Egg // Dragon (0013) tokens
• 2x Frog Lizard // Dragon (0014) tokens
• 2x Dragon (0014) // Treasure tokens
• 2x Treasure // Beast tokens
• 1x Copy // Karox Bladewing token
• 1x Dragon (0014) // Copy token

The Commander

The Alternate Commander

The Decklist

New Cards

We get a two-mana Dragon to go with your Mox JasperMox Jasper, presuming you're not relying on changelings to ensure the Dragon-focused mana rock is functional. A 1/1 flyer for two blue pips, Deceptive Frostkite's mission in life is to turn any of your four-power creatures into a flying Dragon. Not a bad gimmick, though the restrictions might hamper its widespread use.

Back into the more traditional 6/6 flying for six mana territory befitting Dragons, Hammerhead Tyrant brings its own bouncy castle to the battlefield, serving as a depowered Hullbreaker HorrorHullbreaker Horror. Anyone who's ever faced down a Hullbreaker Horror knows, however, that even a less powerful version is still going to be a menace.

Ideally, you're getting all three of these triggers each combat step. A 4/3 flyer for four mana, the Parapet Thrasher encourages spreading the Dragon-based carnage around, providing you with a trio of effects ranging from card advantage to artifact hate to raw damage. Thanks to its reasonable casting cost, resolving a Parapet Thrasher into a five mana Dragon with haste, like, say, Thundermaw Hellkite, means you're off to the races.

We just mentioned Thundermaw, so how about a Thundermane? Another four-mana Dragon, this one's a 4/4 flyer with an arguably slower but more impactful ability. We've seen creature type-specific top-of-library casters before, such as Conspicuous SnoopConspicuous Snoop, Emperor Mihail IIEmperor Mihail II, or Nalia de'ArniseNalia de'Arnise, but none of those give your creatures haste, too. With a little library manipulation, Tundermane Dragon will provide a ton of card advantage if left unchecked.

Our fifth and final new Dragon from Temur Roar is Broodcaller Scourge, a 5/7 flyer for seven mana. In practice, Broodcaller Scourge will serve as a more scaly Kodama of the East Tree, but we're being encouraged to do what Dragons already want to do, which is attack with impunity. There's no better cost than free, so we're ahead even if we only get one trigger from this before the Scourge eats a removal spell.

Our blue Will belongs to the Temur, and it's the most expensive in terms of mana cost, coming in at six. Like all the Wills, we're really hoping to utilize both modes here, in this case turning any permanent into a 4/4 Dragon, then drawing what we're expecting to be a ton of cards. Out of all the Wills, this one's most tied to the current game's context to determine its value, but both halves will likely be solid enough in their own right.

We're getting our first look at Harmonize with Zenith Festival, which is essentially flashback with extra steps. As for the effect, we've seen red exiling the top of our libraries for quite awhile now, and each new iteration has become a slight variation on the same core theme. Still, Zenith Festival is one of the better ones, and many decks outside Temur Roar will probably be looking to snag a copy for themselves.

What if we just did a Return of the WildspeakerReturn of the Wildspeaker, but better? It's no Craterhoof Behemoth in terms of game-ending immediacy, thanks largely to the fact that Become the Avalanche does not provide your creatures with any sort of evasion, but casting this late-game might be all it takes to wrap things up, regardless. And if the temporary buff doesn't do it, hopefully the glut of cards you're drawing help you solve the puzzle. Of course, it can also do absolutely nothing, and drawing this the turn after a board wipe will feel pretty bad.

How The Deck Plays

With Eshki, we want to trigger not only the baseline effect of generating a +1/+1 counter with a creature spell, but we also want to take advantage of both of the "ifs."

That means we want to be casting a ton of creatures, but also trying to maximize our creatures' power. Dragons, obviously, are a fantastic way to do that.

In total, there are 34 creature spells (not counting Eshki) in Temur Roar. Of those 34, only seven actually hit all three requirements on Eshki:

That's not a very good ratio, and looking at the deck as a whole, it becomes clearer that our alternate commander, Ureni, would be much more appropriate in the command zone of Temur Roar.

Other than this little hiccup, the rest of the deck plays exactly how you'd expect; set up for Dragons, cast Dragons, attack with Dragons. For set up, we've got a few ways to make them cheaper:

We've got a few ways to squeeze even more value from casting a Dragon:

And we've got a few ways to make them hit even faster and harder:

Nearly every card in the deck is selected to maximize our Dragon output, so it's even more curious that our face commander seems like the odd card out.

Combos & Synergy

It's no surprise that Temur Roar does not contain any readily evident combos, as per Commander Spellbook's Combo Finder. We're all about theme here in Dragon territory.

However, that doesn't mean there's no synergies to speak of. Dragons, as a creature type, are one of the most supported in Magic, and as a result, we've got a ton of cards that work well with them. Almost as if they were designed to:

If we wanted to add a few combos to this deck while keeping with the Dragon theme, though, where would we start?

With Helm of the Host, simply equip it to Scourge of the ThroneScourge of the Throne for infinite combat steps and Scourge tokens, as long as your life is at five or less.

As for Vrondiss, if you manage to give him indestructible through any means, pairing him with Dragon TempestDragon Tempest will create infinite triggers tied to entering or leaving the battlefield, as well as infinite death triggers.

And lastly, with Phyrexian Altar, combining it with Nesting DragonNesting Dragon and Enchroaching Dragonstorm allows for all basic lands in your deck to suddenly be in play.

Lands & Mana Rocks

Did you know that Temur Roar cares about Dragons? Our primary goal with the deck's landbase and mana rocks is to cast Dragons, color-fix for Dragons, cheat Dragons into play, or bring Dragons back to life.

It's a simple goal, but an effective one as long as we go all-in with it. And if you've read this far, you know that Temur Roar is nothing if not all-in on Dragons.

Outside of a few Dragon-related land choices, the rest of our lands are pretty standard for a preconstructed deck, in line with what we've seen from the other four Tarkir: Dragonstorm decks. We do, however, get this:

As for mana rocks, every one of our six artifacts serve in this capacity. We've got the usual Sol Ring, Arcane Signet and Fellwar Stone, of course, along with two of the three color-relevant Talismans. We've also got a little bonus rock, as a treat:

Our basics, however, don't tell the full story. We've got six MountainMountains, five ForestForests and three IslandIslands. If you look at the total number of colored pips present in the deck, 62% of them are red.

People who buy Temur Roar and play it straight out of the box might find out the hard way that the deck is very hungry for red mana, but only 29% of our colored mana sources create red mana.

Upgrading The Deck

We've got five extra dollars and want to swap out five cards; what do we buy to make that happen?

Out

Migration Path isn't the best option for ramp, especially when we're playing Eshki. Our commander wants us to play creatures, so we should be using creatures to ramp, not spells.

As for the trio of Dragons we're excising, we're just booting some of the least impactful Dragons with the expectation that we'll be adding new, better ones sometime in the near future.

And finally, Storm's Wrath kills a concerning number of our own creatures, and there are better board wipes we can employ that leave us more unscathed.

In

Dragons are the single-most popular creature type on EDHREC, which is a blessing and a curse when it comes to making budget upgrades. On one hand, they're very well-supported, but on the other hand, even some less-powerful choices are going to cost you more than a buck due to the word "Dragon" printed on it somewhere.

With these adds, we're looking to supplement our manabase's wobbly construction by including a few more ways to create red mana. Beyond that, we've got an additional way to draw cards, kill non-flying peasants, and just hit twice as hard.

If we want to spend a little more, though, our options open up a bit:

Dragons are expensive. Yes, you read it here first. So we'll add a few more ways to make them less expensive, as well as a new way to protect our investment from board wipes, a Dragon's mortal enemy. As for Miirym and Old Gnawbone, we're playing a Dragon deck in .

If you want to make a little noise at higher bracket tables, here are a few Game Changers to look at:

Archetype Change

If we really want to make Eshki fulfill its potential as a commander, we're going to want to abandon the Dragon theme entirely and start from scratch:

Why bother with noncreature spells at all?

Monetary Value vs. MSRP

Where Temur Roar stumbles a bit in power or fun-factor, it makes up for it in high-value reprints. As of this writing, the deck's total monetary value is above $180, which puts it as the most expensive deck from Temur: Dragonstorm, dollar for dollar. The most expensive reprints are:

These prices will be in flux for the next few weeks, so don't take them as gospel.

Overall Rating

This is certainly a very well-crafted Dragon deck designed for Bracket 2, but is it a Temur deck? That's the question many players will be asking as these preconstructed decks head out into the wilds to be played at commander tables around the world.

Each of the other four Tarkir: Dragonstorm precons felt like they represented their clans very well, but Temur Roar seems to have lost a bit of that identity somewhere along the way.

But it's still a good preconstructed deck, with few solid reprints and an easy-to-understand, versatile gameplan, and for that, we'll give it a B-.

Nick Wolf

Nick Wolf is a freelance writer, editor, and photographer based in Michigan. He has over a decade of newsmedia experience and has been a fan of Magic: The Gathering since Tempest.