Against the Odds: Dracogenesis Dragon Storm (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Against the Odds! This week, we're heading to Tarkir: Dragonstorm Standard. Which card gets the honor of being the first Against the Odds card from the set? Dracogenesis! When I first read Dracogenesis, I was worried it would just be a bad Omniscience. But then I realized that Dracogenesis has one huge upside compared to Omniscience: it lets us play our Dragons for free from anywhere, not just from our hand. This twist is what lets us combo off today, with the idea being that we should be able to win the game the turn we cast Dracogenesis, even if we are completely tapped out, by chaining together a spicy stream of Dragons! Is Dragon Storm back in Standard? Is Dracogenesis actually good? Let's get to the video and find out!
Against the Odds: Dracogenesis Dragon Storm
The Deck
Our deck today is all about Dracogenesis. As I mentioned in the intro, our deck is built in such a way that we'll (hopefully) be able to win the game the turn when Dracogenesis hits the battlefield by letting us chain together a wild horde of Dragons, which eventually should let us win the game by storming off and dealing hundreds of damage with our Dragons! Here's how it works!
First, we need to get up to eight mana to actually be able to play Dracogenesis, so we've got a bunch of ramp. Overlord of the Hauntwoods gives us an Everywhere land. The omen mode of Bloomvine Regent basically is a Cultivate for basic Forests, and Encroaching Dragonstorm tutors up two basics, potentially multiple times since we can bounce it back to our hand when we play a Dragon. These cards help us turbo out Dracogenesis, with our best draws letting us play our namesake enchantment as early as Turn 5!
Let's say we get Dracogenesis on the battlefield. How do we win the game? Step one is Hoarding Broodlord, an eight-mana Dragon that lets us tutor a card to exile when it enters, which we can play. This is where the difference between Omniscience and Dracogenesis becomes very obvious. Omniscience wouldn't let us cast the card we exile with Hoarding Broodlord for free, but Dracogenesis does, assuming we tutor up a Dragon, which means our combo today actually wouldn't work at all with Omniscience. Anyway, we play a Hoarding Broodlord and tutor up another copy, which we then cast to tutor up another copy, and we keep doing this until we've played all four copies of Hoarding Broodlord.
While just playing all four Hoarding Broodlords is pretty sweet, giving us 28 flying power, it gets even better if we have Up the Beanstalk to draw a card every time we play an expensive card. In fact, with multiple Up the Beanstalks, we can draw our entire deck as we combo off, leading to some spectacular turns since we can also play all of our Dragons for free. Meanwhile, Stormscale Scion adds an absurd amount of power and number of bodies to the battlefield. Let's say we cast Dracogenesis and then four Hoarding Broodlords. Our Storm count will be at five by the time we cast Stormscale Scion, which means we'll get at least six copies of Stormscale Scion and also pump all of our Dragons +6/+6.
While making a massive board of Dragons is pretty sweet, we need one more piece to win the game immediately. Most commonly, this is Song of Totentanz. We can cast all four Hoarding Broodlords, use the last one to tutor up Song of Totentanz, and then cast it for free from exile by tapping a red creature for convoke (thanks to Hoarding Broodlord's other ability) to give all of our Dragons haste and smash our opponent for a few hundred damage. We can also win with Terror of the Peaks. If we play it before we start the Hoarding Broodlord chain, we end up dealing at least 28 direct damage to our opponent's face just from the Broodlords. And if we finish the chain with a Stormscale Scion, we potentially can deal 50 or more direct damage without needing to attack at all!
Finally, we have a couple of omen removal Dragons. While maybe not quite as efficient as other removal spells, they aren't bad, with Twinmaw Stormbrood being a Roast and Disruptive Stormbrood sniping small creatures for just two mana. More importantly, both are Dragons, so we can play them for free during our combo turn to up our storm count or as backup plans if we have Dracogenesis but are missing Hoarding Broodlord for the full combo kill!
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, we went 8-5 with the deck, although I don't really put too much weight in records from early-access day since everyone is trying new things. The best news is that the deck felt really solid, to the point where I'm starting to wonder if Dracogenesis Combo could be a real deck in Standard! It turns out that getting to eight mana isn't that difficult, and we won the game every time we managed to play a Dracogenesis, usually immediately and spectacularly! If you like casting Dragons and massive combo turns, give the deck a shot! It's hilarious and a blast to play!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
