The Dragons are here! The Dragons are here!

This week marks the first ReConstructed after the entire Dragons of Tarkir Card Image Gallery has been put up, and you should definitely check it out if you haven't already. Between a cycle of Commands; cheap removal; efficient creatures; and, of course, gigantic Dragons, this large Magic set is poised to completely shake up Standard. I wouldn't be surprised if entire chunks of the metagame were redefined.

And so where better to start exploring this brave new Standard world than with the Dragons themselves?

In today's ReConstructed, I'm going to run over a savory smorgasbord of reader-submitted decks—each featuring some of the fierce rulers of Tarkir's skies. If you're looking for deck ideas to work on while you go out and trade for cards at your Prerelease this weekend, this is a great place to start!

So, let's not dilly-dally. We have all of Tarkir's time and space, everywhere and anywhere, to cover. Here are five takes on Dragons, with anything from comboing out with Dragons to just smashing face with them. Here we go!

Descent of the Dragons Combo

The first deck I want to look at doesn't even feature any "Creature – Dragon" cards at all. What gives?

Well, it certainly isn't without its Dragon. In some fashion, every creature in the deck is a Dragon. It's sort of like…Schrodinger's Dragon.

Take a look:

I'll admit, I hadn't seen this one before. Asada (along with Sean Skinner, who sent in a similar deck) has quite an exciting interaction going on.

Descent of the Dragons can be a bit pricy to turn all of your creatures into Dragons. Unless…you have Battlefield Thaumaturge on the battlefield! Remember him? Thanks to the Thaumaturge, your Descents are usually going to cost a paltry RR.

But getting a bunch of Dragons isn't where it ends. A Dragon Tempest should kill your opponent immediately—if all of the enters-the-battlefield triggers don't do it, attacking with a swarm of hasted Dragons absolutely should.

You don't really even need the Thaumaturge for this to work. While it's a nice tool for the early game, in the late game you can just hard-cast Descent for the victory.

This deck has a really cool and unique concept. If I were to tweak it further, I would look at making the Dragon Tempests do more so you can amp up the flying and/or Dragon synergy. For example, Thunderbreak Regent, Icefall Regent, and Stormbreath Dragon are all solid cards to look at that positively work with your Tempests. At that point, I could see Silumgar's Scorn and Draconic Roar becoming pretty strong. You could turn it into a more Dragon-focused tempo deck or keep trying to push with low-mana cards.

Temur Dragon Control

Moving from Descent of the Dragons to Dragon decks that contain actual Dragons in them, Pablo Schenone has cooked up a new take on Temur.

Using the green ramp paired with blue and red's control elements, he is taking advantage of what some of the new Dragons have to offer…and headlining his Dragonmaking engine is none other than Sarkhan himself!

Normally when I see Frontier Bivouac I expect cards like Savage Knuckleblade to follow—not so here. Using a good suite of countermagic with Silumgar's Scorn, Temur Charm , and Stubborn Denial , this deck can really contain your opponent's spells. Meanwhile, you're producing your own massive threats!

This deck has a great-looking core and a few ways it can move. If it's going to remain a more controlling deck, it desperately needs some extra removal. Roast is a good option for that, and potentially Draconic Roar. Anger of the Gods is the card that really leaps to mind, since this deck isn't playing Sylvan Caryatid . If it wants to eschew removal and focus more on the ramp direction, cards like Sylvan Caryatid are going to be worth looking at.

However, with some tweaking, this deck really has the positioning to either control the game or tempo out slower decks with countermagic and 4/4 Dragons. Worth noting: if your opponent targets your Thunderbreak Regent and then you counter your opponent's spell, you still deal 3 damage somewhere. Yikes!

Hey, Wait, Naya Isn't on Tarkir!

Naya may be a shard from Alara (the red-green-white one, to be precise), but that certainly doesn't stop us from putting some of its great Dragons together.

Mark Ian Alloso took a solid red-green base and added some white spells into it to create a deck that hits hard with monsters and Dragons alike! It looks like this:

A 5/7 vigilant lifelinker hits hard.

Dragonlord Dromoka may not have generated as much initial buzz as some of her brethren, but she's a card that can stop entire classes of decks in their tracks. With her sitting in the Baneslayer Angel category, this deck can slam her down early and cause a huge headache for most opponents.

In any case, this deck seeks to ramp up and hit its land drops using Sylvan Caryatid , Courser of Kruphix , and newcomer Atarka's Command. Once it's at five mana, it can start dropping huge threats like Stormbreath Dragon onto the table—and at six mana, here comes Dromoka and Harbinger of the Hunt. If you get in just a little bit of damage, Crater's Claws should finish off your opponent.

Hey, I never said it was particularly subtle.

I imagine this deck is awesome as long as it hits its huge creatures—it's just a matter of getting there. So Rattleclaw Mystic may do good work in providing another source of ramp. Fleecemane Lion is going to be a bit tricky to cast early anyway, and my guess is that the white works best here when it's just a light splash. Also, I could see both Dromoka's Command and Dragonlord Atarka being excellent additions to this deck: the former as a versatile card that can also serve as removal, the latter as a game-changing card that can also serve as removal.

If you want to play a variant of RG Monsters that involves plenty of Dragons and gives you access to both white cards and some game-ending Dragons, this is the deck for you. Give something like this a try!

Rakdos Dragons

We've looked at a couple three-color decks (and actually still have one more to go), so I want to take a moment to look at a two-color combination. You might not expect it to be the Dragon-focused colors, but it actually has a lot of great options with them: red and black. If you've ever wanted to Crux of Fate to Plague Wind your opponent while leaving your Dragon army untouched, this might be the deck for you!

Check it out:

This deck is pretty interesting in that it can play both offense and defense well. Want to curve a Goblin Rabblemaster into a Thunderbreak Regent? Absolutely. Want to fire off a flurry of Hero's Downfall s and Crux of Fate s to control the game? You can do that too!

The key to improving this deck is going to be figuring out what it wants a little better and tightening up its numbers to reflect that. Whenever I see so many two-ofs, usually that's a sign to me that the deck builder couldn't quite make up his or her mind about which cards were strongest and what the deck wanted to do. Is this really a Descent of the Dragons deck? Probably not, with that creature base. Flamewake Phoenix might be okay if you're aggressive, but if you want to go the more controlling route it's better left to the side.

However, these kinks aside, there are a lot of good elements going on here. Playing a deck with so many cheap Dragons that you can Crux of Fate in a brutal fashion definitely appeals to me. If you feel similarly, perhaps Rakdos Dragons is for you!

There and Back Again: Jund

Sarkhan has homes on both Tarkir and Jund—and I figured it would only be fitting to close on a Jund deck that uses a bunch of Tarkir Dragons. This is a midrange deck that is serious about its Dragons! It even packs Crucible of Fire and Crucible of the Spirit Dragon .

Interested? Let's take a peek!

Like many other Dragon-focused decks with green, you can spot the Caryatid/Courser/Elvish Mystic package a mile away. But what it's ramping into is decidedly its own, with some Fate Reforged and some Dragons of Tarkir Dragons.

Like some other decks (and especially the first one) this deck runs Dragon Tempest and even has the Descent of the Dragons combo. But Dragon Tempest on its own is pretty impressive in this deck! Most notably with Atarka, World Render . Granting Atarka haste lets you attack in for 12 on the turn you cast her. If you have much else going on (such as a Thunderbreak Regent or Kolaghan) they might just be dead!

I could certainly see Dragonlord Atarka being excellent here as well to stabilize. Crucible of Fire is probably a tad too cute, although it's certainly neat to see that in decklists!

In a way, this deck combines many of my favorite parts form the other decklists into one. Crux of Fate ing with a Dragon on the table? Ability to hit hard out of nowhere? Descent of the Dragons and Dragon Tempest? There are many good things going on here and some variation is certainly worth trying out.

Exploring a World of Dragons

Today, I covered just a small look into what some more Dragon-focused decks might look like—and there's so much to innovate with when it comes to Dragons of Tarkir that I'm excited to see what you all keep sending me.

Here's your mission for this week:

Format: Dragons of Tarkir Standard

Restrictions: None!

Deadline: Monday, March 23 at 6 p.m. Pacific Time.

Submit all decklists by emailing me at reconstructeddecks@gmail.com.

Decklists should be submitted with YOURNAME's DECKNAME at the top. Underneath should be one card per line, with just a leading number. For example:

12 Mountain

4 Firedrinker Satyr

3 Ash Zealot

4 Lightning Bolt

…and so on. Please don't use anything but a space to separate the card numbers and names—don't write "4x Lightning Bolt ," for example. Well-formatted decklists have a much better chance of being read and making it into the column. Poorly formatted decklists are more likely to be ignored. (If I can't read your decklist, I certainly can't talk about it!)

The next month is going to have a ton of excitement, all the way from the Prerelease this weekend to the Pro Tour with Dragons of Tarkir. There will be tons of deck building that will happen along the way! I'm excited to see what shakes out of it.

If you have any thoughts or comments, please send them my way! It would be great to hear from you. You can always send me a tweet or ask me a question on my Tumblr.

I'll be back next week with another look at Standard using the decks you have all sent in. Until then, have an excellent Prerelease—and have a blast with Dragons!

Talk with you next week,

Gavin

@GavinVerhey

GavInsight