Elder Dragons Over Time With the release of secrets of Strixhaven, we have received 5 Elder Dragons in the form of the founders of each college. One of their standout qualities is that they are designed to make great commanders. However, they are far from the only Elder Dragons, and this pair of types has a history of making interesting commanders. So, without further ado, let's look at them by year, starting with... 1994: 1995: These 5 were reprinted in Chronicles. 2006: After a whole 11 years, Elder Dragons made a return with... a reprint of just Nicol Bolas in Time Spiral Timeshifted. 2008: Nicol Bolas was reprinted again in From the Vault: Dragons. (I'm starting to notice a pattern here) 2015: This year saw the first new Elder Dragons since the original cycle in 1994. It featured 5 Dragonlords that represented the new faction in Dragons of Tarkir that resulted from Sarkhan Vol's time traveling. Atarka deals 5 damage among any number of creatures and planeswalkers when entering, Dromoka stops your opponents from casting spells on your turn, and Kolaghan gives everything haste and punishes your opponents for casting creature and planeswalker spells that they already have a copy of in their grave. Ojutai gives you card selection, and Silumgar lets you steal one of your opponents creatures or planeswalkers. This cycle contained lots of powerful affect that not only made them popular commanders but also good in the 99 of commander decks as well. 2018: Ah yes, 2018. Arguably the most important year for Elder Dragons. Here we got one of the most important cards in this category, another reprint of Nicol Bolas in Masters 25. More importantly though, we got updated versions of the iconic original Elder Dragons in Core Set 19. Arcades became Arcades, the Strategist, an incredibly popular defender commander. Chromium, the Mutable allowed you to discard a card at any time to turn it from a 7/7 Dragon with Flying into a 1/1 Human with Hexproof that can be blocked, making it great as a gimmicky Voltron commander. Nicol Bolas, the Ravager is a 4/4 for 4 that forces your opponent to discard a card on ETB, and can later transform into an incredibly powerful Planeswalker, Nicol Bolas, the Arisen. Palladia-Mors, the Ruiner is a French Vanilla which has less useful Hexproof. It's the least interesting one of the bunch by far, similar to its original counterpart. Last but not least, Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire lets you Chaos Warp a permanent controlled by each of your opponents when it attacks. Well, I'm out of text space, so that's all for now. Check the Studio for other articles: Part 2 Link:
