Obosh, the Preypiercer grants Timmy the Ur-Dragon all the stompy dragons and big damage numbers he could wish for!
I love the Companion mechanic, and I ultimately want to brew at least one deck using each of the 8 Companions that can play side-saddle to another Commander. Obosh was one I was initially a bit lukewarm about - I didn't see any obviously synergistic generals that supported the big damage plan that Obosh enables and missing out on the 2CMC and 4CMC slot hurts for a lot of decks. But I started stumbling through Scryfall again, landed on Ur-Dragon and it all clicked. How do you get around being unable to play 4CMC cards? Just cast 4-drops anyways, of course! The Ur-Dragon's mana discount helps smooth out the deck's curve and cheat Obosh's restriction, and there are plenty of dragons that hit hard or spew tons of damage to synergize with Obosh.
Of course, the Ur-Dragon doesn't solve all my problems; I still can't cast 2 drops (except Taurean Mauler
). I'm playing as many 1CMC ramp and mana dorks that fix for multiple colours as is feasibly possible (I believe the colour requirements of this deck are too strict to jam every Llanowar Elves variant) alongside a pile of efficient card selection and protection - Khaleesi never felt more at home. There are also some extremely significant tribal payoffs I'm giving up by going odd. Lathliss, Dragon Queen, Utvara Hellkite, and Dragon Tempest are replaced by Swords and other combat enhancers that make each individual dragon pack more of a punch.
Obosh is essentially the main Commander of the deck as the Ur-Dragon is too expensive to be cast for most of the game, so the deck includes a number of ways to recur him to keep bringing the heat.
My inner Timmy is screaming for joy (as is Timmy the Ur-Dragon!).
The Fairly Odd Dragon (by function)
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Medium Dragons: Hoarding Dragon and Harbinger of the Hunt are the poster-children for "medium", but I feel compelled to run them to keep my dragon count high and my curve smooth. There's some expensive dragons like Bladewing the Risen and Dragon Mage that I feel would bloat the deck too much and are inferior to the 7CMC dragons currently in the deck (though I could be wrong on those two). This may be a problem that will be fixed over time as more powerful dragons get printed - or maybe there's an already existent dragon I underrated. Or maybe I just have to run fewer dragons.
Too much ramp, not enough draw: I've had a number of draws where I play a bunch of cheap ramp, play a single dragon, and that's about all I'm able to do. Most of the ramp in the deck is 1-for-1 (since that's what most 1CMC ramp is) so that's sort of expected, but perhaps I'm playing too much. Alternatively, fitting in more card draw, especially burst card draw like Painful Truths could help alleviate the issue. I'm uncertain about what other types of card draw would fit best though.
Wrath = Loss: I could tell as soon as I started goldfishing, and even while I was building the deck, that with the correct timing a wrath could be devastating and essentially knock me out of the game, and I'm not sure how to combat that efficiently. Swan Song and Stubborn Denial are the only cheap+reliable counterspells I can run, and I feel that cards like Teferi's Protection require too much of a mana commitment to leave up. Perhaps I could run some of the new Ultimatums (Eerie Ultimatum and Genesis Ultimatum in particular) as lategame haymakers to put me back in the game, though I do worry about their manacosts. Living Death and Patriarch's Bidding both seem like they'd help my opponents more as I'm not running all that many creatures. Playtesting against actual humans is likely to help with fully identifying this problem, though it's possible there's also some anti-wrath tech that I've missed.
Any and all card suggestions and ideas are appreciated!
