Tarkir: Dragonstorm releases on April 11th, and the set features 5 brand new Commander precons – one for each of the plane’s iconic clans. In this article, I’ll be reviewing the Temur Roar deck and discussing some of the ways you can make it even better.

The Temur are all about fighting and they especially have an affinity for ferocious wild animals, including dragons. Unsurprisingly, the Temur Roar precon is all about accelerating your mana and powering out dragons. This deck can kill the opponent with big scary dragons, and as such it has many payoffs for cards with this powerful creature type. However, it also includes many payoffs for creatures with high power – which of course, includes most dragons.

THE COMMANDERS

As usual, there are two brand-new legendary creatures in the deck that you can use as your commander. Fittingly, we have Eshki – the leader of the Temur, and Ureni, the Spirit Dragon that represents the ideals of the Temur.

Eshki starts out as a Gray Ogre, which is kind of rough, but she more than makes up for it with a powerful textbox. Casting any creature spell at all buffs her. This will result in her growing rapidly in this creature-heavy deck. She also really loves creature spells with high power.

If they have 4 or more power, she also draws you a card. That sort of trigger really has some serious snowball potential, since drawing cards increases the chances you’ll draw more big creatures to keep on triggering her effect.

And if the creature has 6 or more power, she also damages all of your opponents equal to her power. Because she is so easy to grow, the amount of damage she can do is going to grow incredibly quickly. And because you’re still drawing a card with 6+ power creatures, it won’t be hard to make sure she continues to grow, draw you cards, and damage all of your opponents.

Ureni is no slouch either. The Spirit Dragon is a huge flyer with an amazing “enters or attacks” trigger that will virtually always put a Dragon into play in this deck.

It’s pretty tough to choose between these two powerhouses. Ureni is obviously more powerful in a vacuum, as it will quickly populate your board with dragons. But Eshki can come down much earlier and generate absurd value well before you’re ever able to cast Ureni.

For that reason, I think Eshki is the optimal Commander for the deck, but it’s close enough that I wouldn’t fault anyone for going with Ureni instead.

NEW CARD HIGHLIGHTS

In addition to the deck’s two new legendary creatures, the deck also includes 9 other brand new cards. In this section, I’m going to take a look at the cards from among them that are the most useful alongside Eshki. First, let’s take a look at the cards in the new cards that pay you off for having creatures with high power.

Thundermane Dragon is perhaps the most powerful of all the new cards in the deck. Playing cards of the top of your library is incredibly strong and because almost every creature in this deck has 4 or more power, you’re going to be able to cast them with regularity. When that’s the case, the top of your library becomes an extension of your hand and a source of major card advantage. So, the fact it also gives Haste to any of the creatures you cast off the top is amazing.

Clones are great in Magic. They let you get an additional copy of the best creature you control, something that’s not really supposed to happen in a singleton format. Deceptive Frostkite is a little bit restrictive about what it can clone – limiting itself only to creatures with power 4 or greater – but that also means you’re virtually always going to get your mana’s worth out of cloning something. In this deck, it’ll often let you spend two mana to copy one of your scary dragons.

Become the Avalanche is an overrun and a card draw spell all in one. This deck is very adept at drawing cards and having huge creatures in play, so it’ll often offer a huge buff and draw you a ton of cards. That combination is tough to beat.

This precon also includes two new very powerful dragon payoffs. Both Parapet Thrasher and Broodcaller Scourge give you a powerful trigger when one of your dragons hits your opponent. The Thrasher can take down problem artifacts or effectively draw you a card which is great. But the 4 damage mode is likely to pull a lot of weight in this deck too, since Eshki is capable of pressuring life totals so effectively.

The Broodcaller lets you cheat a creature into play from your hand. Sometimes that effect can be underwhelming because you simply don’t have something to put into play, but with all the cards Eshki draws you, I don’t foresee that being a major problem.

Lastly, I want to take a look at Will of the Temur. It’s not exactly a dragon or high power payoff, but it is super powerful. Like the other Wills, it’s a modal spell with two options, and you get them both if you control your commander. While the second mode gives the deck yet another way to draw a ton of cards, it’s the first mode that I think is especially powerful.

It lets you copy any permanent in 4/4 Dragon form. There are only a handful of cards in the game that can copy such a wide swath of permanents.

While clones are already pretty good, they get even better when they can copy permanents of any type and when you can even choose from among what your opponents have in play. This means that Will of the Temur will virtually always give you the best permanent on the battlefield, and it’ll often be upgraded because it’s a dragon now.

$50 UPGRADES

While this deck looks quite powerful right out of the box, there are some upgrades you can make so that it will perform even better. These are changes you can make without making a huge purchase. These upgrades are largely focused on adding even more “4 power or greater” payoffs to the deck, while also improving its ability to ramp into huge dragons. 

Dragonhawk, Fate’s Tempest is absolutely perfect for this deck. Not only is it a Dragon with more than 4 power, it also has an “enters or attacks” trigger that gets more potent the more big creatures you have. It gives the deck another potent source of card advantage and another source of damage that hits all of your opponents.

Bolt Bend is pretty much a Commander staple these days. After all, protecting your commander is one of the most important things you can do in many games, and in this deck you’ll often be able to cast it for a single Red mana to redirect a removal spell so that hits an opposing Commander instead.

The remaining cards I want to suggest are all cards that pay you off for having high power creatures and they also happen to ramp your mana, so they’re a perfect fit for the deck.

Herd Heirloom is a cheap mana rock that can help you draw more cards. Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner can untap your lands (or other permanents) and draw you cards for putting big creatures into play. Entish Restoration and Fanatic of Rhonas are good at ramping your mana normally, but they both get way better when you have a big creature around.  

Here are the cards I removed to make these changes:

–Draconic Lore

–Reality Shift

–Rapacious Dragon

–Vengeful Ancestor

–Hellkite Courser

–Harbinger of the Hunt

You can find the decklist with these changes here.

FURTHER UPGRADES

If you want to go even harder on your upgrades and you have a hefty budget, there are some further changes that you can make. There are three very powerful Dragons you’re going to want to get your hands on.

Miirym, a great Dragon Commander in it’s own right, lets you copy the dragons that enter the battlefield. Just one powerful dragon is tough to cope with, but getting two of them at a time will really put the pressure on your opponents.

Old Gnawbone is a big dragon that can generate absurd amounts of mana, and this deck is so good at drawing cards that it could enable some truly heinous sequences where you cast multiple huge creatures in a turn, resulting in Eshki eliminating multiple opponents.

Lastly there’s Terror of the Peaks, a dragon that gets better the more high power creatures you have, and as we’ve seen this deck has no shortage of creatures with high power. 

I’d also recommend picking up The Great Henge, and not just for this deck. It is just an absurd card and a staple in Green decks for it’s ability to generate value. That’s why the price is what it is. It’ll be easy to cast in this deck, while letting you rip through your library and ramp your mana. What more can you ask for?

END STEP

So, that’s my deck on the Temur Roar precon. What do you think, would the deck be better with Ureni as the Commander? Let me know what you think on X or Bluesky.