Crackling DrakeCrackling Drake | Art by Victor Adame Minguez

Fantasy loves its Dragons, and Magic is no exception. They're massive, intimidating creatures whose very presence changes the board state. High power and toughness, multiple keywords, and even a few infinite combos here or there.

Though where there's Dragons, there's a dragon's kin.

Half-dragons, dragonborn, dragon-kin, and a range of other winged reptiles will commonly scurry about their fire-breathing cousins. But Drakes, specifically, crop up quite commonly, particularly in Magic.

Overwhelmingly blue-aligned, Magic's Drakes are smaller, more limber relatives of Dragons, and they play quite differently as a result! But they're still related, so Drakes carry that draconic heritage with them whether they want to or not.

They're more than whelps, though most of them struggle to justify their own mana cost.

What Is Playing "Out Of Type?"

Magic as a game has many established methods of play that go beyond formats. Even beyond brackets, there are a number of archetypes you can follow when constructing a deck, pursuing a win condition, or even just maintaining the flow of the game during play. Staples, meta, strategies, and incredibly important notes on how these various archetypes intersect one another make up the core of higher-level Commander games.

But that isn't the only way to play. You can take those archetypes and twist them on their head. In all likelihood, it won't win you games. At least, not to the same extent as sticking to the tried and true. But Magic as a game and novelty is quite fun to explore! So if you find that the game has lost its luster, that's when you play Out of Type.

What Drakes Do Well

Despite being related, Drakes struggle to pull their individual weights in the same way Dragons do. Their main strength is that they almost always have the flying keyword, paired with the fact that they often have a higher toughness than power. However, a Drake's toughness rarely exceeds its mana cost, meaning the raw stats of the creature don't justify its cost.

Even with flying.

That being said, most Drakes have some degree of utility that they can impart upon your board, and that's where they come into their own as a creature type.

Flying

Drakes don't only have flying, they also support the rest of your fliers. Some of them will bolster the stats of your fliers while others will grant flying to creatures that don't have it.

Nephalia MoondrakesNephalia Moondrakes has an enter-the-battlefield (ETB) effect to grant flying to a creature, which, for its cost, doesn't justify it, but it has a cheaper alternative that's even more powerful when you exile it from your graveyard, which can turn into an explosive play if your opponents aren't prepared. Discard, surveil, or self-mill are all reasonable ways to get that card into your graveyard without even needing to play it in order to have a full-board bombing run.

Which a great few Drakes can support.

Card Draw

Despite their diminutive size and overall lacking physical presence, Drakes often involve some degree of card draw. For blue in particular, this is fantastic.

With flying, at-cost toughness, and drawing one or more cards, Drakes find themselves quite comfortably positioned as early to mid-game blockers in blue decks. Despite some notable exceptions, such as Loyal DrakeLoyal Drake, Drakes solidly occupy an unsung but quite important niche as blockers.

To be less charitable: chumps.

But the fact that they so often involve card draw means that playing them furthers whatever other strategy you're pursuing. By having an ETB or on-death card draw trigger, they justify their inclusion in your hand. This is on top of granting you decent defenders to protect yourself, buying you more time to further your goals.

Returns

Other Drakes allow you to return permanents to their owner's hand, which either removes threats or gets you even more value from your ETB effects.

In some cases, it's actually tied to a Drake, like Wormfang DrakeWormfang Drake, which has quite respectable stats for its cost. In this particular instance you have less flexibility in when the exiled creature returns to the field, but if you remove Wormfang DrakeWormfang Drake with something like Shrieking DrakeShrieking Drake, you can then double or even triple up on your blinking of the exiled creature.

With a deck centered around Drakes, that might be three cards drawn. Three creatures granted flying. Or even just getting to look at the top card of each of your opponents' decks with Saheeli's SilverwingSaheeli's Silverwing.

Or you may just swap your Wormfang DrakeWormfang Drake's exile to a different target. Drakes allow the inflexible to be flexible.

Utility

Then there's other, more specific forms of utility that Drakes can provide. Each of these are usually quite specific but generalized in their application, such as how Cerulean DrakeCerulean Drake acts as a counter. There are others like it, such as Spiketail DrakelingSpiketail Drakeling, but countering is something not many Drakes do.

Drakes function as a utility creature type, and therefore have access to range of blue-aligned utility options. When paired with your own ability to draw, scry, and manipulate the hands of the other players, Drakes allow you to defend your board while advancing your agenda. None of them will be a monster individually, but by that same token you don't have to divert resources from your strategy into your Drakes.

But What If You Played Them Like Dragons?

Drakes are weaker than Dragons in almost every respect. In-game they receive less support, given they aren't an iconic creature like their larger cousins. Stats-wise, they tend to be cheaper and weaker than Dragons. Their effects tend to be more supportive than showstopping.

Even narratively, Drakes are smaller, less imposing Dragons.

Naturally, this makes them a perfect fit to be positioned as massive, game-changing threats.

Scaling

Drakes categorically have low power and quite often a middling toughness, but not all of them do! Plus, some have means of increasing their stats via +1/+1 counters. Something as simple as Scavenger DrakeScavenger Drake allows you to set up a Drake that will grow larger as time progresses due to no special input from you. If you hold onto any counterspell or manage to have on-board protections, you'll have a formidable creature in no time.

PteramanderPteramander offers faster but more limited growth, where you can quite cheaply field a 5/5 with flying before the mid-game. This would need to be supported further to reach the heights of a proper Dragon, though it's a fine first step.

Instants/Sorceries

In large part due to the various Izzet Drakes, they synergize quite well with spellslinging. Instants and sorceries don't only have effects that benefit Drakes, but just the act of casting them benefits a select few.

Storm SkreelixStorm Skreelix not only makes them cheaper to cast but also gains power for the turn upon their casting. If paired with multiple cheap instants, like OptOpt or ConsiderConsider, this scales quickly enough that you have a notable threat on the board... if only for a turn.

But enough Drakes benefit from instants and sorceries being in your graveyard that this can set up multiple turns of Drakes being at the forefront of your strategy.

Drakes Are (Useful) Whelps

Drakes as a creature type aren't powerful enough to make an effective strategy around. At least, they aren't powerful enough to justify the opportunity cost of building around them as opposed to another, more powerful creature type. They stick to their niche of being utility blockers for the early and mid-game of blue, which was quite surprising to me. I'd assumed there was at least a few powerful Drakes out there you'd drop in the end-game, but I couldn't find any. There were certainly some that were priced for the end game without having nearly the power to justify it, but I'm not counting them.

Drakes can synergize with themselves with a fair bit of consistency, though even then their direct stat increases mostly revolved around flying creatures, which makes sense, given they tend to support Dragons despite not being the same creature type.

If you're looking to run a deck of Drakes, naturally your commander should be a Merfolk, because they're simply the best options for a Drake commander you have! Drakes work well with instants and sorceries as well as providing you a great deal of card draw, so either commander shown below works.

Just be aware that in order to make Drakes work, you need to add in external support to let them pop.