(Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm | Art by Jeff Miracola)

It's Over 9,000

Welcome to another Power Sink, the article series where we look at the strongest commanders in the format before they spend five episodes powering up. Today, we're starting another chapter in the Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm saga.

What makes Miirym so strong is the ability to make a token copy of any Dragon that enters the battlefield under your control. Getting two creatures for the price of one is powerful card advantage, and making copies this way overcomes the singleton nature of the format. You can even go double-Dragon with your legends since the tokens she makes are no longer legendary. It's simple, but that belies the power of the strategy and the creature type. Being decently-powered fliers already makes them pretty good in Commander, and we often see at least one mythic rare Dragon a set with some wild ability stapled on. Miirym is also fairly effective in combat as a 6/6 flier and Ward 2 helps her stay on the field. Temur is a great color combination in general, and particularly good for Dragon decks, since you get all the best ones in red, the mana to cast them with green, and the counter magic from blue to keep them on the field.

Unsurprisingly, Miirym's typical deck is essentially a sampling of all the best Dragons in the game. Dragons tend to be decent-sized creatures in combat, but Thrakkus the Butcher powers them up to new heights, and if you have a copy from the commander, you're looking at four times the power for each of your Dragons. If that wasn't enough, Atarka, World Render gives them double strike when they attack. Two copies of Utvara Hellkite will quickly fill the skies with Dragons. If combat doesn't do the trick, doubling up on Terror of the Peaks or Scourge of Valkas lets you lay down massive damage to any target. Even having two copies of Drakuseth, Maw of Flames will make quick work of creatures and players.

Dragons are notorious for being expensive to cast, but that becomes less of an issue when Goldspan Dragon, Ancient Copper Dragon, Ganax, Astral Hunter, and Old Gnawbone start dumping Treasures out. Iymrith, Desert Doom, Firkraag, Cunning Instigator, and Ancient Silver Dragon can provide cards to play with all that mana. In addition to the Dragons, we also see support cards that are almost accidentally good with the type. Most Dragons have at least four power, so Temur Ascendancy and Garruk's Uprising are going to draw you cards in addition to granting the haste and trample you want. Keep in mind those abilities trigger on creatures entering the battlefield, so they'll see those tokens from the commander.

Panharmonicon doubles up on the commander's ability as well as the triggers from other Dragons in the deck such as Lathliss, Dragon Queen. I was disappointed to find a lack of clone effects in the average deck. Spark Double and Sakashima of a Thousand Faces show up in 27% and 17% of Miirym decks on EDHREC respectively, but I would have expected them to show up more considering how strong the synergy is. These cards along with Sakashima the Impostor can enter the battlefield as copies of Miirym. The original will make a token copy of the imposter giving you three Miiryms on the battlefield which means you get three extra copies of your next Dragon. Imagine what Terror of the Peaks can do in that situation.

Dra-Gumball Z

What does a Miirym deck look like while only using 20% of its full power? We're doing a throwback to my very first article two years ago, Urza's Gumball Machine. We're building another gumball deck, which is a deck using a busted commander with only commons and uncommons worth 25 cents or less in the 99; about the price of a gumball. Under that restriction, 68 cards from the average deck had to be cut. Can we get there with the Krillins and Yamchas of Dragons? Let's check out the powered down list.

The lesser Dragons still provide a lot of utility even if they don't have the same damage output. Ganax, Astral Hunter and Patron of the Arts can make us a hoard of Treasure, while Swashbuckler Extraordinaire can put that to use giving creatures double strike. We'll likely need to play a longer game with this deck, so we can ward off the worst attacks with Blue Dragon, Juvenile Mist Dragon and Oceanus Dragon. Sapphire Dragon is a counterspell, and Sword Coast Serpent can bounce a problem creature. Hulking Metamorph and Moritte of the Frost are the only available clone effects under these restrictions. Copying Miirym is usually going to be the best choice even if it means the loss of the clone, but occasionally you may want to copy a draw effect like Garruk's Packleader or Keeper of Fables. Keep in mind that Moritte is a Dragon thanks to its Changeling ability, so our commander will give us an extra copy of any non-Dragon we clone. Finally, Hoarding Dragon can tutor up the artifacts in our deck, like that Hulking Metamorph or Bonder's Ornament if we need some cards.

Blink effects are especially powerful in this deck. When the commander is present, they let us get more Dragon copies. This is especially potent when a Dragon has an enter-the-battlefield trigger. Displace and Illusionist's Gambit are especially good since they can target two creatures, and if Ardent Elementalist or Timeless Witness is one of the targets we can get those spells back. Voidwalk is less flexible since it's a sorcery, but with so many fliers, we're likely to get a lot of use from its Cipher ability. As long as we can connect with an opponent in the air, Meneldor, Swift Savior is a repeatable blink effect and Nephalia Smuggler provides a similar role if we have extra mana.

Without access to Terror of the Peaks or Scourge of Valkas we have to rely a little more on combat to get things done. Having a lot of fliers goes farther than you'd expect, but we have some tricks to seal the deal. In a deck with so many native fliers, menace from Goblin War Drums is great, as you're not likely to encounter flying blockers en masse. It even helps you find good attacks with earthbound Dragons like Tiamat's Fanatics. We can get haste from Rising of the Day or cast our Dragons at instant speed with Renari, Merchant of Marvels, and reduce the chance our opponents have to react to us. Like the average deck, Thrakkus the Butcher is present to double the power of our attacking Dragons. Rupture is intended as a board wipe, but it damages all players as well. Lozhan, Dragons' Legacy also made it in from the average deck and is great for picking off any noncommander targets. Red Dragon is a personal favorite here. Four damage to each opponent starts to look really good when you consider the copies we get from our commander as well as the blink package we're putting to use here.

Final Flash

This deck certainly isn't the world's strongest, but playing with restrictions can be fun and keeping a deck like this can have you evaluating cards in a different light. Who knows, maybe some draft common you might have otherwise overlooked could be perfect for another deck you play. This would also be a great deck to have on hand to teach newer players. It's fairly straightforward, but it has some neat tricks to discover that are pretty powerful. Another feature of this deck that makes it great for teaching Commander is that you can get the entire deck for under $12.00. At that price, you could just give it to that person you're teaching if they like it and let them discover all the powerful Dragon cards out there. They might even come back with new cards to show you just how strong they've become. That's all for now, tune in next month for another exciting Power Sink.

Lenny Wooley

Lenny has been in an on again off again relationship with Magic since Fallen Empires. He fell in love with Commander in 2010 when his friends forced him to build Niv Mizzet, the Firemind and has been with the game ever since. When he's not turning cardboard sideways or trying to justify using bad draft commons in EDH decks you can find him playing something from his massive board game collection or practicing the Brazilian martial art Capoeira. Follow Lenny on twitter @LennyWooley