Dragon Fodder | Art by Jaime Jones

It's Token Time!

Hello, and welcome back to Singleton Shmingleton, where I bend the singleton rules of Commander by building decks with as many functional reprints of a certain card as possible. This week, I'm tackling Dragon Fodder, a card that has found a home as a support card in many strategies, from Goblin decks to other Goblin decks to even more Goblin decks. Two mana for two bodies with a relevant creature type is perfect for filling curves and adding consistency, especially in decks that care about having a critical mass of tokens, but it's never an exciting rate. No one has ever jumped for joy to see Dragon Fodder in their opening hand... until now. Two bodies for two mana had better pull some serious weight, because I'm about to build a deck that plays 11 functional copies of the card.

Here's a list of cards that create two creatures for two mana. Only a few of them create Goblins however, so if we want to play as many of these cards as possible we can't be too picky about type.

Most of these cards center around red and white, with the third most common color being green. This makes sense, as those are the three colors that care most about making tokens. While 17 functional versions of this card is impressive, especially since only two of them are exactly the same, the most played of these effects is Dragon Fodder, the original, at 27,993 decks. Following close behind are Krenko's Command with 26,261 decks, and Mogg War Marshal with 22,326 decks. The Goblin creature type gives these cards a clear boost over any other version of this effect, and that makes sense: Goblin decks need to build an early army of disposable dorks, and they have enough synergy that the two tokens are worth the actual cards.

The least played of these cards (besides The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth ones, which just came out) is Clowning Around at 1,028 decks. It's not a bad card at all. In fact, the rate of about 2.33 bodies for two mana puts it well above most of the other cards on this list. But the Un-set effect has kept it well below its counterparts. When I was making this list, I scrolled past it three times before remembering that it was actually legal in our format.

1/1s Galore

Okay, so now we have a way to consistently generate several 1/1s. I don't know how games usually go at your tables, but where I play that doesn't sound very impressive. To make our bad cards useful we need to turn them into an engine, and to make an engine we need to use them to generate mana and/or cards. Mana and cards are the two most important resources in the game, and in Commander the player who can generate the most of both usually wins.

Maybe I'm still fresh off of the March of the Machine play pattern of Ral's Reinforcements into Preening Champion plus Meeting of Minds, but the first thing I want to do with Dragon Fodders is Convoke. By tapping the tokens for Convoke costs, we can use them as effectively mana sources, ramping out big spells like City on Fire and Transcendent Message. Since our Dragon Fodder makes two bodies for two mana, if we cast them into a Convoke spell on the same turn, they can be mana-neutral and start to build mana the next turn.

This play pattern reminds me of the recent Pioneer Convoke deck that looks to dump its hand early and use its creatures to accelerate out either Venerated Loxodon or Knight-Errant of Eos. Venerated Loxodon can often give enough of a boost to threaten lethal the next turn, and Knight-Errant of Eos can dig deeper to keep the train rolling. In Commander, raw stats often can't close out a game on their own, but card advantage is even more important, so we want to find something to replace the draw engine of Knight-Errant of Eos.

Well, there certainly is one, and we can even play it in the command zone. Say hello to Kasla, the Broken Halo. I don't often build around commanders from preconstructed decks because they usually define their own strategy, but Kasla is the perfect missing piece to make our engine run.

With Kasla in play, our Convoke cards will draw us a card, making them card-neutral. Since our Dragon Fodders are mana-neutral and our Convoke cards are card-neutral, we should be able to build a formidable board very quickly. Throw in other payoffs like Mentor of the Meek and Opposition, and we can hopefully get out of control before anyone finds a board wipe to nerf us.

Play Patterns

Our first goal is usually to resolve Kasla. With a one drop on turn one and a Dragon Fodder on turn two, we can put her out on turn three, but usually we'll have to wait until the fourth turn. A more "glass cannon" build of this deck might include extra one-drop creatures to try to power out Kasla as soon as possible, but I stuck with just a couple all stars.

Once we have Kasla in play, we can chain together as many Convoke cards as possible until we run out of mana. Then an opponent casts a board wipe, we laugh, and we start over again. It's often best to keep a Dragon Fodder in hand in order to recover faster, since our strategy is fragile. Such are the risks of playing a go-wide creature deck.

Card Spotlights

Shared Discovery: The secret Convoke card! In our deck this finally lives up to its dreams of being almost Ancestral Recall. I've been looking for a home for it for years, and I finally found one. There's never been a better time for a Shared Disco.

To Arms!: This card is swingy; sometimes it effectively generates five mana and draws a card, and sometimes it cycles away for no value. I want to keep trying it out. Also, I didn't know that there was a card with punctuation in the name as early as Guildpact (!).

Burn at the Stake: Oh my goodness, pulling this off feels crazy every single time. It is so easy to kill someone with Burn at the Stake that it's often best to wait until the last moment possible, just so you know who to kill. There's a sense of security that comes from playing with a Door to Nothingness up your sleeve.

The Decklist

This deck is fast and explosive, and the variation in the payoff cards makes it feel fresh for a long time. On the other side of the coin, this deck is fragile and not very interactive. It doesn't just fold to a board wipe, but it's definitely hoping to dodge them, and if another player starts doing something broken the only thing we can do is try to go faster than them. One of this deck's biggest strengths is the stack of tokens you get to carry around with it: Two Servos, three Clowns, one Dinosaur, two blue and red Elementals, and a lot of Goblins, and that's not even getting into the 1/1 Krakens with trample.

In terms of the Dragon Fodders themselves, they pull their weight. They double as ramp and pressure, and it very rarely feels like we've drawn too many of them. It's a good feeling when your opponents are playing Arcane Signets while you're casting your six-drop commander on turn three on top of an already-wide board. Since Kasla is a precon commander, I also want to note that this deck doesn't play like a preconstructed deck at all. The engine adds a fun Storm feel to the game, and the plan feels much more focused.

Until Next Time

Who doesn't love drawing cards? Since the very beginning of Magic, these X-spell draw effects have tickled the imagination of those who want all the cards. With over a dozen of these cards now in print, the only question remaining is "how big is X?" Join me to find out next time on Singleton Shmingleton!

Would you like to read about another Convoke strategy? Check out our recent article, Brew For Your Buck - Tap Down, Flashback.

Jesse Barker Plotkin

Jesse Barker Plotkin started playing Magic with Innistrad. He was disqualified from his first Commander game after he played his second copy of Goblins of the Flarg, and it's all been uphill from there. Outside of Magic, he enjoys writing and running.