Yes, [casthaven]Dragonlord Atarka[/casthaven] is a fantastic card in Dragons draft. But what about her clan? Do you want to draft red-green decks? Doesn’t green suck in Dragons of Tarkir draft? Not exactly. I got a few chances to try out the color pair online and had a lot of success. Winning with individual decks doesn’t prove the strength of an archetype, but these decks should help illustrate useful cards and strategies.
My first Atarka deck takes a longer-game approach. I consider it part of the formidable archetype. This deck doesn’t have a ton of formidable creatures, but it does want to build up a board and take over in the late game.
Whisperers Amuse
Opening three mythics often leads to a strong deck, or at least a valuable one. My first two picks were [casthaven]Dragon Whisperer[/casthaven] and [casthaven]Roast[/casthaven], but then the packs dried up completely and I had few other playables, split between red and blue, by the end of the first pack. Taking [casthaven]Dragonlord Silumgar[/casthaven] was thus not completely a rare-draft. I had nothing close to a coherent deck, so I could have shifted into blue-black had the cards come that way. Instead, I was passed [casthaven]Thunderbreak Regent[/casthaven] and managed to get enough red and green cards, plus the pack three Ugin, and the deck really came together.
[casthaven]Whisperer of the Wilds[/casthaven] is an unsung hero in Atarka decks of all stripes, and it did great work here. Everyone laments the lack of strong green cards in Fate Reforged, listing [casthaven]Hunt the Weak[/casthaven] as the only good common. Well, [casthaven]Whisperer of the Wilds[/casthaven] is good too, and it is not hard to pick one up.
The concern of being short of cards in pack three is overblown anyway, because Dragons of Tarkir has so many playables that you can have a coherent deck going into Fate Reforged. From there, you can pick up whatever cards help your deck the most. This deck actually was on the short end of playables after two packs, and even though I got no signal in pack one that either red or green were open, I still got enough to fill out the deck. If you do choose to play green in Dragons, just know that you want to focus on picking up enough main deck cards that you don’t have to learn too hard on Fate Reforged.
Whisperers Amuse took me to a 3-0, 6-0 win in an online 8-4 draft. I never cast Ugin, and the one time I cast [casthaven]Dragon Whisperer[/casthaven] it immediately ate a [casthaven]Douse in Gloom[/casthaven]. Even taking the two best cards out of my deck, I still cruised through the opposition. Curving [casthaven]Whisperer of the Wilds[/casthaven] into [casthaven]Thunderbreak Regent[/casthaven] certainly helped, but that success is a strong sign for the viability of the strategy.
Deck two follows more of the Khans of Tarkir style of Atarka decks: play efficient beaters and punch faces.
Dragon Punch
Good creatures and good removal. That’s all you need! People disrespecting green in Dragons of Tarkir makes it easier to pick up [casthaven]Epic Confrontation[/casthaven], and [casthaven]Glade Watcher[/casthaven] is a premium two drop you can get late as well.
Should I have played [casthaven]Hungering Yeti[/casthaven] over [casthaven]Bloodfire Enforcers[/casthaven]? I went with the cheaper card, but I switched them after sideboard a few times. I think [casthaven]Bloodfire Enforcers[/casthaven] is better in an agressive strategy, but [casthaven]Hungering Yeti[/casthaven] is a nice card to have against decks that can slow you down or easily kill two-toughness creatures.
This deck went 2-1, losing in the finals to a crazy-broken esper deck with six powerful rares: [casthaven]Supplant Form[/casthaven], [casthaven]Secure the Wastes[/casthaven], [casthaven]Monastery Siege[/casthaven], Ojutai’s Command, and Silumgar, the Drifting Death. The rest of the deck was full of powerful cards, and I was constantly surprised at how many great cards I had to fight through.
I managed to grind through my opponent’s entire deck in game two, winning with [casthaven]Tread Upon[/casthaven] on [casthaven]Atarka Efreet[/casthaven] when my opponent was two turns from decking with [casthaven]Monastery Siege[/casthaven]. Unfortunately my opponent drew too many good cards too quickly in the other two games and I lost. But again, being able to compete against a broken deck in the finals highlights the strength of Atarka decks. The tools are there.
This last one is sort of a red-green deck, right? It has [casthaven]Sarkhan Unbroken[/casthaven] so I say yes. I mostly include it for awesomeness.
Format Unbroken
First-picking Sarkhan encourages drafting mana fixing. I came out of pack one with [casthaven]Explosive Vegetation[/casthaven] (which maybe is better in the deck than [casthaven]Map the Wastes[/casthaven]?) and [casthaven]Evolving Wilds[/casthaven]. Then I started opening and getting passed off-color bombs. The deck just builds itself!
The splashes work because the deck is mostly green-blue, and the off-color cards are all bombs that are strong plays at any point in a game. I even managed this sweet interaction:
Is this the first Tasigur ever cast off Sarkhan?
Good old planeswalker mana-fixing. The best part is, before casting Tasigur, I cast Map the Wastes fetching a Plains instead of a Swamp, and then on my Sarkhan +1 I drew Mastery of the Unseen for full value. This deck went 2-1 and lost a close match in the finals to red-black dash.
I hope this walk through Atarka decks shows what you can do with the color combination. Good luck at the draft tables!
Carrie O’Hara is Editor-in-Chief of Hipsters of the Coast.