Meme or Dream? No Dragons Approach (Standard)

A few months ago, Wizards started publishing deck lists from Magic Arena. To qualify for publication, a deck needs to win at least six matches in a row at platinum rank or better. This sounds simple on its face, but some incredibly janky lists end up being posted every time lists are published. This has led to speculation that a bug in the system allows decks that didn't actually win six matches in a row to be published or, for the most tin-foil-hatted crowd, the idea that Wizards just publishes whatever it wants, to make the metagame look more diverse than it really is. 

Today we're trying something a little bit different. Our deck - No Dragons Approach - is one of the least logical builds I've ever seen, playing 27 copies of Dragon's Approach, but with zero Dragons to tutor up with Dragon's Approach, which basically turns the sorcery into a three mana Lava Spike. What else is in the deck? Seven Seven Dwarves of course, along with two copies of Torbran, Thane of Red Fell to upgrade our three mana Lava Spike into three mana Lava Axes. 

At first glance it doesn't seem possible that this deck could work. More importantly, it doesn't even seem like it can do anything cool or interesting. I'm perfectly fine with playing bad decks and losing a bunch as long as the games that we do win are spectacular. No Dragon's Approach looks like a deck that will lose a bunch and the "cool thing" it can do is cast more three mana Lava Spikes, which isn't especially appealing. 

As such, rather than beating our heads against a dragonless wall for an hour, for today's episode we're going to play a couple of matches with the original deck and then try to upgrade the deck into something that might be a little bit more fun and function, before wrapping up by giving the new build a shot. How bad is Dragon's Approach without any Dragon? Can we upgrade what looks like an obvious meme deck into a dream? Let's find out!

Original List

Updated List

While we only played one match with the updated list, it seemed way more effective and, most importantly, way more fun than the original, and that was with just a few minutes of updates live on video. There are some really interesting options for a Magda, Brazen Outlaw / Dragon's Approach deck in Standard. What Dragons are best? Should we have more Treasure production in the deck? Are card like Chandra, Heart of Fire or Cathartic Reunion worth main deck slots as ways to fill our graveyard with copies of Dragon's Approach? Well, now it's your turn! Send me your best brews featuring four copies of Magda, Brazen Outlaw and a bunch of copies of Dragon's Approach and we'll try the the most interesting in the future, either on video or on stream! You can leave your lists in the comments, or email them to me at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.