The Commander
Flying, haste
Other creatures you control have haste.
Whenever an opponent casts a creature or planeswalker spell with the same name as a card in their graveyard, that player loses 10 life.
Guide
Gameplan
Drop Dragonlord Kolaghan as an evasive 6/6 flyer with haste and start beating face immediately while granting your whole board haste for explosive alpha strikes. The deck wants aggressive haste creatures, dragons, and a low-to-mid curve to apply pressure faster than opponents can stabilize. Close games with combat damage, big haste-enabled swings, or dragon synergies.
Strengths
- Immediate impact: 6/6 flying haste that demands an answer and pressures life totals right away
- Hands every creature haste, turning fresh drops and reanimation targets into instant threats
- Aggressive Rakdos color pair with premium removal, burn, and recursion
- Evasion plus haste makes alpha strikes and Voltron-style finishes reliable
Weaknesses
- Punishing damage clause almost never triggers in real games, so it's effectively vanilla text
- Six mana for a creature with no protection; dies to any spot removal and resets your tempo
- No card advantage or recovery built in—runs out of gas if the board stalls
- Vulnerable to board wipes that erase your hasty go-wide plan
Key Cards
- Sword of Feast and Famine — Protection and untapping lands turns Kolaghan's haste evasion into a brutal recurring beatdown engine.
- Terror of the Peaks — Hasty dragon payoff that burns the table whenever creatures enter, accelerating your aggressive clock.
- Dragon Tempest — Gives flyers haste redundancy and deals damage equal to dragon power when dragons enter.
- Crucible of Fire — Anthem that makes your dragons hit dramatically harder for faster kills.
- Lightning Greaves — Shroud and haste protect your fragile six-mana commander from removal so the aggression continues.
Upgrade Path
Lean into either dragon tribal payoffs (Scourge of Valkas, Sarkhan, Soul of Ravnica-style anthems) or a tighter Voltron package with Swords and Hexproof protection to make Kolaghan's evasion lethal. Add fast mana (Sol Ring, Signets, rituals) and reanimation (Reanimate, Animate Dead, Buried Alive) to deploy threats ahead of curve, and include protection like Lightning Greaves and Heroic Intervention to weather removal and wraths.
Core Cards
The most-played cards for this commander, built from aggregated deck data (the Mythic Graph). Build public decks to seed it.
Win Conditions
- ▸Alpha strikes with a hasty go-wide or dragon board
- ▸Commander damage via flying Kolaghan loaded with equipment
- ▸Reanimated or cheated-in fatties swinging immediately thanks to haste
- ▸Burn and direct-damage payoffs like Terror of the Peaks finishing low life totals
Archetypes
- Dragons Tribal — Kolaghan headlines a Rakdos dragon board that all attacks the turn it lands thanks to global haste.
- Aggro/Beatdown — Universal haste rewards a low curve of efficient creatures that swing immediately.
- Voltron — Flying haste body loads up equipment and connects for commander-damage kills.
- Reanimator — Reanimated bombs attack the moment they hit the battlefield with built-in haste.
Combos
- Breath of Fury + Dragonlord Kolaghan
→ Infinite LTB, Infinite ETB, Infinite sacrifice triggers
- Garth One-Eye + Deadeye Navigator + Dragonlord Kolaghan
→ Infinite ETB, Infinite LTB, Infinite blinking
- Tortured Existence + Insidious Roots + Dragonlord Kolaghan
→ Infinite ETB, Infinite self-discard triggers, Infinite tapped creature tokens
- Selvala, Heart of the Wilds + Emiel the Blessed + Dragonlord Kolaghan
→ Infinite LTB, Infinite ETB, Infinite colored mana
- Garth One-Eye + Displacer Kitten + Dragonlord Kolaghan
→ Infinite colored mana, Infinite storm count, Infinite magecraft triggers
Combos via Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (BR), by popularity.
