The Commander
, 
: Search your library for a Dragon permanent card, put that card onto the battlefield, then shuffle. That Dragon gains haste until end of turn. Exile it at the beginning of the next end step.
Guide
Gameplan
Tap Zirilan to tutor any Dragon directly onto the battlefield with haste, swing or trigger its enters/attacks ability for value, then keep it permanently by removing the exile clause with sacrifice/blink effects or simply reusing the attack. You're a mono-red Dragon tribal deck that leverages a built-in repeatable Dragon tutor to cheat out bombs ahead of curve.
Strengths
- Repeatable on-demand Dragon tutor that bypasses mana costs entirely
- Mono-red consistency with strong ramp, rituals, and burn backup
- Synergizes with powerful ETB/attack Dragons and tribal payoffs
- Cheats expensive bombs like Worldspine Wurm-tier Dragons onto the battlefield with haste
Weaknesses
- Without a blink/sac response, fetched Dragons get exiled at the end step
- Commander costs five and the ability is sorcery-speed and creature-dependent
- Mono-red lacks card draw and interaction outside burn and artifacts
- Vulnerable to creature removal and graveyard hate disrupting the engine
Key Cards
- Sneak Attack — Redundant cheat-into-play engine that pairs with the same Dragon payoffs Zirilan enables.
- Dragon Tempest — Turns each Dragon entering into burn and grants haste, punishing your steady stream of Dragons.
- Scourge of Valkas — Each Dragon ETB deals damage scaling with your Dragon count, a key go-wide finisher.
- Conjurer's Closet — Blinks the fetched Dragon at end of turn, sidestepping the exile clause to keep it permanently.
- Utvara Hellkite — Snowballs into massive token armies and is a premier Zirilan tutor target.
- Terror of the Peaks — Punishing ETB damage payoff that makes every Dragon entering a removal spell.
Upgrade Path
Add blink and sacrifice outlets (Conjurer's Closet, Goblin Bombardment) to permanently keep tutored Dragons, and lean into payoffs like Terror of the Peaks and Dragon Tempest so even temporary Dragons generate value. Boost the ramp suite (Sol Ring, Dockside Extortionist, mana rocks, rituals) to deploy Zirilan early and chain activations, and include redundant cheat effects like Sneak Attack and Quicksilver Amulet to diversify your routes to victory.
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
- ▸Swing with an army of large hasty Dragons for combat damage
- ▸ETB/attack Dragon payoffs like Scourge of Valkas and Terror of the Peaks burning the table out
- ▸Utvara Hellkite token snowball overwhelming the board
Archetypes
- Dragon Tribal — Zirilan is a built-in Dragon tutor that fuels every tribal lord and payoff in mono-red.
- Cheat-Into-Play — The ability puts huge Dragons onto the battlefield for instead of their mana cost.
- Combo — Tutoring specific Dragons plus blink/sac loops or Worldgorger-style shenanigans enables explosive finishes.
Combos
- Zirilan of the Claw + Worldgorger Dragon + Apocalypse
→ Exile all permanents opponents control, Mass Land Denial
Combos via Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (R), by popularity.
