



The scene is 1994. I'm a bright eyed freshman at North Hardin High School in Radcliff Kentucky. I've already spent a summer with a lot of the people that I would spend time with, and grew up with most of them thanks to youth sports and cub scouts. Waiting for my first day of high school to start, I got up early, showered, dressed in the finest 90's fashion. To be honest it may have involved Zubaz Pants and a Starter Shirt. The nineties were not kind to me at all. I got on the bus, got to school about three miles and thirty minutes later, and was ushered into the cafeteria, where I did find out that the school did offer Taco Bell and other non-school food. Breakfast however has school grade eggs and toast, and passing on that, I met with my friends to see what happened between the time band camp ended and school started. They were excitedly going over their new cards, for a game called Magic: the Gathering. At the time, I had no interest in that, it was something to pass the time between the end of school and band practice, and I had goals, and things that needed to get done.

Then Shivan Dragon happened. I knew nothing about the card itself, but this iconic piece of fantasy card game art caught my eye. I do not know what the perspective is on this piece; it's easy to think that it's taken from a generic knight who knows there is nothing he can do about the dragon that is coming towards him. In fact I know nothing about art, but I do know that this card was beautiful. (The future reprints are fine, but for my money's worth the best Shivan Dragon is the first one.) The art had me hooked, and soon I was looking for extra money to buy these cards myself. I'd never play I said to myself, I'm too busy learning and excelling in school and music to take up a hobby that was not baseball.

I floated along high school, minding my own business, going to practice, turning in homework and waiting for the baseball season to start. I planned on trying out for the team. I had good grades, was not a terrible fielder by any stretch of the imagination, and had never seen a curve ball in my entire life. Upon seeing my first one and bailing out of the batter's box in the most comical fashion ever, I could never get my confidence back, and was one of the first ones cut. My baseball dreams shattered (they were not really dreams; I was never going to get to majors anyway.) I needed a time consuming habit to fill the void. Sure playing basketball was fine and all, but the summers were hot, and I was not great at that either. I needed something fun to do with my friends that could be enjoyed indoors. I rang up a few friends, borrowed a deck and learned how to play in the cafeteria of the high school. I'd still never own cards, but that was ok, I had generous friends, they did not mind lending me cards and it was fun to be a part of something that was not band or school related.

About the same time, I noticed that comic books outside of Milestone were starting to lose my interest. I loved Static, and hated just about everything else. Going through the comic book rack I noticed a Magic the Gathering comic. Fallen Empires on the World of Magic: the Gathering is what Wikipedia told me it was called. It came packaged with multiple packs of Fallen Empires, and I decided to pick some up. I mean I was not buying the cards right? I got the largely forgettable comic home, it's somewhere in the house to this day, and the packs of Fallen Empires were stolen from me sometime in my Junior year, but I opened those packs, was impressed with cards like Hymn to Tourach and Goblin Grenade. The art was great, the flavor text was neat, and suddenly I was looking at a new hobby, and soon to follow a new obsession. Notes would be taken in class of course, but most of the time they started off looking like 4x Shivan Dragon.

And that is what ties all of this back together. Granted that was a lot of words about high school and deciding on a habit that would eventually lead me to great friends and great memories. That Dragon led me on a close to twenty year relationship with many people, and it's not one that I would trade for anything in the world!

The topic of this Ten Things I Think I Think is clearly dragons, we're doing a top ten list, but not a top ten list of the best dragons printed, or what should have been in From the Vault: Dragons, this one is the ten dragons that I love the most! Not all of these Dragons are going to be constructed all-stars, and most of them are cards that I've actually played with in some of my favorite decks. Cards like Rorix Bladewing and Kokusho, the Evening Star played large roles in top eight appearances that I have made throughout my magic playing career. Some of these dragons may be listed because of lasting memories I have with them. With that said, here are my ten favorite dragons.

10. (Shivan Dragon)

This is the Dragon that got everything started for me. The iconic art, the giant beefy numbers, Shivan Dragon was highly coveted in the early days of our play group, and would get a king's ransom in trade. I remember people trading Force of Will for these guys. Early Magic, before the internet sure was strange! There was no netdecking, magic finance came from weird paper things that were like books but not (I'm talking about magazines) and there were rumors of Richard Garfield signing cards and making that card more powerful in the games you played. Shivan Dragon was one of the faces of Magic for years, and I'm sure it's an old favorite among many many players.

9. Worldgorger Dragon

Worldgorger Dragon came many years later, but with this card I finally realized that Magic could be played in a third way. Sure you had your creatures battling in aggro decks, or counterspells flying in control decks, but combo was a myth in my play group, and something we all tried to avoid. It was not fun to play against with our limited card pools (Gorger Combo was not something we really paid attention to anyways, we cared about Standard, Block Constructed and Extended , because they all had PTQ seasons.) Yeah we messed around with Bargain decks, and Academy decks and ProBloom, but those decks were meant for tournament play, not group play sessions. It was around this time that I started to make a push to get better at the game, and while I had already made a few PTQ top eights, and Grand Prix Day twos by the time Judgment rolled around, I was leaving behind this play group. Great guys, still board game with them from time to time, but they were much more casual about Magic than I was.

8. Rith, the Awakener

When one thinks of Brian Kibler they often think of the Dragonmage! This Dragon was in Kibler's 3rd place deck from Pro Tour Chicago 2000. Look at that top eight! It's loaded talent! At the time, I was 20, the internet was dial up in my house and I remember reading the coverage because this would set the Standard format until the next set came out. I may have played Counter Rebels more than Fires or Rith, but Kiblers deck was the dreams of kids everywhere, and I saw it a ton, thanks to judging many Junior Super Series!

7. Draco

Draco and Erratic Explosion were never in the same Standard format, but they were a fun combo deck in Extended. At Pro Tour Houston (another loaded top eight) this was in the top 32, and while decks like Oath of Druids, Reanimator, and Psychatog set the scene for Extended for months, Draco Explosion captured my heart. The blue red combo deck looked to set up the top of the library with a Draco, cast explosion and deal 16 damage right to the face. Here is a copy of the list from the Pro Tour:



This deck was an unreal amount of fun, and lead to plenty of 1-2 drops for me during the PTQ Season. Should have played Reanimator, but whatever, this was too good!

6. Two-Headed Dragon

This was a promo card during the Junior Super Series, a magic tournament series for the younger crowd that paid out in scholarships. It was a great idea, and hopefully one day Wizards of the Coast will bring it back, since the game has seen a ton of growth since they ended this. I'd be willing to play in events that helped with grad school, but I guess they call that the Pro Tour nowadays! Two-Headed Dragon may not have been the flashiest card, it did see some Pro Tour play (I believe in Zvi's Fires deck from Chicago) but the promo really brought the kids in to battle. It's a fan favorite, and my copy of it (I won it in a bet, well, not a bet, more like a public humiliation, I ended up getting kicked in the face by a blackbelt because I simply believed he could not do it.) is hanging out in a collection of promotional cards that I have kept around for my son.

5. (Bogardan Hellkite)

This card led to a dragon based combo deck when combined with Dragonstorm. The bonus card in Time Spiral led to a mono red Dragonstorm deck that put Pat Chapin into the finals of Worlds in 2007. Soon after Blue Red versions of the deck sprang up and stayed in Standard for a long time. This is one of my favorite dragons, because playing the Dragonstorm deck was a lesson in patience. When to go off, how to manage the game, how to manage your resources were all questions that were asked throughout the course of the match, and then sometimes you had Dragonstorm and four Rite of Flame in hand and won on turn two anyways. Good times!

4. (Lotus Guardian)

What a weird dragon to show up in a list right? Well the oft mocked card from Invasion is special to me for one reason only. It's never been in a deck I played, it's never shown up in serious tournament play, but it is the inspiration behind a store in Owensboro, Ky. The Lotus Guardian was opened up years ago by my friend Nate. I was hired to help run the store during a low point in my life, moved to the city and went to work, building shelving units, running events and doing general shop work. It was a good time, I played little magic, (but went to nationals that year with a friend that qualified in an effort to grind in) and I spent it figuring out what I was going to do with myself. This period marked the point in my life where I realized that I did not want to own my card store, it was too much work and kept me from doing what I liked doing, playing a lot of Magic!

3. Eternal Dragon

This plainscycling dragon was featured heavily in Onslaught Block. It was the backbone of Astral Slide and Teen Girl Squad. This Dragon made Grand Prix Detroit 2003 really exciting for me. This was back when Grand Prix events cut to the top 64, and I was on the outside of the cut after round 9. We'll call it a virtual Day Two. I did go 6-3, but five players with that record made it in to day two. Most importantly though, my ride to the event went 8-1, and was in fifth place after day one. We had to panic to find a hotel room, because the guy who promised to stay both days left early, and well, he cancelled the hotel reservation when he left. (Memory is a bit hazy here, but we were without a room) Friends from Cincinnati were staying outside the city and we got a few hours of sleep before going back for day two. My friend Paul went 0-6 on Day Two, and this made for another awkward ride back to Kentucky from Detroit. In 2001, a friend had been disqualified from the Grand Prix, and to this day I'm not sure which ride was more terrible.

2. Rorix Bladewing



In a time of GR Beasts, Astral Slide} and Goblins ruling block, I wanted to play something else. I wanted to play Rorix Bladewing badly. I built up a Blue Red Lightning Rift deck and started to test. The deck was awesome! It beat Slide, Veggies, the Claw, which were three of the four most important decks in the format. This was of course before Scourge came out, and Beasts were one of the best decks. It was also one of the most played decks in the format. Finally it was the deck that my Blue Red deck could never beat, even if they got land screwed, mulliganed to 3 and got disqualified in the middle of the round. Canopy Crawler was not to be messed with! Regardless I was going to play this deck in a tournament, and I was running out of time, Scourge was coming out soon, and the PTQ season would be different (I believe that at Origins, where I played this deck, one PTQ was without Scourge legal and the other had the new set in it.) so I had to quickly find an event to play it in. Origins would be that event, and one of the largest PTQs I played in would be my battleground. Roughly half the field was Beasts. I went x-1-1. I lost to a neat mono black Patriarch's Bidding deck (for some reason Wizards did not publish the day two lists from Pro Tour Venice.) and drew with Sam Stoddard in the last round to make top eight. I dodged Beasts and delivered beats with Rorix! It was the best PTQ ever!



And then I got paired against Beasts in the top eight, played magic for ten minutes and was done. Outside of Merfolk in Lorwyn block this was the most fun I had ever had while playing in a PTQ.

1. (Kokusho, the Evening Star)



This is my favorite dragon of all time. One of my favorite memories in 2004 was sitting down to face my Tooth and Nail playing opponent in the finals of the Kentucky State Championship (This was before TCGPlayer ran three of them, Starcity ran two of them, and SunMesa ran one, and was actually sponsored by Wizards of the Coast. It did not feed into Nationals, prizes were awful, but there was pride on the line, and it was an event that I wanted to win since I started to play. My Magic goals were low at the time.) It was late at night, my playtesting teammates were still there, my team trio constructed teammates were still there, and among the crowd were many friends. My opponent split the first two games with me, and we went to game three. I kept a hand that would let me Persecute on turn three, which was great against the mono green deck. I play my first land, he plays he first land, and I play my second and Sakura-Tribe Elder. He draws for turn, taps the table, and kinda thinks. My girlfriend at the time called, I handed the phone off to Will Lutes so he could give her play by play, and then my opponent passed. No land drop. A murmur went through the crowd, I got a swamp with my tribe elder, untapped, played my fourth land and cast the sorcery. He said "You're gonna like this" when I named green, and put his entire hand into the graveyard.



I went bonkers. I stood up turned around grabbed my trios teammates and lifted them up in celebration. I high fived a ton of people and sat back down. Two turns later the Evening Star is flying high, I attack him to ten, and then make my second Evening Star to legend rule him out of the game. I got my plaque, drove back with my teammates to Hardin County, met up with my girlfriend and had the worst celebration dinner ever. Thanks crappy 24 hour diners. That plaque is the first thing I hang up where ever I move to. It may be pathetic, it may not mean the most, but I love it.



This wraps up the first bit of Dragon Week. I hope you enjoyed my trip down memory lane, and feel free to leave your favorite dragons in the comment section! Thanks for reading!

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