Ureni of the Unwritten Commander Deck Guide

Ureni of the Unwritten | Illustration by Valera Lutfullina

Dragons are some of the most iconic fantasy creatures of all time, and Magic has never been shy about using them to add flair to many sets. While dragons are a traditionally red creature type, plenty of dragon commanders incorporate other colors to make the archetype more well-rounded.

The recent return to Tarkir was bound to provide a sick dragon commander or two, but none have inspired players like Ureni of the Unwritten. It’s got great colors, a stellar ability, and a deadly size—let’s see what you can do with such firepower.

The Deck

Ureni, the Song Unending | Illustration by Alexander Ostrowski

This deck is about as straightforward as Temur () gets: Lots of ramp and lots of dragons. I’d consider this solidly Bracket 3: It’s extremely consistent and strong, with plenty of interaction to impede your opponents and power to end the game, but it’s also fundamentally fair, relying on combat damage and resolving large permanents to win. The simple gameplan makes this a great deck for new Commander players.

The Commander: Ureni of the Unwritten

Part of the charm of Ureni of the Unwritten comes from the triggered ability, and part from the colors.

The triggered ability offers sheer value that can compete with Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm in terms of power. Dropping extra dragons into play lets the deck snowball out of control and improves cards like Terror of the Peaks and Dragon Tempest that reward creaturefall.

The colors are also key. Dragons of any plane come with high mana costs, so access to green for ramp is nearly as critical as red for the best dragons. Adding in blue for countermagic and protection is unnecessary but quite welcome; Temur is, in my opinion, the ideal color combination for dragons.

Dragons

The dragons of the deck have a range of abilities. Few of them are here for just being big; many of them provide card draw or removal to strengthen the pillars of the deck.

Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm isn’t one of those. Making nonlegendary copies of the dragons you play makes this a terrifying threat. It also curves into Ureni, which is a lot of fun. Deceptive Frostkite is similarly just good.

Hellkite Courser supports Ureni beautifully: It gives you two triggers (enters and attacks) without the need to cast Ureni. That can be useful if you smell a board wipe in the future; the Courser forces the issue without committing too many resources.

Bonehoard Dracosaur and Dragonhawk, Fate's Tempest keep the card draw flowing for a relatively low cost. But Ancient Silver Dragon has them beat in quantity and often quality.

Dragons are astonishingly good at killing creatures. Ureni, the Song Unending, Dragonlord Atarka, and Balefire Dragon all act as board wipes. Terror of the Peaks and Tyrant's Familiar are better suited to handling individual threats. You even get Marang River Regent and Hammerhead Tyrant as bounce spells to handle creatures too big to burn or noncreature permanents.

Masked Vandal and Chomping Changeling are honorary dragons that deal with artifacts and enchantments. Parapet Thrasher also handles artifacts, and Magmatic Hellkite handles nonbasic lands like Nykthos or Cavern of Souls.

The extra combats from Scourge of the Throne synergize with Ureni on two accounts: Firstly, it has an attack trigger. Perhaps more relevantly, it’s a massive beater. It only takes a few extra combats to win.

Since most dragons are large, Thundermane Dragon sneaks in extra card advantage and acts as a haste enabler for dragons that care about attacking or dealing combat damage.

The avaricious side of dragons comes out in Ancient Copper Dragon, Goldlust Triad, and Goldspan Dragon. That’s right, the dragons even help to ramp!

Card Draw

Since dragons are large, they easily take advantage of Up the Beanstalk and Outcaster Trailblazer as steady card advantage engines. That size also results in large bursts of card draw from Return of the Wildspeaker and Rishkar's Expertise.

Stock Up isn’t as splashy, but its lower cost keeps the deck consistent in the early turns and lets you find then cast a threat when you have more mana.

Removal and Protection

Though the deck often taps out, it would be a shame to pass up on blue’s countermagic and protection spells. Strix Serenade handles any threat while Swan Song impedes board wipes or removal. Stubborn Denial is excellent here because you virtually always have a 4-power creature.

Horrific Assault turns a big dragon into a cannon to blast away an equally large threat.

Dragon Tempest kills opposing threats with its damage trigger and your opponents with its haste enabler.

Heroic Intervention keeps everything safe while Redirect Lightning and Bolt Bend are mostly around to protect high-value targets like Ureni and the Ancient Dragons.

March of Swirling Mist is excellent with all the ramp in the deck. I love the flexibility of the card, which can protect your creatures or remove blockers, depending on your situation.

The Mana Base

The mana base goes deep with an expansive ramp package and lots of lands—44, including MDFCs. This is critical to make sure you have the resources to cast all the big, dumb dragons you plan to win with.

Starting with the ramp package, many of the usual suspects are around. Delighted Halfling ramps and protects your commander plus a few other dragons, Birds of Paradise gets you off to a fast start, and so on.

Fanatic of Rhonas and Entish Restoration benefit when you control large creatures.

Dragons have dedicated ramp in cost reducers like Dragonlord's Servant, Dragonspeaker Shaman, and Nogi, Draco-Zealot. Sarkhan, Soul Aflame provides cost reduction and an extra threat.

Moving to the lands, the mana base contains many MDFCs and utility lands to offset the necessarily high land count. Most of the MDFCs add extra removal, like Shatterskull Smashing, Stump Stomp, Bridgeworks Battle, and Sink into Stupor. The exception is Glasspool Mimic, which has plenty of juicy dragons to copy.

Otawara, Soaring City and Boseiju, Who Endures are useful interactive cards because they’re extremely hard to interact with; few decks run stifle effects so they’re essentially uncounterable.

Arena of Glory works great with Ureni and any other dragon that wants to attack the turn it comes into play while Shifting Woodland can copy your best dead threat later in the game.

The deck also contains a handful of dragon support lands. Cavern of Souls is the strongest of these, and the least dedicated. Haven of the Spirit Dragon works as a Raise Dead while Maelstrom of the Spirit Dragon is the deck’s only tutor.

Beyond these cards, the mana base focuses on fixing mana. Lots of fetch lands, shock lands, cards like Starting Town and Exotic Orchard, etc.

The Strategy

The strategy is to fulfill the dreams of every child who grew up reading Eragon and ride a dragon into battle. This is a super straightforward battlecruiser deck: Spend the first two or three (or four) turns of the game ramping, then see how many dragons you need to throw at your opponents until their castles are rubble and their crowns puddles of gold.

With this in mind, the most important thing to look for in the opening hand isn’t dragons but ramp and lands. You have Ureni in the command zone; you’ll have plenty of access to dragons. Focus instead on casting them. A hand with no ramp and fewer than three lands isn’t keepable in this list.

You should also consider how the table is responding to your plays. This deck becomes the enemy quite quickly, so make sure you have protection to back yourself up or at least a plan for a board wipe. The card draw comes in quite handy here to keep your resources flowing.

Combos and Interactions

This isn’t a deck with meaningful combos or anything. The most complex interactions come about because you have dragons and cards that do something when a dragon enters.

Rule 0 Violations Check

I can’t imagine this deck failing a Rule 0 conversation. The gameplay is simple, the threats obvious, and combos nonexistent. As long as you clearly disclose that this isn’t a precon, you should have no issues.

Budget Options

The first place to look for budget cuts is the mana base. You can build a perfectly functional mana base without fetches, shocks, and so on. Cards like Arena of Glory and Otawara, Soaring City can be swapped for basics of the equivalent type. The same goes for the MDFCs. I highly recommend that any MDFCs you cut are swapped for basics, not additional spells; I added them to the deck as lands first.

A few of the more expensive cards are also replaceable. Ancient Copper Dragon and Ancient Silver Dragon can be replaced with pretty much any large dragon, like Lathliss, Dragon Queen or Atarka, World Render.

Bonehoard Dracosaur and Dragonhawk, Fate's Tempest can go for cards like Garruk's Uprising that are cheaper but also draw cards consistently.

Expensive mana dorks like Delighted Halfling and Bloom Tender can be replaced for cheaper ramp. If you also trim on the dual lands, consider more Rampant Growth variants to take advantage of additional basics.

Terror of the Peaks is probably the only card without a great replacement. Warstorm Surge works, though Ureni can’t grab it anymore.

Other Builds

You can’t really build Ureni without dragons, but there are different paths you could take. One build path leans much more into dragon typal. I chose to focus on dragons that supported the pillars of ramp, card draw, and removal, but there are lots of dragon payoffs like Lathliss, Dragon Queen, Atarka, World Render, and Scourge of Valkas I didn’t run because of that. There’s also cards like Raise the Palisade and Kindred Discovery that round out the deck further.

You could also build the deck to support Ureni’s trigger better. There’s a build that focuses on clones and flicker spells, and probably Panharmonicon, to trigger Ureni as often as possible and turn it into a card advantage engine.

Commanding Conclusion

Will of the Temur | Illustration by Irina Nordsol

Dragon commanders get to be flashy in ways other creature types rarely do because they’re such large, iconic creatures. Ureni of the Unwritten gets to ignore something as trivial as mana costs to flood the board with dragons that offer a range of powerful abilities like ramp and card draw.

Have you built Ureni? Would you prefer another dragon commander? Let me know in the comments below! If you want more Draftsim, check out our YouTube channel, The Daily Upkeep, and join the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe and thanks for reading!