Commander
Dimir dragons deck list
View Dimir dragon tribal deck list in Archideckt!
About Silumgar, the Drifting Death
Silumgar's ability fits well in dimir decks if you don't look at the dragon tribal issue.
Silumgar's ability works as a one sided board wipe with enough dragons (or changelings in dimir, sigh). Silumgar has the best evasion combo in commander: hexproof to avoid removals and flying to avoid blockers. Silumgars ability causes a trigger every time a dragon you control attacks, so you can react to those how ever you like using priority and taking advantage of removals like Tragic Slip.
Dimir is very likely the most powerful color combination of the two color pairs, but this jank build is luckily not that powerful. This deck is built with cheap cards and has a total budget of under 200€ including the mana base.
Silumgar, the Drifting Death in EDHREC
In EDHREC Silumgar, the Drifting Death has only 113 decks. So if you are looking for a nice dragon tribal deck and want to avoid the all-too-known Tiamat and Scion of the Ur-Dragon or even the The Ur-Dragon itself, look no further and choose the janky off-color dragon tribal!
Possible themes for Silumgar, the Drifting Death
Tribal and combat theme with dragon tribal
Silumgar wants multiple dragons to attack at the same time to actually provide any value. The idea of the deck is to pop out as many dragons as possible as fast as possible, and starting to create value from them and outpacing the opponent in the late game. Winning is through combat as in any Dragon deck and value received from death triggers.
Tribal and clone theme in Dimir dragon tribal
Dimir has great spells for copying and a dimir dragon tribal deck can easily turn your opponents threats into _your_ threats with multiple copy effects and clones. This provides additional tools to your tool box. The strategy is mostly the same but with the extra layer of copies that also works as what-ever-your-opponents-are-having. This can of course lead to some silly situations and over the board threat assesments, as people often don't want their cool decks and cards to be copied, so be aware.
Strategy with dragon tribals
Early game and mulligans, T0-T3
Silumgar is very expensive with CMC 6, and the deck does its best to ramp to there. With 15 spells for ramping and 35 lands you should be in a good balance and have the possibility to play Silumgar on T5 if you want to.
The deck is very slow, and aims to stay in the game as long as possible. Early aggro decks and artifact hate are the biggest threats. Depending on the meta you want 3 lands and a mana rock with some kind of dragon to be out on T3.
Great cards for early game:all CMC2 mana rocks, Morbid Opportunist, Mothdust Changeling, Universal Automaton, Worn Powerstone and Cryptoplasm.
Mid game
T4 to T6 are the mid game and you set up your dragon catapult ready after the heavy ramping. Very likely your hand is starting to run out after playing a land on every turn. The aim is to get the dragons out before Silumgar, and then doing the sweep with the drifting death.
Silumgar has hexproof so you can take a breath even if your opponents have their mana open. Silumgar is not a kill-on-sight commander, and if someone does counter your elder dragon they've seriously assessed the table wrongly, or the game ends anyhow with the goblins or elves running the show.
During mid game you want your bigger dragons out, and aim to have 2-3 dragons out before landing with Silumgar. Try to setup the resource engine with Coastal Piracy, Distant Melody, Military Intelligence or Araumi of the Dead Tide.
Late game
T6+ are the late game and the Elden dragon should be controlling the skies with their minions. Most decks are getting shredded with 4 attacking dragons, and the bigger threats are also threats to you. Having enough cannon fodder with Midnight Reaper or Grim Haruspex out really helps with find the answers. Crux of Fate is the ultimate wipe in the deck for the emergency cases.
Winning the game with dimir dragons
As Dimir tribal is having hard time to actually close the game with pure combat, the deck provides nice recursion with Nightmare Shepherd as the tiny 1/1 dragons are enough to trigger Silumgar, and destroy everything in their path. Ogre Slumlord turns your opponents million elves into your cool rats and shreds the enemies health points.
Great alternative wincon is Revel in Riches, which can turn you into an archenemy, but Lazotep Plating and the Counterspells are for that, too. Blood Artist is also great wincon in the deck as opponents creatures are dying left and right.
Vedalken Humiliator is a slow-wipe as everyone can see it is coming from miles away but no-one expects Mass Diminish to turn all creatures into a 1/1 and dying for a single dragon.
Who is the deck for
Dimir dragons is definitely a jank deck. The off-color tribal is very intriguing idea and Silumgar, the Drifting Death brings a very refreshing way to play a tribal deck in dimir colors by focusing on the combat, rather than the interactions.
I'd say the Power level is 5 due to the importance of the commander for the deck. A single board wipe can set you sitting for a long time if you play too aggressively in the start with almost none resources or even ways to get those. Slow and steady wins the race with Dimir dragons.
