Draconic Dissent precon upgrade guide

Twenty-two cards in this box can force a creature to attack, which is what Firkraag pays you for. The box has one instant that removes a permanent, and seven of its 38 lands tap for colourless and nothing else. Eleven swaps and $18.86 deal with both.

Firkraag draws a card and grows a +1/+1 counter whenever a creature that had to attack deals combat damage to one of your opponents. Goad is the tidy way to cause that, because a goaded creature has to attack each combat and has to attack somebody other than you. The box is built on it. Thirteen cards goad, a few of them only under conditions: Vengeful Ancestor, Sly Instigator, Agitator Ant, Bloodthirsty Blade, Psychic Impetus, Shiny Impetus, Geode Rager, Disrupt Decorum, Bothersome Quasit, Baeloth Barrityl, Death Kiss, Spectacular Showdown and Mocking Doppelganger. Seven more force an attack without steering it away from you: Rowan Kenrith, Warmonger Hellkite, Avatar of Slaughter, Goblin Spymaster, Pursued Whale, Angler Turtle and The Akroan War. Chaos Dragon and Territorial Hellkite carry an attack requirement of their own.

That is 22 cards, and the engine doesn’t need more of them. Four of the 22 go and two come in. Everything else I change goes on what the engine is missing: answers, coloured mana and Dragons.

What are the best Draconic Dissent upgrades?

If you only buy some of them, buy in this order:

1. Lightning Bolt ($0.74) and Abrade ($0.16). Three damage at instant speed for one mana and two. Chaos Warp is the only instant in the box that removes a permanent.
2. Glorybringer ($0.36). A hasty Dragon that deals 4 damage to a non-Dragon creature an opponent controls every time you exert it.
3. Lathliss, Dragon Queen ($0.37). A 5/5 flying Dragon token whenever another nontoken Dragon you control enters, and the deck has fifteen other Dragons.
4. Puppet Master ($0.56) and Red Death, Shipwrecker ($0.34). Two goaders that cost three and two mana.
5. Shivan Reef ($0.22), Sulfur Falls ($0.25) and Spirebluff Canal ($4.50). Three blue-red lands in place of four that make no colour.
6. Goldspan Dragon ($11.17). The big-ticket add, and a five-mana Dragon with flying and haste.
7. Fact or Fiction ($0.19). Instant-speed card advantage to sit beside Compulsive Research.

Eleven cards come out. The list is below.

Avatar of Slaughter, Pursued Whale, Baeloth and Death Kiss are the weak links

The two ways of forcing an attack aren’t the same. A goaded creature must attack a player other than you if it can. A card that only says "attacks each combat if able" steers nothing, so the creature it forces is free to swing at you.

Avatar of Slaughter costs eight, gives every creature double strike and makes every creature attack. Warmonger Hellkite also makes every creature attack, costs six, flies and pumps the attackers by +1/+0 for {1}{R}. The Hellkite is also a Dragon, so it sets off Firkraag’s first ability when it attacks. That makes the Avatar a dearer copy of a card the deck already has.

Pursued Whale costs seven and gives each opponent a 1/1 Pirate token that can’t block and makes that opponent’s creatures attack each combat if able. That is Angler Turtle’s text, moved onto a token. The Turtle is hexproof, while the effect on the token ends the moment the 1/1 dies, so the Turtle stays and the Whale goes.

Baeloth Barrityl is the odd one. He costs five and is a 2/5, and his ability goads creatures with power less than his own, which means power 0 or 1. Against a table of real creatures that is tokens and little else. The Treasure he makes when a goaded creature dies is nice, and five mana is a lot to pay for it.

Death Kiss costs six. It doubles an opponent’s creature’s power when that creature attacks one of my opponents, which does nothing when I’m the target, and its goad is a one-shot, because a creature can only become monstrous once. Spending {X}{X}{R} to goad a single creature, one time, is a poor return on six mana plus the monstrosity cost.

Rowan Kenrith, Warmonger Hellkite, Goblin Spymaster, Angler Turtle and The Akroan War stay. So do Propaganda and Dissipation Field, which are the deck’s answer to the same problem. A forced attacker isn’t required to pay Propaganda’s {2}, so if there is another player to hit it has to hit them. And Dissipation Field returns any permanent that damages you to its owner’s hand.

Seven lands that can't make a colour

Seven of the 38 lands tap for colourless and nothing else: Desolate Lighthouse, Kher Keep, Ash Barrens, Myriad Landscape, Reliquary Tower, Temple of the False God and Terrain Generator. Three of them earn their slot anyway. Ash Barrens and Myriad Landscape fetch basics, and Desolate Lighthouse loots for {1}{U}{R}. The other four do nothing for colour. Kher Keep makes 0/1 Kobolds, Reliquary Tower lifts your hand-size limit, Temple of the False God taps for two colourless once you have five lands, and Terrain Generator puts a basic from your hand onto the battlefield. All four go.

The colour requirements are steep. Thirteen spells want {R}{R} and nine want {U}{U}, and the cheapest of the red ones is Chaos Dragon at {1}{R}{R}. The site’s calculator, which counts the mana rocks (Fellwar Stone included) as well as the lands, gives the box 24 red and 26 blue, counting Myriad Landscape for both colours it can fetch. That is {R}{R} by turn three on the play 69.4% of the time and {U}{U} 74.2%.

Three lands come in. Shivan Reef is a painland: colourless for free, blue or red for 1 damage. Sulfur Falls enters tapped unless you control an Island or a Mountain, and the deck runs 24 basics. Spirebluff Canal enters tapped unless you control two or fewer other lands, so it is a free dual in the opening turns and a tapland later. That takes the red-producing lands from 18 to 21 and the blue ones from 19 to 22, at the price of one land overall (38 to 37).

The calculator’s count after the swaps is 27 red and 28 blue. It leaves out Goldspan Dragon’s Treasure clause, which isn’t a land or a rock. {R}{R} by turn three rises to 76.4% and {U}{U} to 78.5%. That count includes Red Death, whose {R} comes attached to a goad. It’s an improvement and not a cure. Six lands still always enter tapped (Temple of Epiphany, Wandering Fumarole, Izzet Boilerworks, Myriad Landscape, Path of Ancestry and Prismari Campus). Five of them make both colours and Myriad Landscape fetches two basics, so I left all six alone.

One instant, a fight ability and the sweepers

Look at what the box can do to a single threat. Chaos Warp is the only instant that removes a permanent, and its owner gets the top card of their library if it’s a permanent. Curse of the Swine exiles X creatures at sorcery speed and gives each of their controllers a 2/2 Boar. Brash Taunter can fight for {2}{R}. Past those, removal comes in bulk: Blasphemous Act, Chain Reaction, Thunder Dragon, Ryusei and Rowan Kenrith’s -2.

Lightning Bolt and Abrade fill the gap at one and two mana. Abrade can deal 3 to a creature or destroy an artifact. Glorybringer is the better answer when it’s already attacking: exert it as it attacks and it deals 4 damage to a non-Dragon creature an opponent controls, one way and with no fight. The cost is that an exerted Glorybringer doesn’t untap in your next untap step, so it normally sits out the following attack.

Fifteen other Dragons for Lathliss to count

The swaps take the Dragon count from 13 to 16, Firkraag included. Lathliss, Dragon Queen makes a 5/5 flying Dragon token whenever another nontoken Dragon enters under your control. That covers the fifteen others, Firkraag among them if he comes out of the command zone. The tokens are Dragons too, so they can carry an attack to a second opponent, and Firkraag’s first ability triggers once for each opponent Dragons attack. Lathliss also pumps your Dragons by +1/+0 for {1}{R}.

Haste matters more than usual here. Firkraag’s first ability fires when Dragons attack, so with him in play a Dragon that lands and attacks the same turn starts the goad chain at once. The box has three hasty Dragons besides Firkraag: Sprite Dragon, Chaos Dragon and Territorial Hellkite. Glorybringer and Goldspan Dragon make five.

Goldspan Dragon is the big line in the bill. It makes a Treasure whenever it attacks and your Treasures tap for two mana of one colour. The cheapest copy is a $11.17 promo and a regular printing is $11.19, so it doesn’t matter which you buy.

Puppet Master and Red Death are the cheap half of the engine. Puppet Master is a 2/4 for {2}{R} that goads one creature whenever you attack, stops it blocking that turn, and makes a Treasure when goaded creatures hurt an opponent. Red Death, Shipwrecker is a 1/3 for {U}{R} that taps to goad a creature, adds {R} and lets that creature’s controller draw a card. That last clause is a real cost, and it’s why the FAQ below has an argument for paying it.

Everything that leaves

• Avatar of Slaughter, Pursued Whale, Baeloth Barrityl and Death Kiss: argued above.
• Curse of Opulence: pays in Gold, a single-use mana, while Curse of Verbosity pays in cards and stays. Both reward every opponent who attacks the cursed player too.
• Hedron Archive and Fellwar Stone: the Archive makes only colourless at four mana, and Fellwar Stone makes whatever colours your opponents' lands do, which may be neither of yours.
• Kher Keep, Reliquary Tower, Temple of the False God and Terrain Generator: the four colourless lands from above.

Why Blasphemous Act, Stuffy Doll and the goad attachments stay

Blasphemous Act is a nine-mana card on paper and has its cost cut by one for every creature in play, so most of the time you pay a fraction of that. It also kills your own Dragons, which is why it’s a reset button.

Stuffy Doll is indestructible, and any damage dealt to it is passed on to the player you chose as it entered. That turns the deck’s sweepers into burn aimed at that player: Blasphemous Act is 13 damage to them, Chain Reaction is as many as there are creatures, and Thunder Dragon is 3, since the Doll has no flying. The rest of the time it is five mana for a blocker that hurts whoever you named.

Bloodthirsty Blade, Psychic Impetus and Shiny Impetus look like single-creature buffs in a deck with 30 creatures. They aren’t buffs for my creatures at all. Each one goads an opponent’s creature, for three mana, and the +2 power or +2/+2 is the price of doing it. The reward is the usual one, a card for Firkraag if the goaded creature connects, plus a scry 2 from Psychic Impetus or a Treasure from Shiny Impetus when it attacks.

Eighteen dollars, and what I priced out

The eleven adds come to $18.86 at the cheapest released printing of each card, October 2026. Goldspan Dragon ($11.17) and Spirebluff Canal ($4.50) are $15.67 of it, which leaves $3.19 for the other nine. Where a cheapest printing is a promo or an old reprint, that is the one I priced.

Steam Vents would have been the other dual, at $10.05. Star Trek reprints it on 13 November 2026, so I’d wait on that one. Rhystic Study ($59.58) and Cyclonic Rift ($30.10) would both suit the deck, and both are Game Changers, which is a bracket change as well as a price. Nothing in the eleven adds is a Game Changer, so the deck stays at a Bracket 1 floor.

After the swaps the average mana value falls from 4.07 to 3.92, and the cards costing seven or more fall from seven to five (Blasphemous Act counted at its printed nine). The Dragon count goes from 13 to 16, and the number of cards that can force an attack goes from 22 to 20.

The upgraded decklist

This is the full list with every swap made. Hover any name for a preview.

Load into the deck builder Copy decklist Playtest the upgraded deck

“Load into the deck builder” opens this list in your account, pinned to the printings the box shipped, ready to edit or save. “Copy decklist” gives you plain text for Moxfield, Archidekt or Arena — no account needed.

FAQ

When one of my own creatures attacks, does Firkraag draw?

Only if that creature had to attack. Warmonger Hellkite makes every creature attack each combat if able, yours included, and Chaos Dragon and Territorial Hellkite are forced to attack by their own text. Any of them that deals combat damage to an opponent draws you a card and puts a counter on Firkraag. A creature you simply chose to send doesn’t count, and neither does a goaded creature that hits you.

Is Draconic Dissent any good one-on-one?

Mostly not, and the reason is goad itself. A goaded creature has to attack a player other than the one who goaded it if it can. With one opponent there is nobody else, so it attacks you, and Firkraag’s second ability only counts damage dealt to your opponents. Your own forced attackers, such as Warmonger Hellkite, still pay off, but that is a handful of cards. The deck is built for three or four players, and the more of them there are, the more places a goaded creature has to go.

Is Red Death, Shipwrecker worth letting an opponent draw?

I think so, for two reasons. The creature you goad has to attack somebody else, and if it connects Firkraag draws you a card, so the exchange isn’t one-sided. And it adds {R} each time, the colour this deck is shortest of. Aim it at the player holding the biggest attacker.

Why is there no Rhystic Study or Cyclonic Rift?

Both are Game Changers, and both cost real money. Rhystic Study is $59.58 and Cyclonic Rift is $30.10 at their cheapest printings. Adding either moves the deck from a Bracket 1 floor to Bracket 3, which is a different pod from the one this box was built for. Nothing I add is a Game Changer, so the floor stays at 1.

Is Blasphemous Act really a nine-mana spell?

It costs {8}{R} before the discount, and {1} less for every creature in play. With eight creatures out it costs {R}, and with four it costs {4}{R}. It deals 13 damage to each creature, your Dragons included, so it is a reset button and not a casual play.

Can Will and Rowan Kenrith lead this deck instead?

They are both in the 99, and each has partner with the other, so the pair is a legal commander duo in the same two colours. Every card in this list stays legal under them. This guide covers the Firkraag version only, and I haven’t tested the swaps against the Kenrith version.