Eclipse Dragon is the
best card in Eternal. It does everything you would ever want, and it only costs 4 Power! How great is that?! He keeps power open for counters, for removal, for card draw, can gain you life, and kills your opponents. That 3 extra Power is a lifesaver while also essentially helping to negate everything an opponent can do to stop you. It feels great to deplete an opponent of resources while Eclipse Dragon roars in for victory.
I've been working on this deck in various forms since Eclipse Dragon first came out, in FJP, in JTP, in FPS, and this version I feel is complete enough to post.
Updated!
Card choices:
Menace Chant: Obvious choice, got to have some colorfixing since there are so many 2 color cards that you want to play by turn 3 or 4.
Transpose: Pops face Aegis (necessary for some removal) and gives face Aegis for those pesky
Silverblade Menace and
Turn to Seed if they manage to transform one of your dragons. It happens sometimes, but as long as we don't lose all of them we're in the game.
Targeted Removal Pile: Answers for most threats in a variety of fashions to hit different problems, like an Aegis creature with
Voprex's Choice, early multicolored cards with
Defile and
Annihilate and
Desecrate for late game threats too big for the rest.
Sear has been removed for
Shadowcreeper. It is a nonbo with Transpose and the waystones, but, it blocks early, can provide a bit of pressure, eat removal, and sometimes even kill a creature.
Mass Removal: Early Aggro is still very potent in this format, so there are plenty of
Hailstorms, and Display of Menace, discussed later.
Dragon Forge: Copies 5-8 of
Eclipse Dragon. One of the best Turn 3 plays into a Turn 4 Dragon, assuming no need to board wipe or remove something pesky.
Counterspell Suite: I would run more if I could find room. For now, 4
Unseal to stop the wide array of curses, and 2
Dazzle which turns late game power into more draw, or sometimes just smooths out colors .
Vile Collaborator: It
seemed very good as it is an early game blocker, helps gain life as a buffer, pumps Eclipse Dragon in order to turn one of them from a seven turn clock to a five turn clock. It turned out good enough to add another copy.
Magebreaker was taken out for a Shadowcreeper and a Vile Collaborator.
Display of Menace: This is a catchall for a variety of problems. It allows you to wipe the board of small tokens, it kills problem relics and relic weapons, it protects your Dragon from
Turn to Seed and messing up the entire plan, it pops Aegis in order for other removal pieces to work, it just does work.
Wisdom of the Elders: Something to do when you don't need to kill something or protect something with counters. Keeps your hand going smoothly.
Eclipse Dragon: MVP of the deck, what everything is based around.
Market Choices:
I used to use a
Howling Peak Smuggler Market for a few reasons. First, HPS empowers a lot of the removal played: Char, Hailstorm, Display of Menace, Lightning Storm (former Market Choice). Secondly, she also allows other good Market choices, like a banner for color-fixing or
Garden of Omens, a card that does everything we want our removal to do
and provides another flying body to kill with. However, she is slower than Transpose and does not protect with Aegis, important for the ever-present Shadow cards that mess with control. Still worth a thought, though, just for Garden.
Draconic Ire: Kills relics, lessens the amount of damage a Dragon needs to kill a player, sometimes destroys a
Permafrost on another Dragon, doesn't need to be Transposed.
Feeding Time: A flex slot, for now it is good against creatures you don't want to see reanimated against your removal suite. Could replace with
Cremate, but it is a lot less color-intensive.
Malediction: A wipe. If in an HPS market, replace with something like
Lightning Storm.
Sudden Schism: Replaced with
Kenna, Uncontained because she's both removal and another wincon.
The Winter Crown: Keeps the hand full which is really important to keep Eclipse Dragon alive. An empty hand is a naked dragon. It can also stall for time by stunning, or get rid of a blocker to get a few more points of damage in.
Feel free to play around with the market, the only truly necessary parts is 1 boardwipe, and 1 attachment removal.
This deck has been updated, the changes listed above as well as adding cylixes. Overall it runs a bit better and I rather like it (though I wish I could have
Harsh Rule too).
Eremot's Designs seems really good too, might try a 2-of somehow, same with
Fatal Misstep and
Battle at the Gates. Feel free to mix things up and not go with the removal suite I have.
Eclipse Dragon is still MVP in my book.
Menace Chant
x4
2
Annihilate
x3
2
Dazzle
x2
2
Defile
x2
2
Shadowcreeper
x3
2
Transpose
x4
2
Unseal
x4
2
Voprex's Choice
x3
3
Desecrate
x3
3
Display of Menace
x3
3
Dragon Forge
x4
3
Hailstorm
x3
3
Vile Collaborator
x3
3
Wisdom of the Elders
x4
5
Eclipse Dragon
x4
Fire Sigil
x3
Primal Sigil
x3
Shadow Sigil
x2
Cobalt Waystone
x2
Crest of Chaos
x2
Crest of Cunning
x1
Crest of Fury
x2
Seat of Chaos
x2
Seat of Cunning
x2
Seat of Fury
x3
Skycrag Cylix
x4
View Deck on Shiftstoned
The biggest threats against this deck are Turn to Seed, which can be countered or the dragon sacrificed to Display of Menace in an emergency, and Silverblade Menace which is why I switched to Transpose market.
Of course, there is always the chance you don't have the removal on hand for when things get too dire, but you should be racing them in the air for 4-5 damage at a time while removing pertinent threats. Some things you can leave alive while you are getting in more damage to kill them later if necessary, weighing the risks and how much you will take that turn, depending if you suspect something worse and what sort of removal you have on hand.
I've tried versions with more dragons, things like Tattoo Dragon. Midias, Leyline Dragon, Poaching Drake, but I found that mainly, I just wanted to draw more Eclipse Dragon than any other threat, so just replaced more and more with extra support. Kenna, Uncontained looks like another decent card to try, maybe in the market, and Aurapiercer could be strong as well since it can get through aegis, but I don't like how it costs 6.
It is an uphill struggle if it does get killed, but 2 of them are a very fast clock and you get an extra 6 power on the opponent's turn to stop as much as you can, and even one of them gives you the power to have any 3 or lower cost spell playable. If an opponent has instant-speed hate, just wait to play the Dragon until you have an extra 2 power open for the counterspell, or play it when they are out and you will have some on their turn to protect it because of the Dragon.
Before this deck, I played a lot of Temporal Control, and this was an attempt to make a more aggressive dragon deck. First there were Teething Whelps for some early beats, early access to Draconic Ire and to eat removal and some mid-late game dragons with Den of Ordeals as the big finisher out of the market. This is the distilled version of it. It's not a top meta deck, but it is one of the ones that helped me reach masters along with some more usual decks.