Conditions Allow - Dash in EDH with Goro-Goro and Satoru
(Goro-Goro and Satoru | Art by Johannes Voss)
Dashing Forward... Again
Hello, and welcome back to Conditions Allow, where I take a legendary creature with a drawback and build a Commander deck to turn it into a strength. Except, for this episode I'm re-visiting an entire mechanic from Magic's past: Dash. I've tacked Dash once before, but March of the Machine has finally given me the perfect commander to support this mechanic in Goro-Goro and Satoru.
As a mechanic, Dash suffers from a few problems that are only exacerbated in multiplayer Magic. First and foremost, you can't really develop your board when your creatures are continually returning to your hand. Not only is the tempo loss hard to offset, those creatures take up space in your hand. Casting those creatures also eats up mana you could use on removal and draw spells. Most importantly, however, you're left vulnerable to counterattacks from each of your opponents. In a single-player draft environment this is offset by the resilience to sorcery-speed removal, but against three opponents and plenty of instants, it's a devastating setback. Goro-Goro and Satoru helps to solve most of these problems, most importantly the ability to develop your board state throughout the game.
Are Dash Creatures Any Good?
Before we talk about the commander, let's quickly recap the real centerpiece of this deck, the available Dash creatures. I'm focusing on the creatures with the highest impact, so Mardu Shadowspear and Screamreach Brawler don't quite make the cut. The best Dash creatures are the three with flying, since they are most likely to hit an opponent. Reckless Imp may not boast as impressive a stat-line as Archwing Dragon, but it still creates a 5/5 Dragon Spirit token. Thanks to those Dragon tokens, Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury becomes a powerful win condition for this deck.
The original centerpiece for the deck makes a return as well. You don't usually want to actually Dash Warbringer in, but it makes all your other Dashers much, much better. With Goro-Goro and Satoru you can think of each of these creatures as a three- or four-mana 5/5 flying Dragon, and Warbringer brings that cost down to just one or two mana.
Finally, we have a few big hitters. Pitiless Horde, Sprinting Warbrute, and Kolaghan Forerunners are the biggest Dash creatures. Even on their own they present a reasonable clock for your opponents: paired with Dragon tokens, you can apply a lot of pressure to them. March of the Machine also gave us Death-Greeter's Champion, a rare new Dash creature that gives your Dragon tokens a +1/+1 counter and double strike every time it hits play. Alternately, you can give one of your other Dash creatures double strike to double up on Goro-Goro and Satoru's triggered ability. If Death-Greeter's Champion can get through as well, that's four Dragon tokens, a total 20 extra power, every turn.
Unblocked, Unbothered
Of course, all that depends on your creatures actually getting through to your opponents' life totals. Apart from the few fliers, most of your creatures are relatively fragile, with much lower toughness than power, and because you have to cast those creatures every turn, traditional sources of evasion, like Whispersilk Cloak and Thassa, God of the Sea, don't work.
Instead, I searched for as many ways as possible to make creatures hard to block without spending mana. Luckily, this deck doesn't care about Alora, Merry Thief's downside, because most of our creatures bounce back to hand at the end of turn anyway. You're also not going to be attacking with more than one Dash creature very often, so Alora, Merry Thief covers your needs very well.
I've also been experimenting with Wingcrafter and Hanweir Lancer. Each of these can pair with your Dash creatures every turn. Flying is obviously useful, and first strike should solve the issue of Pitiless Horde having only three toughness. It also makes it much harder for your opponents to make profitable blocks. Whether you get through and make a Dragon token, or eat a chump blocker, you're coming out ahead on board, which is what we're trying to accomplish.
Finally, I have a few new enchantments to join Onslaught, Warstorm Surge, and Sarkhan's Unsealing from the original decklist. Levitation gives all your creatures flying, while Ferocity of the Wilds makes sure that even if your attack is blocked you're likely to get a Dragon token anyway, and once you have a couple tokens in play, an extra power across the board helps you end the game faster.
Winning the Race
The real game-changer for Dash, however, is Goro-Goro and Satoru themselves. The tokens they create not only help you play defense by blocking, they let you build momentum as the game goes on.
The earlier iteration of this deck had a strict limit on the amount of damage it could do in a turn, which was tied to the number of Dash creatures you could cast in a turn. Now, however, you can deal increasing amounts of damage, even with just Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury or Death-Greeter's Champion. This gives the deck significantly more hitting power and plays into the strengths of Dash creatures. Even if your Dragon tokens are hit by Wrath of God, you can still replay Goro-Goro and Satoru and continue on casting Goblin Heelcutter every turn to rebuild your board. Interestingly, this also makes you an aggro deck that plays board wipes well, even with an already established battlefield.
Even with the help from Goro-Goro and Satoru, this deck is going to develop more slowly than a lot of other decks. Board wipes are powerful equalizing tools against faster creature decks that this deck is uniquely able to utilize. Because of the recurring cost of Dash, this deck already wanted to play plenty of mana rocks, along with Grim Hireling and Professional Face-Breaker. You could realistically have enough mana to cast Decree of Pain, re-cast Goro-Goro and Satoru, and rebuild your board faster than your opponents. Complement this gameplan with cheap interactive spells, and it ends up being more a tempo deck than flat out aggro.
This Dash deck is one I've been working on personally for quite some time now. Goro-Goro and Satoru finally feels like a commander that rewards you for following the particular play patterns that the mechanic requires. Ognis, the Dragon's Lash was a close fit, but Grixis offers better tools and the Dragon tokens are much more impactful than tapped Treasure tokens. I'm very excited to see how this deck evolves from here.
Are you interested in any niche mechanics from Magic's past? What commanders have given you surprise support for your pet cards? Tell me about them in the comments, and thanks for reading!
