Loch Dragon MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: When Loch Dragon enters the battlefield or attacks, you get to draw a card if you’ve discarded a card this turn, bolstering your hand and paving the path to victory with a larger selection of strategic options.

Resource Acceleration: This creature contributes to your battlefield presence, applying pressure and demanding answers from opponents. By ensuring you consistently make land drops or cast spells ahead of schedule, it indirectly accelerates resource availability through continuous action.

Instant Speed: While Loch Dragon itself isn’t cast at instant speed, it synergizes well with instant speed spells and abilities that allow you to discard as part of their cost or effect, ensuring you reap the card draw benefit and maintain momentum every turn.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Players must prepare to discard a card whenever Loch Dragon deals combat damage to use its triggered ability, often depleting hand resources especially if the player is already struggling to maintain card advantage.

Specific Mana Cost: Loch Dragon’s casting cost demands both blue and red mana, making it less flexible for inclusion in decks that can’t reliably produce both colors, potentially hindering its playability outside of strictly Izzet (blue-red) decks.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With a casting cost of four mana, including the need for specific colors, Loch Dragon sits at a higher curve. For the investment, its stats and effects may seem lackluster compared to other creatures or spells within the same cost bracket that offer immediate impact or more substantial board presence.

Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Loch Dragon offers a flexible role in your decks, particularly for those requiring both card filtering and a mid-game presence. Its ability to draw and discard helps maintain hand quality across multiple game stages.

Combo Potential: The flying creature pairs well with strategies that capitalize on instants and sorceries. Each time you cast a noncreature spell, you cycle through your deck, setting up advantageous plays or synergies.

Meta-Relevance: Given the right circumstances, Loch Dragon might find a home in formats where long games dominate and incremental advantages lead to victory. Its recurrent card selection can be a key factor against control matchups.

How to Beat

Loch Dragon is an intriguing creature card that players can encounter in Magic: The Gathering matches. Often seen in decks that focus on drawing and discarding cards, Loch Dragon presents a recurring challenge due to its ability to put pressure on opponents while offering card selection for the player using it.

To effectively counter this card, consider utilizing instant-speed removal spells which can dispatch Loch Dragon before its controller benefits from the draw and discard ability. Cards that can exile creatures at instant speed, such as Path to Exile or Unmake, are particularly effective. Additionally, employing counter spells when Loch Dragon is cast prevents it from ever hitting the battlefield.

Another strategy is to go over the top with creatures that have flying and greater power. This approach turns the aerial battlefield to your advantage and forces the opponent to deal with your threats instead. Lastly, since Loch Dragon flourishes in a drawn-out game, you could also adjust your play style to be more aggressive, reducing the game’s length and minimizing the impact of the dragon’s ability on the match.

Examining Loch Dragon within the context of Magic: The Gathering, we see that while it has strengths, there are multiple ways for astute players to mitigate its effects and maintain the upper hand in their duels.