Bone Dragon MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Bone Dragon gives players a strategic upper hand by returning from the graveyard to the battlefield. This recurring presence can be key to outlasting opponents and maintaining pressure on the board, effectively offering a form of card advantage as you don’t need to draw additional creatures.

Resource Acceleration: Its activation cost, which involves exiling seven other cards from your graveyard, can be seen as a form of resource acceleration. This ability effectively utilizes what would be dormant resources in your graveyard to generate a powerful and impactful presence on the battlefield.

Instant Speed: While the Bone Dragon itself does not operate at instant speed, its ability to return from the graveyard can be activated at instant speed. This permits tactically surprising your opponent by bringing it back during their end step, setting up your board for your next turn without consuming resources during your own turn.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Bone Dragon’s ability to return from the graveyard necessitates discarding valuable cards from your hand, putting you at a potential resource disadvantage when facing decks that can capitalize on your diminished hand.

Specific Mana Cost: To cast Bone Dragon, you need both black mana and generic mana, which can be challenging for multicolored decks or those lacking sufficient mana fixing to consistently meet this demand.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With a five mana cost to cast from your hand and an additional hefty activation fee from the graveyard, Bone Dragon competes with other high-impact creatures and spells which may offer immediate board presence or effects without the additional graveyard setup.

Reasons to Include Bone Dragon in Your Collection

Versatility: Bone Dragon adds value to any deck looking for a resilient finisher. Its ability to return from the graveyard gives it staying power in both aggressive and control strategies.

Combo Potential: This fearsome dragon synergizes with self-mill or discard strategies, turning graveyard stocking into a resource. It can anchor an entire strategy around graveyard play, meshing with cards that enable reanimation and recursion.

Meta-Relevance: Given the ever-changing nature of the metagame, Bone Dragon’s innate flexibility keeps it relevant. Its ability to come back from the graveyard can be a game-changer, particularly in longer games where resources are stretched thin.

How to Beat Bone Dragon

Bone Dragon enters the battlefield from the graveyard, presenting a recursive threat that requires specific strategies to overcome. Dealing with this fearsome creature demands careful planning, but there are several effective tactics available to dedicated players. Graveyard hate cards, such as Rest in Peace or Scavenging Ooze, can remove Bone Dragon from the game completely, preventing its return. Another approach is to employ exile effects—cards like Path to Exile or Swords to Plowshares can handle the dragon permanently, as they prevent it from hitting the graveyard in the first place.

Counterspells also serve as a formidable defense, thwarting the initial casting or the activation of its return ability. For those who prefer a proactive approach, controlling the opponent’s graveyard size is key, as a smaller graveyard means the resurgence of Bone Dragon is less likely. In short, keeping its resurrection in check hinges on preemptive graveyard management and swift, permanent removal solutions.