Rise, Sarkhan and claim your glorious place next to the great Nicol Bolas! Such is the fate of the fallen Sarkhan Vol. He sought the greatest dragon and now he found him.

As a servant of Nicol Bolas, Sarkhan ‘s abilities become darker and in my opinion, cooler. His ability to sacrifice creatures , both yours and your opponent’s is gravy. Paired with Sprouting Thrinax, it’s a straight-up upgrade. Trade in a 3/3 creature for 3 1/1’s AND a 5/5 dragon. Sounds good right? Darn right it is!

The dragon-making ability alone is just sweet enough but you get 2 other abilities to top it off. We will address the ultimate first. Now, barring any proliferate shenanigans, this planeswalker is always losing loyalty. Sometimes, you really need to ultimate your opponent to win and find yourself lacking the loyalty to do so. Jokes about Sarkhan’s disloyalty are justified as he is not happy to simply be a mindless slave to Bolas. You will often times find yourself making a dragon, attacking and using the -4 ability to win games. Barring the game winning part, you will find yourself using the –x ability to draw cards till Sarkhan drops. The Dark Confidant ability is also quite flavorful.

Originally, it was thought you could simply enchant Sarkhan with Indestructability and he would just draw you cards forever. Reasoning: he takes damage, but is indestructible, hence does not die. Reality: damage cause loss of loyalty, no more loyalty cause you to sacrifice your planeswalker. I know, in this case, reality sucks.

Onto the card draw ability. This is one awesome ability. When paired with Blodbraid Elf or Crystal Ball, it can be downright insane. I used to play in a Jund deck back a few years and it was awesome. You would be able to ‘control’ what you drew and how you cascaded. Pure Awesome! Sometimes you just last ditch draw with Sarkhan and it’s great and othertimes, meh. Of course when you’re down to 1 loyalty, another Sarkhan is usually what you want to flip. Makes your opponent go: “ Aw! Not this guy again!”

Another word on the sacrifice ability, it can also be used to ‘downgrade’ an opponent’s creature to a 5/5 flyer. The creature being an Emrakul, Kozilek, Ulamog or even just a Baneslayer Angel (something you never want to see across the table when you’re using Sarkhan the Mad.