Chris' Magic: The Gathering Card of the Day!

The Card of the Day is...

Zirilan of the Claw

3/4 1RR, Tap: Search your library for a Dragon card and put it into play as though it were just played. Shuffle your library afterwards. That creature is unaffected by summoning sickness. Remove the creature from the game at end of any turn.

A brief rundown of the card:

Zirilan seems a simple enough card to use---just save a little mana each turn to enable yourself to go fetch any summon Dragon and use it for a turn. This is an incredible ability beacuse all dragons available in tourney play are flyers (kinda), and have a power greater than 4 (except for Dragon Whelp, and Nalathani Dragon). If you are lucky enough to own enough dragons, try making a dragon deck based around Zirilan of the Claw. All summon dragon cards are great--especially if you can avoid the hefty casting cost that goes along with them. Zirilan is one of the better ways of getting around this. Let's take a look at a few of the better dragons to use with Zirilan, and maybe a few other uses for our dragons once we sneak them out into play:

• Firestorm Hellkite
  What's so special about the Firestorm Hellkite? Trample. A Shivan Dragon can be stopped cold by a wasp token. A Firestorm Hellkite would have 5 points of trample damage spill over the wasp onto your opponent.
• Crimson Hellkite
  If you desire direct creature damage instead of damage to your opponent, try a surprise Crimson Hellkite.
• Safe Haven/Tormod's Crypt/Teferi's Veil
  Even though Zirilan is really good at retrieving dragons, the dragons don't seem to want to stick around afterward. Before the end of the turn, use any of the above cards to make sure your dragon is not around to be removed from the game (in an undesirable way).
• Dragon Mask
  Attack with your newfound dragon, and give it +2/+2 until the end of the turn with Dragon Mask. Conviently enough, Dragon Mask also sends the dragon back to your hand.