This month is the Draco Summer season, in which the fate of Draco Temple is decided by you, the players. Every game of achroma played connected on the app contributes to the achrometer, which tracks achrom vs. chroma wins. Whichever side comes out on top at the end of the month determines which side wins in the Siege of Draco Temple. I checked this morning, and this is the current state of affairs:

Over the weekend, many players went to the store in Poole to battle it out, and it looks like the majority of players were playing achrom, with the dark side currently holding a narrow 16 win lead.

In addition to determining the outcome of the Temple, during this season, everyone ordering from the achroma store and spending £30 or more also gets one of the limited edition Draco Summer promo cards.

This is a very nice promo that follows on from the format of the Salum Spring promo. To celebrate the season, I thought I’d share 2 Draco Planum decks. First up, my personal favourite, an achrom deck:

The principle is pretty simple: drain with drakes, control the canvas, and if you can pull off a Peorth/Draco Graveyard play, all the better.

This deck shares a number of similarities with the excellent drakes deck posted by Lewis to achroma.tools (check it out here). This wasn’t deliberate; there’s just certain cards and combos we both value equally highly. Notable differences are the lack of Ruber Draco and Prism Stones, instead relying on Chroma Storehouse and an extra HAIM (mostly for trade or Cintimani/Peorth) to help me ramp. This is because I generally want shards now not later. I’ve dropped a Monastery Nest and Breath of Ice and fitted in a couple of Draco Planum Library to help feed my hand. Since I’ve now gone more dark blue and playing Chroma Storehouse, I’ve got Umbra Aqueous over Igneus. It’s also cheaper and hits the opponent harder. I also slotted in a single Draco Summer, just because it felt seasonally appropriate.

I’ve tried, I’ve really tried to make sacrifice work. But non-sacrifice achrom decks just seem to be better, despite the support for it in Rise of the Realm Runners. Hopefully the mechanic gets some more love in the next release.

While I’m an achrom player mostly, it would be remiss not to post my favourite Draco chroma deck here:

I played this deck in the 3/4 playoff at the recent Grand Tournament, and my opponent (Torus) just happened to throw down an Aqueous Transition/Vast Volitarus deck too. When playing this deck you want to deploy lots of locations, draw lots of cards, and hopefully manage a blowout Chroma Storehouse/Chroma Overflow/Vast Volitarus/Aqueous Transition play. Note that since Chroma Storehouse counts itself, if you’ve got 2 red shards on the canvas already, this nets 2. Most often though it’s a late game card to help you sprint to the finish line, and can be pretty nuts with Draco Planum Library and/or Aqueous Transition on the canvas.

It is very low on characters deliberately, as it makes the deck harder to control (claim and erase character cards are essentially dead cards against this deck), and to make Chromatic Extinction that much more beneficial for me. It’s got Draco Graveyard to recycle Chroma Storehouse (especially nice if it got erased due to the heroic rule) or an erased Vast Volitarus. This isn’t the fastest deck in the world, but when it hits critical mass it is very hard to stop.

I’ll be keeping an eye on the achrometer over the course of the month, and can’t wait to see how things shake out. Will achrom push their lead over the month like last time? Will chroma rally at the end to pull off a surprise victory? Only time will tell.

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Next time you’re ordering achroma products, please use the discount code dracotemple at checkout on the achroma webstore for 10% off all orders, including pre-orders.
To activate this discount, enter the code at checkout, or go to shop.achroma.cards/dracotemple to automatically apply the code.