The Most Strategic and Intelligent of Elder Dragon Strategies (EDH / Commander)

The basics of this deck:

The basic premise behind every Arcades deck should be some variation of the following strategy: play cheap walls that provide some degree of value. Sometimes the value is simply that they are a 0/7 for three mana, which Arcades then enables to deal damage from their toughness value. 7 points of creature damage for three mana is a pretty nice deal. If you can keep Arcades from being removed, your low cmc walls begin to replace themselves with a card draw thanks to Arcades' first triggered ability. Eventually you should have a bunch of creatures that are hitting really hard.

Because of the wonky power/toughness values, Arcades decks almost always make use of board wipes such as Retribution of the Meek, Wave of Reckoning, Fell the Mighty, and Slaughter the Strong. This keeps your combat lanes clear - the challenge is making sure you have some way to allow your walls to both attack, and deal damage from their toughness value.

Rolling Stones isn't quite enough. They can attack, but they need High Alert to fall over like a vending machine into your opponents. Assault Formation tries to enable this as well, albeit awkwardly. Arcades himself gets the job done as well, making it imperative to keep him alive.

I can't imagine anyone would want to build this deck if they didn't find the satisfaction of attacking your friends with walls inherently humorous. These days there are defender cards, which aren't quite as funny, but we need them in today's high octane EDH environment. And just so you know, Arcades Sabboth is one of the original Dragons that the format is named after. I respect you greatly if you include the O.G. in your deck.

My spin on it and how it's different than what I see:

I have more defensive cards than many lists that I see. I am a massive fan of Vigilance in EDH, so I included 3 enchantments and the mysterious and chaotic Angel's Trumpet to let our walls attack, but also have the ability to block, which walls are usually pretty good at. Once Arcades hits the board, it has proven pretty important to play patiently and slowly, always allowing yourself some kind of response while only making one or so cheap creatures a turn. I included four Ghostway style cards for us to dodge board wipes of all kinds, while getting value upon re-entry through Arcades' card draw. There are four counterspells as well. Giant's Amulet is a cool new card that is really cheap to get hexproof where you want it, and Arcades synergizes with it thanks to his vigilance.

I do not have an optimized decklist. I don't run Triumph of the Hordes or Teferi's Protection. There's things you can do like put a Pemmin's Aura on your Axebane Guardian and get infinite mana, which I'm not doing. I tend to avoid combos.

Spicy Fun:

Aura Shards works really well with lots of cheap creatures.
Meekstone messes with our opponents and not with us.
Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive makes us unblockable.

Concerns:

This deck was a massive pain to figure out what walls I wanted, and how many. Normally I run 36 lands, I don't know why there's 33 here, and no talismans or signets for artifact ramp. This is a pretty simple deck, there's no combo stuff going on.

Sidequests:

Cast Stoneskin on a Tree of Redemption who is not being blocked.

Have a Meekstone in play along with an Angel's Trumpet.

Slam someone for a trillion with the help of the Towering Titan.

Why 102 cards?

Because dragon shield sleeves often come with 102 sleeves, and I won't tell my friends I have two extra cards if you don't.

Extras

All of my lands in this deck feature walls, structures, or a dragon flying around.
Haven't had enough rectangle fun yet? Check this out

Still not satisfied? Learn about the controversial artpiece Tilted Arc which was removed because it kicked too much ass. It's just a tilted rectangle of rusting metal.