The way it works is simple: you sign up for a certain budget (suppose $50), which means at any time, you can borrow cards up to that budget
You are allowed to look at the front face of manifested cards you control whenever you like
On the Dragon front, it does quite well, bringing some new cards to support this side of the deck
His +1 ability reads: Create a 1/1 red Wizard creature token with Tap, Add a Red Mana
At the end of the day, I think there are probably stronger standalone foretell (Ranar the Ever-Watchful) and goad (Thantis, the Warweaver) commanders but having the two abilities together is pretty cool
Again, more new-to-Magic cards means more opportunities for high-value goodies that arent being counted here, so dont shrug the deck off completely