I've loved dinosaurs all my life. I tried making dinosaur tribal a thing before dinosaurs WERE a thing in Magic, but there just was never enough upside to casting Door of Destinies and saying "Lizard Beast." With the release of Ixalan my dream of being able to play Dinosaur tribal commander has come true, and after five iterations of the deck I have landed at what I feel is the real sweet spot of Naya Dinosaur Stompy. It's like a wingless dragon deck that mows over opponents with sheer creature size (and an incredibly brutal commander).
(Also of note, but not exactly a weakness: I find Enrage to be an over-hyped ability that doesn't have the necessary payoff to really work as a build around ability. I like it when Domri Rade allows my Ranging Raptors or Ripjaw Raptor to remove a mana dork or utility creature and get upside, but if you're looking for a dedicated dinosaur Enrage deck this is clearly not it!)
The Deck!
The main way of winning is just by developing a massive board of equally massive creatures. This generally involves biding your time for an enemy to give you an opening, then swinging in with Gishath, Sun's Avatar while holding up mana for a Boros Charm or Heroic Intervention. Damage doublers like Xenagos, God of Revels, Samut, the Tested, or Aggravated Assault allow for both serious beats and an incredible amount of potential dinosaurs entering the battlefield for free. As an additional plus, Gishath + extra damage effects can close out the game with commander damage pretty effectively. Kinjalli's Sunwing and her two compatriots allow you to pave the way for Gishath to swing in, while Iroas, God of Victory both prevents single blockers and protects your dinos from being killed through double blocks.
As backup win conditions, Warstorm Surge, Where Ancients Tread, and Arlinn Kord's emblem all provide ways for your massive dinosaurs to push through damage without ever attacking. A good Gishath activation will generally net you 10+ damage just from enchantment triggers as long as one of these is on the board. A double-striking Gishath will generally hit enough dinosaurs that you can 40-0 an opponent on the spot if your dino gets through.
As another backup win condition, this deck does have an infinite combo possibility. It involves sneaking through at least 2 Gishath damage and having some top-of-the-library manipulation to hit Burning Sun's Avatar and Changeling Titan with a Dual Nature on the field. I cannot take credit for figuring out this infinite combo; check out Nekorin's explanation of it here. Note that this combo does not actually require Gishath; as long as you have Dual Nature down and enough mana to cast BSA and a Changeling, you can do it. Additionally, while BSA is the easiest dinosaur to combo off with, any 5+ power dinosaur will work if you have Where Ancients Tread or Warstorm Surge (for the latter, they don't even need 5+ power) down, and I'm fairly certain that you can accomplish a combo kill with a Changeling alone if you have either of those enchantments on the battlefield.
In order to combo off (and just to make sure you hit creatures you want off Gishath's damage), it's important to dedicate some slots to top of the library manipulation. Congregation at Dawn is doubtlessly the strongest, allowing you to hit whatever three dinos you need for the exact situation once Gishath connects.
Worldy Tutor
is also quite strong, ensuring you hit at least one useful dino off Gishath. The normal downside of these tutors (going to top of library instead of hand) is actually pure upside for Gishath! Scroll Rack allows you to do this as well, but necessitates you having the dinos you want Gishath to hit in your hand to shuffle back in. Gaea's Blessing is the worst of the top-of-the-deck manipulation cards, but is still much more valuable in this deck than it is in most. If you have Gishath out and you know you can hit for at least three damage it effectively allows you to return three cards from your graveyard to the battlefield. The fact that it also serves as mill protection in niche situations is more upside.
Gishath is greedy for mana, and it puts up its best results with mana doublers. I haven't been able to test Regal Behemoth out because it doesn't exist online (I slot Mana Reflection in its place instead on MTGO), but I love the addition of Monarch to any EDH game and Gishath generally can push through damage to bring it back to you once you lose it. Mirari's Wake and Zendikar Resurgent are the real stand out mana doublers, as both provide a fantastic secondary effect as well. Outside of mana doublers, we have the standard green mana fetch spells in Cultivate and Kodama's Reach, and we cast enough creatures that Karametra, God of Harvests does serious work. Nissa, Vastwood Seer
gives both early game mana fixing and late game card advantage; she's never a dead card in hand.
Because of how incredibly expensive dinosaurs can be on their own, the best ramp in the deck are the cost reducers. Urza's Incubator is by far the strongest, but I am never unhappy to see Otepec Huntsmaster or Kinjalli's Caller. These effects often allow you to hit multiple dinosaurs in the midgame, which in turn allow for great drawing potential off Vanquisher's Banner and Elemental Bond. These are two of your primary card advantage engines, and either one of them surviving on the field for multiple turns will ensure your hand stays stocked full of large creature goodness. As a final card advantage engine, I can not overstate how good Greater Good is. While discarding three can feel harsh, the reality is that it's often easy to sacrifice a Bonded Horncrest with an anthem down and almost totally refuel your hand. It's also a great response to board wipes, allowing you to draw 10+ cards and then discard down to 7 to recover quickly.
Weaknesses:As much as I love this deck, there are some real glaring weaknesses. Most notable is its complete lack of interaction with your opponent. This deck is aiming to do one thing - get cards at board to strengthen or clear the way for Gishath strike, then protect your cards so that they can hit again. As a result, there is no room to interact with your opponent's strategies, meaning you both struggle to remove their important creatures (and you can't exile ANYTHING), and you can't prevent or delay opponents from comboing off. This is in every way a straight-up dinosaur beatdown deck, and I personally would not have it any other way.
An additional weakness is that the deck really relies on hitting your early mana drops, which can be stressful (especially since the deck is running only 38 lands). I always mulligan for lands unless I have a truly god-tier hand (and a scryland or two in hand). Additionally, you spend so much of your early game just trying to get your engine online that dedicated aggro decks (Edgar Markov, Krenko) can make it incredibly hard for you to stabilize in the midgame.
Rivals of Ixalan Wishlist: My number one hope for Rivals of Ixalan is upping the number of dinosaurs. I would love to see ten worthwhile dinosaurs added; hopefully, they would be dinosaurs with some of the following utility features.
- -An artifact/enchantment dinosaur (my number one wish, as this deck has zero ways to interact with troublesome enchantments/artifacts). I would especially like one dinosaur that removes those card types on ETB and one that removes them on enrage.
- -A graveyard recursion dinosaur. I don't need it to be as strong as Paleoloth (which is a house in this deck, though I'm annoyed a creature with PALEO in its name didn't errata to dinosaur type), but something that brings back your creatures from the graveyard is important.
- -A Warstorm Surge/Where Ancients Tread on a dinosaur body.
- -A dinosaur that allows you to pump individual other dinosaurs.
- -A dinosaur that gives the Furnace of Rath effect (unlikely, due to Ixalan's Angrath's Marauders being the same effect on a different tribe's body).
Please note I'm not expecting any of these, but these are the things I would LIKE to see over Vanilla creatures that likely won't make the cut.
Cards currently on the chopping block:1. Imposing Sovereign Draws a lot of early game hate, is off-flavor, and generally isn't a good top deck. Kinjalli's Sunwing is better because it can be hit off a Gishath and is flying, but Sovereign just doesn't fit as well.2. Rishkar's Expertise Very slow + requires a board presence to make the most of it.3. Spike-Tailed Ceratops (Probably won't be cut until Rivals, but this deck really doesn't care about defending that much.4. Samut, the Tested I really want to make Samut work, and if I can protect her long enough to swing in with Gishath it could be game over for someone. The fact that her ult allows you to combo off as long as you have Dual Nature on the field is gravy, but she's definitely not the strongest card in the deck.5. Rampaging Ferocidon has been in half my drafts of this deck and out of the other half. It sucks to hit a Verdant Sun's Avatar off Gish while Ferocidon is out, and VSA is one of the best cards at keeping you alive into the late game. On the flip side, tutoring for Ferocidon vs. a Sanguine Bond or Aetherflux Reservoir deck could keep you alive. The jury is still out on this one for me, but I ultimately do think having the utility available helps.
Feedback Desired1. -Your opinions on the deck!2. -Questions on the choices I made3. -Suggestions for cards I overlooked4. -Suggestions for the current "Maybeboard."
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