The Land Before Time: Sharptooth is Pissed (Commander / EDH MTG Deck)

The Land Before Time: Sharptooth is Pissed

Commander / EDH RGW (Naya)

juishjackhammer

Creature (26)

Enchantment (8)

Land (37)

Artifact (8)

Commander (1)

Sorcery (11)

Instant (9)

Maybeboard

Instant (9)

Sorcery (4)

Creature (8)

Artifact (2)

Enchantment (7)

Planeswalker (1)

1x Garruk, Primal Hunter

Land (1)

1x Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep

enter image description here The Land Before Time was one of my favorite line of movies while growing up, and with the release of the new super-charged dinosaurs from Rivals that basically crap all over most of the dinosaurs from the last batch, I feel like I am obligated to make a cool deck to properly show off what they can do. This is not supposed to be just a Timmy deck where you play big creatures and swing. This is a combo deck that hopes to exploit the enrage triggers of our dinosaurs, while burning everything else in sight along the way, and then maybe finish them off with huge creatures if necessary.

Each color in this deck serves a very specific purpose: green is to ramp, red is for mass burn that will burn our dinosaurs for enrage triggers (as well as our opponent's creatures), and white is to make our dinosaurs indestructible for protection and to encourage mass burn. White probably has the least relevance in the deck at the moment, but that may change.

This being said, I am not the best deck builder, or most knowledgeable magic player in general. I would greatly appreciate any constructive criticism. This deck is meant to be somewhat casual, but still aggressive and fun to play.

Additionally, I try to play on a budget, so I do not own most of the cards here over $5, and only hope to acquire them over time when I am in a better financial position. More on that note, I'm sure this deck can be improved if I beef up the land base, but I don't plan on spending $50 on Cavern of Souls or over $200 on Gaea's Cradle at any point. I don't own any shock lands either, so even for those, I'll probably pass up any advice that tells me to get any land over $10 (although I would still appreciate the comment if you'd like to mention it).

All that being said, let's examine the cards and their potential synergies at work here:

Combos

Best gurl definitely goes to Pyrohemia.

1.) Pyrohemia & Cacophodon: With pyrohemia, we have my new favorite card: cacophodon. He does work, and with pyrohemia, might win you the game.

Give him indestructible, tap a red source to activate pyrohemia->cacophodon triggers->untap the same red source to use on pyrohemia again->repeat ad nauseam. Since everyone gets burned every time this happens (including you) you need to watch life totals. Otherwise, you can burn every creature for as much damage as you want, and if you have the most life you suddenly win. If you have less life, but have Ravenous Daggertooth and have made your board indestructible, then suddenly you start gaining 1 life for every activation and you win anyway.

This works especially well with Rite of Passage instead of indestructibility, as even if you have less life than an opponent, once you burn away their creatures, every creature on your field will be enormous and you can swing in for the kill. For that purpose, I put Plea for Guidance over Enlightened Tutor just to search up both pyrohemia and rite of passage.

Note: cards like Sun-Crowned Hunters, Trapjaw Tyrant, Needletooth Raptor, or Silverclad Ferocidons also do massive work here, but might be more situational if you don't have rite of passage or enough life advantage.

Also, if you have Boros Garrison or Gruul Turf, you can generate an extra white or green mana respectively every time you activate pyrohemia, and suddenly you have a decent amount of colored mana to help cast other spells with.

2.) Forerunner of the Empire: Another big enrage enabler here. If you have him in your hand early game, you can cast him to search out Ranging Raptors. Next turn you draw the raptors and play them, and get a Rampant Growth along with it. Now every time a creature enters under your control you have an additional rampant growth to tag along.

If you have him in your hand later in the game, and Gishath, Sun's Avatar is on the field where you're confident he can get a hit through, then you play him and search up Polyraptor. When polyraptor enters, you can get up to 8 polyraptors, and if forerunner is indestructible you can get infinitely many at the cost of burning everything else on the board to death.

3.) Polyraptor/comboraptor: Speaking of polyraptor, it works equally well, if not better, with our friend pyrohemia. Let * represent raising something to a power/exponent (I don't know how to make the "carrot" symbol on tappedout). For any n<5, you get 2 * n polyraptors, where n is the number of times you use pyrohemia. If n >5 or n=5, then you get (2 * n)-(2 * (n-5))=(2 * n)(1-1/(2 * 5)), as the raptors that have been on the field any more than 4 damage ago will die off. Still, you get a lot of raptors...like... a lot.

4.) Boros Reckoner: Let's take a look at one of the oddballs/non-dinosaurs in this deck: Boros Reckoner. At first I wasn't really sure if I should keep him in, but with forerunner or pyrohemia he does wonders. Every time one of those two trigger, he'll take 1 damage, which he can then redirect back towards the enrage dinosaur already on the field. Now every time you have an activation from forerunner or pyrohemia, you get twice the enrage triggers on a dinosaur. I originally wanted to put Shaman en-Kor in over him, but since you have to spend mana to fully utilize the shaman, and also the reckoner can deal damage to any creature or player (which after using Star of Extinction or a big Earthquake can be very nice) I decided to keep the reckoner in.

There's other enrage enablers like Raging Swordtooth and Raging Regisaur and dinosaurs with great enrage abilities like Ripjaw Raptor, Trapjaw Tyrant, and card:silverclad ferocions that can always be stacked on your library with things like Congregation at Dawn and Reinforcements, but there's a lot of variability in that regard and I just wanted to mention some of the big synergies that I've found.

Card Draw

I'm sure there's better cards I can put in like Greater Good, Mind's Eye, Sylvan Library, and The Immortal Sun, but like I said I'm trying to make this deck a budget if I can get away with it.

1.) Staff of Nin: It's great, as it's just an extra draw every upkeep, and also you can always deal that sweet damage to one of your enrage dinosaurs.

2.) Harmonize: Draw 3 for 4 in not blue? Yes please.

3/4.) Momentous Fall/Life's Legacy: Both can draw you huge amounts of card, considering there's plenty of dinosaurs here that serve their purpose early on and just become fodder later on like raging swordtooth or other big fatties that have outlived their purpose. Life's legacy is awesome for only 2 mana, but with fall being at instant speed you can sack gishath or another creature that one of your opponents might be trying to steal.

5.) Rishkar's Expertise Probably some of the best draw here. Not much necessary explaining as long as you have a big dino out.

6.) Ripjaw Raptor: It's good in standard and it's good in here. Plenty of enrage enablers means plenty of chances for card draw.

Edit: Removed Arch of Orazca, Shamanic Revelation, and Garruk, Primal Hunter. Arch was too much of an investment for a colorless land. This deck puts out usually only a few big green creatures at a time, so 5 mana for only a few cards with shamanic isn't worth it to me. I'd much rather play things like rishkar's expertise, since each creature usually has at least 5 power. Removed Garruk just because he's a little expensive for a non-dinosaur card for me. Added in Elemental Bond. That card is just too much value with gishath.

Ramp

1/2.) Cultivate/Kodama's Reach: Replaces itself with a land and accelerates you by 1 turn. My favorite ramp spells in all of EDH.

3/4.) Explosive Vegetation/Skyshroud Claim: A little on the expensive side, but both give you a two turn advantage. I like skyshroud claim more, as the forests come in untapped (and can be non-basic) so it's almost a 2 mana spell if you look at the net mana you have.

5.) Atzocan Seer: Replaced Drover of the Mighty. Even though he's a little more expensive, he's almost as big, and he can recur a necessary dinosaur if necessary.

6.) Otepec Huntmaster: He makes ya bois less expensive, and can give a big ol' dino haste. If you want to cast more than one dinosaur per turn, cost reduction can be much better than an extra land or a mana dork, which almost makes me want to put in Kinjalli's Caller or Knight of the Stampede, but again I'm limiting creature ramp to avoid losing resources in a board wipe, and I think otepec is the best out of the previous two I just mentioned.

7.) Sol Ring: What can I say that every EDH player ever hasn't already said...

8.) Mirari's Wake: Wake is almost objectively better, but both are amazing, especially if you can ramp in to them to get them out even earlier.

9.) Regal Behemoth: He's an official dinosaur now!!! In my opinion the only good retconned dinosaur, and therefore the only one in this deck. As stated above, anything that doubles your lands is great. Additionally, you can get him out free of charge with Gishath.

10.) Ranging Raptors: Even though this is conditional ramp, if the right conditions are met, he'll get you every basic in the deck. Plus he's a good chump blocker, as at the very least he'll get you a land.

11.) Wayward Swordtooth: Again, kind of conditional as if you need a lot of lands in your hand for him to make a sustainable impact. if you get him out early and don't have draw spells, you might go enough turns without hitting your land drops that it'll just net even eventually. Still, with good draw (and just in general) playing multiple lands per turn. Also he's a 5/5 for 3, which always kicks ass. City's blessing is kind of trivial in EDH anyway.

Edit: Added in Thran Dynamo, Gilded Lotus, and all the single land ramp cards Nature's Lore, Rampant Growth, Farseek, and thunderheard migration. This deck was suffering from not being able to get Gishath out early to apply pressure, and needed way more ramp.

I removed Zendikar Resurgent. It was just too expensive, especially because I don't cast creatures often enough to benefit from the card draw.

Removal

While a weak point of this deck is its lack of removal, there should hopefully mass burn cards like
Blasphemous Act, Star of Extinction, Chain Reaction, Earthquake, pyrohemia, and at times forerunner of the empire to handle non-indestructible creatures. Otherwise, it hurts to not have reliable non-creature removal.

1.) Zacama, Primal Calamity: The most powerful removal in the deck. However he is 9 mana and is a huge target. If you can get him out and he isn't countered, then he's wonderful. In all honesty, it's best to search him up with something like Congregation at Dawn or the forerunner.

2/3.) Beast Within/Chaos Warp: I tried to include spot removal that didn't have any limitations. As such, I've been thinking about putting Oblation back in, but for now it didn't make the cut. All three are wonderful removal that will hit any permanent on the board, getting rid of an opponents biggest threat.

4/5/6.) Trapjaw Tyrant/Silverclad Ferocidons/Needletooth Raptor: Again, the problem with enrage is that it is conditional, but with something like pyrohemia these can annihilate your opponents board. Needletooth needs some beefing up for him to be heavily abused, so he's probably the least reliable out of all of these guys. That being said, none of them are 100% reliable, as without enrage triggers (other cards/resources) they're basically just dumb creatures but...meh.

7.) Thrashing Brontodon: The only other non-creature removal here. Hopefully he will be a 1 mana spell if you can get him out with gishath.

I've been thinking of putting Swords to Plowshares back in, but...meh. This deck is about hitting first and getting hit later, so I've left targeted creature removal out mostly. I'll probably put it back in though for pesky indestructible creatures, but until then we just have to burn everything in sight.

Cards in Question

I would like some opinions on my inclusions of the following cards. I like them, and they have their uses, but I'm sure I could find better options too.

1.) Carnage Tyrant: Great in more aggressive formats, but I feel he does not do too much in EDH except annoy my opponent until a boardwipe. However, my friend bought him for me before rivals was released, and for a $20 purchase he'll stay in my deck. Just wanted to mention why he was here.

4.) Ravenous Daggertooth: As mentioned above he can gain you life with pyrohemia if you can keep him alive, and in doing so will help win the game with cacophodon. However he's pretty weak and could just as easily die miserably.

5.) Sun-Crowned Hunters: Really expensive for its power and toughness, although under the right circumstances could do a lot of work with pyrohemia on board.

Edit: removed majestic heliotrops, Ravenous Daggertooth, Territorial Hammerskull, Imperial Ceratops, and a few others. They didn't have enough board presence, and I was able to make room for some combat tricks, card draw, and/or more ramp. Replaced Boros Reckoner with Shaman en-Kor. Feel like it offered better utility.

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Date added	5 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	12 - 0 Mythic Rares 43 - 0 Rares 23 - 0 Uncommons 8 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	4.62
Tokens	Beast 3/3 G, City's Blessing, Copy Clone, Dinosaur 3/3 G, Dinosaur Beast / G, The Monarch, Treasure
Folders	EDH
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