This deck has a couple different infinite combos that revolve around Forerunner of the Empire and Raptor Hatchling and instants that make them indestructible like Make a Stand and Chance for Glory. With those cards you get infinite dinosaur tokens entering the battlefield which causes infinite ETB triggers from Forerunner of the Empire (which kills the tokens). That by itself would at least be a board wipe on your opponent, but if we add the new Truefire Captain into the mix then we get infinite pings to the opponents face for 1.
Or, alternately, we can throw in a Bellowing Aegisaur, which allows us, when we go infinite, to have infinite infinitely large dinosaur tokens to go wide with.
I've tried to make a deck like this before, and it never quite got there. I was originally trying to make it work with Frilled Deathspitter, but that card just isn't very good outside of the combo. Enter Truefire Captain! With a much better top and bottom end and the ability to turn any amount of damage done to it back on the opponent, and Mentor it makes this deck much more viable. I also think this one works better because we can have more than 4 of almost all of the components for the combo. Make a Stand and Chance for Glory give us multiple opportunities to make all our creatures indestructible at infinite speed for 3 Mana. We can actually capitalize on the extra turn from Chance for Glory because it allows us to untap all our mana to cast the rest of our combo pieces if we need it. Losing the game afterwards will only hurt if the opponent has a non-destruction or damage based way of thwarting our combo at instant speed. We should always be able to win that turn otherwise.
I've added in Relentless Raptors and Sky Terrors to be annoying aggressive early Boros critters. Ultimately I hope to annoy them with Sky Terror enough to soak up some of their removal, which will hopefully add a layer of protection to my Forerunner of the Empire, which is kind of the keystone of this whole thing. Also, because they are cheap dinos they can trigger a Forerunner and start the infinite combo if my Hatchling is already on the field, AND they are great targets for mentor triggers off the Truefire Captain.
I've added Star of Extinction as another alternate win con with Truefire Captain. Play testing has proven it to be a very worthwhile addition. Thank you BaneOfLordran!
My only real concern here is being unable to draw Forerunner, which can be problematic, but our creatures and all of our instants that give indestructible should help us to stay alive long enough to either kill them with our critters or hit our combos. Treasure Map
has proven to be a worthwhile addition as it helps us dig through our deck and find our pieces. Thank you Apex_killjoy02 for the suggestion! I also added in a copy of Firesong and Sunspeaker as a fun-of, but with that card on the field a well-timed Star of Extinction can net us 20 life per creature it hits, which would also keep us alive long enough to hit our combos - unless our opponent just scoops when they see us sitting at 200 life in a game of Standard.
I have goldfished the hell out of this deck and can reliably hit one of the combos as early as turn six. In match-ups against real people with real cards the deck still functions pretty well. It's able to apply and maintain pressure early, keep itself defended mid-game, and hopefully hit the combo before late game. Because there are multiple win condition combos in this deck you win a game one way and have the opponent go super aggressive towards shutting down that one strategy just to have you drop another combo on them that wins the game and makes them flip the table. I will be taking it to FNM this weekend and testing it out for reals. I will report on the results.
I guess we'll see.
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